a celebrated Greek physician, was born in the former half of the fourth century at Pergamum, in Mysia, the birthplace of Galen. He studied medicine with success under Zeno of Cyprus, and soon acquired a great professional reputation. The chief cause, however, of the good fortune of his life was the steady friendship of Julian. On being elevated to the rank of Caesar, that prince took the young physician along with him into Gaul, made him his confidant as well as his medical adviser, and employed him to write an epitome of Galen. After he had been proclaimed emperor in 361, he appointed him questor of Constantinople, and entrusted him with the vain enterprise of restoring the Delphic oracle. The death of Julian, in 363, left Oribasius exposed to the malice of his enemies. His goods were confiscated, and he was exiled to some barbarous country. Yet the imperturbable fortitude which he then began to manifest soon led to his triumphant recall. He set himself actively to practise his profession; the barbarians, astonished at his skill, scarcely refrained from paying him divine honours; his countrymen soon repented of having banished such an able physician, and so magnanimous a man; and in the course of a few years he was recalled and restored to his former position of wealth and esteem. The rest of his life was employed in writing, amid other engagements, a synopsis of his epitome of Galen, for the use of his son Eustathius. The date of his death is unknown. He was still living when Eunapius, the chief authority for his biography, about 395, inserted his Life in the *Vita Philosophorum et Sophistarum*.

Of the several works which Oribasius is said to have written, three alone remain, either entire or fragmentary. His *Συναγωγή Ἰατρικῆς*, *Collecta Medicinalia*, originally in seventy books, now exists in the shape of twenty-five whole, and two fragmentary books. Although professedly an epitome of Galen, it contains many valuable extracts from other writers whose works are now lost. His *Σύνοψις*, consisting of nine books, and his *Εἰσόδημα*, consisting of four books, were published at Venice in Latin, by J. Bap. Rasarius, the former in 1554, and the latter in 1558. The same editor also translated nineteen books of the other work of Oribasius, and published all these translations together in three volumes, 8vo, Basle, 1557.

ORIGEN (Οριγένης) was the son of an excellent Christian named Leonides, and was born in Alexandria about A.D. 186. His boyhood gave full promise of saint-like piety and great intellectual attainments. He loved to read the Scriptures, to commit large portions of them daily to memory, and to ask his father to explain the difficult passages. The good Leonides was wont of an evening to visit the couch of his sleeping child, and, uncovering the little bosom, to kiss it with the reverential thought that the Holy Spirit might dwell there. Although a pupil for some time of Clement of Alexandria, the boy did not permit the rationalistic teachings of his master to cloud the simple piety of his heart. When he heard in his sixteenth year that his father was apprehended for the truth, all the devotion of a martyr was stirred within him: he wrote to Leonides,—"See that you do not change your mind on our account;" and had not force been employed to detain him at home, he would have gone to meet death along with his parent.

All this promise began to be fulfilled in Origen when the martyrdom of his father had cast him destitute upon the world. At first he earned a livelihood by giving lessons in the Greek language and literature. Then, in course of time, being appointed to the gratuitous office of catechist by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, he devoted himself with self-sacrificing ardour to the duties of a Christian teacher. All other employments were set aside; a choice collection of ancient authors was sold to supply the bare necessaries of life; the most pinching asceticism was practised: the moral precepts of the Bible were obeyed to the very letter; and in the height of his reckless fanaticism, he even "made himself an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake." With the same devotedness did the youthful missionary discharge his public duties. In controversy, his fervid and affectionate address melted the stubborn prejudices of many a philosophic heathen; in the persecution under the government of Aquila, he communicated his pious heroism to his young converts; and when any of these were summoned to martyrdom, he appeared on the scaffold to cheer their departing spirits.

It was this same proselytizing ardour that now began to change the direction of Origen's theological studies and opinions. He saw that it was necessary to understand fully the tenets of the pagan philosophy before he could fully refute them. To learn these tenets, therefore, he set himself with all his one-sided intensity, and with a fixed determination to sympathize with whatever he might find beautiful and true. In Arabia, whither he was invited by the governor of that province; in Palestine, whither he fled to escape the massacre of Caracalla; at Antioch, where he had an interview with Mammea, the mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus; at Cesarea, where he was ordained a priest by the bishops of Palestine; and in Greece, whither he was sent, about 229, to refute heretics, every opportunity was taken to converse with learned heathens. At home the tuition of the younger catechumens was given over to his friend Heraclius; his own attention was directed to delivering a course of lectures on the points of congruity between philosophy and Christianity; and from the distinguished heretics who did not disdain to sit at his feet he was ever ready to receive as well as to communicate instruction. In this manner he gradually led to appropriate many of the dogmas of the old heathen philosophers. At the same time, it was necessary to show how these dogmas could be reconciled with the doctrines of the true religion. To this task, therefore, in the midst of his multifarious duties, he had applied himself, furnished with all external facilities of study by his friend and convert, the wealthy Ambrose, and carried forward by that force of unyielding application which gained for him the epithets of the "adamantine," the "brazen-bowelled" Origen. By the year 229 several of his commentaries, his Treatise on the Resurrection, his Stromata, and his work On Principles, had been completed. In all these, but especially in the last, he made the daring attempt to harmonize Platonism and Christianity, and to build up by means of the two a system of religious doctrine.

There existed from all eternity, he held, one original essence and source of existence called the Father; co-eternal and co-equal with Him was the Son, the Logos ceaselessly proceeding from the everlasting mind, the ineffable brightness ever emanating from the Divine glory; and joined with these two persons in trinal unity, although created like all other spirits by the Son, was the Holy Ghost. Since the exercise of creative power is essential to the being of the Godhead, there also existed from all eternity a succession of worlds. To fill these worlds, a number of intelligences were created. These were clothed with bodies of an ethereal rarity, for God alone is incorporeal; and they were all created alike, for God cannot be the author of inequality. Free-will was bestowed upon them, and the exercise of this soon began to lead them into depravity, and to alter in various degrees their original conditions. They were degraded into souls, were imprisoned in gross material bodies, and, according to their different degrees of degeneracy, became angels, men, or demons. The Logos then undertook to restore them by revealing himself. To men he made this revelation by uniting himself with the most perfect intelligence, and by connecting himself through that medium with a body of flesh; and to angels and demons he employed in a similar manner modes suited to their different states and capacities. Thus, all created spirits, including Satan himself, will eventually be restored; a new state of probation will then commence; they will fall again through the exercise of free-will; and the succession of worlds as places of reformatory punishment will require to be continued.

The adoption of a doctrinal system so seemingly contradictory to Scripture as this forced Origen to assume a new style of biblical interpretation. It was impossible, he held, that such sublime spiritual truths, when stated abstractly, could be understood by the generality of men; they must therefore from necessity have been clothed by the sacred writers in palpable figures and allegories; and, accordingly, there is often a mystical meaning lying concealed behind the letter of holy writ. The very attention which Origen bestowed upon the construction of this erroneous allegorizing method led him at the same time to render a great service to the cause of hermeneutics. He found it necessary in many cases to adopt the bare letter of the word; this induced him to lay down an accurate distinction between the verbal and spiritual sense; and he thus had the merit of establishing a new and improved school of grammatical interpretation.

It is likely that these opinions contributed in some degree to exasperate the series of troubles that began to harass him about 229. After this date his life is the picture of a great Christian teacher labouring patiently for the reward of a good conscience amid the persecuting malice of an ungrateful world. Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, offended at the ordination of Origen by the bishops of Palestine, raked up every private scandal that might be thrown against his reputation, and procured his banishment from Egypt. Yet the uncomplaining exile, setting up his humble household among his friends in Cesarea, continued his biblical labours without remission. The thunders of excommunication soon followed him thither, and awoke a stormy controversy on his account between the churches of Rome and Alexandria, on the one hand, and the churches of Palestine, Phoenicia, Achaia, and Arabia, on the other. Yet the enthusiastic teacher was meanwhile lecturing on theology, philosophy, logic, natural science, geometry, astronomy, and ethics, with an eloquence "unspeakably winning, hallowed, and passing lovely." The persecution of the Emperor Maximinus in 235 drove him to seek refuge in Cappadocia, in the house of a wealthy lady named Juliana. Yet the two years of his concealment were employed in the compilation of his Hexapla, a work which exhibited in six, eight, or nine parallel columns, according as the case required, the various copies of the Old Testament. In the Decian persecution, which began in 249, he was cast into a dungeon in Tyre, and subjected to the most exquisite and protracted inquisitorial tortures. Yet not only did the old man vindicate the sufficiency of his Christian faith by his pious endurance, but he also wrote letters to console and confirm his fellow-sufferers. These accumulated toils and hardships at length undermined the health of Origen; and in the course of two or three years after his liberation from prison, he died about 254, and was buried at Tyre.

The works which Origen left behind him were so numerous that they were estimated by Epiphanius to amount to six thousand. By far the greater part is lost. Some of them, such as the treatise On Prayer, the Exhortation to Martyrdom, and the apologetic pamphlet Against Celus, are extant; others, such as the Hexapla, and the Commentaries on the books of the Old and New Testament, exist in fragments; and others, such as his work On Principles, are preserved by Rufinus in Latin translations, which professedly attempt to improve the originals, both by omissions and interpolations. The best edition of the fragments of the Hexapla is that of Montfaucon, in 2 vols. fol., Paris, 1713. The collected works of Origen were published in Latin at different times during the sixteenth century, by Merlin, Erasmus, Panzer, and Genebrard. The standard edition is that of Charles and Vincent Delarue, in 4 vols. fol., Paris, 1733-59. Several fragments of Origen appeared for the first time in the 14th volume of Gallard's Bibliotheca Patrum, published in 1781. A list of his works is given in the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius. (For the biography of Origen, the standard authority is the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius. See also, among many other works, Huet's Origeneana; Neander's Church History; and Origenes, Darstellung Seines Lebens und Seiner Lehre von Ernst Rudolph Redepenning, in 2 vols. 8vo, Bonn, 1841-46.)

The opinions of Origen gave rise many years after his death to a great controversy in the church. It was begun in the fourth century by a party accusing him of being the founder of Arianism; then a faction of the Egyptian monks came forward in his defence; and the dispute was brought to a head by Rufinus adopting the latter side, and Jerome adopting the former. From this time, the Origenists, though soon suppressed in the Western Church, began to rise into importance in the East. In the fifth century they had secured a firm footing in Egypt, Syria, and the adjacent countries; and in the sixth century they had acquired great influence in the palace of the Emperor Justinian. Their