miliating revelations which laid
bare the absurdity of claims subsequently advanced. These unwelcome
witnesses were, therefore, quietly permitted to pass into oblivion.

It has been said, however, that Truth is the daughter of Time, and the
discovery of monuments long since forgotten, or of writings supposed to
have been lost, has often wonderfully verified and illustrated the
apologue. The reappearance, within the last three hundred years, of
various ancient records and memorials, has shed a new light upon the
history of antiquity. Other testimonies equally valuable will, no doubt,
yet be forthcoming for the settlement of existing controversies.

In A.D. 1551, as some workmen in the neighbourhood of Rome were employed
in clearing away the ruins of a dilapidated chapel, they found a broken
mass of sculptured marble among the rubbish. The fragments, when put
together, proved to be a statue representing a person of venerable
aspect sitting in a chair, on the back of which were the names of
various publications. It was ascertained, on more minute examination,
that, some time after the establishment of Christianity by Constantine,
[344:1] this monument had been erected in honour of Hippolytus--a
learned writer and able controversialist, who bad been bishop of Portus
in the early part of the third century, and who had finished his career
by martyrdom, about A.D. 236, during the persecution under the Emperor
Maximin. Hippolytus is commemorated as a saint in the Romish Breviary;
[344:2] and the resurrection of his statue, after it had been buried for
perhaps a thousand years, created quite a sensation among his papal
admirers. Experienced sculptors, under the auspices of the Pontiff, Pius
IV., restored the fragments to nearly their previous condition; and the
renovated statue was then duly honoured with a place in the Library of
the Vatican.

Nearly three hundred years afterwards, or in 1842, a manuscript which
had been found in a Greek monastery at Mount Athos, was deposited in the
Royal Library at Paris. This work, which has been since published,
[345:1] and which is entitled "Philosophumena, or a Refutation of all
Heresies," has been identified as the production of Hippolytus. It does
not appear in the list of his writings mentioned on the back of the
marble chair; but any one who inspects its contents can satisfactorily
account for its exclusion from that catalogue. It reflects strongly on
the character and principles of