A

DICTIONARY

OF

CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY,

LITERATURE, SECTS, AND DOCTRINES.

H

HERMOGENES

**> HERMOGENES (X), a teacher of hereticaldoctrine towards the close of the 2nd century, 'the chief error ascribed to him being the doc-trine that God had formed the world, not out ofnothing, but out of previously existing uncreatedmatter. Tertullian wrote two tracts in answerto him, one of which is lost; but the other isextant, and is our chief source of informationabout Hermogenes. The minuteness with whichhis arguments are considered and answeredindicates that Tertullian is replying to a pub-lished work of Hermogenes, and to all appear-ance that work was written in Latin. Anotherpiece of doctrine of Hermogenes had been pre-served by Clement of Alexandria ( Eclog . exScript. Proph. 56, p. 1002), which being unlikeanything told of him by Tertullian, had beensupposed by Mosheim (de Rebus Christ anteConst, p. 435), to have emanated from somedifferent Hermogenes. But this suspicion hasbeen set at rest by the since recovered treatiseon heresies by Hippolytus, who combines in hisaccount of Hermogenes (viii. 17, p. 273), thedoctrines attributed to him by Clement and byTertullian. It is likely enough that Clementand Hippolytus drew from a common source,namely, the work “ against the heresy of Her-mogenes,” which we are told by Eusebius (H. E.iv. 24) was written by Theophilus of Antioch.This work of Theophilus is mentioned also byTheodoret ( Haer . Fab. i. 19), and from it he pro-bably also drew the account which he gives ofHermogenes in the passage referred to, in whichhe clearly employs some authority differentfrom the tenth book, or summary, of Hippo-lytus, of which he makes large use elsewhere.Theodoret adds that Hermogenes was alsoanswered by Origen, on which the suppositionarises that he may intend under this name torefer to the summary which we now ascribe toHippolytus; but there is an absence of evidencethat Theodoret regarded this work as Ovigen’s,see Volkmar ( Hippolytus und die romischenZeitgenossen, p. 54),* so that we must suppose

8 It is just p 'Ssible that Theodoret may h ive takenfor Orlgen’s the extract from Maximus given in thePkiUKalia ( 24 ).

CHRIST. BIOGR.—VOL. III.

HERMOGENES

some lost work of Origen’s is intended. Thepassages cited make up our list of primaryauthorities about Hermogenes, if we add somestatements of Philastrius, which we shall discussafterwards.

A considerable distance of time and placeseparates the notices of Hermogenes by Theo-philus and Tertullian. Theophilus survived theaccession of Commodus in 180, but probably notmore than a couple of years; in fact, his deathis placed by Eusebius in his Chronicle under thereign of Marcus Aurelius. We cannot then wellassign a later date than 180 to the teaching ofHermogenes, which drew forth an answer fromTheophilus; and it may have been earlier. Wemay probably infer that Hermogenes had disci-ples at Antioch, and therefore must have beenteaching either there or at no great distance;and we may be certain that any writing of hiswhich was answered by Theophilus must have beenwritten in Greek. Tertullian’s tract againstHermogenes is assigned by Uhlhorn ( FundamentaChron. Tert p. 60) to the year 206 or 207. Inthis tract Hermogenes is spoken of as stillliving (ad hodiernum homo in saeculo); he isalso coupled with one Nigidius in the work onPrescription, c. 30, as among the heretics “ whostill walk perverting the ways of God.” Thereare indications that the work to which Tertul-lian replies was written in Latin; and we haveevery reason to think that Hermogenes (thoughprobably, as his name indicates, of Greekdescent), was at the time living in Carthage,for in the controversy Tertullian assails hisprivate character, entering into details in a waywhich would not be intelligible unless bothwere inhabitants of the same city. The sameinference may be drawn from the frequency ofTertullian’s references to Hermogenes in worksof which his errors are not the subject ( de Monog.16; de Praescrip. 30, 33; adv. Valent. 16; deAnima , 1, 11, 21, 22, 24), for we are led tothink that it was proximity which gave thisheretic an importance in his eyes greater thanhis general celebrity warranted. TertullianI describes him as a turbulent man, who tookI loquacity for eloquence, and impudence for firmI ness. But two things in particular are shocking

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