Patristic scholarship has always been one of the great strengths of the Anglican Communion. It has been represented by a long succession of able scholars, including J. B. Lightfoot (d. 1889), B. F. Westcott and F. J. Hort, Benjamin Kidd and G. L. Prestige. It has never been subjected to the constraints that beset Roman Catholic patristic scholars on the continent at the time of the imposition of the anti-Modernist oath by the Papacy in 1910. The critical study of the early Fathers has flourished in the United Kingdom as one of the hallmarks of ‘sound learning’ in the church, and in particular, the four-yearly patristic conferences at Oxford initiated by F. L. Cross in 1951 remain a memorial to the contribution by scholars of British universities in that field. For more than forty years Henry Chadwick has represented the outstanding quality of their achievement.

Patristics, however, are by definition concerned largely with the literary study of the orthodox tradition of early Christianity. The Fathers were educated men, belonging to the relatively small cultural élite that has left its ideas for posterity. They were conscious, also, of belonging to a tradition of Christian teaching that was the sole truth, and they were concerned to defend its message against heresies, false interpretations, and misunderstandings. Their vast output of works expounding and defending the orthodox position as defined by the precedent of tradition reinforced by church councils, and their commentaries on every book of the Bible fill the columns of Migne's Patrologia.