Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: While he presided over the Alexandrian school, the Indians sent to Demetrius, requesting him to dispatch some teacher of the Faith to that country, who should be recommended no less by his learning than by his character. Pantsenus accepted the office with joy,and left the government of his school in the hands of his celebrated disciple, Clemens. Clemens: In the Catechetical School, therefore, Origen1 was placed; and under Clemens, (whom we shall have occasion to mention more at length hereafter,) made rapid progress not only in sacred, but also in profane literature. Here,2 in all probability, he formed that friendship with Alexander, afterwards Bishop of Jerusalem, which was at a later period so important to his welfare. He also attended the lectures of Ammonius,3 from whom he drank deeply of that Platonic philosophy which more or less tinged his writings. On the breaking out of the persecution, such was Origen's desire for martyrdom, that he was scarcely to be prevented, by the tears and entreaties of his mother, from denouncing himself at the tribunal of the governor. And on the apprehension of his father, he was restrained by little short of main force. Happy had it been for him had he thus early and gloriously ended his life happy, had he not been spared to leave a doctrine that divided the Church for centuries, and a reputation of so doubtful a nature that the salvation of Origen was one of the most famous questions of antiquity He at length contented himself with encouraging S. Leonidas to endure to the end, neither regarding his own sufferings, nor the destitute condition of his wife, and her seven sons, of whom Orl -s Origen, young as he was, was the eldest. S. Leonidas4 was povertyi beheaded, and his family reduced to the deepest poverty, the possessions of the ...Detailed info »« Brief info