In this state of the controversy, commentators turned their attention towards Hippolytus, in favour of whose authorship the majority of modern schohirs have decided. The arguments that have led to this conclusion, and those alleged by others against it, could not be adequately discussed in a notice like the present. Suffice it to say, that such names as Jacobi, Gieseler, Duncker, Schneidewin, Bernays, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Döllinger, support the claims of Hippolytus. The testimony of Dr. Döllinger, considering the extent of his theological learning, and in particular his intimate acquaintance with the apostolic period in church history, virtually, we submit, decides the question. Those who are desirous of examining it for themselves may consult Gieseler's paper on Hippolytus, etc., in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1853; Hergenröther, Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen 1852; Bunsen's Hippolytus and his Age; Wordsworth's St. Hippolytus; Dr. Döllinger's Hippolytus und Kallistus: oder die Römische Kirche in der ersten Hälfte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 1853; and Cruice's Etudes sur de Nouveaux Documents Historiques empruntes au livre des Φιλοσοφούμενα, 1853. See also articles in the Quarterly Review, 1851; Ecclesiastic and Theologian, 1852, 1853; the Westminster Review, 1853; the Dublin Review, 1853, 1854; Le Correspondent, t. xxxi.; and the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1865.
For a biography of Hippolytus we have not much authentic materials. There can be no reasonable doubt but that he was a bishop, and passed the greater portion of his life in Rome and its vicinity. This assertion corresponds with the conclusion adopted by Dr. Döllinger, who, however, refuses to allow that Hippolytus was, as is generally maintained, Bishop of Portus, a harbour of Rome at the northern mouth of the Tiber, opposite Ostia. However, it is satisfactory to establish, and especially upon such eminent authority as that of Dr. Döllinger, the fact of Hippolytus' connection with the Western Church, not only because it bears on the investigation of the authorship of The Refutation, the writer of which affirms his personal observation of what he records as occurring in his own time at Rome, but also because it overthrows the hypothesis
