[79]The MSS. from which this extract comes state that it is from a letter to Dionysius and Stephanus of Rome. No such letter is otherwise known, and it is not likely that Stephen’s name would come second, as he was then bishop and Dionysius only a presbyter, though later on he became bishop. Possibly it is from the letter which our Dionysius tells us he wrote to his Roman namesake and Philemon when they were of the same opinion as Stephen: see [p. 55]. As far as the contents of the extract go, it is not at all incredible that Dionysius was willing to admit the validity of such baptisms as are specified: it was only heresies of a very fundamental kind which he considered to invalidate baptism.
[80]The successor to Stephanus in 257 as Bishop of Rome: he was martyred after one year’s reign.
[81]This was, according to Benson (Cyprian, p. 354), a threat which he did not actually carry into effect, and was only meant to restrain them from adopting Cyprian’s attitude on the matter.
[82]i. e. those of Iconium and Synnada (circ. 230): Dionysius may also be referring to the three much more recent councils which Cyprian had held at Carthage between 254 and 256 (i. e. since his letter to Stephen above). By this time he had by patient inquiry found out much more than he had known at first of what was necessary to be known before coming to a decision.
[83]Cf. 1 Cor. vi. 11 and v. 7, 8.
[84]See [note on p. 54]. Dionysius became afterwards Bishop of Rome in 259: a fragment of a letter from our Dionysius to him is printed on [p. 58]. His famous letter to our Dionysius on the Sabellian controversy is not included in this volume. Part of a letter to Philemon is given on [p. 56]. He was a Roman Presbyter.
[85]On the north-west coast of Cyrenaica, one of the five chief cities which gave its name to the Libyan Pentapolis. Sabellius denied the three Persons in the Trinity, and held that the Person of the Father who is One with the Son was incarnate in Christ: see further [p. 19].
[86]There seems no doubt that this is the right reading here, though most of the MSS. read “God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ”; but clearly Dionysius is only speaking of God the Father in this clause and of Jesus Christ in the next. See 2 Cor. i. 2, Eph. i. 3, etc.
[87]It was Dionysius’s treatment of this subject which afterwards gave Arius the heresiarch of Alexandria an opening for claiming his teaching in support of his own tenets, though there is no Arian suggestion, of course, in this phrase: see [p. 20].
[88]Col. i. 15.