RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ambrosian American
is often valuable, distinguished by soberness, clearness, and richness of thought, and singularlyunbiased and objective for its period. Certain prejudices, as against the speculations and " sophistries " of the Greeks, and against the deacons, are explicable by the circumstances of the time assigned above to its composition. The author repeatedly remarks that the institutions of the Church have undergone essential alterations since the apostles' time. Of great interest are his remarks about the primitive organization, which he considers to have been very informal, all teaching and all baptizing as occasion offered. He thinks that the primitive institutions were modeled after the synagogue; that presbyters and bishops were originally the same, as indeed, he says, they still are fundamentally; that the Roman Church was founded not by the apostles, but by certain Jewish Christians, who imposed a Judaic form upon it to be corrected by better-informed later arrivals; that not Peter alone, but Paul also, had a primacy. In a manuscript written about 769 by Winitharius, a monk of St. Gall, and elsewhere, Origen is named as the author, which is explicable by the presence of certain Origenistic ideas. (F. Arnold.)
In 1899 Dom Morin (Revue d'histoire et de littcrature religieuse) suggested as the author of the " Ambrosiaster " works Isaac the Jew, a professed convert, who prosecuted Pope Damasus on a capital charge and who was said by the friends of the pope to have relapsed to Judaism and " profaned the Christian mysteries " (382 a.d.). In 1903 Morin withdrew this identification in favor of Decimius Hilarianus Hilarius, prefect of Rome in 383, and pretorian prefect of Italy in 396. A. Souter (formerly of Caius College, Cambridge, now professor at Mansfield College, Oxford), in an article in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, 1904, and in A Study of Ambrosiaster (TS, vol. vii., No. 4, 1905) adopted the later view of Morin, and from an exhaustive study of manuscripts and comparison of the Ambrosiastrian works with contemporary writings has concluded that this view " entirely satisfies the conditions of the problem," and he advises those who may incline to a different view to " read the works of the author carefully in the forthcoming Vienna edition [part of which he is himself editing] before coming to a conclusion on the subject." C. H. Turner, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, expressed hearty approval of Morin's first identification and, in an article in JTS (Apr., 1906, pp. 355 sqq.), refuses to be convinced by the arguments of Morin or those of Souter that Decimius Hilarianus Hilarius rather than Isaac the Jew wrote the " Commentaries " and the " Questions." The writer's millenarianism, extraordinary familiarity with Jewish history and customs, and unstrongly favorable to the theory that the books usually friendly attitude toward Judaism are were written by Isaac and are as strongly inimical to the theory that the official Decimius Hilarianus Hilarius was the author. Equally in favor of Isaac's authorship are allusions by Jerome to views regarding the genealogies, ascribed to some Judaizing teacher whose name he does not deign
to mention, which are identical with those of " Ambrosiaster." A young Roman Catholic scholar Joseph Wittig, has recently advocated the Isaac hypothesis, and has called attention to the fact that " Isaac " and " Hilary " both mean " laughing as a means of accounting for the ascription of the " Commentaries " to Hilary by Augustine. Recent writers (Harnack, Jiilicher, Morin, Souter, Turner, and others) are agreed in attributing the Commentaria and the Qucestiones to the same author. The Commentaria as " the earliest commentary on the Pauline epistles " and the Quastiones as " the earliest substantial book on Biblical difficulties," are of considerable importance. Jiilicher pronounces the Commentaria " the best commentary on St. Paul's epistles previous to the sixteenth century," and Harnack is equally appreciative. Several other extant works are attributed to the same author. A. H. Newman.
Bibliography: His work is usually included among the works of Ambrose; it is in MPL, xvii. and in P. A. Ballerini, Ambrosii Opera, iii. 349-372, 971-974, Milan, 1877. Consult A. Souter, A Study of Ambrosiaster, Oxford, 1905 (claims to prove finally that Ambrosiaster was Hilary the layman); C. Oudin, Commentarius de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, i. 481 sqq., Leipsic, 1722; J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, i., pp. xxvi.-xxxiv., 49-159, 567, Paris, 1852; J. H. Reinkens, Hilarius von Poitiers, pp. 273, Schaffhausen, 1864; DCB, i. 89-90; J. Langen, Commentarium in Epistolas Paulinas . Bonn, 1880; H. B. Swete, Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Minor Epistles of St. Paul, i., p. lxxviii., ii., p. 351, Cambridge, 1880-82; Marold, Der Ambrosiaster nach Inhalt und Ursprung, ZWT, xxvii. (1884) 415-470.
AMEN. See Liturgical Formulas.
AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION. See Baptists, II., 3, § 7.
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY. See Baptists, II., 3, § 7.
AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY. See Bible Societies, III., 1.
AMERICAN BIBLE UNION. See Bible Societies, III., 2.
AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. See Congregationalists, I., 4, § 11; Missions.
AMERICAN AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY. See Bible Societies, III., 2.
AMERICAN AND FOREIGN CHRISTIAN UNION: A society organized May 10, 1849, by the union (as indicated by the name) of the American Protestant Society (founded 1843), the Foreign Evangelical Society (instituted 1839 as the expansion of the French Association of 1835), and the Christian Alliance of 1842. The purpose was to prosecute more efficiently the work of the three societies named; viz., to convert Roman Catholics to Protestantism; or, to quote its constitution, " by missions, colportage, the press, and other appropriate agencies, to diffuse the principles of religious liberty, and a pure and evangelical Christianity, both at home and abroad, where a corrupted Christianity exists."
For a number of years the society prospered, and spread its influence over Europe, North and South America, and adjacent islands. From 1849 to 1859 its yearly receipts averaged 160,000. But
American
Ammonites