A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, Volume 8

Philip Schaff's classic work colloquially known as The Early Church Fathers is an invaluable resource filled with the primary documents and early theological building blocks for the Christian church. Comprised of thirty-eight volumes, it is broken into three parts: the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First and Second Series.

Philip Schaff (1819-1893), American theologian and church historian, was born in Chur, Switzerland, on the first of January, 1819. He was educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart and at the universities of Tuebingen, Halle, and Berlin, where he was successively influenced by Baur, Tholuck, and Neander. In 1843 he became professor of church history and biblical literature at the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His inaugural address, The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English version by J. W. Nevin, was a pioneer work in the field of symbolics.