PREFACE
I would never have undertaken to publish any part of the works of Theodoret, being well aware of how much the diligence of the most learned Schulze had achieved in the other portions, and how not only unfair but also difficult it is to push one's own studies into the labors of others, had I not been forced to comply with the desire of the publisher. To him, as he frequently pressed this same request, it seemed no less difficult a thing to be denied than it seemed to Schulze himself to be relieved of a part of his burden. At that time, the publisher’s accounts demanded that, in order for this whole work to be completed more quickly, two volumes should be printed at once. Although for many just reasons I tried to shift this burden onto another, whether more learned or less encumbered than myself, the publisher—a very dear friend to me and one who has deserved well of me—was so insistent that I began to fear that by refusing his just and noble request, I might be seen as lacking either in benevolence or in the zeal to assist his honest endeavors. I therefore consented, and although subsequently that necessity of accelerating the work was removed, I set to the task; and I intend to explain in some detail the way and manner in which I have done it.
First, this volume contains Theodoret’s commentary on all of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, a most excellent work, than which antiquity has nothing better after Chrysostom, whom he surpasses even in brevity and a certain selectivity, though he adds much of his own, truly worthy of being examined more carefully. For indeed, if I except Gagnæus (in his *Schol. on all divine Epistles of Paul*) and Bellosobrius (in his *Obss. hist. crit. et philos. in N. T.*), who provided some excerpts from our author, I have known of no interpreters of ours who seemed to have made use of his interpretations; so that I might even dare to promise that those who diligently compare these scholia of Theodoret will find many things which will not even have entered the minds of common interpreters. Now, in editing these scholia, which Sirmond was the first to bring forward in Greek—using I know not what codex (for he is accustomed to be somewhat negligent in relating such matters)—we have used two codices: one from Augsburg and another from Bavaria.
The former, used also by Bengel in his edition of the New Testament—who called it the fifth Augsburg codex, just as Wetstein called it the fifty-fourth for the Epistles of Paul—is a parchment manuscript, written most accurately, I believe, about six hundred years ago, in the same hand that Bandini recently had engraved in Table 1 of his *Catalog of the Greek Manuscripts of the Medicean Laurentian Library*. It contains a catena on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans starting from the seventh verse of the seventh chapter, joined with the commentaries of the most illustrious interpreters, even those whose fragments have not yet been published, such as Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, which we have carefully seen transcribed, perhaps to be published if we find readers desirous of them. Therefore, where these scholia of Theodoret existed, we have accurately compared them with the Sirmondian text, leaving nothing out, unless it was taken from other books of Theodoret or offered no difference in the reading.
Besides this one, which the liberality of the most ample Senate of the Republic of Augsburg granted, another was sent to us to use from the library of the most serene Elector of Bavaria, through the incredible kindness and most liberal spirit of one Felix Andreas Œffelius, the prefect of that library. Though this book is modern, it is similar to the one which Richard Simon says (in his *Hist. crit. Commentatorum in N. T.*, p. 323) exists in the library of the King of France, written in the XVIth century by a Greek man—a fact which, if the hand and paper itself did not declare it, the following words written at the end of the volume certainly would: Τέλος εἴληφε τῆσδε τῆς βίβλου ἄφμζ' ἐν μηνὶ φευρουαρίῳ κε'· αὕτη ἡ βίβλος ἐγεγράφη διὰ χειρὸς ἐμοῦ Πέτρου Καρνεάδου ἐκ πόλεως Ἐπιδαύρου τὴν νῦν ἐπονομαζομένην Μονεμβασίαν. Furthermore, it is so corrupted with many errors of the pen, especially regarding orthography, that the words often appear to have been cast onto the paper without sense. Yet it was of great benefit. For it contained the whole of Theodoret’s commentaries with few gaps, and offered elegant readings, not only in the commentaries themselves, in which it not rarely concurs with the readings of Hervet, but also in the text of Paul, which often differs from that which Sirmond published, and even more so from the received text; as in I Cor. x, 33, in παντάπασιν (which I would easily prefer), II Cor. ii, 10, where the words τὰ κεχάρισμαι are absent, as is the verb περισσεύει in c. iii, 9, and εἰς before πάντα in Rom. v, 12: to which discrepancy experts in these matters will not be displeased, along with the other...
A collection of readings; indeed, we have taken pains to ensure that nothing has been omitted except manifest scribal errors. Nor have we neglected what Gentianus Hervetus had added to these commentaries following his Latin translation, published at Florence in the year 1552. For having received from Marcello Cervini, Cardinal of the Holy Cross, a manuscript copy of these commentaries, and having decided to follow the authority of the ancient Latin interpretation in expressing Paul’s text whenever he saw the Greek reading of Theodoret to differ from it, he noted in the margin how he had found it in Theodoret. In these notes of Hervetus there are not a few that dissent from the common text of Paul and Theodoret, which it will have been useful to note and examine, such as this: Καὶ τῶν τοιούτων οὐκ ἔστι νόμος, Gal. v, 23, a reading which is found in no other codex, although it may seem probable and in the first instance agreeable to Paul’s passage at 1 Tim. i, 9.
But since the Greeks used to collect the opinions of the ancient Greek interpreters, including those of Theodoret, in the books which the more recent custom of the Latins has called Catenas: it is for this reason that we have adopted the plan of comparing the fragments of Theodoret that were scattered there. Although of that genre, beyond the codex we praised above, the Augustan, nothing was available to us except those excerpts which were published in Latin under the name of B Theodulus—I know not whose name that is—in the *Orthodoxographa*, and likewise in the commentaries which, not without doubt as to whether it is rightly done, they are accustomed to attribute to Oecumenius. But those were very few, even pertaining to the single Epistle of Paul to the Romans; nor were we greatly assisted by the work of Oecumenius, in which, although there are very many things from the scholia of Theodoret not even noted by his own name, excerpts from Theodoret are rarely brought forward, and often his name is wrongly added to things that proceed from the authority of other interpreters, especially in the ὑποθέσεις of the Pauline Epistles, which are by no means to be referred to Theodoret, a fact which his commentaries clearly demonstrate. A richer crop of readings for establishing the text of Paul was offered by a collation of the other works of Theodoret, in which he often exhibits different readings than in his own work of commentaries on the Epistles of Paul, at the same time agreeing more with his own interpretations themselves than with the standard text of Paul as appended. And we hope, indeed, that we have done something grateful to those studious of the criticism of New Testament books in having taken care to collect these and insert them in their proper places, especially since we noticed that these passages were not only most negligently examined by Mill and Wetstein, but also regarded by the latter as readings posited by Theodoret, from which he most strongly shrinks. But since it came to our mind rather late to diligently gather that variety of reading, when the commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans had already been struck by the printer’s types: those things which pertain to that epistle, together with those which perhaps were neglected elsewhere, we will take care to append at the end of the fifth volume together with a similar crop of readings. For the rest, we were deceived in the hope placed in Wetstein (Prolegom. ad N. T. tom. I, p. 72), who claimed that he had collated Sirmond’s Theodoret with the Basel codices. For we have seen nothing of this kind in the work of Wetstein, nor does he mention in his narrative concerning the New Testament codices any other Basel C codex adorned with the scholia of Theodoret, except the one he named as the seventh among the codices for the Epistles of Paul (tom. II, p. 1), and what he drew from it for the purpose of correcting or restoring Theodoret we do not know; indeed, nothing of the sort was offered.
In Theodoret’s *Ecclesiastical History*, which follows these scholia in this volume, there was no assistance from manuscript codices, except for a fragment pertaining to book IV, c. 10, from a certain Augustan codex which contained that *cinnum* [mixture] of John Damascene on heresies, edited by Cotelerius in *Eccles. Gr. Monument. t. I*, the note on which, if you please, you may compare on p. 786; but nevertheless, we have handled almost all the published books, so that we may at least hope our edition excels the rest, because we have diligently collated whatever discrepant readings are found in these books, whereas it occurred to no one of those through whose study Theodoret’s history was produced to gather this whole woodland collection. But since it is useful to know what each person has achieved in editing this work of Theodoret, and in what manner he established the text, it seemed best to recount the whole history of the editions. Since nothing of Theodoret’s work had been published besides those fragments which, having been translated by Epiphanius Scholasticus or Cassiodorus into the *Historia tripartita*, Beatus Rhenanus had undertaken his new edition at Basel in 1525, repeated in the year 1528, having obtained a Greek codex of Theodoret which had passed from the library of Johannes Ragusinus, a cardinal, into the library of the Basel Dominicans, he interspersed the Greek epistles of the synods and the emperors into the text of the *Historia tripartita* from it. And from this same source, I know not whether there flowed the first Greek edition of the whole of Theodoret’s history, which professes itself to have been printed at the end in Basel D
by the press of Froben, through Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, in the month of March, 1555. That I would easily believe, if what Fabricius relates (Bibl. Græc., vol. VI, p. 125) were true: that Beatus Rhenanus first edited this history in Greek at the end of the A Eusebio-Rufinian and Tripartite History, with the addition of the three books of Victor Vitensis on the Vandal persecution, and the anonymous excerpts from the History of Nicephorus Callistus, at Basel by Froben in 1535. But the reason I venture to doubt this is, in the first place, the discrepancy in the readings of both—both the Latin of certain fragments and the Greek of the whole of Theodoret’s history—which, although not great (for they usually tend to agree even in single readings), is nevertheless present, as our excerpts will show. Furthermore, although I would not wish to call the fidelity of Fabricius suspect—whom I know is often led astray by the narrations of others, even to the bad faith of catalogues—yet I have found no one who has mentioned the same edition that Fabricius attributes to Rhenanus; rather, there is only that Basel one which contains nothing besides the Greek text, and which the *Bibliotheca Gesnero-Simleriana* (p. 648) clearly proclaims to have appeared separately, not joined with the other ecclesiastical historians. Likewise, I see that the letters [appearing] in Theodoret’s history are public and are in Greek in that work edited under the care of Rhenanus, which embraces the Eusebian history in the translation of Rufinus, and two books added thereto, along with the *Historia Tripartita*. Therefore, I begin to fear lest, perchance, in the volume that Fabricius either possessed himself or read of as mentioned by others, the binder's judgment joined the Greek edition with that work; hence, the error of Fabricius could have more easily arisen, because a copy of my Greek edition has nothing on the title page except the words: *Τοῦ μακαρίου Θεοδωρίτου ἐπισκόπου Κύρου ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱστορίας τόμοι πέντε* [The five books of the ecclesiastical history of the blessed Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus], to which, immediately on the back of the title page, the chapters of the first book are added underneath. However this may be, that Basel Greek edition offers exquisite readings, such that the most learned Valesius rightly judges it to have been expressed from an excellent codex, although it has enough faults, especially in accents and orthography.
Soon after, when Francis, King of France, had commanded a great quantity of Greek books of every kind to be brought from Italy and Greece and his library to be adorned with them, and then that elegant letter forms be engraved by which every best book might be transcribed, and had transferred the care of this matter to Robert Stephanus, he made the beginning of publishing them with the writers of ancient ecclesiastical history, joined together in one volume of the largest format, at Paris in the year 1544. Added at the end were various readings from very ancient books; but what or how many these were, or with what diligence Stephanus used them in collecting them, is not sufficiently clear; for he admonished the reader nothing upon that matter. I have noticed that the Basel edition was not used, and if one thinks of the method that Stephanus followed in editing other books, it is not credible that he collected all the readings that he could and should have, but rather those which occurred to him while reading the codices quickly or while consulting them on difficult passages. Moreover, the Greek text itself, although it is not so pure as to be free from errors, both of Scripture and of the printers, even those which affect the sense itself, is nevertheless expressed in such elegant letter forms and with such care in every way that whoever later repeated these writers after Stephanus, all followed that recension, although with some variation.
Among these were those who edited this whole corpus of ancient Christian historians with the Latin translation of John Christopherson, Bishop of Chichester, at Geneva [Colonia Allobrogum] by Peter de la Roviere in the year 1612, in two tomes of the largest size. The Greek text is derived from the Stephanian edition, but it is less elegantly printed and defiled with infinite printer's errors, although the editors follow a different arrangement from the Stephanian in the partition of chapters and sections. However, this Genevan edition has this merit, that various readings are placed either inserted into the text or in the margin, which, in Theodoret's History, are referred either to Christopherson or to Joseph Scaliger. Concerning their origin, I have nothing certain to say, except that I have observed some derived from Socrates and Sozomen in the letters or public manifestos which the diligence of this triumvirate preserved, and that Henry Savile (in the preface to tom. III of the *Historic. eccles.*, apud Valesium) professes that Christopherson corrected the text published by Rob. Stephanus from three most excellent manuscript copies—Vatican, Venetian, and Florentine—which various readings from the edition of Christopherson are to be inspected at the end of the Latin edition, Cologne, 1581. But what Christopherson put forward from these codices and what he put forward by conjecture, whether the emendations of Scaliger had already been added then, or later in the Genevan edition, and with what trustworthiness and precision the Genevans acted—this, because no opportunity was given to us to use that Latin edition of 1581, and the Genevans reveal nothing about the matter, can in no way be stated.
A Thirty years later, when Jacques Sirmond first edited all the works of Theodoret, he provided a text of Theodoret’s history that was sufficiently purified, in which it appears that the Stephanus recension, or rather that of Christophorson, served as the base, though corrected at times by Sirmond. Regarding this matter, he says nothing at all about what law or method he followed. Valesius thought that he had collated the codices in the Royal Library of Paris, such as the one Valesius says belonged to Jean Pini, as well as two books of Robert Stephanus. Regarding the former, I readily agree; certainly, in individual readings, he occasionally concurs with that one Pini book, though not too often, and indeed even more frequently he dissents from it. But that he himself consulted the royal codices collated by Stephanus, Valesius could not persuade me. I will not say that this is assumed in vain—that Stephanus collated only two books, so that he might form the text from one and add the variety of readings from the other; for he clearly says those readings were found [in the oldest exemplars], plural therefore. But Sirmond was not one who would diligently collate divergent readings in the codices, as one who would not even employ those good ones that either the Basle edition or Stephanus himself had offered in his booklet of various readings. Sirmond provided a hodgepodge B of many editions, as it were, so that where he departs from the Stephanian text, he has usually received the emendations of Christophorson and Scaliger into the text; sometimes he derived his own from the codex of Jean Pini, more rarely from the Stephanian booklet of various readings, and he also added certain things either from his own ingenuity or from the codices—as in Book I, chap. 4, p. 755 of our edition, that phrase: [Τοὺς θεηγόρους φημὶ ἀποστόλους], and a little later: [Οὐ φυσικὴν εἶναι λέγων εἰς κατάληψιν]; and on the same page, [ἐκ τοῦ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων], I, 17 extr. [κατακλίνασα] instead of [ἀνακλ], I, 8, having deleted the word [ἐπισκόπων], he ineptly replaces it with [ὑγιεῖ] instead of [ὑγιεῖς], so that it might refer to [τέλει]. I pass over others; nor did he refrain from changing the division or the titles of the chapters.
Far exceeding the diligence of all these men was the man of excellent talent and learning, Henricus Valesius, when he undertook to publish the Greek writers of early Christian history, having illustrated them with his own animadversions. For he not only ornamented the Stephanian text—which he had corrected, though not too often—with a new interpretation, but also with most learned notes, by which he might either bring some light to the subjects themselves or emend the text. For he was a man highly practiced in all intellectual exercises, instructed by the resources of languages and ancient history, aided also by published books and writings, or certainly the excerpts of them which he had received from Leo Allatius pertaining to the first and C second book of Theodoret, and others also from Ussher from the codex of Henry Savile, the readings of which—those disagreeing with the text of Stephanus—Savile himself had written in the margins of that text. He used these with great discernment; he settled the rest most successfully from his own ingenuity in the Parisian edition of the year 1673, reprinted at Mainz or rather Frankfurt in 1679. After the death of Valesius, when things were found in his papers that would serve to either emend or augment his notes, these were added to the previous ones in the repetition of the Valesian edition made in the year 1677, which the Amsterdam or Frankfurt edition of the year 1695 follows. Even though these are very few, they helped us greatly for the reason that they exhibit those readings which Valesius had derived from the codex of Jean Pini, which is today in the Royal Library of Paris. How truly Valesius believed that this had already been collated by Stephanus and Sirmond, I do not know; but if it was done, this business must have been managed negligently by both; for these Pinian readings are unique, and one detects very few vestiges D of them in the Sirmondian edition, and almost none in the Stephanian booklet of various readings. Although I entirely regret that the whole variety of reading was not derived from this and other books either by Valesius or by the others; but this is a common vice of past times, about which I do not wish to repeat the just complaints of great men; it is enough to have admonished readers not to think, when they see a few codices cited by us as exhibiting some reading, that it is immediately true of only those few, an error which has disadvantaged many, even learned men.
This entire edition of the ancient historians by Valesius was most elegantly repeated by William Reading, a Briton, at Cambridge in 1720, in three volumes of the largest size, yet with some new value. Not that I place great store by the notes of various men that were added there to the Valesian ones—for most are trivial and not comparable to the dignity of the Valesian observations—but since this edition is more convenient because the notes were placed under the text, thus to Theodoret's History, p. 625, Reading added a table of various readings from a codex which formerly belonged to Meric Casaubon and afterwards to John Jones. Although they are very few altogether, and, as I saw, they are consistent with those which are attributed to Christophorson and Scaliger in the Genevan edition. Finally, it is hardly worth mentioning the edition that appeared at Augustae Taurinorum (Turin) in 1748; for it is a mere repetition of the British one, which it follows to such an extent that not even the divergent readings, which Reading had placed at the end of his edition, were added to their proper places or those of Valesius.
although Reading himself had admitted to this error; not to mention that the Turin edition is far inferior to the British both in the typography and in the errors of the presswork. A
From these books, therefore, edited by typographers, we have gathered the entire forest of variant readings, not neglecting that which Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Epiphanius, Socrates, Sozomen, Nicephorus, and also the author of the *Historia Tripartita* offered in those places where they had either given excerpts from Theodoret or public documents also promulgated by us. B Although, in these matters, we have maintained this method: since we wished to express Theodoret and such public documents as he had mingled into his history, we mostly omitted those readings in which Theodoret’s exemplar seemed to differ from the others. We have also used the emendations which Joach. Camerarius had attempted on the margin of the Latin translation of Theodoret’s *History*, which was published at Basel in 1536 and also elsewhere. But beside what pertains to the notes for establishing the text, we have been sparing in other matters, so that we might not by our own fault increase the bulk of the volume, and we have directed all our effort entirely toward the integrity of the Scripture and, in particular, a few obscure passages. C Among these, one thing may be allowed to be added: we have some hesitation regarding *Hist. Eccl.* book IV, chap. 9, note 10, as to whether Cotelerius’s conjecture is to be preferred ( *Not. ad Eccl. Græc. Monum.* vol. 1, p. 719), who thinks that the entire obscurity of the faulty passage arose from a Latin archetype of a synodical epistle in which it was written: *Si quidem fuerint ex episcopis qui in fide visi sunt sani*, for which the Greek interpreter mistakenly read: *in fide usi*.
Regarding the *Philotheus* or *Religious History* of Theodoret, we had no assistance from published books; for that variant of the Hervet edition, which rendered this history from Greek into Latin (Paris, 1556, in quarto), is hardly worth mentioning. But we have joined to it, following Hervet, Theodoret’s *Oration on Charity*, which Sirmond had relegated to the fourth volume, even though it is like an epilogue to the *Religious History*. However, the letters contained in Sirmond’s third volume we thought better to save for the fifth volume, for the reason that this volume which we have edited seemed, by its own amplitude—just as that fifth one by its smallness—to exceed due measure, and we hoped that we might obtain some other letters of Theodoret by which this edition of ours could in some way be enriched. D
We have expressed the text of Theodoret entirely from the Sirmondian recension, except in those places which either had an inept reading or one which Sirmond had introduced against the consensus of all the books. We have not dared to emend anything ourselves without the books, except in a few places which appeared to suffer from a manifest error. But, however, we have warned the readers wherever, and for whatever reason, we have departed from Sirmond. Finally, since almost every edition of Theodoret’s *Ecclesiastical History* followed a different method of division, while keeping that of Sirmond, we have taken care to note in the margin that chapter division which prevailed in other editions, so that those which occur as cited according to them may be found more easily in our own.
Furthermore, as the greatest praise is due to the curators of our orphanage library, who, at such great expense and with incredible diligence, took pains that the vast *Works* of Theodoret should be printed most emended and most amply at a time when the studies of Greek literature, and especially of the holy Fathers, seem to languish, and the buyers of such things are certainly seen to be very rare: so I hope that men who are lovers and students of these letters will aid this most honorable institution, even if only by their recommendation, and I pray to Almighty God that whoever shall have used these books of Theodoret, He may bid them gather from them the most abundant fruits for the nourishing and increasing of doctrine and piety.
Written at Halle, the 27th day of April, in the year 1771.
COROLLARY.
When I had reached that part of Theodoret’s scholia on the Pauline Epistles where mention was made of the passage 1 Cor. III, 13, regarding that which shall test all things by fire, and the other in Gal. II, which contains the dispute of Paul with Peter, and I had observed that the interpretation of the latter had fallen out of Theodoret’s commentaries, while, on the contrary, there are those who say that in interpreting the former, Theodoret discovered a certain signification of fire, which they call purgatory: I hoped that in the meantime, while that commentary was in the printer’s forms
something might be discovered from which the reason and causes of this addition or detraction might be more certainly understood. In which, although hope deceived me, I shall nevertheless provide things which, if they do not contribute much to illuminating that matter, may certainly be able to rouse others to seek better things.
There is a long-standing complaint, though returned by the Greeks against the Latins: that the authority of the Greek Fathers has been corrupted by the Latins; and Leo Allatius collected places full of such complaints in *De Eccles. Occid. et Oriental. perpetua consensione*, lib. II, c. 1, § 5. To pursue the case of Theodoret alone, it is in no way credible that the passage in the Epistle to the Galatians was omitted by him without some interpretation, since he doubtlessly had the passage in his own books and often cited its words elsewhere; nor is it such an obscure passage that nothing could suitably be said about it, nor is Theodoret so negligent that he would omit the very words of a text that were not illustrated. There are in all three codices of Theodoret's commentaries on the Epistles of Paul that have been accurately collated to this time. One is that which Hervet followed in his interpretation, received, as he says, from Marcello Cervini, Cardinal of the Holy Cross, who later, having assumed the name Marcellus II, ruled the Roman Church as pontiff. Since it is sufficiently established that he was at that time the prefect of the Vatican Library and had enriched it with many books, especially Greek ones, [he] used primarily the work of Guglielmo Sirleto, whom Hervet himself commemorates in the Preface as one who warned him concerning the variation of the passage in I Cor. III, and since Hervet (in the dedicatory epistle of his interpretation of Chrysostom’s commentaries on the Psalms) professes that he had obtained from M. Cervini a codex of Chrysostom copied from the libraries of the Dominicans of Ferrara and the Franciscans of Cesena, there is a probable suspicion that the commentaries of Theodoret which Hervet possessed were derived from an Italian codex—of which type of books I shall speak later. Then Sirmond, when he first edited Theodoret’s Greek scholia, does not indeed say which codex he used, but since, by his own profession (Preface to vol. I of Theodoret’s Works), he primarily consulted the codices of the Royal Library of Paris, it can hardly be doubted that he used the book written there, which is the only one surviving in that library, and which Richard Simon (*Hist. crit. commentat. in N. T.*, 325) calls a modern one, and paper, made from another in Italy. And indeed, even Peter Allix (in his notes to Nectarius’ *Confutatio imperii Papæ in Ecclesiam*, p. 419) says he examined that same codex which Sirmond followed in omitting the passage of Paul concerning his controversy with Peter, which was copied, if he is not mistaken, from an ancient Florentine codex in which this whole περικοπή had been erased. But as for our own Bavarian codex, in which a space had been left empty at the place where the scholia of Theodoret had fallen out, we demonstrated (in the Preface) that it is modern, so that it sufficiently appears that these codices are highly suspect regarding the passage intentionally omitted by more recent copyists.
Now as to that other passage in I Cor. III, no book has been found such that it would introduce Theodoret there as speaking about purgatorial fire, except for that brief scholion in the commentaries of Gagnæus, and likewise the testimony of Thomas Aquinas, both of which we have mentioned in relation to that passage. But first, all the codices conflict with this, and they are not suspected of such an omission, since the passage, if it were truly Theodoret’s, would have favored the doctrine of the Latinizing Greeks; furthermore, Thomas makes Theodoret speak in a manner far different from the scholion which Gagnæus had found; finally, I believe that Thomas—unless he himself deceived others with that spurious authority, which I deem most alien to him—was nevertheless persuaded by other testimonies of the Fathers, such as Cyril, which he interspersed in his books elsewhere in defending the decrees of the Roman Church, [testimonies] convicted of falsity learnedly and copiously by Jean Launoy, *Epistolarum* book I, epist. 1-3. Indeed, Barlaam, or whoever may be the author of the book *Περὶ τοῦ καθαρτηρίου πυρός* which Salmasius published in the appendix to the books *De primatu Papæ*, p. 81, says clearly of that authority of Theodoret boasted of by the Romans: «Πολλῶν ὄντων τοῦ ἐκείνου παρ' ἡμῖν συγγραμμάτων, ἐν οὐδενὶ φαίνεται πώποτε εἰρηκώς» (Although many of his writings are among us, in none does it appear he ever said it). Wherefore, neither this passage ought to be attributed to our Theodoret, nor that one to the Galatians [ought to be] taken away; but it is more difficult to say whence such a corruption arose or by whom it was accepted. Our conjecture leads us to believe that both were done by Greek copyists in Italy addicted to the Roman Church, which also seemed to be the opinion of Richard Simon (l. c., p. 325, 24 and in *Critica bibliothecæ Pinii* vol. I, p. 170-71), who rightly warns that there is a great difference between the codices which are brought from the East and those which exist in the Greek libraries of Italy; whence it happened that Gretser, who had described many Greek books found by him in the Kingdom of Naples, was accused as one who had corrupted the books. Of which kind, many scholia are found in the codices of the Catenae, even those pertaining to the doctrine of the Roman Church; such as, to use this example, was that of Theophylact, which Philip Melanchthon had used in his *Apology*.
A *Conf. art. x*, which he later struck out in the Latin edition of the *Apology* published at Wittenberg in 1580. He gives the following reason for this (in *Epist. ad Joan. Cratonem*, Consiliorum Latt. t. 11, p. 385): "In Theophylact, Oecolampadius faithfully rendered the words regarding *metastoicheiosis* (trans-elementation), which he found in his manuscript. That whole sentence is missing in our manuscript. Thus, corruptions are inserted into ancient books!" And the similar things he has there, he repeats almost in the same way in his *Letters to Hardenberg*, published by Pezelius, sig. E.
Abbreviations for the Scriptures used in citing manuscripts
Regarding the abbreviations by which we have cited the manuscripts, and regarding the other books from which variations in readings have been drawn, our preface speaks more fully.
In the Pauline Epistles, A indicates the *Augustanum*, B the *Bavaricum*.
In Theodoret’s *Ecclesiastical History*: *Allat.* is the manuscript of Allatius, whose excerpts for the first and second books Valesius possessed. *Bas. Gr.* is the first Greek edition, Basel, 1536. *Bas. Lat.* is the edition of the *Historia Tripartita* printed at Basel, into which Beatus Rhenanus interspersed the Greek letters of the synods from Theodoret's *H.E.* *Casaub.* is the manuscript of Meric Casaubon, whose readings are in the British edition of the *Hist. Eccl.* *Christoph.* are the readings of Christophorson from the Genevan edition. *Savil.* is the manuscript of Savile which Valesius used. *Scal.* are the readings of Joseph Scaliger, from the Genevan edition. *Steph.* or *Steph. I.* is the text of the Stephanus edition. *Steph. II.* are the readings in the booklet at the end of the Stephanus edition. The rest are easily understood.