3 Introductory Note to The Pastor of Hermas [Translated by the Rev. F. Crombie, M.a.] [a.d. 160.] The fragment known as the “Muratorian Canon” is the historic ground for the date I give to this author.1 I desired to prefix The Shepherd to the writings of Irenæus, but the limits of the volume would not permit. The Shepherd attracted my attention, even in early youth, as a specimen of primitive romance; but of course it disappointed me, and excited repugnance. As to its form, it is even now distasteful. But more and more, as I have studied it, and cleared up the difficulties which surround it, and the questions it has started, it has become to me a most interesting and suggestive relic of the primitive age. Dr. Bunsen2 calls it “a good but dull novel,” and reminds us of a saying of Niebuhr (Bunsen’s master), that “he pitied the Athenian3 Christians for being obliged to hear it read in their assemblies.” A very natural, but a truly superficial, thought, as I trust I shall be able to show. At first sight, Hermas might seem to have little in common with Irenæus; and, on many accounts, it would be preferable to pair him with Barnabas. But I feel sure that chronology forbids, and that the age of Irenæus, and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, is the period which called for this work, and which accounts for its popularity and its diffusion among the churches. Its pacific spirit in dealing with a rising heresy, which at first was a puzzle to the Latins,4 which Pius was disposed to meet by this gentle antidote, with which Eleutherus, in the spirit of a pacificator, tampered to his own hurt, and by which Victor was temporarily compromised, met precisely what the case seemed to demand in the judgment of Western Christians. They could not foresee the results of Montanism: it was not yet a defined heresy. And even the wise prudence of Irenæus shows anxiety not too hastily to denounce it; “seeing,” as Eusebius affirms, “there were many other wonderful powers of divine grace yet exhibited, even at that time, in different churches.” Bunsen pronounces magisterially on the Muratorian fragment as an ill-translated excerpt from Hegesippus, written about a.d. 165. This date may be inaccurate, but the evidence is that of a contemporary on which we may rely. “Very recently,” he says, “in our own times, 1 To be found, with copious annotations, in Routh’s Reliquiæ, vol. i. pp. 389–434, Oxford, 1846. See also Westcott, On the Canon of the New Testament, Cambridge, 1855. 2 Hippolytus and His Age, vol. i. p. 315. 3 Why “Athenian”? It was read everywhere. But possibly this is a specification based on Acts xvii. 21. They may have welcomed it as a novel and a novelty. 4 More of this in Athenagoras; but see Kaye’s Justin Martyr, p. 179, note 3, ed. 1853. Introductory Note 4 Introductory Note