A new history of ecclesiastical writers containing an account of the authors of the several books of the Old and New Testament, of the lives and writings of the primitive fathers, an abridgement and catalogue of their works ... also a compendious history of the councils, with chronological tables of the whole / written in French by Lewis Ellies du Pin.

SERAPION of ANTIOCH.

SErapion the Eighth Bishop of Antioch was advanced to this Dignity in the Tenth year of the Emperor Commodus, in the year of our Lord 191. He wrote a Letter to Caricus and Pontius * 1.1 against the Sect of the Montanists, a Fragment whereof Eusebius has cited, wherein he oppo∣ses the Authority of Apollinarius Bishop of Hierapolis, and the a 1.2 Subscriptions of two Bi∣shops of Thrace to the Montanists. There was also in the time of Eusebius another Letter of his addressed to Domninus, who of a Christian turned Jew, to reduce him from his Apostacy, and a Book concerning the Gospel falsely attributed to St. Peter. Eusebius cites a Fragment of this Book, by which it appears, that the subject and occasion which induced Serapion to write it, was a Contest that arose in the Church of Rhossus in Cilicia about the truth of that Gospel, that Serapion happening to be there, permitted them to read it, but that afterwards being convinced, that those Persons who defended it, were secret Hereticks, and that Marcion, who was the principal Asserter of it, received it from some Hereticks named the Doc••t••, (who believed that Jesus Christ did not really suffer, but only in appearance) he wrote this Letter to them, till he could go to see them himself, to acquaint them with the falsity and errors of that Gospel.

St. Jerome takes notice, that in his time there were some short Epistles of the same Author, that were conformable to his austere rigid way of living; but they are wholly lost. This Bishop governed the Church of Antioch till the first year of the Emperor Caracalla, and the year of our Lord 203. Antoninus succeeded him, and was the Ninth Bishop of Antioch after the Apostles.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Serapion of Antioch
• a 1.2

  The Subscriptions of two Bishops of Thrace.] These Subscriptions occasioned Baronius to imagine, that a Council was held upon this Subject; but they are only the Subscriptions of the Letters of two Bi∣shops of Thrace, who wrote to the Asiaticks concer∣ning this new Sect, (as the Church of France had done) and therefore there is no necessity of saying that there was a Council assembled upon this occasion.