Doctrinal Treatises

The most weighty of the doctrinal treatises is that on the Holy Trinity. The Latin original (De Trinitate contra Arianos libri quindecim), is contained in the 8th volume of the Benedictine edition. It is the most elaborate, and probably also the ablest and profoundest patristic discussion of this central doctrine of the Christian religion, unless we except the Orations against the Arians, by Athanasius, "the Father of Orthodoxy," who devoted his life to the defense of the Divinity of Christ. Augustine, owing to his defective knowledge of Greek, wrote his work independently of the previous treatises of the Eastern Church on that subject. He bestowed more time and care upon it than on any other book, except the City of God. Besides this treatise the following works are included: The Enchiridion, or On Faith, Hope and Love, On the Catechising of the Uninstructed, Treatise on Faith and the Creed, Concerning Faith of Things not Seen, On the Profit of Believing On the Creed.

The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavor to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Aeterna Press

The Parker Society was the London-based Anglican society that printed in fifty-four volumes the works of the leading English Reformers of the sixteenth century. It was formed in 1840 and disbanded in 1855 when its work was completed. Named after Matthew Parker -- the first Elizabethan Archbishop of Canterbury, who was known as a great collector of books -- the stimulus for the foundation of the society was provided by the Tractarian movement, led by John Henry Newman and Edward B. Pusey. Some members of this movement spoke disparagingly of the English Reformation, and so some members of the Church of England felt the need to make available in an attractive form the works of the leaders of that Reformation.