Philip Schaff’s classic work colloquially known as The Early Church Fathers is an invaluable resource filled with the primary documents and early theological building blocks for the Christian church. Comprised of thirty-eight volumes, it is broken into three parts: the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First and Second Series.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background. Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world. Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.

This book is a comprehensive and concise treatment of the philosophical, theological and biblical issues related to the doctrine of God. Within its pages the nature, existence, and tri-unity of God are presented in an understandable and clear manner. The authors objective was to hold in highest regard the text of Holy Scripture while reflecting the biblical position of the historic orthodox faith. The books tone is polemic and passionate, sincere and scholarly with a commitment to communicate the truth of Gods Word with simplicity and profundity. Also, between its covers, you will find a wealth of information with numerous references and explanatory notes for clarification and further personal study. The book is arranged around the concept of the term logos which suffixes many other words and turns them into fields of study, as in the phrase theology (Theos-logos). The term Logos refers to the concepts of epistemology, ontology, and hermeneutics. Applied to the doctrine of God, its organization deals with Knowing God, the Being of God, and Communicating God. This corresponds to Thomas Aquinass approach to understanding God, in the questions: what is God (we define God by negation, what He is not); how do we know God (we know him by His effects); how do you communicate or explain God (God is communicated to us by His names, that is, His attributes). The book, furthermore, presents a classic and newly reworked argument for the existence of God called the Existential Argument, which is based on the notion of being.