A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine From the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine From the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council, Vol. 2The era embraced in our second division extends from the reign of Antoninus Pius to that of Commodus. One of the writers included in the previous group, Polycarp, lived far on into this period. But his style and mode of thought, as well as the most active part of his life, belong to the earlier period. The writer of the Pastor of Hermas may also have lived in the time of the Antonines, but here again in the lack of external evidence we are led by the character of his work to place him in the earliest group of Christian writers. On the other hand, some of the writers included in the second group flourished in the reign of Hadrian. The first Apologists presented their apologies to that emperor. But as their writings are lost, and consequently a thorough study of their mode of thought is impossible, we class them along with those who carried out the spe01al work which they had commenced.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.