Ante - Nicene Christian Library : Additional Volume. Edited by Allan Menzies,
D.D. (T. and T. Clarke.)—This supplementary volume is a welcome addition to the Ante-Nicene series. It consists of two parts, of the second of which it is sufficient to say that it contains the Commentaries of Origen on the Gospels of St. John and St. Matthew. In the first we have collected a number of recent discoveries. These are the fragments of the Docetic Gospel of Peter, the Diatessaron of Tatian, perhaps the most important "find" (after the Didache) of recent times; the Apocalypse of Peter, a curious cento of Christian and classical speculations on the future world; the Visio Pauli (which Augustine so strongly condemned as professing to utter things "not lawful to be uttered ") ; the Apocalypses of the Virgin and of Sedrach ; the Testament of Abraham ; the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena (two sisters whom St. Paul visits in his journey to Spain), a document strongly tinged with ascetic views, as in the expression, "the filth of marriage ; " and the narrative of Zosimus (a visit to the Land of the Blessed). Then we have the Epistles of Clement, the translation of Vol. I. of the "Library," reprinted with the additions discovered in 1875 by Philotheus Briennius in the Library of the Holy Sepulchre at Fanari. Finally comes the Apology of Aristides the Philosopher. The Apology was first discovered in an Armenian translation, chaps. 1 and 2. Then Professor J. Rendel Harris discovered a Syriac version of the whole in one of the Sinaitic monasteries. Finally it was recognised as having been incorporated in the "Life of Baarlam and Josaphat."
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