Six Lectures on the Ante-Nicene Fathers

These lectures by F.J.A. Hort explain the significance of the early Church Fathers. The teachings on Christian life, thought, and belief of these parents of the Christian thought reflect the the peculiar circumstances of the centuries which followed the apostolic age. As Hort states in the first lecture, “Although it is important to remember that our own thoughts, and the thoughts of all Christians everywhere, have been in a great measure thus shaped for us by the thoughts of the early Fathers, it is not on account of this fact that we call them Fathers, but rather in gratitude and veneration for them as the patriarchs of Christendom, speaking to us still out of that early dawn of the Christian period of history, and often speaking to us out of the fiery trial of persecution.” Hort covers Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen.