INTRODUCTORY NOTICE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
HE entire of The Refutation of all Heresies, with the exception of Book i., was found in a ms. brought from a convent on Mount Athos so recently as the year 1842. The discoverer of this treasure—for treasure it certainly is—was Minöides Mynas, an erudite Greek, who had visited his native country in search of ancient mss., by direction of M. Abel Villemain, Minister of Public Instruction under Louis Philippe. The French Government have thus the credit of being instrumental in bringing to light this valuable work, while the University of Oxford share the distinction by being its earliest publishers. The Refutation was printed at the Clarendon Press in 1851, under the editorship of M. Emmanuel Miller,[1] whose labours have proved serviceable to all subsequent commentators. One generally acknowledged mistake was committed by Miller in ascribing the work to Origen. He was right in affirming that the discovered ms. was the continuation of the fragment The Philosophumena, inserted in the Benedictine copy of Origen's works. In the volume, however, containing the Philosophumena, we have dissertations by Huet, in which he questions Origen's authorship in favour of Epiphanius. Heuman attributed the Philosophumena to Didymus of Alexandria, Gale to Aetius;[2] and it, with the rest
