Saint Theophilus of Antioch

The heretics were causing much trouble in the Church at that time, striving to stifle the holy seed of the Apostles' doctrine with the tares of their errors. But the holy pastors kept constant watch, always occupied with pulling these tares from the field of the Church; sometimes they warned the faithful to be on their guard, at other times they openly attacked the heretics, either by confounding them in private disputes or by refuting their errors in public writings. Theophilus distinguished himself in this war with a book he composed against Marcion, which was still seen in t he time of Eusebius and Saint Jerome, but w hich h as not come down to us, any more than the one he had written against the heresy of Hermogenes. He used the authority of the Apocalypse of Saint John several times in this work.

His three books to Autolycus have had a happier fate and still survive today. Theophilus composed them on various occasions and only completed them shortly before his death, around the year 181. Autolycus, to whom he dedicated them, was a pagan, but very skilled in the sciences and so eager to learn that he would spend nights reading. The first of these books appears to be the result of a conference they had held together. The second is written in a manner quite different from the first; and the third in the form of a letter; but all deal with the principles of religion.

In addition to the treatises that Theophilus had composed against Marcion and against Hermogenes, he had written several others that are lost. Neither E usebius nor Saint Jerome specify them; they content themselves with saying that they were seen in their time, and that most were instructions or short treatises for the edification of the Church. The little that remains to us of the works of Saint Theophilus should make us regret those that have not come down to us. The style is elevated, polished, and varied; the turn of thought is lively and pleasant, the reasoning just and pressing; they are filled with curious research regarding the sentiments that poets and philosophers held concerning their false divinities, and one cannot doubt that Theophilus excelled in the knowledge of profane antiquity. He also loved allegories; and there is almost nothing literal in the explanations he gave of the work of the six days. His sentiments on religion are very orthodox.

Saint Theophilus's Books to Autolycus were printed in Greek in Zuric h, in 1546, in-4°, with the writings of Tatian and several others, under the care of Conra d Gesner, fro m a manuscript that John of Friesland had obtained in Venice; in Latin, at the same place and in the same year, from the translation of Conrad Clauser. It is this version that was followed in the Libraries of the Fathers of Paris, in 1575, 1589, 1609, 1644; of Cologne, in 1618 and of Lyon, in 1677; in the Orthodoxographa, printed in Greek and Latin, in Basel, in 1555, in-fol.; in the edition of Saint Justin in Paris, 1615 and 1636; in Cologne, 1686, in-fol., and in the Auctuarium of the Library of the Fathers, in Paris, 1624, in-fol., with the notes of Fronton-Leduc. The last and most correct of all the editions of the Books to Autolycus is that of Oxford, of 1684, in-12. The one that Christoph Wolf provided in Hamburg, in 1724, surpassed even the previous one. M. Caillau provided the Latin version of the Books to Autolycus. M. de Genoude translated the three Books to Autolycus i nto French. Dom Ceillier, Histoire des Auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques.