us that are true Christians we know that there shall be a Resurrection of the Flesh and that the Saints shall spend a thousand years in Jerusalem which shall be rebuilt enriched and enlarged as the Prophets assure us Ezechiel Isaiah and others And to this purpose he citeth that which is written Isaiah Chap. 65. and besides that other Passage in the Revelation where it is said That those which had believed in Christ should live and reign with him a thousand years in Jerusalem and that after this there should be a General and Final Resurrection and Judgment In which words you see plainly that he holds with the Chiliasts that the Saints shall reign a thousand years in Jerusalem before the Resurrection be perfectly accomplished Which is an Opinion that is at this day condemned as Erroneous by the whole Western Church both on the one side and on the other He seems in another place to have held that the Essence of God was finite and was not present in all places where he endeavours to prove against a Jew that it was not the Father who rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom because that he could not then have been at that time in Heaven That which he hath delivered concerning the Angels is altogether as senseless though not so dangerous namely That God having in the beginning committed unto them the Care and Providence over men and all sublunary things they had broken this Order by suffering themselves to be overcome by the Love of Women by companying with whom had been also born Children which are those we now call Demons or Devils I know not neither whether he will be able easily to bring any one over to that other Opinion of his where he says that All the Souls of the Saints and of the Prophets had fallen under the power of Evil Spirits which were such as were the Spirits of Python and that this was the reason why our Saviour Christ being now ready to give up the Ghost recommended his Spirit to God I pray you tell me out of what part of Gods Word he learnt this Doctrine which he delivers in his second Apologie where he says That all those who lived according to the Rule of Reason were Christians notwithstanding that they might have been accounted as Atheists such as among the Greeks were Socrates Heraclitus and the like and among the Barbarians Abraham and Azarias repeating the same Doctrine within a few Lines afterward and saying that All those who lived or do now live according to the Rule of Reason are Christians and are in an assured quiet condition Irenaeus Bishop of Lyon who lived very near his time was also of the same Opinion with Justin touching the state of the Soul after it is once departed out of the Body till the hour of Judgment For towards the conclusion of that Excellent Book of his which he wrote against Heresies after that he hath told us that our Saviour Christ had descended into Hell and had been in the place where the Dead were which place he opposed to the Light of this World he further addeth That it is evident that the Souls of the Disciples of our Saviour for the love of whom he did all these things shall go also into a certain Invisible place which is prâ—vided for them by God there to expect the Resurrection and shall afterwards resume their Bodies and be raised up again in all Perfection that is to say Corporally in the same manner as our Saviour was raised up again and so shall they come into the presence of God And this Opinion he opposeth against that of the Valentinians and Gnosticks which he had before produced in the beginning of that Chapter of his who held That the Souls of Men immediately after they were departed out of the Body were carried up above the Heavens and the Creator of the World and went to that Mother or that Father which these Hereticks had fancied to themselves Which Opinion of theirs is in like manner rejected by Justin Martyr in the Passage a little before alledged out of his Book against Tryphon Whence it plainly appears that we may not trouble our selves to produce any other Proofs that Justin and Irenaeus were both of the same Belief touching the State of the Soul after Death But to return to Irenaeus in his Second Book against Hereticks he maintains very sâ—iffely That our Saviour Christ was above Forty years of age when he suffered death for us bringing in in defence of this Opinion of his which so manifestly contradicteth the Evangelical Histories certain Probabilities onely as namely That our Saviour passed through all Ages as heing come into the World to sanctifie and save People of all Ages urging also those words of the Jews to our Saviour Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast thou seen Abraham In the Conclusion of all saying That S. John had delivered it by Tradition to the Priests of Asia That Christ was somewhat Ancient when he began to preach being then about the age of Forty or Fifty years This Fancy of his appeased so ridioulous to Cardinal Baronius as that notwithstanding the Faith of all the Copies of this Father and the Contexture which appears evidently to be his together with the Vein and Marks of his Fancy and Stile he hath yet had the confidence to say That this whole Passage had been soisted into the Text of Irenaeus either by some ignorant or some malicious Person and that it could not be Irenaeus his own But it seemeth that he had no great reason for this his suspicion as the Jesuite Petavius hath clearly made it appear in his Notes upon Epiphaniuâ— However you may hence perceive that Baronius thinks that very Possible which we have endeavoured to prove in the Former Part of this Treatise namely That there may Possibly have been very many and great Alterations and Corruptions in the Books of the Writers of the First Ages by many Passages and Clauses having been either inserted into them or else maliclously rased out of them The same Irenaeus holds and endeavours to prove in the same Book That the Souls of Men after death retain the Character that is to say the Figure of the Bodies to which they were formerly united and that they represent the shape of the said Bodies so as to make Men take them for the same I shall here pass by that which he saith in the 49 Chapter of the same Book namely That our Saviour Christ did not at all know when the Day of Judgment should be neither according to the one nor according to the other of his Natures although these words of his look as if they would very hardly be reconciled to any good fense Neither shall I yet take notice of what both he and Justin Martyr have in divers places so rashly delivered touching the strength of Humane Nature in the Business of
from the Controversies now in hand p. 8. III. The Writings which go under the names of the Fathers are not all truly such but are a great part of them Supposititious and Forged either long since or of later times p. 11. IV. Those of the Writings of the Fathers which are Legitimate have been in many places corrupted by Time Ignorance and Fraud both Pious and Malitious both in the Former and Later Ages p. 34. V. The Writings of the Fathers are hard to be understood by reason of the Languages and Idioms they wrote in the Manner of their Writing which is for the most part incumbred with Figures and Rhetorical Flourishes and nice Logical Subtilties and the like and also by reason of the Termes which they for the most part used-in a far different sense from what they now bear p. 69. VI. When we meet with an Opinion clearly delivered in the Writings of any of the Fathers we must not from hence conclude that the said Father held that Opinion seeing that we often find them speaking those things which themselves have not believed whether it be when they report the opinion of some other without naming the persons as they frequently do in their Commentaries or in disputing against an Adversary in which kind of Writing they take liberty to say one thing and believe another or whether it be that they concealed their own private Opinion purposely as they have done in their Homilies meerly in compliance to such a part of their Auditory p. 100. VII Supposing that we are well assured that a Father hath clearly delivered his Opinion in any Point we ought notwithstanding to enquire into the time wherein he wrote that Opinion of his whether it were before or after he arrived to Ripeness of Judgment For we see that they have sometimes retracted in their old age what they had written when they were young p. 117. VIII But suppose that a Father hath constantly held one Opinion it will nevertheless concern us to inquire How he held it and in what degree of Belief whether as Necessary or Probable only and then again in what degree of Necessity or of Probability he placed it Beliefs being not all equally either Necessary or Probable p. 123. IX After all this we are to examine whether or no he deliver this as his own particular Opinion only for this cannot necessarily bind our faith or whether he deliver it as the Opinion of the Church in his time p. 136. X. In the next place it will concern us to enquire whether he deliver it for the Judgment of the Church Vniversal or of some particular Church only those things which have been received by the Major Part having not always notwithstanding been received by some particular parts of the Church p. â—4â— XI And after all this whether you take the Church for the Collective Body of Christians or only for the body of the Clergy or Pastors it is notwithstanding impossible to know what the Belief of the whole Church in any Age hath been for as much as it frequently so falls out that the Opinions of these Men who have appeared to the World have not only not been received but on the contrary have also been Opposed and Contradicted by thâ—se Members of the same Church who have not at all appeared to the World who notwithstanding both for their Learning and Piety deserved perhaps to have had as much or more Esteem and Authority than the other p. 151. The Second Book THE second Reason namely that neither the Testimony nor the Preaching of the Fathers is altogether Infallible is proved by these following Considerations p. 1. II. The Fathers themselves witness against themselves that they are not to be believed Absolutely and upon their own bare word p. 11. III. It appeareth plainly by their Manner of Writing that they never intended that their Writings should be our Judges p. 40. IV. They have erred in divers Points not only Singly but also many of them together p. 60. V. They have very much contradicted one the other and have maintained different Opinions in Matters of great Importance p. 112. VI. Lastly to say the truth neither Party alloweth them for Judges but reject them boldly and without any scruple both the one and the other maintaining divers things which the Fathers were ignorant of and rejecting others which were maintained by them the Protestants in those things where the Fathers have gone either against or besides the Scripture the Church of Rome where they oppose against them the Resolutions of their Popes or of Councils Seeing therefore that both Parties attribute the Supream Authority to some other Judges the Fathers though perhaps their Resolutions should be grounded on Divine Authority could never be able notwithstanding to clear their Differences and to reconcile the two Parties p. 126. So that it followeth from hence that our Controversies are to be decided by some other means than that of their Writings and that we are to observe the same Method in Religion that we do in all other Sciences making use of those things wherein we all agree for the clearing of those wherein we differ comparing exactly the Conclusions of both Parties with their Principles which are to be acknowledged and granted by both sides whether it be in Reason or Divine Revelation And as for the Fathers we ought to read them carefully and heedfully and especially without any prejudication on either side searching their Writings for their Opinions and not for our own arguing Negatively concerning those things which we find not in them rather then Affirmatively that is to say holding all those Articles for suspected which are not found in them it being a thing altogether Improbable that those Worthies of the Church were Ignorant of any of the Necessary and Principal Points of Faith but yet not presently receiving for an Infallible Truth whatsoever is found in them for as much as being but Men though Saints they may sometimes have erred either out of pure Ignorance or else perhaps out of Passion which they have not been always wholly free from as appeareth clearly by those Books of theirs which are left Vs The Testimonies of the Lord Faulkland Lord Digby Doctor Taylor Doctor Rivet concerning this learned Book Reader THE Translation of this Tract hath been oft attempted and oftner deâ—â—â—ed by many Noble Personages of this and other Nations among others by Sir Lucius Cary late Lord Viscount Faulkland who with his dear Friend Mr. Chillingworth made very much use of it in all their Writings against the Romanists But the Papers of that learned Nobleman wherein this Translation was half finisht were long since involved in the common loss Those few which have escaped it and the press make a very honourable mention of this Monsieur whose acquaintance the said Lord was wont to say was worth a Voyage to Paris Pag. 202. of his Reply he hath these words This observation of mine hath been confirmed by consideration of
what hath been so temperately learnedly and judiciously written by Monsieur Daille our Protestan-Perron And what the same Lord in a Treatise which will shortly be publisht saith concerning the Popish Perron viz. Him I can scarce ever laudare in one sense that is quote but I must laudare in the other that is praise who hath helpt the Church to all the advantages which wit learning industry judgment and eloquence could add unto her is as true of this our Protestant I shall add but one Lords Testimony more viz. the Lord George Digbies in his late Letters concerning Religion in these words p. 27 28. The reasons prevalent with me whereon an inquiring and judicious person should be obliged to rely and acquiesce are so amply and so learnedly set down by Monsieur Daillé in his Employ des Peâ—â—s that I think little which is material or weighty can be said on this subject that his rare and piercing observation hath not anticipated Were it needful to wander to Foreigners for Testimonies I could tell you how highly this Author is esteemed by the Learned and Famous Doctor Andr. Rivet upon whole importunity his Book des Images and other Tracts have been translated but writing to Englishmen I will only name the judicious Doctor Jer. Taylor Libert of Proph. Sect. 8. n. 4. in these words I shall chuse such a topick as makes no invasion upon the great reputation of the Fathers which I desire should be preserved sacred as it ought For other things let who please read Mr. Daillé du vrai usage des Peres Et siquis eueulo locus inter Oscines I must ingenuously profess that it was the reading of this rational Book which first convinced me that my study in the French Language was not ill employed which hath also enabled me to commend this to the World as faithfully translated by a judicious hand And that if there were no other use of the Fathers there is very much while Testem quem quis adducit pro se tenetur accipere contra se is a rule in reason as well as Civil Law and that the works of Cord. Perron for whose monstrous understanding they are the words of Viscount Faulkland p. 59. Bellarmine and Bironius might with most advantage to their party and no disgrace to them have been employed in seeking citations being built upon the principle That whatever the Fathers witness to be tradition and the doctrine of the Church must be received of all for such and so relied on And this principle being here throughly examined You have here as sufficient a constitation of Perrons Book against K. J. and by consequence of the Marquess of Worcesters against K. C. and Dr. Vanes and other Epitonizers of the Cardinal as you have of Mr. Cressys in the Preface to the Lord Faulkland by the learned I. P. Chr. Coll. Aug. 1. 1651. T. S. THE PREFACE ALl the Difference in Religion which is at this day betwixt the Church of Rome and the Protestants lies in some certain Points which the Church of Rome maintaineth as important and necessary Articles of the Christian Faith Whereas the Protestants on the contrary neither believe nor will receive them for such For as for those things which the Protestants believe for their part and which they conceive to be the Fundamentals of Religion they are so evidently and undeniably such as that even their Adversaries themselves do also allow of and receive them as well as they for as much as they are both clearly delivered in the Scriptures and expresly set down by the Ancient Councils and Fathers and are indeed unanimously received by the greatest part of Christians in all Ages and Parts of the World Such for example are these Maxims following Namely That there is a God who is Supreme over all and who created the Heavens and the Earth That having created Man after his own Image this Man revolting from his Obedience is faln together with his whole Posterity into most extreme and eternal misery and become infected with Sin as with a mortal Leprosie and is therefore obnoxious to the Wrath of God and liable to his Curse That the Merciful Creator pitying Mans Estate graciously sent his Son Jesus Christ into the World That his Son is God Eternal with him and that having taken Flesh upon himself in the Womb of the Virgin Mary and become Man He hath done and suffered in this Flesh all things necessary for our Salvation having by this means sufficiently expiated for our Sins by his Blood and that having finished all this he is ascended again into Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father from whence He shall one day come to judge all Mankind rendering to every one according to their Works That to enable us to communicate of his Salvation by His Merits He sendeth us down His Holy Spirit proceeding both from the Father and the Son and who is also one and the same God with Them in such sort as that these Three Persons are notwithstanding but One GOD who is Blessed for ever That this Spirit enlightens our Vnderstanding and begets Faith in us whereby we are justified That after all this the LORD sent his Apostles to Preach this Doctrine of Salvation throughout the whole World That These have planted Churches and placed in each of them Pastors and Teachers whom we are to hear with all reverence and to receive from them Baptism the Sacrament of our Regeneration and the Holy Eucharist or Lords Supper which is the Sacrament of our Communion with Jesus Christ That we are likewise all of us bound to love GOD and our Neighbour very fervently observing diligently that Holy Doctrine which is laid down unto us in the Books of the New Testament which have been inspired by His Spirit of Truth as also those other of the Old there being nothing either in the one or in the other but what is most true These Articles and some other few the like which there perhaps may be are the substance of the Protestants whole Belief and if all other Christians would but content themselves with these there would never be any Schism in the Church But now their Adversaries add to these many other Points which they press and command Men to believe as necessary ones and such as without believing of which there is no possible hope of Salvation As for example That the Pope of Rome is the Head and Supreme Monarch of the whole Christian Church throughout the World That He or at least the Church which he acknowledgeth a true one cannot possibly erre in matter of Faith That the Sacrament of the Eucharist is to be adored as being really Jesus Christ and not a piece of Bread That the Mass is a Sacrifice that really expiates the Sins of the Faithful That Christians may and ought to have in their Churches the Images of God and of Saints to which they are to use Religious Worship bowing down before them That it is
all which is continually declining after they have once passed the Point of their Vigour and as it were the Flower and Prime of their Strength and Perfection Now I cannot believe that any faithful Christian will deny but that Christianity was in its Height and Perfection in the time of the Blessed Apostles And indeed it would be the greatest injury that could be offered them to say that any of their Successors have either had a greater desire or more Abilities to advance Christianity than they had It will hence follow then That those Times which were nearest to the Apostles were necessarily the purest and less subject to suspicion of Corruptions either in Doctrine or in Manners and Christian Discipline it being but reasonable to believe that if there be any Corruptions crept into the Church they came in by little and little and by degrees as it happens in all other things If any one shall here object That even the very next Age immediately after the times of the Apostles was not without its Errours if we may believe Hegesippus who as he is cited by Eusebius witnesseth that the Church continued a Virgin till the Emperour Trajan's time but that after the death of the Apostles the Conspiracy of Errour began to discover it self with open fce I shall not oppose any thing against this testimony but shall only say that if the Enemy immediately upon the setting of these Stars of the Church their Presence and Light being scarcely shut in had yet the boldness presently to fall to sowing his evil seed how much more had he opportunity to do this in those Ages which were further removed from their Times when as the Sanctity and Simplicity of these great Teachers of the World having now by little and little vanished out of the memories of Men Humane Inventions and new Fancies began to take place So that we may however conclude That supposing that Christianity even in the First Ages hath not been altogether exempt from alteration in Doctrine yet are they much more free from it than the succeeding Ages can pretend to be and are therefore consequently to be preferred before them in all respects it being here something like what the Poets have fancied of the Four Ages of the World where the succeeding Age always came short of the former For as for the Opinion of those Men who think the best way to find out the true Sense of the Ancient Church will be to search the Writings of those of the Fathers chiefly who lived betwixt the time of Constantine the Great till Pope Leo or till Pope Gregory's time that is to say from the end of the Third Century till the beginning of the Seventh I take this as a Confession onely of the small number of Books that are left us of those Ages before Constantine and not that these Men allow that the Authority of these Three later Ages ought to be preferred to that of the Three former If we had but as much Light and as clear Evidences of the Belief of the one as we have of the other I make no question but they would prefer the Former But if they mean otherwise and are indeed of a perswasion that the Church was really more pure after Constantine's time than before they must excuse me if I think that they by this means confess the distrust they have of their own Cause seeing they endeavour to get off as far as they can from the Light of the Primitive times retreating back to those Ages wherein it is most evident there was both less Perfection and Light than before running clean contrary to that excellent Rule which S. Cyprian hath given us That we should have recourse to the Fountain whenever the Channel and Stream of Doctrine and Ecclesiastical Tradition is found to be any whit corrupted But however let their meaning be what it will their Words in my judgment do not a little advantage the Protestants Cause it being a very clear confession That those Opinions about which they contest with them do not at all appear clearly in any of the Books that were written during the Three First Centuries For if they were found clearly in the same what Policy were it then in them to appeal to the Writers of the Three following Centuries to which they very well know that their Adversaries attribute less than to the Former But besides this tacite Confession of theirs the thing is evident namely That there is left us at this day very little of the Writings of the Fathers of the Three First Centuries of Christianity for the deciding of our Differences The blessed Christians of those times contented themselves for the greatest part of them with writing the Christian Faith in the hearts of Men by the beams of their Sanctity and holy Life and by their Blood shed in Martyrdom without much troubling themselves with the writing of Books Whether it were because as Learned Origen elegantly gives the Reason they were of opinion that the Christian Religion was to be defended by the Innocency of Life and honesty of Conversation rather than by Sophistry and the Artifice of Words or whether because their continual Sufferings gave them not leisure to take Pen in hand and to write Books or else whether it were for some other Reason perhaps which we know not But this we are very well assured of that except the Writings of the Apostles there was very little written by others in these Primitive times which was the cause of so much trouble to Eusebius in the beginning of his History having little or no light to guide him in his Undertaking and treading as himself saith in a new path unbeaten by any that had gone before him Besides the greatest part of those few Books which were written by the Christians of those Times have not come down to our hands but were lost either through the injury of Time that consumeth all things or else have been made away by the malice of Men who have made bold to suppress and smother whatsoever they met with that was not wholly to their gust Of this sort were those five Books of Papias Bishop of Hierapolis the Apology of Quadratus Atheniensis and that other of Aristides the Writings of Castor Agrippa against the XXIV Books of the Heretick Basilides the five Books of Hegesippus the Works of Melito Bishop of Sardis Dionysius Bishop of Corinth Apollinaris Bishop of Hierapolis the Epistle of Pinytus Cretensis the Writings of Philippus Musanus Modestus Bardesanes Pantaenus Rhodon Miltiades Apollonius Serapion Bacchylus Polycrates Bishop of Ephesus Heraclius Maximus Hammonius Tryphon Hippolytus Julius Africanus Dionysius Alexandrinus and others of whom we have no more left save onely their Names and the Titles of their Books which are preserved in Eusebius S. Hierome and others All that we have left us of these Times which is certainly known to be theirs and that no Man doubts of is some certain Discourses of
S. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr who wrote his second Apology a hundred and fifty years after the Nativity of our Saviour Christ the Five Books of S. Irenaeus who wrote not long after him Three excellent and learned Pieces of Clemens Alexandrinus who lived toward the end of the second Century divers Books of Tertullian who was famous about the same time the Epistles and other Treatises of S. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage who suffered Martyrdom about the year of our Saviour CCLXI the Writings of Arnobius and of Lactantius his Scholar and some few others For as for Origen S. Cyprian's Contemporary who alone had we but all his Writings entire would be able perhaps to give us more light and satisfaction in the Business we are now upon than all the rest we have but very little of him left us and the greatest part of that too most miserably abused and corrupted the most learned and almost innumerable Writings of this great and incomparable Person not being able to withstand the violence of Time nor the envy and malice of Men who have dealt much worse with him than so many Ages and Centuries of Years that have passed from his time down to us And thus have I given you an account of well-nigh all that we have left us which is certainly known to have been written by the Fathers of the Three First Centuries For as for those other Pieces which are pretended to have been written in the same times but are indeed either confessed to be supposititious by the Romanists themselves or are rejected by their Adversaries and that upon very good and probable grounds these are not to have any place at all or account here in clearing the Controversie we have now in hand The Writings of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries have I confess out-gone the Former for number and good fortune too the greatest part of them having come down safe to our Hands but they come much short of the other in Weight and Authority especially in the Judgment of the Protestants who maintain and that upon very probable Grounds too That the Christian Religion hath from the beginning had its declinings by little and little losing in every Age some certain degree of its Primitive and Native Purity And besides we have good cause perhaps to fear lest the multitude of Writers of these two Ages trouble us as much as the paucity of them in the three preceding and that as before we suffered under scarcity we now be overwhelmed with their multitude For the multitude of Words and of Books serves as much sometimes to the suppressing of the Sense and Opinion of any Publick Body as Silence it self our Minds being then extremely confounded and perplexed while it labours to apprehend what is the True and Common Opinion of the Whole amidst so many differently-biassed Particulars whereof each endeavours to express the same it being most certain that amongst so great and almost infinite variety of Spirits and Tongues you shall very hardly meet with two Persons that shall deliver to you one and the same Opinion especially in Matters of so high a nature as the Controversies in Religion are after the same form and way of representation how unanimous soever their Consent may otherwise be in the same Opinion And this Variety although it be but in the Circumstances of the thing makes notwithstanding the Foundation it self to appear different also CHAP. II. Reason II. That those Writings which we have of the Fathers of the First Centuries treat of Matters very far different from the present Controversies in Religion BUt suppose that neither the want of Books in the Three First Centuries nor yet the abundance of them in the Three following should bring along with it these inconveniences it will however be very hard to discover out of them what the Opinion of their Authors hath been touching those Points of Christian Religion now controverted For the Matters whereof They treat are of a very different nature these Authors according as the necessity of their times required employing themselves either in justifying the Christian Religion and vindicating it from the aspersion of such Crimes wherewith it was most falsly and injuriously charged or else in laying open to the World the Absurdity and Impiety of Paganism or in convincing the hard-hearted Jews or in confuting the prodigious Fooleries of the Hereticks of those times or in exhortations to the Faithful to Patience and Martyrdom or in expounding some certain Passages and Portions of the Holy Scripture all which things have very little to do with the Controversies of these times of which they never speak Syllable unless they accidentally or by chance let a Word drop from them toward this side or that side yet without the least thought of us or of our Controversies although both the one and the other Party sometimes lights upon Passages wherein they conceive they have discovered their own Opinions clearly delivered though in vain for the most part and without ground just as he did that hearing a Ring of Bells thought they perfectly â—ounded out unto him what he in his own thoughts had fancied Justin Martyr and Tertullian Theophilus and Lactantius Clemens and Arnobius shew the Heathen the vainness of their Religion and of their gods and that Jupiter and Juno were but Mortals and that there is but one onely God the Creator of Heaven and Earth Irenaeus bends his whole Forces against the prodigious Opinions of Basilides the Valentinians and other Gâ—osticks who were the Inventors of the most Chimaerical Divinity that ever came into the fancy of Man Tertullian also whips them as they well deserve it but he especially takes Marcion Hermâ—genes Apelles Praxcas and others to task who maintained That there were Two Gods or Two Principles and confounded the Persons of the Father and the Son Cyprian is wholly upon the Discipline and the Vertues of the Christian Church Arius Macedonius Eunomius Photinus Pelagius and afterwards Nestorius and Eutyches made work for the Fathers of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries The Blasphemies of these Men against the Person or the Natures of our Saviour Christ or against the Holy Ghost and its Grace which have now of a long time lay buried and forgotten were the Matters debated in those times and the subject of the greatest part of the Books then written that have come to our Hands What relation hath any thing of all this to the Business of Transubstantiation and the Adoration of the Eucharist or the Monarchy of the Pope or the Necessity of Auricular Confession or the Worshipping of Images and the like Points which are the Business of the present Controversies and which none of the Ancients hath handled expresly and of set purpose and perhaps too never so much as thought of It is very true indeed that the silence of these Fathers in these Points which some set so much by is not wholly mute and perhaps also it may pass for a very clear Testimony
Their Names how much more likely is it that they would not stick to make as bold with the Fathers And indeed this kind of Imposture hath always been very ordinary Thus we read That the Nestorians sometime published an Epistle under the Name of S. Cyril of Alexandria in the defence of Theodorus Bishop of Mopsuestia who was the Author and first Broacher of their Heresie and likewise that the Eutychists also vented certain Books of Apollinaris under the Title of The Orthodox Doctors onely to abuse the simple People Leontius hath written an express Tract on this Subject wherein he shews That these Men abused particularly the Names of S. Gregory of Neocaesarea of Julius Bishop of Rome and of Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria and he also saith particularly That the Book entituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A particular Exposition of the Faith which is delivered unto us by Turrianus the Jesuite Gerardus Vossius and the last Edition of Gregorius Neocaesariensis for a true and legitimate Piece of the said S. Gregory is not truly his but the Bastard Issue of the Heretick Apollinaris And the like Judgment do the Publishers of the Bibliotheca Patrum give of the XII Anathema's which are commonly attributed to the same S. Gregory The Monothelites also taking the same course forged an Oration under the Name of Menas Patriarch of Constantinople and directed to Vigilius Bishop of Rome and two other Books under the Name of the same Vigilius directed to Justinian and Theodora wherein their Heresie is in express terms delivered and these three Pieces were afterward inserted into the Body of the Fifth Council and kept in the Library of the Patriarch's Palace in Constantinople But this Imposture was discovered and convinced in the VI Council for otherwise who would not have been deceived by it seeing these false Pieces in so Authentick a Copy I bring but these few Examples to give the Reader but a taste onely of what the Hereticks not onely dared but were able also to do in this particular and all these things were done before the end of the Seventh Century that is to say above nine hundred years ago Since which time in all the Disputes about the Images in Churches and in the differences betwixt the Greek and Latine Churches and indeed in the most part of all other Ecclesiastical Contestations you shall find nothing more frequent than the mutual Reproaches that the several Parties cast at each other accusing each other of forging the Pieces of Authors which they produced each of them in defence of their own Cause Judge you therefore whether or not the Hereticks using the same Artifice and the same Diligence now for the space of so many Centuries since though in different Causes may not in all probability have furnished us with a sufficient stock of spurious Pieces sent abroad under the Names of the Ancient Fathers by their professed Enemies And do but think whether or no we may not chance to converse with an Heretick sometimes when we think we have a Father before us and a professed Enemy disguised under the mask of a Friend So that it will hence follow That it may justly be feared that we sometimes receive and deliver for Maxims and Opinions of the Ancient Church no better than the very Dreams of the Ancient Hereticks For we must conceive that they were not so foolish as to discover their Venom at the first dash in the height of their Heretical Positions but rather that they onely cunningly cast in here and there some sprinklings of it laying the foundation of their Heresie as it were afar off onely which makes the Knavery the more hard to be discovered and so consequently the more dangerous But supposing that this Jugling Trick of the Hereticks may have very much corrupted the Old Books yet notwithstanding had we no other spurious Pieces than what had been forged by them it would be no very hard matter to distinguish the True from the False But that which renders the Evil almost uncurable is that even in the Church it self this kind of Forgery hath been both very Ordinary and very Ancient I impute a great part of the cause of this Mischief to those Men who before the Invention of Printing were the Transcribers and Copiers out of Manuscripts of whose negligence and boldness in corrupting of Books S. Hierome very much complained even in his time Scribunt saith he non quod inveniunt sed quod intelligunt dum alienos errores emendare nituntur ostendunt suos That is They write not what they find but what they understand and whilst they endeavour to correct other Mens Errors they shew their own We may very well presume that what liberty these Men took in corrupting they took the same in forging Books too especially since this last course was beneficial to them which the other was not For by altering or corrupting the Books they wrote they could not make any advantage to themselves whereas in forging new Books and venting them under great and eminent Names they put them off both faster and dearer So likewise if there came to their hands any Book that had either no Authors Name or having any it was but an obscure or a tainted one to the end that these evil Marks might not prejudice the venting of it they would rase it out without any more ado and inscribe it presently with some one of the most Eminent and Venerable Names that was in the Church that so the Reputation and Favour that That Name had found in the World might be a means of the better putting off their false Wares As for example The Name of Novatianus who was the Head of a Schism against the Roman Church became justly to be odious to Christian ears as that of Tertullian was the more esteemed both for the Age Wit and Learning of the Person Now the Transcriber considering this with himself without any other design or end than onely of his own private Gain hath in my judgment made an exchange attributing to Tertullian that Book of the Trinity which is indeed Novatianus his as we are given to understand also by S. Hierome And I am of opinion that both the birth and fortune of that other Piece De Poenitentia hath been if not the very same yet at least not much unlike that of the other So likewise that Book which beareth Title De Operibus Cardinalibus Christi which was composed and sent by the Author of it to one of the Popes without setting down his Name as himself there testifies hath been vented abroad under the Name of S. Cyprian onely because by this means it is the more profitable to the Manuscript-monger and it hath formerly always passed and doth still pass for his notwithstanding that in my judgment it is clear enough that it cannot be his as is ingenuously confessed by very many of the Learned both of the one and of
the other side Ruffinus had some Name in the Church though nothing near so great a one as Cyprian had and this is the reason why the afore-named Merchants have inscribed with S. Cyprian's Name that Treatise upon the Apostles Creed which was written by Ruffinus Besides the Avarice of these Librarii their own Ignorance or at least of those whom they consulted hath in like manner produced no small number of these spurious Pieces For when either the likeness of the Name or of the Stile or of the Subject treated of or any other seeming Reason gave them occasion to believe that such an Anonymous Book was the Work of such or such an ancient Author they presently copied it out under the said Author's Name and thus it came from thenceforth to be received by the World for such and by them to be delivered for such over to Posterity But all the blame is not to be laid upon the Transcribers onely in this particular the Authors themselves have contributed very much to the promoting of this kind of Imposture For there have been found in all Ages some that have been so sottishly ambitious and so desirous at what rate soever to have their Conceptions published to the World as that finding they should never be able to please and get applause abroad of themselves they have vented them under the Name of some of the Fathers chusing rather to see them received and honoured under this false Habit than disdained and slighted under their own true one These Men according as their several Abilities have been have imitated the Stile and Fancy of the Fathers either more or less happily and have boldly presented these Issues of their own Brain to the World under their Names The World the greatest part whereof hath always been the least subtile hath very readily collected preserved and cherished these false Births and hath by degrees filled all their Libraries with them Others have been moved to use the same Artifice not out of Ambition but some other irregular Fancy as those Men have done who having had a particular affection either to such a Person or to such an Opinion have faln to write of the same under the Name of some Author of good Esteem and Reputation with the World to make it pass the more currantly abroad Just as that Priest did who published a Book entituled The Acts of S. Paul and of Tecla and being convinced of being the Author of it in the presence of S. John he plainly confessed that the love that he bare to S. Paul was the onely cause that moved him to do it Such was the boldness also of Ruffinus a Priest of Aquileia whom S. Hierome justly reprehendeth so sharply and in so many places who to vindicate Origen's Honour wrote an Apology for him under the Name of Pamphilus a holy and renowned Martyr although the truth of it is he had taken it partly out of the First and Sixth Books that Eusebius had written upon the same Subject and partly made use of his own Invention in it Some such like Fancy it was that moved him also to put forth the Life of one Sextus a Pythagorean Philosopher under the Name of S. Sixtus the Martyr to the end that the Work might be received the more favourably What can you say to this namely That in the very same Age there was a Personage of greater Note than the former who disliking that Hierome had translated the Old Testament out of the Hebrew framed an Epistle under his Name wherein he maketh him repent himself of having done it which Epistle even in S. Hierome's Life-time though without his knowledge was published by the said Author both at Rome and in Africk Who could believe the truth of this bold attempt had not S. Hierome himself related the Story and made complaint of the Injury done him therein I must impute also to a Fancy of the same kind though certainly more innocent than the other the spreading abroad of so many Predictions of our Saviour Jesus Christ and his Kingdom under the Names of the Sibylls which was done by some of the first Christians onely to prepare the Pagans to relish this Doctrine the better as it is objected against them by Celsus in Origen But that which is of greater consequence yet is that even the Fathers themselves have sometimes made use of this Artifice to promote the Interest either of their own Opinions or their Passions We have a notable Example hereof which was objected against the Latins by the Greeks above two hundred years since of two Bishops of Rome Zozimus and Boniface who to authorize the Title which they pretended to have of being Universal Bishops and Heads of the whole Christian Church and particularly of the African forged about the beginning of the Fifth Century certain Canons in the Council of Nice and alledged them for such divers times in the Councils in Africa which notwithstanding after a long and diligent search could never yet be found in any of the Authentick Copies of the said Council of Nice although the African Bishops had taken the pains to send as far as Constantinople Alexandria and Antioch to get the best and truest Copies that they could Neither indeed have the Canons and Acts of the Council of Nice at this day though it hath since that time passed through so many several hands any such thing in itâ— no not in the Editions of those very Men who are the most interested in the Honour of the Popes as that of Dionysius Exiguus who published his Latin Collection of them about the year of our Saviour Christ 525. nor in any other either Ancient or Modern For at for that Authentick Copy of the Council of Nice which one Frier John at the Council of Florence pretended to have been the onely Copy that had escaped the Corruptions of the Arrians and had for this cause been always kept under Lock and Key at Rome with all the safety and care that might be out of which Copy they had transcribed the said Canons I confess this Copy must needs have been kept up very close under Locks and Seals seeing that three of their Popes namely Zozimus Boniface and Celestine could never be able to produce it for the justification of their pretended Title against the African Fathers though in a case of so great Importance And it is a wonderful strange thing to me that this Man who came a thousand years after should now at last make use of it in this cause whereas those very Persons who had it in their custody never so much as mentioned one Syllable of it which is an evident Argument that the Seals of this rare Book were never opened save onely in the Brains of this Doctor where onely it was both framed and sealed up brought forth and vanished all at the same instant the greatest part of those Men that have come after him having laid aside this Chimerical
too they made no conscience at all to make use of so gross a piece of Forgery what have they not since in these later Times while the whole World for so many Ages lay covered with so thick darkness dared to do But as for my part I shall neither accuse nor excuse at present these Mens Proceedings but shall onely conclude That seeing that the Writings of the Fathers before they came to us have passed through the hands of those who have sometimes been found to use these jugling Tricks it is not so easie a matter as People may imagine to discover out of those Writings which now pass under the Names of the Fathers what their Opinions were The like Inclinations produced the very same Effects in the Fifth Council where a Letter forged under the Name of Theodoret touching the Death of S. Cyril was both read and by a general silence approved by the whole Assembly which yet notwithstanding was so evidently false that those very Men who caused the Body of the General Councils to be Printed at Rome have convinced it of falshood and branded it as spurious Such another precious Piece is that foolish Story of a Miracle wrought by an Image of our Saviour Christ in the City Berytus which is related in very ample manner in the VII Council and goes forsooth under the Name of S. Athanasius but is indeed so tasteless a Piece and so unworthy the Gallantry and clearness of that great Wit that he must not be thought to have common sense that can find in his heart to attribute it to him And therefore we see that notwithstanding the Authority of this Council both Nannius Bellarmine and Possevine have plainly confessed that it was not written by Athanasius I shall place in this Rank the so much cried up Deed of the Donation of Constantine which hath for so long a time been accounted as a most Valid and most Authentick Evidence and hath also been inserted into the Decrees and so stifly maintained by the Bishops of Agobio against the Oppositions of Laurentius Valla. Certainly those very Men who at this day maintain the Donation do notwithstanding disclaim this Evidence as a piece of Forgery Of the same nature are the Epistles attributed to the first Popes as Clemens Anacletus Euaristus Alexander Sixtus Telesphorus Hyginus Pius Anicetus and others down to the times of Siricius that is to say to the year of our Saviour Christ CCCLXXXV which the World read under these Venerable Titles at the least for eight hundred years together and by which have been decided to the advantage of the Church of Rome very many Controversies and especially the most important of all the rest namely that of the Pope's Monarchy which sheweth plain enough the Inclination shall I call itâ— or rather the purposed Design of the Merchant that first vented them abroad The greatest part of these notwithstanding are accounted forged even by many of the Learned of their own Party as namely Henricus Kâ—ltheisen Nicolas Cusanus Jo. de Turrecremata both Cardinals Erasmus Jo. Driedo Claudius Espensaeus Cassander Simon Vigor Baronius and others as indeed their Forgery appears plain enough by the barbarousness of their Stile the Errors that you meet with every foot in computing the Times and in History the Pieces that they are patched up of stollen here and there out of several Authors whose Books we have at this day to shew and also by the general silence of all the Writers of the Eight first Centuries among whom there is not one word mentioned of them Now I shall not here meddle at all with the Six or Seven last Centuries where in regard of diverse Articles of Faith most eagerly by them pressed and established there hath been more need than ever of the Assistance of the Ancients and where in respect of the dark Ignorance of those Times and the scarcity of Opposers they had much better opportunity than before to forge what Books they pleased This Abuse the World was never free from till the Times of the Light breaking forth in the Last Century at what time Erasmus by name gives us an account how he himself had discovered one of these wretched Knaves whose ordinary practice it was to lay his own Eggs in another Man's Nest putting his own Fooleries on S. Hierome particularly and on S. Augustine and S. Ambrose And who knows what those many Books be that are daily issued out of the self-same Shops that of old were wont to furnish the World with these kind of Knacks Is it not very probable that both the Will and the Dexterity in forging and venting these false Wares will rather in these days increase than abate in the Professors of this Trade So that if besides what the Malice of the Hereticks the Avarice and Ignorance of Transcribers of Manuscripts and the ambition and affection of Men hath brought forth of this kind there have yet so many others bent their endeavours this way and that in a manner all along for the space of the last Fourteen hundred years although they had their several ends we are not to wonder at all if now in this last Age we see such a monstrous number of Writings falsly Fathered upon the Ancients which if they were all put together would make little less than a Fourth or a Fifth part of the Works of the Fathers I am not ignorant that the Learned have noted a great number of them and do ordinarily cast them into the later Tomes of Editions and that some have written whole Books upon this very Subject as namely Ant. Possevine's Apparatus Bellarmine's Catalogue Scultetus his Medulla Patrum Rivet's Critick and the like both of the one and the other Religion But who can assure us that they have not forgotten any thing they should have noted Besides that it is a new Labour and almost equal to the former to read so many Books of the Moderns as there are And when all is done we are not presently to sit down upon their Judgments neither without a due examination had of them For each of them having been prepossest with the Prejudices of the Party in which they were brought up before they took this Work in hand who shall warrant us that they have not delivered any thing in this case in favour of their own particular Interest as hath been touched before The justness of this suspicion is so clear that I presume that no Man that is but any whit versed in these matters will desire me to prove my Assertion Neither shall I need to give any other reason of it than the Conflict and Disagreements in Judgments which we may observe in these Men the one of them oftentimes letting pass for pure Metal what the other perhaps will throw by for Dross Which Differences are found not onely betwixt those that are of quite opposite Religions but which is more even betwixt those that are of the self same Perswasion
Those whom we named not long before who were all of the Roman Church cry down as we have said the greatest part of the Decretals of the first Popes Franciscus Turrianus a Jesuite receives them and defends them all in a Tract written by him to that purpose Baronius calls the Recognitions which are attributed to Clemens Romanus A Gulf of Filth and Vncleanness full of prodigious Lies and frantick Fooleries Bellarmine says That this Book was written either by Clemens or else by some other Author as Learned and as Ancient as he Some of them hold those Fragments published by Nicol. Faber under the Name of S. Hilary for good and legitimate Pieces and some others again reject them Erasmus Sixtus Senensis Melchior Canus and Baronius are of opinion That the Book Of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary is falsly attributed to S. Hierome Christophorus à Castro a Spanish Jesuite maintains the contrary Cardinal Cajetan Laurentius Valla Erasmus and some others hold the Books of Dionysius the Areopagite for suspected and spurious Baronius and almost all the rest of their Writers maintain that they are true and legitimate Turrianus Bovin and some others commend unto us the Constitutions of the Apostles for a legitimate Piece But Baronius Possevine Petavius and a great many others speak doubtfully of them And a Man shall find in the Writings of those of the Church of Rome infinite variety of divided Judgments in such Cases as these He that hath a mind to furnish himself with Examples of this Nature may have recourse to their Books and particularly to the Writings of the late Cardinal Perron who differs as much from the rest in this Point of Criticism as he doth for the most part in the Method he observes in his Disputations Now I would willingly be informed what a Man should do amidst these diversities of Judgment and what Path he should take where he meeteth with so disagreeing Guides But yet suppose that these Authors have done their utmost endeavour in this Design without any particular affection or partiality how notwithstanding shall we be satisfied concerning their sufficiency for the performance of their Undertaking Is it a light Business think you to bring the whole stock of Antiquity to the Cruzet and there to purifie and refine it and to separate all the Dross from it which hath so deeply and for the space of so many Ages been not only as it were tied and fastned on to it but even throughly mixed united and incorporated with it This Work requireth the most clear and refined Judgment that can be imagined an exquisite Wit a quick piercing Eye a perfect Ear a most exact knowledge in all History both Ancient and Modern both Ecclesiastical and Secular a perfect knowledge of the Ancient Tongues and a long and continued Conversation with all sorts of Writers both Ancient of the middle Ages and Modern to be able to judge of their Inclinations and which way their Pulse beat to understand rightly the manner of their Expression Invention and Method in Writing each Age each Nation and each Author having their own peculiar ways in all these Now such a Man as this is hardly produced in a whole age As for those Men who in our Times have taken upon them this part of Criticism who knows not who sees not that but reads them how many of these forenamed Qualities are wanting in them But yet suppose that such a Man were to be found and that he should take in hand this Discovery I do verily believe that he would be able very easily to find out the Imposture of a bungling Fool that had ill counterfeited the Stamp Colour and Weight in the Piece which he would father upon some other Man or that should for example endeavour to represent either S. Hierome or S. Chrysostome with a stammering Tongue and should make them speak barbarous Language bad Latin and bad Greek or else perhaps should make use of such Terms Things or Authors as were not known to the World till a long time after these Men or should make them treat of Matters far removed from the Age they lived in and maintain Opinions which they never thought of or reject those which they are notoriously known to have held And of this sort for the most part are those Pieces which our Criticks have decried and noted unto us as spurious But if a Man should chance to bring him a Piece of some able Master that should have fully and exactly learnt both the Languages History Manners Alliances and Quarrels of the Family he hath boldly thrust himself into and should be able to make happy use of all these assure your self that our Aristarchus would be here as much puzled to discover this Jugler as they were once in France to convince the Impostures of Martin Guerre Now how can we imagine but that among so many several Persons that have for their several Purposes employed their utmost Endeavours in these kinds of Forgeries there must needs have been in so many Centuries of years very many able Men who have had the skill so artificially to imitate the Fancy and Stile of the Persons whom they act as that it is impossible to discover them Especially if they made choice of such a Name as was the onely thing remaining in the World of that Author so that there is no mark left us either of his Stile Discourse or Opinions to guide us in our Examination And therefore in my judgment he was a very cunning Fellow and made a right choice that undertook to write under the Name of Dionysius the Areopagite for we having not left us any true Legitimate Piece of this Author by which we may examine this Cheat the Discovery must needs be difficult and it would have proved so much the more hard if he had but used a more modest and less swelling manner of Expression Whereas for those others who in the Ages following made bold with the Names of S. Hierome S. Cyprian S. Augustine and the like of whose legitimate Writings we have very many Pieces left us a Man may know them at the first sight meerly by the Stile those Gothick and rude Spirits being no more able to counterfeit the Graces and Elegancies of these great Authors than an Ass is to imitate the Warblings of the Nightingale I confess there is another Help which in my judgment may stand us in more stead in this Particular than all the rest namely the Light and Direction of the Ancients themselves who oftentimes make mention of other Writers of the Church which lived either before or in their own Times S. Hierome among the Latins having taken the pains to make a Catalogue of all those whose Names and Writings he knew of down from the Apostles time to his own which was afterward continued by Gennadius To this we may also add that incomparable Work of the Patriarch Photius which he calls his Bibliotheca and is now published in this
our Age where this great Person hath given us his Judgment of most of the Authors of the Greek Church Now this Help we may make use of two manner of ways The one is in justifying a Book if it be found mentioned by these Authors The other is in rejecting it if they say nothing of it As for the first of these it concludes onely according to the Quality of the Authors who make mention of a suspected Book For some of the Fathers themselves have made use of these kind of Forgeries as we have formerly said others have favoured them because they served their turn some have not been able to discover them and some others have not been willing to do so whatsoever their Reason hath been I shall not here repeat the Names of any of those that have done these things themselves And as for those that have favoured them there are good store of examples as Justin Martyr Theophilus and others who alledge the Sibylls Verses as Oracles which are notwithstanding the greatest part of them forged Clemens Alexandrinus the most Learned and most Polite of all the Fathers in S. Hierome's judgment how often doth he make use of those Apocryphal Pieces which go under the Names of the Apostles and Disciples to whom they were most falsly attributed citing under the Name of Barnabas and of Hermes such Writings as have been forged under their Names And did not the VII Council in like manner make use of a supposititious Piece attributed to Athanasius as we have shewed before and likewise of divers others which are of the same stamp That even the Fathers themselves therefore have not been able always to make a true discovery of these false Wares no Man can doubt considering that of those many necessary Qualifications which we reckoned up before as requisite in this Particular they may oftentimes have failed in some S. Hierome himself the most knowing Man among all the Latin Fathers especially in Matters of this nature sometimes lets them pass without examination as there where he speaks of a certain Tract against Mathematicians attributed to Minutius Foelix If at least saith he the Inscription represent unto us the right Author of the Book And in another place whatsoever his reason was he delivers to us for Legitimate Pieces the Epistles that go about under the Name of S. Paul to Seneca and of Seneca to S. Paul which notwithstanding Cardinal Baronius holds for suspectâ—â— and spurious as doubtless they are But even those Men who have been able to discover these false Pieces have not sometimes been willing to do it either being unwilling to offend the Authors of them or else not daring to cast any disrepute upon those Books which having many good things in them had not in their judgment any false or dangerous Positions in them And this is the reason why they made choice to let such things pass rather than out of a little tenderness of conscience to oppose them there being in their apprehension no danger at all in the one and much trouble and envy in the other And therefore I am of opinion That S. Hierome for example would never have taken the pains nor have undergone the envy in laying open the Forgeries of Ruffinus if the misunderstanding that hapned to be betwixt them had not engaged him to it Neither do I believe that the African Fathers would ever have troubled themselves in convincing the false Allegation of Zozimus but for their own Interest which was thereby called in question For wise and sober Men never use to fall at variance with any Body till they needs must neither do they quickly take notice of any Injury or Abuse offered them unless it be a very great one and such as hath evident danger in it which was not at all perceived or taken notice of at first in these Forgeries which nevertheless have at length by little and little in a manner born down all the good and true Books These Considerations in my opinion make it clearly appear That the Title of a Book is not sufficiently justified by a Passage or two being cited out of it by some of the Ancients and under the same Name As for the other way which rendreth the Authority of a Book doubtful by the Ancients not having made any mention of it I confess it is no more demonstrative than the other forasmuch as it is not impossible that any one or divers of the Fathers may not have met with such a certain Wriâ—â—r that was then extant or else perhaps that they might omit some one of those very Authors which they knew Yet notwithstanding is this the much surer way of the two there being less danger in this case in rejecting a True Piece than in receiving a Forged one the want of the Truth of the one being doubtless much less prejudicial than the receiving the opposite Falshood of the other For as it is a less sin to omit the Good than to commit the Evil that is opposite to it in like manner is it a less Errour not to believe a Truth than to believe the Falshood which is contrary to it And thus we see what confusion there is in the Books of the Ancients and what defect in the Means which is requisite for the distinguishing the False from the True insomuch that as it often falls out it is much easier to judge what we ought to reject than to resolve upon what we may safely receive Let the Reader therefore now judge whether or no these Writings having come down along through so many Ages and passed through so many Hands which are either known to have been notoriously guilty or at least strongly suspected of Forgery the Truth in the mean time having made on its part but very weak resistance against these Impostures it be not a very hard matter to discover amidst the infinite number of Books that are now extant and go under the Names of the Fathers which are those that truly belong to them and which again are those that are falsly imposed upon them And if it be so hard a matter to discover in gross onely which are the Writings of the Fathers how much more difficult a Business will it be to find out what their Opinions are touching the several Controversies now in agitation For we are not to imagine that it is no great matter from which of the Fathers such an Opinion hath sprung so that it came from any one of them for there is altogether as much difference amongst these Ancient Doctors both in respect of Authority Learning and Goodness as among the Modern Besides that an Ages being higher or lower either raiseth or lesseneth the Repute of these Writings in the esteem both of the one Party and of the other as it were so many grains as years And certainly not altogether without good reason it being most evident to any one that hath been but the least versed in the
reading of these Books That Time hath by degrees introduced very great Alterations as well in the Doctrine and Discipline of the Ancients as in all other things Our Conclusion therefore shall be That whosoever shall desire to know what the Sense and Judgment of the Primitive Church hath been touching our present Controversies it will be first in a manner as necessary for him as it is difficult exactly to find out both the Name and the Age of each of these several Authors CHAP. IV. Reason IV. That those of the Writings of the Fathers which are Legitimate have been in many Places corrupted by Time Ignorance and Fraud both Pious and Malicious both in the former and later Ages BUt put the case now here that you had by your long and judicious Endeavours severed the True and Genuine Writings of the Fathers from the Spurious and Forged there would yet lie upon you a second Task whose event is like to prove much more doubtful and fuller of difficulty than the former For it would concern you in the next place in reading over those Authors which you acknowledge for Legitimate to distinguish what is the Author 's own and what hath been soisted in by another Hand and also to restore to your Author whatsoever either by Time or Fraud hath been taken away and to take out of him whatsoever hath been added by either of these two Otherwise you will never be able to assure your self that you have discovered out of these Books what the true and proper meaning and sense of your Author hath been considering the great Alterations that by several ways they may have suffered in several Times I shall not here speak of those Errours which have been produced by the Ignorance of the Transcribers Who write as Hierome hath complained of them not what they find but what themselves understand Nor yet of those Faults which necessarily have grown up out of the very Transcribing it being an impossible thing that Books which have been copied out an infinite number of times during the space of ten or twelve Centuries of years by Men of so different Capâ—â—cities and Hands should all this while retain exactly and in every Particular the self-same Juyce the same Form and Body that they had when they first came forth from the Author 's own hand Neither shall I here say any thing of the sufferings of these Books by Moths and a thousand other Injuries of Time by which they have been corrupted while all kind of Learning for so many Ages together lay buried as it were in the Grave the Worms on one side feeding on the Books of the Learned and on the other the Dust defacing them so that it is impossible now to restore them to their first integrity And this is the sad Fate that all sorts of Books have lain under whence hath sprung up so great variety of Readings as are found almost in all Authors I shall not here make any advantage of this though there are some Doctors in the World that have shewed us the way to do it taking advantage from this Consideration to lessen the Authority that the Holy Scriptures of themselves ought to have in the esteem of all Men under this colour That even in these Sacred Writings there are sometimes found varieties of Reading which yet are of very little or no Importance as to the Ground-work If we would tread in these Mens steps and apply to the Writings of the Fathers what they speak and conclude of the Scriptures we could do it upon much better terms than they there being no reason in the Earth to imagine but that the Books of the Ancient Writers have suffered very much more than the Scriptures have which have always been preserved in the Church with much greater care than any other Books have been whatsoever and which have been learnt by all Nations and translated into all Languages which all Sects have retained both Orthodox and Hereticks Catholicks and Schismaticks Greeks and Latins Moscovites and Ethiopians observing diligently the Eye and the Hand one of the other so that there could not possibly happen any remarkable Alteration in them but that presently the whole World as it were would have exclaimed against it and have made their Complaints to have resounded throughout the Universe Whereas on the contrary the Writings of the Fathers have been kept transcribed and read in as careless a manner as could be and that too but by very few and in few Places being but rarely understood by any save those of the same Language which is the cause that so many Faults have both the more easily crept into them and likewise are the more hard to be discovered Besides that the particular Stile and Obscurity of some of them renders the Errours the more important As for example Take me a Tertullian and you shall find that one little Word added or taken away or altered never so little or a Full-point or Comma but out of its place will so confound the Sense that you will not be able to find what he would have Whereas in Books of an easie smooth clear Style as the Scriptures for the most part are these Faults are much less prejudicial seeing they cannot in any wise so darken the Sense but that it will be still easie enough to apprehend it But I shall pass by all these minute Punctilioes as more suitable to the Enquiries of the Pyrrhonians and Academicks whose Business it is to question all things than of Christians who onely seek in simplicity and sincerity of heart whereon to build their Faith I shall onely here take notice of such alterations as have been knowingly and voluntarily made in the Writings of the Fathers purposely by our holding our peace to disguise their Sâ—nse or else to make them speak more than they meant And this Forgery is of two sorts The one hath been made use of with a good intention the other out of malice Again The one hath been committed in Times long since past the other in this last Age in our own days and the days of our Fathers Lastly the one is in the Additions made to Authors to make them speak more than they meant the other in subtracting from the Author to eclipse and darken what he would be understood to say Neither ought we to wonder that even those of the honest innocent primitive Times also made use of these Deceits seeing that for a good end they made no great scruple to forge whole Books taking a much stranger and bolder course in my opinion than the other For without all doubt it is a greater Crime to coin false Money than to clip or a little alter the true This Opinion hath always been in the World That to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true that is to say upon what we account to be such it is necessary that we remove out of the way whatsoever may be a hinderance to it
the Hereticks used For seeing that as this Father informs us they made no Conscience of making such an Attempt upon the Gospel of the Son of God himself with how much greater confidence would they adventure to geld the Books of Men Certainly Ruffinus a Man so much applauded by S. Hierome before their falling out and so highly esteemed by S. Augustine who very much bewails the Breach betwixt those two and whom Gennodius hath placed with a very high Elogie of his Worth in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers hath so filthily mangled and so licentiously confounded the Writings of Origen Eusebius and others which he hath translated into Latin that you will hardly find a Page in his Translations where he hath not either cut off or added or at least altered something S. Hierome also although his Enemy yet agrees with him in this Point confessing in several Places That he had indeed translated Origen but in such sort as that he had taken liberty to cut away that which was dangerous and had left only that which was useful and had interpreted only what was Good and had left out the Bad that is to say that if he found any thing there that was not so consonant to the Common Judgment and Opinions of his Time and so might possibly give Offence to the simple People he suppressed it in his Translation affirming also that S. Hilary and Eusebius Bishop of Verceil had done the like And again in his Preface to Eusebius his Book De locis Hebraicis he confesseth that he had left out that which he conceived was not worth remembring and that he had altered the greatest part of it And to make it appear that this hath been his constant practice we need but compare his Latin Chronology with the Greek Fragments which remain of Eusebius where you may plainly see what liberty these Ancients allowed themselves in the Writings of others And what doubt is there to be made but that those Men that came after them following the Authority of so great an Example carefully either took out of their Copies or else left out of their Translations the greatest part of whatever they found to be dissonant to the Opinions and Customs which were received in the Church in the Times they lived in and likewise that for adding the greater Authority to them some have had the boldness to add in some places what they conceived to be wanting From whence else could it proceed that we should have so many unseasonable breakings off in many places and so many impersinent Additions in others as there are to be met with frequently in the Ancient Authors Whence otherwise should we have those many course Patches that are ready to grate the Skin off our Fingers in the midst of their soft Sattin and Velvet and that inequality of Pulse and Breath that we may observe in one and the same Author in a quarter of an Hours reading It would prove a troublesom business to bring in here all the Examples of this kind that we might there being scarcely any of the Moderns that have taken any pains in writing upon the Fathers but have noted and complained of this Abuse and hence it is that we oftentimes meet with such like Notes as this in the Margins of the Fathers Hic videtur aliquis assuisse nugas suas and the like And that which is observed also by Vives upon the XXI Book of S. Augustine De Civitate Dei namely That ten or twelve Lines which we find at this day in the XXIV Chapter of that Book which contain a Positive Assertion of Purgatory were not to be found in the ancient Manuscripts of Bruges and of Collen no nor yet in that of Paris as is noted by those that Printed S. Augustine Anno 1531. One Holsteinius also a Dutchman testifieth That he had met with divers Pieces among the Manuscripts of the King's Library of Chrysostome Proclus and others that had in like manner been scratched in divers Places by the like Hands by some Interpolators of the later and worst Ages But I may not here forget to note That this Alteration hath taken place even in the most sacred and Publick Pieces also as namely in the Liturgies of the Church and the like and I shall give you this Observation to the end it may carry with it the greater gracefulness and weight in the Expressions of Andreas Masius a Man of singular and profound Learning yet of such Candor and Integrity as renders him more admired than his Knowledge doth and which together with his other Excellencies endears him to all moderate Men of both Professions This Learned Person taking notice that the Liturgy of S. Basil was not so long in the Syriac as in the Greek gives this Reason of it For saith he Men have always been of such a humour and disposition in Matters of Religion as that you shall scarcely find any that have been able to content themselves with the Ceremonies prescribed unto them by their Fathers how holy soever they have been in themselves so that we may observe that in tract of time according as the Prelates have thought fittest to move the Affections of the People to Piety and Devotion many other things have been either added or altered and which is much worse many superstitious things have been introduced also in which particular I conceive the Christians of Syria to have been more moderate and less extravagant than the Greeks and Latins as having not the opportunity of enjoying that quiet and plentiful state of Life which the others had Thus the Learned Masius And Cassander who hath also turned over the Writings of the Ancients with innocent Hands confesseth and proveth out of other Authors That the ancient Liturgies have by little and little been enlarged by the several Additions of the Moderns Thus proportionably as the World it self hath changed so would it have whatever there remained of Antiquity to suffer its Alterations also imagining that it was but reasonable that these Books should in some measure accommodate their Language to the Times forasmuch as the Authors of them in all probability would have done so themselves believing and speaking with the Times had they been now living Now to render them the more acceptable they have used those Arts upon them that some old Men are wont to practise they have new coloured their Beard and Mustachioes cutting off the rude and scattered hairs they have polished their Skin and given it a fresh Complexion and taught them to speak with a new Voice having changed also the Colour of their Habit insomuch that it is much to be feared that we oftentimes do but lose our labour when we search in these disguised Faces and Mouths for the Complexion and Language of true Antiquity Thus have they taught Eusebius to tell us in his Chronicon that the Fast of Lent was instituted by Telesphorus and the
them and you will hardly be able to give a handsome guess what his reason should be unless perhaps it were because that the business of the eighth Canon displeased him which is that the Bishops of Cyprus had their Ordinations within themselves without admitting the Patriarch of Antioch to have any thing to do with it and that the same course ought to be observed in all other Provinces and Diocesses so that no Bishop should have power to intrude into a Province which had not from the beginning been under His and His Predecessors jurisdiction For fear that under the pretence of the Administration of Sacred Offices the pride of a Secular Power should thrust it self into the Church and so by this means we should lose said these good Fathers by little and little before we were aware the Liberty that our Lord Jesus Christ the Redeemer of all mankind hath purchased for us with his own Blood I know not whether this Constitution and these words have put the Latines into any fright or not or whether any other reason hath moved them not to receive the Canons of the Council of Ephesus into their Code But this is certain that they do not appear any where among them and it is now at the least seven hundred and fifty years and upward that Aâ—astasius Bibliothecarius the Popes Library Keeper testified that these Canons were not any where to be found in the most Ancient Latine Copies withal accusing the Greeks of having forged them But let them try out this dispute among themselves yet whether these Canons were forged by the Greeks or whether they have been blotted out of this Council and smothered by the Latins it is still a clear case that the Cheat is very near of eight hundred years standing But in the next example that follows the business is evidently clear without any more ado For whereas the Greek Code Numb â—06 sets before us in the XXVIII Canon of the General Council of Chalcedon a Decree of those Fathers by which conformably to the First Council of Constantinople they ordained that Seeing that the City of Constantinople was the seat of the Senate and of the Empire and enjoyed the same Priviledges with the City of Rome that therefore it should in like manner be advanced to the same Height and Greatness in Ecclesiastical Affairs being the second Church in order after Rome and that the Bishop of it should have the Ordaining of Metropolitans in the Three Diocesses of Pontus Asia and Thrace which Canon is found both in Balsamon and Zonaras and also hath the Testimony of the greatest part of the Ecclesiastical Historians both Greek and Latine that it is a Legitimate Canon of the Council of Chalcedon in the Acts of which Council at this day also Extant it is set down at large yet notwithstanding in the Collection of Dionysius Exiguus this Canon appears not at all no more than as if there had never been any such thing thought of at Chalcedon We know very well that Pope Leo and some others of his Successors rejected it but he that promised us that he would make an orderly Digestion of the Canons of the Councils and translate them out of the Greek why or how did he or ought he to omit this so remarkable a Canon If all other Evidences had been lost how should we have been able so much as to have ghessed that any such thing was ever treated of at Chalcedon Where or by what means could we have learnt what the opinion was of the DCXXX Fathers which met here together touching this Point which is the most important one of all those that are at this day controverted betwixt us And it is now eleven hundred years and upward since this Omission was first on foot And who will pass his word to us that among so many other Writings whether of Councils or particular Mens Works whether Greek or Latine the like liberty hath not been at any time used Rather by these Forgeries which have come to our knowledge who can doubt but that there have been many other the like which we are ignorant of Thou hast gone along innocently perhaps reading these Books of the Ancients and believing thou there findest the pure sense of Antiquity and yet thou seest here that from the beginning of the Sixth Century they have made no scruple of cutting off from the most Sacred Books they had whatsoever was not agreeable to the gust of the Times And therefore though we had no more against them than this it were in my judgment a sufficient reason to move us to go on here very warily and as they say With a stiff Rein through this whole business In the next place there is a very observable Corruption in the Epistle of Adrian I. to the Emperour Constantine in the time of the Second Council of Nice For in the Latine Collection of Anastasius made about seven hundred and fifty years since Adrian is there made to speak very highly and magnificently of the supremacy of his See and he rebukes the Greeks very shrewdly for having conferred upon Tarasius the Patriarch of Constantinople the Title of Vniversal Bishop And all this while there is not so much as one word of this to be found neither in the Greek Edition of the said VII Council nor yet in the common Latine ones The Romanists accuse the Greeks of having suppressed these two Clauses and the Greeks again accuse the Romanists of having foisted them in neither is it easie to determine on which side the guilt lies However it is sufficient for me that wheresoever the fault lies it evidently appeareth hence that this curtalling and adding to Authors according to the interest of the present Times hath now a very long time been in practice amongst Christians Which appears also very evidently in the next piece following in the same Council namely the Epistle of Adrian to Tarasius which is quite another thing in the Greek from what it is in Anastasius his Latin Translation and that in Points too of as high importance as those other before mentioned And so in the V. Act likewise where both in the Greek Text and also in the Old Latin Translation Tarasius is called Vniversal Bishop this Title appears not at all in Anastasius his Translation In the same Act the Fathers accuse the Iconoclasts of having cut out many Leaves out of a certain Book in the Library at Constantinople and that at a certain City called Photia they had burned to the number of Thirty Volumes and that besides all this they had rased the Annotations out of a certain Book and all this out of the malice they bore against Images which these Books spake well and favourably of But yet I do not see how we can excuse the Romanists from being guilty of corrupting Anastasius in those passages above noted nor yet of the injury they do Eusebius in the Exposition which they give of some
formerly determined by the Orthodox Doct. as appears plainly not only by the Manuscripts but also by the most ancient Editions of this Author and even by Card. Baronius his alledging of this Passage also in the Tenth Tome of his Annals An. Dom. 869. These are they who have quite rased out this following Passage out of Oecumenius For they who defended and favoured the Law introduced also the worshipping of Angels and that because the Law had been given by them And this Custom continued long in Phrygia insomuch that the Council of Laodicea made a Decree forbidding to make any Addresses to Angels or to pray to them whence also it is that we find many Temples among them erected to Michael the Archangel Which Passage David Hâ—eschelius in his Notes upon the Books of Origen against Celsus p. 483. witnesseth That himself had seen and read in the Manuscripts of Oecumenius and yet there is no such thing to be found in any of the Printed Copies Who would believe but that the Breviaries and Missals should have escaped their Razour Yet as it hath been observed by Persons of eminent both Learning and Honesty where it was read in the Collect on S. Peter's day heretofore thus Deus qui B. Petro Apostolo tuo collatis clavibus regni coelestis animas ligandi solvendi Pontificium tradidisti that is O God who hast committed to thy Apostle S. Peter by giving him the Keys of the Heavenly Kingdom the Episcopal Power of Binding and Loosing Souls in the later Editions of these Breviaries and Missals they have wholly left out the word Animas Souls to the end that People should not think that the Popes Autority extended only to Spiritual Affairs and not to Temporal also And so likewise in the Gospel upon the Tuesday following the Third Sunday in Lent they have Printed Dixit Jesus Discipulis suis that is Jesus said to his Disciples whereas it was in the old Books Respiciens Jesus in Discipulos dixit Simoni Petro si peccaverit in te frater tuus Jesus looking back upon his Disciples said unto Simon Peter If thy Brother have offended against thee c. cunningly omitting those words relating to Simon Peter for fear it might be thought that our Saviour Christ had made S. Peter that is to say the Pope subject to the Tribunal of the Church to which he there sends him And if the Council of Trent would but have hearkned to Thomas Passio a Canon of Valencia they should have blotted out of the Pontifical all such Passages as make any mention of the Peoples giving their Suffrage and Consent in the Ordination of the Ministers of the Church and among the rest that where the Bishop at the Ordination of a Priest saith That it was not without good reason that the Fathers had ordained That the Advice of the People should be taken touching the Election of those Persons who were to serve at the Altar to the end that having given their Assent to their Ordination they might the more readily yield Obedience to those who were so Ordained The meaning of this honest Canon was that to take away all such Authorities from the Hereticks the best way would be to blot them all out of the Pontifical to the end that there might be no trace or footstep of them left remaining for the future But they have not contented themselves with corrupting onely in this manner some certain Books out of which perhaps we might have been able to discover what the Opinion and Sense of the Ancients have been but they have also wholly abolished a very great number of others And for the better understanding hereof we are to take notice that the Emperours of the first Ages took all possible care for the stifling and abolishing all such Writings as were declared prejudicial to the True Faith as namely the Books of the Arrians and Nestorians and others which were under a great penalty forbidden to be read but were to be wholly supprest and abolished by the Appointment of these ancient Princes The Church it self also did sometimes call in the Books of such Persons as had been dead long before by a common consent of the Catholick Party as soon as they perceived any thing in them that was not consonant to the present Opinion of the Church as it did at the Fifth General Council in the Business of Theodorus Theodoreius and Ibas all three Bishops the one of Mopsuestia the other of Cyprus and the third of Edissa anathematizing each of their several Writings notwithstanding there Persons had been all dead long before dealing also even in the quiet times of the Church with Origen in the same manner after he had been now dead about three hundred years The Pope then hath not failed to imitate now for the space of many Ages both the one and the other of these rigorous Courses withal encreasing the harshness of them from time to time in so much that in case any of the Opinions of the Ancients hath been by chance found at any time to contradict his we are not to make any doubt but that he hath very carefully and diligently suppressed such Pieces without sparing any though they were written perhaps two three four or five hundred years before more than the others As for example It is at this day disputed whether or no the Primitive Church had in their Temples and worshipped the Images of Christ and of Saints This Controversie hath been sometime very eagerly and with much heaâ— and for a long time together debated in the Greek Church That Party which maintained the Affirmative bringing the business before the VII Council held at Nicaea it was there ordained That it should be unlawful for any Man to have the Books of the other Party withal charging every Man to bring what Books they had of that Party to the Patriarch of Constantinople to do with them as we must conceive according as had been required by the Legats of Pope Adrian that is tâ—at they should burn all those Books which had been written against the Venerable Images including no doubt within the same Condemnation all such Writings of the Ancients also as seemed not to favour Images as namely the Epistle of Eusebius to Constantia and that of Epiphanius to John of Hierusalem and others which are not now extant but were in all probability at that time abolished For as for the Epistle of Epiphanius that which we now have is only S. Hieromes Translation of it which happened to be preserved in the Western parts where the passion in the behalf of Images was much less violent than it was in the Eastern but the Original Greek of it is no where to be found Adrian II. in his Council ordained in like manner that the Council held by Photius against the Church of Rome should be burnt together with his other Books and all the Books of those of his Party which
had been written against the See of Rome and he commanded the very same thing also in the VIII Council which is accounted by the Latines for a General Council It is impossible but that in these Fires very many Pieces must needs have perished which might have been of good use to us for the discovering what the opinion of the Ancients was whether touching Images which was the business of the VII Council or that other Controversie touching the Power of the Pope which was the principal Point debated in the Synod held by Photius some of whose Pieces they for the self same reason do at this day keep at Rome under Lock and Key which doubtless they would long ere this have published had they but made as much for the Pope as in all probability they make against him This rigorous proceeding against Books came at length to that height as that Leo X. at the Council of Lateran which brake up An. 1518. decreed That no Book should be printed but what had first been diligently examined at Rome by the Master of the Palace in other places by the Bishop or some other person deputed by him to the same purpose and by the Inquisitor under this penalty That all Book sellers offending herein should forfeit their Books which should be presently burnt in publick and should pay a hundred Ducats when it should be demanded towards the Fabrick of S. Peter a kind of punishment this which we find no examples of in all the Canons of the Ancient Church and should also be suspended from exercising his Function for the space of a whole year This is a General Sentence and which comprehendeth as well the Works of the Fathers as of any others as appeareth plainly by this that the Bishop of Malfi having given in his opinion saying that he concurred with them in relation to New Authors but not to the Old all the rest of the Fathers voted simply for all neither was there any Limitation at all added to this Decree of the Council This very Decree hath been since strongly confirmed by the Council of Trent which appointed also certain persons to take a Review of the Books and Censures and to make a Report of them to the Company To the end that there might be a separation made betwixt the good Grain of Christian Verity and the Darnel of strange Doctrines That is in plain terms that they might blot out of all manner of Books whatsoever relished not well with the gust of the Church of Rome But these Fathers having not the leisure themselves to look to this Pious Work appointed certain Commissaries who should give an account of this matter to the Pope whence afterward it came to pass that Pope Pius IV. first and afterward Sixtus V. and Clement VIII published certain Rules and Indexes of such Authors and Books as they thought fit should be either quite abolished or purged only and have given such strict order for the printing of Books as that in those Countries where this order is observed there is little danger that ever any thing should be published that is either contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of Rome or which maketh any thing for their Adversaries All these Instructions which are too long to be inserted here may be seen at the end of the Council of Trent where they are usually set down at large And in order to these Rules they have since put forth their Indices Expurgatorii as they call them namely that of the Low Countries and of Spain and other places where these Gallants come with their Razor in their hand and sit in judgment upon all manner of Books rasing out and altering as they please Periods Chapters and whole Treatises also often times and that too in the Works of those Men who for the most part were born and bred up and dyed also in the Communion of their own Church If the Church for eight or nine hundred years since had so sharp Razors as these men now have it is then a vain thing for us to search any higher what the judgment of the Primitive Christians was touching any particular Point for whatsoever it was it could not have escaped the hands of such Masters And if the Ancient Church had not heretofore any such Institution as this why then do we who pretend to be such Observers of Antiquity practise these Novelties I know very well that these men make profession of reforming only the Writings of the Moderns but who sees not that this is but a Cloak which they throw over themselves lest they should be accused as guilty of the same cruelty that Jupiter is among the Poets for having behaved himself so insolently against his own Father Those Pieces which they raze so exactly in the Books of the Moderns are the cause of the greater mischief to themselves when they are found in the Writings of the Ancients as sometimes they are For what a senseless thing is it to leave them in where they hurt most and to raze them out where they do little hurt The Inquisition at Madrid puts out these words in the Index of Athanasius Adorari solius Dei est that is God alone is to be worshipped and yet notwithstanding these words are still expresly found in the Text of Athanasius The same Father saith That there were some other Books besides those which he had before set down which in truth were not of the Canon and which the Fathers had ordained should be read to those who were newly come into the Christian Communion and desired to be instructed in the word of Piety reckoning in this number the Wisdom of Solomon Ecclesiâ—sticus Judith Esther Tobit and some other Nevertheless these very Censâ—rs put out in the †Index of Athanasius his Works those words which affirm that the said Books are not at all Canonical In the Index of St. Augustine they put out these wâ—rds Christ hâ—th given the sign of his Body which yet are evidently to be seen in the Text of this Father in his Book against Adimantus Chap. 12. They put out in like manner these words Augustine accounted the Eucharist necessary to be administred to Infants which opinion of S. Augustine is very frequently found expressed either in these very words or the like throughout his Works as we shall see hereafter They likewise put out these words We ought not to build Temples to Angels and yet the very Text of S. Augustine saith If we should erect a Temple of Wood or of Stone to any of the holy Angels should we not be Anathematized And this is the practice of the Censors both in the Low Countries and in Spain in many other particulars which we shall not here set down Now if thou cuttest off such Sentences as these out of the Indexes of these Holy Fathers why dost thou not as well raze them out of the Text also Or if thou leavest
Circumstances which are necessarily requisite for the enlightning and clearing the same as for example when we are ignorant of the scope and drift of the Author and of the Connexion and Dependencies of his Discourse and other the like particulars which are requisite for the penetrating into the sense of all sorts of Writers For it is with Mens words as it is with Pâ—eces of Picture they must have their proper Light to shew themselves according to the meaning and intention of the Author and according to the difference of the Lights we see them by they also have a different appearance As for example if any one should now 〈◊〉 alone and barely without reference to the rest of the Discourse and history of its Author this short Passage of Dionysius Alexandrinus where he calls the Son of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Workmanship or Manufacture of the Father and adds certain other very shange Terms also touching this particular as we daily see the custome of some is in the business of our present Controversies to produce the like shreds and little short Passages severed from the main Body of the Discourse whereof they are a part which of us how able so ever he be could possibly imagine â—ny thing eâ—se but that this is an absolute 〈◊〉 expression and such as cannot be interpreted to any other sense And yet Athanasius in the places before cited makes it plainly appear that it is not so and by the advantage of those through Lights which he had in the Subject there treated of by the Author he demonstrates unto us that this expression of Dionystus how strange soever it appear hath notwithstanding a good and allowable sense in that place And that we may be able more fully to apprehend the truth of this our Assertion we shall in the next place take into consideration some other causes of the obscurity of the Fathers among which I shall rank in the first place their having sometimes purposely and upon Design endeavoured either wholly to conceal their Conceptions from us or at least to lay them down not naked and open but as it were with a Curtain and that sometimes a very thick one too drawn over them to the end that none but those of the quickest and most piercing eyes should be able to penetrate into them some of their Meditations having been such as they themselves accounted either less useful or else perhaps such as it was not so safe to commit to weak vulgar spirits Whether this practice of theirs were raised upon good grounds or not I shall not here stand to examine it is sufficient for me to shew that it was usual with them as may appear among the rest out of Clement Alexandrinus about the beginning of his Stromateis where giving an account of the Design of his Book he saith that He had passed over some things in silence fearing to write that which he made some simple even to speak of not that he envied his Readers any thing but fearing rather lest they might happily out of a misunderstanding of them fall into errour and so he might seem to have put a Sword into the hand of a Child He adds further That he had handled somethings clearly and some other obscurely laying the one open to our view but wrapping up the other in Riddles But that which makes most to our present purpose is that they are known to have taken this course particularly in some certain of those Points which are now controverted amongst us as namely in that touching the Sacraments of the Church For as they celebrated their holy Mysteries in secret and apart by themselves not admitting either the Pagans or the Catechumeni nor yet as some assure us any person whatsoever save only the Communicants to the sight of them in like manner also in their Writings especially in those that were to be read openly to the people in their publick Assemblies they never spake but very obscurely and darkly as hath been observed in Point of the Eucharist by Cardinal Perron and by Casaubon Petavius and others in the Points of Baptism Confirmation and other holy Ceremonies of the Christians Do but observe how wary Theodoret Epiphanius and other of the Ancient Writers are in naming the matter of the Eucharist describing it in general terms only and such as they only could understand who had been formerly partakers of that holy Sacrament I shall not here take upon me to examine the end which they proposed to themselves in so doing which seems to have been to beget in the minds of the Catechumeni a greater reverence and esteem of the Sacraments and withal a more earnest and eager desire to be admitted to partake of them fearing lest haply the laying open and discoursing plainly of the Matter and Manner of Celebration of the Sacraments might something take off from one of these two Affections in them Seeing therefore that not only in this but in divers other Particulars also they have purposely and upon design concealed their Sense and Opinions from us we ought not to account it so strange a matter if we many times find their Expressions to be obscure and which is a consequence of obscurity if they sometimes also seem to clash and contradict one another And indeed it were more to be wondred at if these Men who were for the most part able learned Men having a purpose of writing obscurely on these Points should yet have left us their Opinions clearly and plainly delivered in their Writings But there is more in it yet than so for sometimes also even where they had no purpose of being so they yet are very obscure and sometimes again the little Conversation they have had with those Arts which are requisite for the polishing of Language was the cause of their not expressing themselves so clearly and sometimes perhaps their Genius and natural Disposition might be the reason hereof all their Study and Industry they could take not being able to correct this natural defect in them I believe we may very safely reckon Epiphanius in the first Rank of these kind of Writers who was indeed a good and holy Man but yet had been very little conversant in the Arts either of Rhetorick or Grammar as appeareth sufficiently out of his Writings where you shall often find him failing not only in the clearness of his Expressions and the course and fit contrivance of his Periods but also even in the Order and Method which is the true Light of all Discourse which Defects must necessarily be the cause of much obscurity in very many Places as indeed is much complained of by the Interpreters of this Father Others perhaps there have been who have endeavoured to polish their Language by Arts who yet have not been able to compass their desire whether it were because they began too late or else perhaps through the dulness of their Wit and want of Capacity as we see all Natures are
their Words in apperance seem to carry Who hath not observed the strange Hyperboles of S. Chysostome S. Hilary S. Ambrose and the like But that I may make it plainly and evidently appear unto you how much these Ornaments do darken the clearness of the Sense of an Author I shall onely here lay before you one Instance taken from S. Hierome who writing to Eustochium giveth her an account how that for his being too much addicted to the Study of Secular Learning he was brought before the presence of our Lord and was there really with Stripes chastised for it And think not saith he that this was any of those drowsie Fancies or vain Dreams which sometimes abuse us I call to witness hereof that Tribunal before which I then lay and that sad Judgment which I was then in dread of So may I never hereafter fall into the like danger as this is true I do assure you that I found my Shoulders to be all over black and blue with the stripes I then received and which I afterwards felt when I awaked So that I have ever since had a greater affection to the reading of Divine Books than I ever before had to the study of Humane Learning Now hearing him speak thus who would not believe this to be a true Story and who would not be ready to understand this Narration in the literal sense And yet it appears plainly from what he hath elsewhere confessed that all this was but a meer Dream and a Rhetorical piece of Artifice frequently used by the Masters in this Art contrived only for the better and more powerful diverting Men from their too great affection to the Books of the Heathens For Ruffinus picking a quarrel with him for this and objecting against him That contrary to the Oath which he had before taken he did notwithstanding still apply himself to the study of Pagan Learning S. Hierome after he had alledged many things to quit himself from this Accusation Thus you see saith he what I could have urged for my self had I promised any such thing waking But now do but take notice of this new and unheard of kind of impudence He objects against me my very Dreams And then presently doth he refer him to the Words of the Prophets saying We must not take heed to Dreams for neither doth an adulterous Dream cast a Man into Hell nor that of Martyrdom bring him to Heaven And so he at last plainly says That this Promise of his was made onely in a Dream and that therefore consequently it carried no obligation with it And who knows but that the Life of Malchus which he hath so delicately and artificially described unto us and some other the like Pieces of his and of some others may be the like Essays of Wit We see he doth not stick to confess That the Life of Paulus Eremita was accounted for such by some of his back-friends and it is very probable that his 47â— Epistle which is so full of Learning and Eloquence is but an Essay of the same nature he having there fancied to himself a fit Subject only whereon to shew his own Eloquence as the usual manner of Orators is Thus thou seest Reader how great darkness is cast over the Writings of the Ancients by these Figures and Flourishes of Rhetorick and other Artifices of Humane Learning which they so often and so over-licentiously use at least for our parts who to our great disadvantage find that so many Ornaments and Embelishments do rather disguise and hide from us the bottom and depth of their Conceptions Who shall assure us that they have not made use of the same Arts in their Discourses touching the Eucharist to advance the Dignity of the Divine Mysteries and to increase the Peoples Devotion as likewise touching the Power of the Prelates to procure them the greater respect and obedience from their People What probability is there that they would spare their Pencils their Colours their Shadows and their Lights in those Points where this their Art might have been imployed to so good purpose And to this place I shall refer those other Customs of theirs which are so frequent with them of denying and affirming things as it were absolutely notwithstanding the purpose and intent of their Discourse be to deny or affirm them only by way of comparison and reference to some other things Who could chuse but think that S. Hierome was tainted with the Heresie of Marcion and of the Eneratites hearing him so fiercely inveigh against Marriage as he doth in his Books against Jovinian and oftentimes in other places also insomuch that there have sometimes fallen from him such words as these Seeing that in the use of the Woman there is always some Corruption and that Incorruption properly belongeth to Chastity Marriage saith he cannot be accounted of so high esteem as Chastity And a little after My opinion is That he that hath a Wife till such time as he returneth to that pass as that Satan tempts him not that is to say so long as he makes use of her as of a Wife he sowes in the Flesh and not in the Spirit Now he that soweth in the Flesh it is not I that say it but the Apostle the same shall reap Corruption Now these words taken literally condemn Marriage and the use thereof as defiling a Man and depriving him of Blessed Immortality Yet notwithstanding in his Epistle to Pammachius he informeth us That these Passages of his and all other the like are not to be understood as spoken positively and absolutely but only by way of comparison that is he would be understood to say That the Purity and Felicity of Virgins is such as that in comparison of it that of the Marriage-Bed is not at all to be mentioned This Key is very necessary for the finding entrance into the Sense of the Ancients and the Fathers of the VII Council made very good use of it in giving the Sense of two or three Passages that were objected against them by the Iconoclasts The first was out of S. Chrysostome Through the Scriptures we enjoy the presence of the Saints having the Images not of their Bodies but of their Souls For the things there spoken by them are the Images of their Souls The second was out of Amphilochius Our care is not to draw in Colours on Tables the Natural Faces of the Saints for we have no need of any such thing but rather to imitate their Life Conversation by following the Example of their Vertue The third was out of Austerius Draw not the Portraiture of Christ on thy garments but rather bestow upon the Poor the price that these expences would amount to For as for him it is sufficient that he once humbled himself in taking upon him our flesh Would not any man that hears these words believe these three Fathers to have been Iconoclasts I
corrected by the Hypocrisie or false shew of Reprehension and that by this means both the one and the other might be saved whilst the one who stood up for Circumcision followed S. Peter and those other who refused Circumcision applaud and are taken with S. Paul's Liberty S. Augustine utterly disliking this Exposition of S. Hierome wrote unto him in his ordinary grave and meek way modestly declaring the Reasons why he could not assent unto it which Epistles of his are yet extant The other answers him a thousand strange things but particularly he there protesteth That he will not warrant for sound whatever shall be found in that Book of his And to shew that he doth not do this without good reason he setteth down a certain Passage out of his Preface to it which is very well worth our Consideration For after he hath named the Writings of Origen Didymus Apollinaris Theodorus Herâ—clas Eusebius Emisseâ—us Alexander the Heretick and others he adds That I may therefore plainly tell the truth I confess that I have read all these Authors and collecting together as much as I could in my memory I presently called for a Scribe to whom I dictated either my own Conceptions or those of other Men without remembring either the Order or the Words sometimes or the Sense Do but think now with your self whether or no this be not an excellent rare way of Commenting upon the Scriptures and very well worthy both to be esteemed and imitated by us He then turneth his Speech to S. Augustine saying If therefore thou lightedst upon any thing in my Exposition which was worthy of reprehension it would have stood better with thy Learning to have consulted the Greek Authors themselves and to have seen whether what I have written be to be found in them or not and if not then to have condemned it as my own private Opinion And he elsewhere gives the same answer to Ruffinus who upbraideth him for some absurd Passages in his Commentaries upon the Prophet Daniel Now according to this reckoning if we would know whether or no what we meet with in his Commentaries be his own proper Sense or not we must first turn over the Books of all these ancient Greeks that is to say we must do that which is now impossible to be done seeing that the Writings of the greatest part of them are utterly lost and must not attribute any thing to him as his proper Opinion how clearly and expresly soever it be delivered unless we are first able to make it appear that it is not to be found in any of those Authors out of whose Writings he hath patched up his Commentaries For if any one of them be found to have delivered any thing you here meet with you are to take notice that it belongeth to that Author S. Hierome in this case having been onely his Transcriber or at most but his Translator So that you may be able perhaps by the reading of Books in this manner collected to judge whether the Fathers have had the skill to make a handsom and artificial Connexion and Digestion of those things which they took out of so many several Authors or not but whether or no they believed all that they have set down in their Books you will be no more able to discover than you can judge what Belief any Man is of by the Books he transcribeth or can guess at the Opinions of an Interpreter by the Books he translateth Whence we may conclude that testimonies brought out of such Books as these are of little or no force at all either for or against us And this seemeth to have been the Opinion of Cardinal Bellarmine also where to a certain Objection brought out of one of S. Hierome's Books he makes this Answer That the Author in that place speaketh according to the Opinion of others as he often doth in his Commentaries upon the Epistle to the Ephesians and in other places The like course hath Cardinal Perron taken where the Protestants have urged against the Church of Rome the Authority of S. Hilary touching the Canon of the Scriptures of the Old Testament confidently answering That the Notes cited out of that place of S. Hilary are not his but Origen's in his Commentary upon the First Psalm part of whose Words he had transcribed and put into his own Prologue upon the Psalms and yet S. Hilary neither so much as nameth Origen nor yet gives us any intimation at all whether we are to receive what is there spoken touching the Scriptures as from Origen or from himself And the ground of this Answer of his is taken from what S. Hierome hath testified in divers places namely that S. Hilary hath transcribed the greatest part of his Commentaries out of the said Origen Now if we but rightly consider the account which S. Hierome hath given as we shewed before of all Commentaries in general how can we have any assurance whether that which the Fathers deliver in these kind of Writings be their own proper Opinion or only some other Man 's transcribed And if we can have no assurance hereof how can we then account them of any force at all either for or against us So that it is most evident that this Method which the Fathers have observed in their Expositions of the Scriptures must needs render the things themselves very doubtful how clearly and expresly soever they have delivered themselves But hath it not concerned them to be more careful in their Homilies or Sermons and to deliver nothing there save only what hath been their own proper Opinion and Belief May we not at least in this particular rest assured that they have spoken nothing but from their very soul and that their Tongues have vented here their own Opinions only and not those of other Men Certainly in all reason they should not have uttered any thing in this Sacred Place from whence they taught their People save what they conceived to have been most true And yet besides what we have formerly noted as to this particular namely that they did not always speak out the whole truth but concealed something of it as not so fit for the ears either of the Pagans or of the weaker sort of Christians Cardinal Perron that great and curious Inquirer into all the Customs of the Ancients hath informed us that in regard of the aforesaid Considerations they have sometimes gone further yet For in expounding the Scriptures to the People where the Catechumeni were present if by chance they fell upon any Passage where the Sacraments were spoken of that they might not discover these Mysteries they would then make bold to wrest the Text a little and instead of giving them the true and real Interpretation of the Place which they themselves knew to be such they would only present their Auditory with an Allegorical and Symbolical and as this Cardinal saith an Accidental and Collateral one only to give them some
which amount in all in the Old Testament to the number of twenty two only without making any mention at all of those other Books which Cardinal Perron calls Posthumous namely Ecclesiasticus the Book of Wisdom the Maccabâ—es Judith and Tobit All the Canons of this Council were afterwards inserted into the Code of the Church Universal where you have this very Canon also Num. 163. that is as much as to say they were received as Rules of the Catholick Church Who would believe now but that this Declaration of the Canon of the Scriptures was at that time received by all Christian Churches And yet notwithstanding you have the Churches of Africk meeting together in the Synod at Carthage about the year of our Lord 397. and ordaining quite contrary to the former Resolution of Laodicea that among those Books which were allowed to be read in Churches the Maccabees Judith Tobit Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom which two last they also reckon among the Books written by Solomon should be taken into the number Who knoweth not the difference that there was in the first Ages of Christianity betwixt the Eastern and the Western Churches touching the Fasting upon Saturdays the Church of Rome maintaining it is lawful and all the rest of the World accounting it unlawful Whence it was that we had that so bold Canon passed in the Council at Constantinople in Trullo in these words Vnderstanding that in the City of Rome in the time of the Holy Fast of Lent they fast on Saturdays contrary to the Custom and Tradition of the Church it seemeth good to this Holy Council that in the Roman Church they inviolably also observe that Canon which saith that whosoever shall be found to fast either upon the Lords day or upon the Saturday excepting only that one Saturday if he be a Clergie-man he shall be deposed but if be be of the Laity he shall be excommunicated Who knoweth not after how many several ways the Fast of Lent was Anciently observed in divers Churches an account whereof is given you by Irenaeus in that Pious Epistle of his which he wrote to Victor part whereof Eusebius setteth down in his Ecclesiastical History Who doth not also know that the opinions and expressions of the Greek Church touching Free-will and Predestination are extremely different from what the Church believed and taught in S. Augustines time and so downward And as concerning the Discipline of the Church do but hear Anastasius Bibliothecarius upon the VI Canon of the VII General Council which enjoyneth all Metropolitans to hold Provincial Synods once a year Neither let it at all trouble thee saith he that we have not this Decree seeing that there are some others found among the Canons whose Authority nevertheless we not admit of For some of them are in force and are observed in the Greek Church and others again in certain other Provinces only As for example the XVI and XVII Canons of the Council of Laodicea are observed only among the Greeks and the VI and the VIII Canons of the Council of Africk are received by none but the Africans only I could here produce divers other Examples but these may suffice to shew that the Opinions and Customs which have been received in one Part of the Church have not always been entertained in all the rest Whence it evidently follows that all that is acknowledged as the opinion or observation of the Church ought not therefore presently to pass for an Universal Law The Protestant alledgeth for the justifying his Canon of the Scriptures the Council of Laodicea before mentioned Thou answerest him perhaps that this indeed was the opinion of the Churches but it was only of some particular Churches I shall not here enter into an Examination whether this Answer be well grounded or not it is sufficient for me that I can safely then conclude from hence that according to this account before you can make use of any Opinion or Testimony out of any of the Fathers it is necessary that you first make it appear not only that it was the Opinion of the Church at that time but you must further also clearly demonstrate unto us what Churches opinion it was whether of the Church Universal or else of some Particular Church only It is objected against the Protestants that Epiphanius testifieth that the Church admitted not into the higher Orders of the Ministry any save those that were Virgins or professed Continency Now to make good this Allegation it is necessary that it be first proved that the Church he there speaks of was the Church Universal For will the Protestant reply upon you as Laodicea hath had as it seems a particular Opinion touching the Canon of the Scriptures possibly also Cyprus may in like manner have had its particular Resolutions touching the Ordination of the Clergy The like may be said of the greatest part of those other Observations and Opinions of the Ancient Church Now how difficult a business it will be to clear these Matters which are so full of perplexity and to distinguish of Antiquity at this so great a distance of time severing that which was Publick from what was Particular and that which was Provincial from what was National and what was National from that which was Vniversal any Man may be able to give some kind of guess but none can throughly understand save he that hath made trial of it Do but fancy to your selves a City that hath lain ruinated a thousand years no part whereof remains save onely the Ruines of Houses lying all along here and there confusedly all the rest being covered all over with Thorns and Bushes Imagine then that you have met with one that will undertake to shew you precisely where the Publick Buildings of the City stood and where the Private which were the Stones that belonged to the one and which belonged to the other and in a word who in these confused Heaps where the Whole lies all together will notwithstanding separate ye the one from the other The very same Task in a manner doth he undertake who ever shall go about truly and precisely to distinguish the Opinions of the Ancient Church This Antiquity is now of Eleven or Twelve hundred years standing and the Ruines of it are now onely left us in the Books of the Writers of that Time which also have met with none of the best entertainment in their Passage through the several Ages down to our time as we have shewed before How then dare we entertain the least hope that amidst this so great Confusion we should be able yet to distinguish the Pieces and to tell which of them honoured the Publick Temple and which went to the furnishing of Private Chappels onely especially considering that the Private ones have each of them ambitiously endeavoured to make their own pass for Publick For where is the Province or the City or the Doctor that hath not boastingly cried up
turn their eyes back a little upon themselves and to consider how many opinions they themselves hold which are not only different but even quite contrary too to the Church in the Communion whereof they live and of which they profess themselves to be Members and by which indeed they subsist The Difference is here so great as that it seems to be as it were one State within another State and one Church within another Church And yet notwithstanding when any of the Doctors of that Party to which they adhere deliver unto us either in their Definitions or in their Sermons or in their Books the common Sense and Judgment of their Church this Intermixture of Opinions is quite laid aside and appears not at all They speak only of the opinions of others passing by those of Cassander which are contrary to them in silence as if they did not at all concern the Church of Rome neither more nor less and yet it is very well known unto us even to us who live at this very day that they are favoured and maintained by very many of the most Eminent Persons of the Roman Clergy it self And if this senseless Sect who forsooth think themselves much more refined in their opinions than the rest of the Body whereof they are a part should chance in time either to fail of it self or to be supprest by force their Memory would so utterly come to nought as that Posterity would not know any thing of their Belief but only by conjecture Every one will then believe that the Church of Rome at this time precisely held to the Doctrine and Opinions that he reads in the Decrees of Trent and in other the like Books and yet notwithstanding we both know and see that among those very Persons which have been Anointed Consecrated and Preferred also by the said Church there is a Party that dissenteth from it in judgment touching divers Important Articles of Faith Let us therefore reckon that the Ancient Church had also its Cassanders and very many even among the Clergy it self who held many opinions which were different from that which was the common Belief of the Church and which it hath at length by little and little sunk as it were under water and wholly swallowed up so that now there is not any Tract of them left us Christianity was either different in the Ancient times from what it is now or else it was the same If it was Different it is then a Piece of meer Sophistry to endeavour to make it seem to be the same and a very great Abuse to produce unto us for this purpose so many several Testimonies out of Antiquity If it were the same it must then without all doubt have produced the same Accidents and have sown the same seeds of diversity of opinions in the spirits of its Clergy Those opinions and observations which now give offence to the Cassandrists would then also have offended some persons or other that were endued with the like Moderation For we are not to conceive but that those First Ages of Christianity brought forth Spirits that were as much and more refined and delicate than ours have done But that we may insist upon this particular no longer it is sufficient for me that I have thus clearly made it appear that in the Ancient Church the whole Clergy of a City or of a Nation much less of the whole World had not necessarily one and the same sense and opinion touching Points of Religion So that it will follow from hence that we cannot know certainly whether those opinions which we meet withal in the Fathers were received by all and every of the Pastors of the Church at that time or not All that you can gather thence is but this at the most that they themselves and some others perhaps of the most eminent amongst them if you please maintained such or such opinions in like manner as that which Bellarmine and others have written touching the Sacrament of the Eucharist will inform Posterity that these Men and many others of our time held these opinions in the Church of Rome But as those who shall conclude from the Books of these Authors that there is at this day no other opinion maintained among the Clergy themselves of the Church of Rome touching this Particular would very much abuse themselves so is it much to be feared that we in like manner deceive our selves when from what we find in Two or Three of the Fathers we conclude that there was at that time no other opinion held in the Christian Church touching those Points whereof they treat save that which they have delivered It is a very hazardous business to take Eight or Ten Men how Holy and Learned soever they may have been as Sureties for all the Doctors of the Church Universal that lived in their Age. This is too little Security for so great a Sum. Now there are Two things which may be objected against that which we have before delivered The First is that if there had been in Antiquity any other opinions touching the Points now in Debate which had been different from those which we now meet with in the Books either of all the Fathers or at least of some few of them they would then both have mentioned and also refuted them But we have already heretofore answered this Objection by saying that the Fathers forbare to speak any thing of this Diversity of opinion partly out of Prudence lest otherwise they might have provoked the Authors of the said opinions which were contrary to their own and so might increase the Difference instead of appeasing it and partly also out of Charity mildly bearing with that which they accounted not any whit dangerous I only speak here of those Differences in opinion which they knew of for there might be a great number of others which they knew not of Who can oblige you to believe that a Monk for example that had retired into a Corner and as it were forsaken the World professing only to instruct a small number of Men and Women in the Rules of Devotion must needs have known what the opinions in Points of Religion of all the Prelates of his Age were Who will pass his word unto us in his behalf that he doth not sometimes reprove that in some Men which yet the Church allowed in an infinite number of others Who will warrant us that all Christendom in his time embraced all his opinions and had no other of their own Possevine answering an Objection made by some touching the Works of Dionysius the Areopagite which S. Hierome hath made no mention of at all saith that it is no great marvel that a Man that lay hid in a Corner of the World should not have seen this Book which the Arrians endeavoured to suppress May not a Man with as much reason say that it is no great wonder if S. Hierome or Epiphanius or any other the like Authors who were
what degree of Faith we are to hold each particular Point of Doctrine and their leaving us in doubt whether what they teach be the Judgment of the Church or their own private Opinion onely and whether if it be the Judgment of the Church it be of the Church Universal or of some Particular Church only Now the least of these Objections is sufficient to render their Testimony invalid And again on the other side that it may be of force it is necessary that it be clearly and evidently free from all these Defects forasmuch as the Question is here touching the Christian Faith which ought to be grounded on nothing save what is sure and firm Whosoever therefore would make use of any Passage out of a Father he is bound first to make it appear that the Author out of whom he citeth the said Passage lived and wrote in the first Ages of Christianity and besides that the said Person is certainly known to be the Author of that Book out of which the said Passage is quoted and moreover that the Passage cited is sincere and no way corrupted nor altered and likewise that the Sense which he gives of it is the true genuine Sense of the Place and also that it was the Opinion of the Author when he was now come to Riponâ—â—s of Judgment and which he changed not or retrâ—cted afterwards He must also make it appear in what degree he held it and whether he maintained it as his own private Opinion onely or as the Opinion of the Church and lastly whether it were the Opinion of the Church Universal or of some particular Church onely which Inquiry is a Business of so vast and almost infinite labour that it makes me very much doubt whether or no we can be ever able to attain to a full and certain assurance what the Real Positive Sense of the Ancients hath been touching the whole Body of Controversies now debated in this our Age. Hence therefore our principal Question seems to be decided namely Whether the alledging of the Fathers be a sufficient and proper Means for the demonstrating the Truth of all those Articles which are at this day maintained by the Church of Rome and rejected by the Protestants or not For who doth not now see that this kind of proof hath as much or more difficulty in it than the Question it self and that such Testimonies are as Obscure as the Controverted Opinions themselves Notwithstanding that we may not be thought too hastily and upon too light grounds to reject this way of Proceeding we will pass by all that obscurity that is found touching the Opinions of the Ancients and supposing it to be no hard matter to discover what the Opinion and Sense of the Fathers hath been touching the aforesaid Points we will now in this Second Book consider whether or no their Authority be such as that we ought or may without further examination believe on their score what we know them certainly to have believed and to hold it in the same degree that they did There are two sorts of Passages to be observed in the Writings of the Fathers In the one you have them speaking only as Witnesses and testifying what the Belief of the Church was in their Time In the other they propose to you like Doctors their own Private Opinions Now there is a World of difference betwixt these two things For in a Witness there is required only Faithfulness and Truth but in a Doctor Learning and Knowledge The one perswadeth us by the opinion we have of his Veracity the other by the strength of his Arguments The Fathers are Witnesses onely when they barely tell us That the Church in their Times held such or such Opinions And they are then Doctors when getting up as it were into the Chair they propose unto us their own Opinions making them good either out of the Scripture or out of Reason Now as concerning the Testimonies that they give touching the Faith held by the Church in their time I know not whether we ought to receive all they bring for certain Truths or not But this I am sure of that though they should deserve to be received by us for such yet nevertheless would they stand us in very little stead as to the Business now in hand The Reason which moveth me to doubt of the former of these is because I observe that those very Men who are the greatest Admirers of the Fathers do yet confess that although they erre very little or not at all in matter of Right yet nevertheless they are often out and have their failings in matter of Fact because that Right is an Universal thing which is every way Uniform and all of one sort whereas matter of Fact is a thing which is mixed and as it were enchased with divers particular Circumstances which may very easily escape the knowledge of or at least be not so rightly understood by the most clear and piercing Wits Now the condition of the Churches Belief in every particular Age is matter of Fact and not of Right and a Point of History and not an Article of Faith So that it followeth hence that possibly the Fathers may have erred in giving us an account hereof and that therefore their Testimonies in such Cases ought not to be received by us as infallibly True Neither yet may we be thought hereby to accuse the Fathers of Falshood For how often do the honestest Persons that are innocently testifie such things as they thought they had seen which it afterwards appeareth that they saw not at all for Goodness renders not Men infallible The Fathers therefore being but Men might both be deceived themselves in such things and might consequently also deceive those who have confided in them though innocently and without any design of doing so But besides all this it is very evident that they have not been wholly free from Passion neither and there is no Man but knows that Passion very oâ—ten disguiseth things and maâ—â—â—h them appear even to the honestest Men that may be much otherwise than they are insomuch that sometimes they are affectionately carried away with one Opinion and do as much abhor another Which secret Passion might easily make them believe that the Church held that Opinion which they themselves were most taken with and that it rejected that which they themselves disliked especially if there were but the least appearance or shadow of Reason to incline them to this Belief For Men are very easily perswaded to believe what they desire I conceive we may hereto impute that Testimony of S. Hierome where he affirms That the Churches of Christ held That the Souls of Men were immediately Created by God at the instant of their entrance into the Body And yet notwithstanding that doubt which S. Augustine was in touching this Particular and his inclining manifestly to the contrary Opinion which was That the Soul was propagated together with the Body and descended down
Castro and Melchior Canus Two Spanish Doctors For as much therefore as we are not bound to believe any thing save that which is True it is most evident that we neither may nor ought to believe the Opinions of the Fathers till such time as they appear to us to have been certainly True Now we cannot be certainly assured of this by Their Single Authority seeing that they were but Men who were not always inspired by the Holy Spirit from above and therefore it is necessary that we make use of some other Guides in this our Inquiry namely either of the Holy Scriptures or of Reason or of Tradition or of the Doctrine of the Present Church or of some other such means as they themselves have made use of So that it hence follows that their bare Assertions are no sufficient Ground for us to build any of our Opinions upon they only serve to encline us before hand to the Belief of the same the great opinion which we have of them causing us to conclude that They would never have embraced such an Opinion except it had been True Which manner of Argumentation how ever is at the best but Probable so long as the Persons we have here to do withal are only Men and no more and in this particular Case where the Question is touching Points of Faith it is by no means in the world to be allowed of since that Faith is to be grounded not upon Probabilities but upon necessary Truths The Fathers are like to other great Masters in this Point and their Opinions are more or less Valid in proportion to the Reason and Authority whereon they are grounded only they have this Advantage that their very Name begets in us a readiness and inclination to receive whatsoever comes from them while we think it very improbable that so Excellent men as they were should ever believe any thing that was False Thus in Humane Sciences the saying of an Aristotle is of a far different Value from that of any other Philosopher of less Account because that all men are before-hand possessed with an Opinion that this Great Philosopher would not maintain any thing that was not consonant to Reason But this is Prejudice only for if upon better examination it should be found to be otherwise his Bare Authority would then no longer prevail with us what himself had sometime gallantly said would then here take place namely That it is a sacred thing always to preferre the Truth before Friendship Let the Fathers therefore if you please be the Aristotles in Christian Philosophy and let us have a Reverent esteem of Them and their Writings as they deserve and not be too rash in concluding that Persons of so eminent both Learning and Sanctity should maintain any Erroneous or vain Opinions especially in a matter of so great Importance Yet notwithstanding are we bound withal to remember that they were but Men and that their Memory Understanding or Judgment might sometimes fail them and therefore consequently that we are to examine their Writings by those Principles from whence they draw their Conclusions and not to sit down upon their Bare Assertions till such time as we have discovered them to be True If I were to speak of any other Persons than of the Fathers I should not add any thing more to what hath been already said it having been already in my judgment clearly enough proved that they are not of themselves of Authority enough to oblige us necessarily to follow their Opinions But seeing the Question here is touching these great Names which are so highly honoured in the Church to the end that no man may accuse us of endeavouring to rob them of any of the Respect which is due unto them I hold it necessary to examine this business a little more exactly and to make it appear by considering the thing it self that they are of no more Authority neither in Themselves nor in respect of Us than hath been already by Us attributed unto them CHAP. II. Reason 2. That the Fathers themselves testifie against themselves that they are not to be believed Absolutely and upon their Own bare Word in what they deliver in matters of Religion THere is none so fit to inform us what the Authority of the Writings of the Ancients is as the Ancients themselves who in all Reason must needs know this better than we Let us therefore now hear what they testifie in this Particular and if we do indeed hold them in so high Esteem as we make profession of let us allow of their Judgment in this particular attributing neither more nor less unto the Ancients than they Themselves require at our hands St. Augustine who was the Principal Light of the Latine Church being entred into a Contestation with St. Hierome touching the Interpretation before-mentioned of the second Chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians and finding himself hardly pressed by the Authority of six or seven Greek Writers which were urged against him by the other to rid his hands of them he was fain to make open profession in what account he held that sort of Writers I confess saith he to thy Charity that I only owe to those Books of Scripture which are now called Canonical that Reverence and Honour as to believe stedfastly that none of their Authors ever committed any Error in writing the same And if by chance I there meet with any thing which seemeth to contradict the Truth I presently think that certainly either my Copy is Imperfect and not so Correct as it should be or else that the Interpreter did not so well understand the Words of the Original or lastly that I my self have not so rightly understood Him But as for all other Writers how Eminent soever they are either for Sanctity or Learning I read them so as not presently to conclude whatsoever I there find to be True because They have said it but rather because they convince me either out of the said Canonical Books of Scripture or else by some Probable Reason that what they say is True Neither do I think Brother that thou thy self art of any other Opinion that is to say I do not believe that thou expectest that we should read thy Books as we do those of the Prophets or Apostles of the Truth of whose Writings as being exempt from all Errour we may not in any wise doubt And having afterwards opposed some other the like Authorities against those alledged by St. Hierome he addeth That he had done so notwithstanding that to say the truth he accounted the Canonical Scriptures only to be the Books to which as he said before he owed that ingenuous Duty as to be fully perswaded that the Authors of them never erred or deceived the Reader in any thing This Holy man accounted this Advice to be of so great Importance as that he thought fit to repeat it again in another place and I must intreat my Reader
to read the Ancients to prove all things and to hold fast that which is good and not to depart from the Faith of the Catholick Church according to the Rule which he hath commended unto us in his LXXVI Epistle where he adviseth us to read Origen Tertullian Novatus Arnobius Apollinaris and some other of the Ecclesiastical Writers but with this caution that we should make choice of that which is good but take heed of embracing that which is not so according to the Apostle who bids us prove all things but hold fast onely that which is good And this is the course he constantly takes censuring with the greatest Liberty that may be the Opinions and Expositions of all those who went before him He gives you freely his Judgment of every one of them affirming That Cyprian scarcely touched the Scriptures at all that Victorinus was not able to express his own Conceptions that Lactantius is not so happy in his Endeavours of proving our Religion as he is in overthrowing that of others that Arnobius is very uneven and confused and too luxuriant that S. Hilary is too swelling and incumbred with too long Periods I shall not here set before you what he saith of Origen Theodorus Apollinaris and of the Chiliasts whose professed Enemy he hath declared himself and whom he reproveth very sharply upon all Occasions whensoever they come in his way and yet himself confesseth them all to have been Men of very great Parts giving even Origen himself who is the most dangerous Writer of them all this Testimony That none but the ignorant can deny but that next to the Apostles he was one of the greatest Masters of the Church But that I may not meddle with any but such whose Names have never been cried down in the Church do but mark how he deals with Rhetitius Augustudunensis an Ecclesiastical Author There are saith he an infinite number of things in his Commentaries which in my judgment shew very mean and poor and a little after He seemeth to have had so ill an Opinion of others as to have a conceit that no Man was able to judge of his Faults He taketh the same liberty also in rejecting their Opinions and Expositions and sometimes not without passing upon them very tart Girds too He justifies the Truth of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament and findeth an infinite number of Faults in the Translation of the LXX against almost the general consent not onely of the more Ancient Writers but also of those too who lived in his own time who all esteemed it as a Divine Piece He scoffs at the conceit of those Men who believed that the LXX Interpreters being put severally into Seventy distinct Cells were inspired from above in the Translation of the Bible Let them keep saith he speaking of his own Backbiters by way of scorn with all my heart in the Seventy Cells of the Alexandrian Pharos for fear they should lose their Sails of their Ships and be forced to bewail the loss of their Cordage perhaps the same Truth as S. Augustine saith a little before but it will not be of equal Authority with that of the Canonical Books Besides as Cardinal Baronius hath observed this last Passage of S. Hierome ought to be understood onely in the Point touching the Holy Trinity concerning which there were at that time great Disputes betwixt the Catholicks and the Arians for otherwise if his words be taken in a General sense they will be found to be false as to S. Hilaries particular who hath had his failings in some certain things as we shall see hereafter In a word although S. Hierome were to be understood as speaking in a General sense as his words indeed seem to bear yet might the same thing possibly happen to him here which he hath observed hath oftentimes befallen to others namely to be mistaken in his Judgment For we are not to imagine that he would have us have a greater Opinion of him than he himself hath of other Men. And S. Augustine told him as we have before shewed that he did not believe that he expected Men should judge any otherwise of him And I suppose we may very safely keep to S. Augustine's Judgment and believe with him that S. Hierome had never any intention that we should receive all his Positions as Infallible Truths but rather that he would have us to read and examine his Writings with the same freedom that we do those of other Men. And if we have no mind to take S. Augustine's word in this Particular let us yet take S. Hierome's own who in his second Commentary upon the Prophet Habakkuk saith And thus have I delivered unto you my sense in brief but if any one produce that which is more exact and true take his Exposition rather than mine And so likewise upon the Prophet Zephaniah he saith We have now done our utmost endeavour in giving an Allegorical Exposition of the Text but if any other can bring that which is more Probable and agreeable to Reason than that which we have delivered let the Reader be swaied by his Authority rather than by ours And in another place he speaketh to the same purpose in these words This we have delivered according to the utmost of our poor Ability and have given you a short touch of the divers Opinions both of our own Men and of the Jews yet if any Man can give me a better and truer Account of these Things I shall be very ready to embrace the same Is this now I would fain ask to bind up our Tongues and our Belief so as that we have no further liberty of refusing what he hath once laid down before us or of searching into the Reasons and Grounds of his Opinions No let us rather make use of that Liberty which they all allow us let us hearken to them but as they themselves advise us when what they deliver is grounded upon Reason and upon the Scriptures If they had not made use of this Caution in the reading of those Authors who went before them the Christian Faith had now been wholly stuffed up with the Dreams of an Origen or an Apollinaris or some other the like Authors But neither the Excellency of the Doctrine nor yet the Resplendency of their Holy Life which no Man can deny to have shone forth very eminently in the Primitive Fathers were able so to dazle the eyes of those that came after them as that they could not distinguish betwixt that which was Sound and True in their Writings and that which was Trivial and False Let not therefore the Excellency of those who came after them hinder us either from passing by or even rejecting their Opinions when we find them built upon weak Foundations You see they confess themselves that this may very possibly be we should therefore be left utterly inexcusable if after this their
then safely perhaps rely upon the Writings of the Fathers But then on the other side it is so very difficult a matter to meet with such a Conjunction of so many several Quâ—lifications as that I very much doubt whether we shall be ever able to enjoy this happiness or not For first of all for the persons of those men whose Testimonies we alledge he requireth that they should be such as not only Lived but also Taught and which is more persevered too not only in the Faith but in the Communion also of the Catholick Church And then for fear of being surprised and taken at this Word he comes over us with a new supply and qualifies his words with a Restriction of Three Adverbs and tells Us that they must have lived and taught Holily Wisely and Constantly But yet this is not all for besides all this they must have either died in Christ or for Christ So that if they Lived but did not Teach or if they both Lived and Taught but did not Persevere or if they both Lived Taught and also Persevered in the Faith but not in the Communion or else in the Communion but not in the Faith of the Catholick Church or if they yet Lived and Taught Holily but not Wisely or on the contrary Wisely but not Holily and if in the last place after all this having performed all the Particulars before set down they did not at last die either in Christ or for Christ they ought not according to this mans Rule be admitted as Witnesses in this Case Certainly he might have stopped here and not have gone on still with his Modifications as he doth limiting the number and the words of these witnesses For what Christian ever made scruple of receiving the Opinion of such a one as had both Holily Wisely and Constantly lived and taught in the Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church For you might hence very well rest assured that whatsoever he had delivered was True and consequently Fit to be believed for how could he have taught Wisely and Constantly if he had taught any False Doctrine All tha he here therefore promiseth us is no more but this That we should be sure not to be deceived provided that we believed no other Doctrines save what were Holy and True This Promise of his is like that which little Children are wont to make when they tell you that you shall never die if you but eat always Neither do I believe that there is any man in the World so perverse and wilful as not readily to assent to such a man as he assuredly knew to be so qualified as Vincentius Lirinensis would here have him to be But seeing that it is necessary that we should first know the Quality of the Witness before we hear him it remaineth in my judgment that before we do so much as hear any of the Fathers we ought to be first assured that he was so qualified in every particular according to Vincentius his Rule before layed down Now I would very fain have any one inform me how it is possible for us to know this Who will assure us that Athanasius St. Cyrill or what other Father you please both Lived Taught Persevered and Died Holily Wisely and Constantly in the Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church This can never be done without a most Exact Inquiry made both into their Life and their Doctrines which is an Impossible thing considering the many Ages that have passed from Their times down to Ours But yet supposing that this were a Possible thing it would nevertheless be of no use at all as to this Authors purpose For He will have us hear the Fathers to the end that we may be by Them instructed in the Truth Now that we may be rightly informed whether or no they were so Qualified as is before required we ought necessarily to know first of all what the Truth is For how is it otherwise possible that we should be able to judg whether they have taught Holily and Wisely And if you were before-hand instructed in the Truth what need have you then to hear Them and to desire to be instructed in it by Them You may indeed make use of them for the Illustration and Confirmation of that which you knew before but you cannot learn any Truth from them which you knew not before And if you understand the Maxime before alledged in another sense and take this Wisdom and Holiness this Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church therein mentioned for a shadow onely and the Superficies and Outward Appearance of these things and for a Common and Empty Opinion grounded meerly upon the Publick Voice of the People and not upon an Exact Knowledge of the thing it self it will then prove to be manifestly False those Persons who have but the Outward Appearance only and not the Reality of these Qualities being no way fit to be admitted as Witnesses much less to be receiv'd as the Supreme Judges in the Point of the Christian Faith So that this Proposition is either Impossible if you understand it as the words seem to sound or else it is False if you take it in any larger sense The like Exceptions may be made against those other Conditions which he there further requires touching the Number and the Words of these Witnesses For he alloweth not the force of a Law to any thing but what hath been delivered either by All or else by the Greatest part of them If he here by All mean All the Fathers that ever have been or but the Greatest Part of them onely he then puts us upon an Impossibility For taking the whole Number of Fathers that ever have been the Greatest and perhaps too the Best Part of them have not written any thing at all and among those that have written how many hath Time devoured and how many hath the False Dealings of Men either wholly suppressed or else corrupted and altered It is therefore evidently Impossible to know what the Opinions have been either of All or of the Greatest Part of the Fathers in this sense And if he restrains this All and this Greatest Part to those who appear at this day either in their own Books or in Historians and the Writings of other men it will concern us then to inquire Whether or no by All he means All promiscuously without distinguishing them by their several Ages wherein they lived or else Whether he would have us distinguish them into several Classes putting together in the same Rank all those that lived in one and the same Age and receiving for Truth whatsoever we find to have been held and confirmed by the greatest part of them Now both these ways agree in this one thing namely that they render the Judgment of the Christian Faith wholly Casual and make it depend upon divers and sundry Accidents which have been the Cause of the Writings of the Fathers being either preserved or lost For put the case that
as appears plainly by the great account he makes of Ruffinus a Priest of Aquileia who was the Grand Patriarch of the Pelagians saying of him That he was not the least part of the Doctors of the Church Tacitely also taxing S. Hierome his Adversary and calling him A Malicious Slanderer as also by the Judgment which he gives of S. Augustine who was Flagellum Pelagianorum The Scourge of the Pelagians passing this insolent Censure upon him and saying That in speaking so much it had hapned to him what the Holy Ghost hath said by Solomon to wit That in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin So that I cannot sufficiently wonder at the Boldness of Cardinal Perron who when he hath any occasion of alledging this Author ordinarily calleth him Saint Vincent de Lerins Saint Vincent of Lerius thus by a very ill example Canonizing a Person who was strongly suspected to have been an Heretick Since therefore he was such a one why should any one think it strange that he should so much cry up the Judgment and Opinions of the Fathers seeing that there is no Man but knows that the Pelagians and Semipelagians had the better of it by the citing Their Authorities and laboured by this means to bear down S. Augustine's Name and all this forsooth only by reason that the Greatest Part of the Fathers who lived before Pelagius his time had delivered themselves with less caution than they might have done touching those Points which were by him afterwards brought into Question and many times too in such strange Expressions as will very hardly be reconciled to any Orthodox Sense Yet notwithstanding should we allow this Vincentius to have been a Person who was thus Qualified and to have had all those Conditions which he requireth in a Man to render him capable of being hearkned to in this Particular what weight I would fain know ought this Proposal of his to carry with it which yet is not found any where in the mouth of any of all those Fathers who went before him who is also so strongly contradicted both by S. Augustine and S. Hierome as we have seen in those Passages before alledged out of them and who besides is full of Obscllre Passages and Inexplicable Ambiguities So that Hoâ—â— Leâ—â—ned and Holy a Man soever he might be wheâ—heâ— he were a Bishop Confessor or Martyr which yet he was not this Proposal of his according to his own Maxims ought to be excluded from the Authority of Publick Determinations and to be accounted of only as his own Particular Private Opinion Let us therefore in this Business rather follow the Judgment of S. Augustine which is grounded upon evident Reason a Person whose Authority whenever it shall be questioned will be found to be Incomparably Greater than Vincentius Lirinensis his and let us not henceforth give any Credit to any Sayings or Opinions of the Fathers save onely such the Truth whereof they shall have made appear Evidently unto us either by the Canonical Books of Scripture or else by some Probable Reason CHAP. III. Reason III. That the Fathers have Written after such a manner as that it is clear that when they Wrote they had no intention of being our Judges in Matters of Religion Some few Examples of their Mistakes and Oversights WHosoever will but take the pains diligently to consider the Fathers manner of Writing he will not desire any other Testimony for the proof of this Truth For the very Form of their Writings witnesseth clear enough that in the greatest part of them they had no intention of delivering such Definitive Sentences as were to be Obliging meerly by the Single Authority of the Mouth which uttered them but their purpose onely was rather to communicate unto Us their own Meditations upon divers Points of our Religion leaving us free to our own Liberty of Examining them and to approve or reject the same according as we saw good And thus hath S. Hierome expresly delivered his Mind as we shewed before where he speaks of the Nature and Manner of Commentaries upon the Holy Scriptures And certainly if they had had any other Design or Intention they would never have troubled themselves as they ordinarily do in gathering together the several Opinions of other Men. This Diligence I confess is Laudable in a Teacher but it would be very Ridiculous in a Judge Their Stile also should then be quite of another kind than now it is and those Obscurities which we have observed in the Former Part of this Treatise proceeding either from the Rhetorical Ornaments or the Logical Subtilties which they made use of should have no place here For what use would there be of any such thing in pronouncing a Sentence of Judgment or indeed in giving ones bare Testimony only to any thing But that which makes the Truth of this our Assertion more clearly to appear than all the rest is the little care and diligence that they took in composing the greatest part of these Writings of theirs which we now would so very fain have to be the Rules of our Faith If these men who were endued with such exquisite sanctity had had any intention of prescribing to Posterity a true and perfect Tenor and Rule of Faith is it probable that they would have gone carelesly to work in a business of so great importance Would they not rather have gone upon it with their Eyes opened their Judgments setled their Thoughts fixed and every Faculty of their Soul attentively bent upon the business in hand for fear lest that in a business of so great weight as this something might chance to fall from them not so becoming their own Wisdom or so suitable to the Peoples advantage A Judge that had but never so little Conscience would not otherwise give sentence concerning the Oxen the Field and the Gutters of Titius and Moevius How much more is the same Gravity and Deliberation requisite here where the Question is touching the Faith the Souls and the Eternal Salvation of all Mankind It were clearly therefore the greatest injury that could be offered to these Holy Persons to imagine that they would have taken upon them to have passed Judgment in so weighty a Cause as this but with the greatest care and attention that could be Now it is very evident on the other side that in very many of those Writings of theirs which have come down to our hands there seemeth to be very much negligence or to speak a little more tenderly of the business security at least both in the Invention Method and Elocutioâ— If therefore we tender the Reputation either of their Honesty or Wisdom we ought rather to say that their design in these Books of theirs was not to pronounce definitively upon this Particular neither are their Writings judiciary Sentences or final Judgments but are rather Discourses of a far different Nature occasioned by divers emergent Occurrences and are more or less elaborate according
to the Time Judgment Age and Disposition they were of when they wrote them Now although this want of diligence and of deliberation appears of it self evidently enough to any man that readeth the Fathers but with the least attention that may be yet notwithstanding that I may not leave this Assertion of mine only said and not proved at all I shall here give you some few Instances for a taste only First of all there are very many Pieces among the Works of the Fathers which were written in haste and some too which were meer Extemporary Discourses and such as in all probability the Authors of them themselves would have found many things therein which would have required correction had they had but leisure to have reviewed the same St. Hierome in a Prologue of his to some certain Homilies of Origen translated by him into Latine saith that Origen made them and delivered them in the Church Ex tempore Touching these therefore we are pretty well satisfied by St. Hierome but how many in the mean time may there be of the like nature among those so many Homilies of St. Chrysostome St. Augustine and others all which we perhaps imagine to have been leisurely and deliberately studied digested and composed which yet some sudden occasion might perhaps have put forth into the World upon an instant and which were as soon born as conceived and as soon published as made St. Hierome often telleth us that he dictated what he wrote in haste Thus at the end of that long Epistle which he wrote to Fabiola he confesseth that he had dispatched it in one Evening only when he was now setting sail for a journey And which is a matter of much more importance he saith in another place That he had allotted himself but three days for the translating of the three Books of Solomon namely the Proverbs Ecclesiastes and the Canticles which yet a man will hardly be able to read over well and exactly in a month by reason of the great difficulties he will there meet withal as well in the Words and Phrases as in the sense And yet for all this if what the Church of Rome pretends to be true this little Three-days Work of St. Hierome hath proved so fortunate as to deserve not only to be approved and highly esteemed but even Canonized also by the Council of Trent Now whether the will of God be that we should receive this Translation of his as his pure Word or not I shall leave to those who have a desire and ability to examine However I dare confidently affirm that St. Hierome himself never had any the least thought or hope that ever this Piece of his should one day come to this honour it being a thing not to be imagined but that he would have taken both more time and more pains in the thing if ever he had either desired or foreseen this And thus it sometimes falls out that Men have better Fortune than ever they wished for The same Author saith at the end of another Piece of his That it was an Extemporary and Running business as he there speaks and hudled out so fast as that his Tongue over-run the Hands of his Amanuenses and by its Volubility and swiftness in a manner confounded them and their Cifres and Abbreviations He elsewhere excuseth in like manner another Work of his of no small importance neither which is his Commentary upon the Gospel of St. Matthew telling us that by reason he had been straitned in time he was constrained to dictate it in very great haste And so likewise in the Preface to his Second Commentary upon the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians he confesseth that he wrote it in so great haste as that he many times made as much of it as came to a thousand lines in a day In a word that I may not cloy the Reader with producing all the Instances of the same kind that I could here bring in it is his ordinary way of excusing himself either in his Prefaces or else at the closing up of all his Discourses to say that either the Messenger was in haste or some other design called him away or else some other the like cause whatsoever it were was pretended So that he never did any thing almost but in haste and at full speed Sometimes again either some sickness had taken him off his metal or else the study of the Hebrew had let his Tongue grow rusty or his Pen is not now able to reach its wonted pitch Now I would fain know if so be he would have us receive all his sayings as Oracles and did not indeed desire us to excuse rather some things in him and to forgive him some others why should he use these speeches unto us Who ever heard a Judge excuse himself by reason of the shortness of the Time Would not this be rather to accuse than to excuse himself by making such an Apology as this for himself for as much as the giving of over-hasty Judgment in any Cause is a very great fault And in my Opinion the Fathers could not more clearly have deprived themselves of this Dignity of being our Judges wherewith we will invest them whether they will or no than by writing and speaking after this manner But yet although St. Hierome had not given us these Advertisements which yet ought to make us look well also to the rest of the Fathers it appeareth evidently enough out of their very Writings themselves how little both time and diligence they bestowed in composing the greatest part of them For otherwise how could so many small trifling Faults both in History Grammar Philosophy and the like have escaped so great and Eminent Persons who were so well furnished with all sorts of Literature How happened it that they so either forgot or else mistook themselves as they have sometimes done I shall here give the Reader some few examples of this kind not to take off any thing from the Praises due to these Learned Persons as if we thought them really to have committed these Errours out of ignorance but rather to let the World see that they did not alwayâ— make use of their whole stock of Worth and Learning and that sometimes they either could not or else would not make use but of some part only of their Knowledge and of their Time which is a most certain Argument that they had never any intention of being received by us as Judges in Points of Faith I shall not say much of their Errours in matter of Time which are both very notable ones and also very frequent with them as for example where Justin Martyr saith that David lived Fifteen Hundred years before the Manifestation of the Son of God it being very apparent by observing the Course of Times derived along through Histories both Sacred and Profane that from the death of David to the Birth of our Saviour Christ there passed no more
was watred with Tigris and Euphrates there had been neither River nor Willow nor any Aquatick Tree The same Author also demandeth as if it had been a most indissoluble Question if taken in the Literal sense who the Daughter of Babylon is and why she is called Miserable which is so easie a Question as that any Child almost might very easily resolve it without torturing the Text with Allegories So likewise in his exposition of the 146 Psalm he understandeth by the Clouds wherewith God is said to cover the Heavens the Writings of the Prophets and by the Rain which he prepareth for the Earth the Evangelical Doctrine by the Mountains which bring forth Grass the Prophets and Apostles by the Beasts he understands Men and by the young Ravens the Gentiles assuring us withal that it would not be onely Erroneous but rather very Irreligious to take these words in the Literal sense May not this be called rather Sporting with than Expounding of the Scriptures So likewise in another place speaking of the Fowls of the Air which our Saviour said neither reaped nor gathered into Barns he understands by these the Devils and by the Lilies of the Field which spin not the Angels I should much abuse the Readers patience if I should here set down the strange Discourses he hath upon the Story of the two Possessed with Devils who were healed by our Saviour in the Country of the Gergesens and upon the Leap which the Devils made the neighbouring Herd of Swine take into the Sea and of the Swine-herds running away into the City and of the Citizens coming forth and intreating our Saviour to depart out of their Coasts or if I should but give you the whole entire Exposition which he hath made of these words Vers 29. Chap. 10. of St. Matthew Are not two Sparrows sold for a Farthing c. where by the two Sparrows he understandeth Sinners whose Souls and Bodies having been made to flye upward and to mount on high sell themselves to sin for meer Trifles and things of no value by this means becoming both as one the Soul by sin thickning as it were into a Body and such other like wild Fancies the reading whereof would astonish a man of any judgment rather than edifie him Neither is St. Ambrose any whit more serious where expounding those words of our Saviour Matth. 17. 20. If you have Faith as a grain of Mustard seed ye shall say to this Mountain Remove hence to yonder place c. By this Mountain saith St. Ambrose is meant the Devil It would be too tedious a business to set down here at length all that might be collected of this nature out of him he that hath any mind to see more Examples of this kind may read but his Homilies upon the 118. Psalm which Piece of his will indeed be otherwise very well worth any mans reading as being a very excellent one and full of Eloquence and sound Doctrine But yet perhaps a man would find it a troublesom business to make any handsom defence for him where he makes bold sometimes to use the Sacred words of the Scriptures in his own sportful Fancies as where he applies to Valentinian and Gratian that which is spoken of Christ and the Church in the Canticles O that thou wert as my Brother that sucked the breasts of my Mother When I should find thee without I would kiss thee c. I would lead thee and bring thee into my Mothers house c. I would cause thee to drink of Spiced Wine and of the juyce of my Pomegranates His left hand should be under my head and his right hand should embrace me In this place saith he is meanâ— the Emperour Gratian of Râ—nowned Memory who teâ—â—eth his Brother that he is furnished with the fruits of divers Vertues And to the same purpose doth he make Application of divers other Passages of this Sacred Canticle and with so great Licence as to say the truth no Poet ever lashed out with more liberty and freedom than he hath done in that Book of his I shall here purposely pass by what I might produce of this nature out of Gregory Nazianzen St. Augustine and almost all the rest of the Fathers for this that we have already brought is enough and indeed more than we needed for our present purpose Let the Reader therefore now judge whether or no the Fathers by this their manner of Writing have not clearly enough witnessed against themselves that their Intention when they wrote these their Books never was either to bound and determine our Faith or to decide our differences touching the same I must needs confess that they were Persons who were endued with very large Gifts of the Spirit and with a most lively and clear Understanding for the diving into the Truth But yet those that have the greatest â—hare of these Gifts have it yet to very little purpose if so be they imploy it not all and every part of it to the utmost of their power when the business they are to treat of is of so great both difficulty and importance and such as to the deciding and discussing whereof we can never bring either more attention or diligence than is needful Now that the Fathers have not observed this Course in their Writings appeareth clearly enough by what hath been formerly said Their Books therefore are not to be received by us either as Definitive Sentences or Final Judgments upon our present Controversies I confess that these small trivial Errors ought not to take off any thing of the Opinion we have of the Greatness and Gallantry of their Parts I believe they might very easily have avoided the falling into them if they would but have taken the pains to have looked a little better about them And I â—m of Opinion that they fell into them meerly by inadvertency only which may also sometimes happen even to the greatest Masters that are in any Sciences whatsover I shall as willingly also yield to you if you desire it that they have sometimes done these things purposely letting fall here and there throughout their Writings such little slips from their Pen sportingly and by way of Recreation or else out of a design of exercising our Wits But certainly whatsoever the Reason were seeing that they had no mind to use any more either care or diligence in the composing of their Books we may very well and indeed we ought to conclude from hence that they had never any Intention that these Books of theirs should be our Judges These Innocent Faults these Mistakes these Oversights these Forgetfulnesses and these Sportings of theirs do sufficiently declare for their part that we are to make our Addresses to some others and that they have not so sadly delivered their Opinions as if they had sate on the Seat of Judgment but rather have spoken as in their Chamber venting their own private Opinions only and not as our
Salvation because I conceive with Cassander that all those Passages may and indeed ought to be understood with respect had to the scope and drift of these Authors whose Business there was to confute those Hereticks of Their time who maintained That there was a Fatal Necessity in the Actions of Men by this means depriving them of all manner of Election or Judgment Neither hath the great Learning of Clemens Alexandrinus kept him from falling inâ—o very many the like Errors as for instance where in divers places he says plainly That the Heathen who lived before the coming of our Saviour Christ were justified by Philosophy which was then Necessary for them whereas it is now only Vseful unto them and that this Philosophy was thoâ—â— choolmister of â—he Gentiles which brought them to Christ or served to guide them till the time of his Coming in like manner as the Law did the Jews and that the Greeks were justified by iâ— aloneâ— and that it was given unto them as their Covenant being a step to and as it were a Foundation laid for Christian Philosophy He was of Opinion also in order to this That our Saviour went down into Hell to preach the Gospel to the Departed Souls and that he saved many of them that is all that believed And that the Apostles also after their Death descended likewise into the same place and for the same purpose Conceiving that God otherwise should have been Unjust and an Accepter of Persons if so be he should have condemned all those who died before the Coming of his Son For saith he if He preached to the Living to the end they might not be condemned Vnjustly why should â—e not for the same Reason preach also to those who were departed this Life before his Coming From these and the like Considerations he concludeth That it was necessary that the Souls of all the Dead as well Gentiles as Jews should have been made Partakers of the Preaching of our Saviour and should have had the Beâ—â—fit of the same Dispensation which he used towards others here upon Earth in order either to their Salvation through Repentance or their just Condemnation for their Impenitency He plainly maintains also in several places of his Works That all the Punishments which God inflicts upon Mâ—n tend to their Salvation and are sent them for their Instiuction and Amendment comprehending also within this number even those very Pains which the Damned endure in Hell and from hence it is that he somewhere also affirmeth That wicked Men are to be purged by Fire And hereto doth he refer the Conflagration spoken of by the Stoicks alledging also to this purpose certain Passages out of Plato and out of a certain Philosopher of Ephesus which I conceive to be Heraclitus by all which it clearly appears that he had the same Belief touching the Pains of Hell that his Scholar Origen had who maintains in an infinite number of places up and down his Works That the Pains of Hell are Purgative only and consequently are not Eternal but are to have an end when the Souls of the Damned are once throughly Cleansed and Purified by this Fire He believes also with Justin Martyr That the Angels fell in love with the First Women and that this Love of theirs transported them so far as to make them indiscreetly to discover unto them many Secrets which they ought to have concealed But now quite contrary to Irenaeus who maintains That our Saviour Christ lived upon Earth to the Age of Fifty years Clemens will have him to have Preached in the Flesh but one year onely and to have died in the Thirty first year of his Age. But since it is confessed by both Parties That there are very many absurd Tenets in this Author I shall not meddle any further with him As for Tertullian I confess his very turning Montanist hath taken off indeed very much of the repute which he before had in the Church both for the Fervency of his Pâ—ety and also for his Incomparable Learning But yet besides that a great part of his Works were written while he was yet a Catholick we are also to take notice that this his Montanism put no separation at all betwixt him and other Christians save only in point of Discipline which he according to the Severity of his Nature would have to be most Harsh and Rigorous For as for his Doctrine it is very evident that he constantly kept to the very same Rule and the same Faith that the Catholicks did whence proceeded that tart Speech of his That People rejected Montanus Maximilla and Priscilla not because they had any whit departed from the Rule of Faith but rather because they would have us to Fast oftner than to Marry And this is evident enough out of all those Books which were written by him during the time of his being a Montanist wherein he never disputeth or contendeth about any thing save onely about Discipline And this is ingenuously confessed also by the Learned Nicalaus Rigaltius in his Preface to those IX Books which he hath lately published Now notwithstanding the great Repute which this Father had in the Church and his not departing from it in any thing in Point of Faith yet how many Wild Opinions and Fancies do we meet withal in his Books I shall here speak onely of some of the principal of them passing by his so Dangerous Expressions touching the Person of the Son of God as having touched upon this Particular before But how strange is his manner of Discourse touching the Nature of God whom he seems to render subject to the like Passions that we are as namely to Anger Hatred and Grief He attributes also to him a Corporeal Substance and does not believe as he saith himself that any man will deny but that God is a Body So that we need the less to wonder that he so confidently affirms That there is no Substance which is not Corporeal or that with Justin Martyr and Clemens Alexandrinus he makes the Angelical Nature obnoxious to the Carnal Love of Women which occasioned those words in that Book of his De Virginibus velandis where he says That it is necessary that so dangerous a Face should be veiled which had scandalized even Heaven it self We need no after this think strange of his Doctrine touching the Nature of Mans Soul which he will have to be Corporeal and endued with Form and Figure and to be propagated and derived from the Substance of the Father to the Body of the Son and sowed and engendred with the Body increasing and extending it self together with it and many other the like Dreams in the maintaining whereof he useth so much Subtilty strength of Reason and Eloquence as that you will hardly meet with throughout the whole Stock of Antiquity a more Excellent and more Elegant Piece than that
piece of Labour in hand if he should go about to win the Franciscan Friers over to this Belief S. Ambrose one of the most Firm Pillars of the Church in his Time is not yet free from the like Failings no more than the rest For first of all he agrees with S. Hilary in this last Point and maintains That All in General shall be proved by Fire at the Last Day and that the Just shall pass through it but that theVnbelievers shall continue in it After the end of the World saith he the Angels being sent forth to sever the Good from the Bad shall that Baptism be performed when all Iniquity shall be consumed in a Furnace of Fire that so the Just may shine like the Sun in the Kingdom of God their Father And although though a Man be such a one as Peter or as John yet nevertheless shall he be Baptized with this Fire For the Great Baptizer shall come for so I call Him as the Angel Gabriel did saying He shall be Great and shall see a multitude of People standing before the Gate of Paradise and shall brandish the fiery Sword and shall say unto those who are on his Right Hand who are not guilty of any grievous Sins Enter ye in c. He says the same in another place also where he exempteth none from this Fiery Trial save onely our Saviour Christ alone It is Necessary saith he that All that desire to return into Paradise should be proved by this Fire For it is not without some Mystery that it is written That God having driven Adam and Eve out of Paradise He is said to place at the Entrance of Paradise a Flaming Sword which turned every way All must pass through the Flames whether it be John the Evangelist whom our Saviour loved so much that He said concerning him to Peter c. Or whether it be Peter himself who had the Keys of Heaven committed unto him and who walked upon the Sea He must be able to say We have passed through the Fire c. But as for S. John this Brandishing of the Flaming Sword will soon be dispatched for him because there is no Iniquity found in him who was so beloved of the Truth c. But the other that is Peter shall be tried as Silver is and I shall be tried like Lead I shall burn till all the Lead is quite melted down and if there be no Silver at all found in me wretched Man that I am I shall be cost into the lowest Pit of Hell As for the Resurrection of the Dead his Opinion is That All shall not be raised at once but by degrees one after another by a Long yet Certain Order those who were Believers rising first according to the degrees of their Merits Whereto we are to refer that which he hath elsewhere delivered saying That Those who are raised up in the First Resurrection shall come to Grace without Judgment but as for the rest who are reserved for the Second Resurrection they shall burn with Fire till they have fulfilled the full space of time betwixt the First and the Second Resurrection or if they do not finish this time they shall continue very long in their Torments I shall leave to the Reader to take the pains in examining whether or no that Passage of his can be reconciled to any good sense where he says That before the Publication of the Law of Moses Adultery was not an unlawful thing We are to take notice in the first place saith he that Abraham living before the giving of the Law by Moses and before the Gospel in all Probability Adultery was not as yet forbidden the Crime is punished after the time of the Law made which forbiddeth it for things are not condemned before the Law but by the Law and whether those Discourses of his which you meet with in his Books De Instit Virg. ad Virg. de Virg. and in other places do not much disgrace and cast Slurs upon the Honour of Marriage I shall also leave to the Consideration of the Judicious Reader whether there be more of Solidity or of Subtilty in that Exposition which he gives us of the Promise made by God to Noah after the Flood telling him That he had set his Bow in the Clouds to be a Token of a Covenant betwixt him and the whole Earth upon which words S. Ambrose utterly and fiercely denies that by this Bow is meant the Rain-bow but will have it to be I know not what strange Allegorical Bow Far be it from us saith he that we should call This God's Bow for This Bow which is called Iris the Rain bow is seen indeed in the Day time but never appears at all in the Night And therefore he understands by this Bow the Invisible Power of God by which He keepeth all things in one certain Measure enlarging and abating it as he sees cause Neither do I know whether that Opinion of his which you have in his First Book De Spiritu Sancto is any whit more justifiable where he affirms That Baptism is avialable and Legitimate although a Man should Baptize in the Name either of the Son or of the Holy Ghost onely without mentioning the other two Persons of the Trinity Epiphanius as he was a Man of a very good honest and plain Nature and if I may have leave to speak my own Opinion a little too Credulous and withal very eager and fierce in maintaining whatsoever he thought was Right and True so hath he the more easily been induced both to deliver and to receive things for Solid which yet were not so and to stand stifly in the defending of them after he had once embraced the same It would take up both too much time and Paper if I should go about to give you a List of all those things wherein he hath failed if you please you may have an Account of a good number of them in the Notes of the Jesuite Petavius his Interpreter who makes bold to correct him many times and sometimes also very uncivilly too As first of all he accuseth him of Obscurity and of Falshood also in the Opinion he held touching the Year and Day of our Saviour's Nativity saying that some of his Expressions touching this Point are more Obscure and Dark than the Riddles of Sphinx And truly he hath reason enough to say so of what he hath delivered touching the Year of our Saviours Nativity but as for the Day of that Year whether it were the Sixth of January as Epiphanius held with the Church of Egypt or else whether it were the Twenty fifth of December which is the General Opinion at this day I think it very great rashness for any Man to affirm either the one or the other neither of these Opinions having any better Ground the one than the other He likewise in plain terms gives him the Lie upon that place
with others than he hath with St. Augustine wresting their words much further than he ought to have done But sometimes he goes further yet and speaks even of the Pen-men of the Old and New Testament in so disrespectful a manner as that I am very much unsatisfied with these his doings As for example where he says in plain Terms without any Circumlocution that the Inscription of the Altar at Athens was not expressed in those very words which are delivered by St. Paul in the Acts Chap. 17. TO THE UNKNOWN GOD but in other Terms thus To the Gods of Europe Asia and of Africk to the Vnknown and Foreign Gods So likewise where he tells us and repeats the same too in many several places that St. Paul knew not how to speak nor to make a Discourse hang together and that he makes Soloecisms sometimes and that he knew not how to render an Hyperbaton nor to conclude a Sentence and that he was not able to express his own deep Conceptions in the Greek Tongue and that he had no good utterance but had much ado to deliver his mind And again in another place he tells us that It was not out of modesty but it was the plain naked truth that he told us when the Apostle said of himself that he was Imperitus Sermone Rude in Speech because that the truth is He could not deliver his mind to others in clear and intelligible Language And he says moreover which is yet much worse than all the rest that the Apostle disputing with the Galatians counterfeited ignorance as knowing them to be a dull heavy People and that he had let fâ—ll some such Expressions as might possibly have offended the more intelligent sort of people had he not before hand told them that he spake after the manner of men Whosoever shall have had but the least taste of the force and vigour and of the Candor of the Spirit and Discourse of this Holy Apostle can never see him thus used without being extremely astonished at it especially if he but consider that these kinds of speeches although they had perhaps some Ground which yet they have not must needs scandalize and give offence to the weaker sort of People and therefore ought not to have been uttered without very much Qualification and sweetning of the business St. Augustine I confess is much more discreet in this particular every where testifying as there is very great Reason he should the great Respect he bare to the Authors of the Books of the Holy Scriptures and never speaking of any of them whether it be of their Style or of their Sense but with a singular admiration But as for his own private Opinions and those of other men which he embraceth he is not without his Errours also Such is that harsh Sentence of his which he hath pronounced upon all Infants that dye before Baptism whom he will have not only to be deprived of the Vision of God which is the punishment that the ordinary Opinion of the Church condemns them to but he will further have them to be Tormented in Hell fire wherein he is also followed by Gregorius Armininensis a Famous Doctor in the Schools where he is called by reason of this Rigour of his Tormentum Infantium He maintaineth also that the Eucharist is necessary for little Infants as we have formerly noted to another purpose To which we must also add that other Opinion to which he evidently inclines namely that the Soul is derived from the Father to the Son and is engendred of his Substance as well as the Body and is not immediately Created by God which is the Common Opinion at this day There is no man but knows that He every where attributes to the Angels a Corporeal Nature and also that he conceives against all sense and reason that the whole World was created all in an instant of time and refers the six days space of time wherein the Creation is said to have been perfected to the different degrees of the knowledge of the Angels He believed also with the most of the Ancient Fathers that the Souls of Men departed are shut up into I know not what secret dark Receptacles where they are to remain from the hour of their departure till the Resurrection But we need not trouble our selves any further in proving that he also might erre in matters of Religion seeing that himself hath made so clear and so Authentick a Confession hereof in his Books of his Retractations where he correcteth many things which he had formerly written either besides or against the Truth I must here confess also that in my Opinion it would have added very much to the great and high Esteem which we generally have of his Parts and Worth if he had been more positive and more resolved in the Decision of things which he hath handled for the most part after the manner of the Academicks doubtingly and waveringly all the way insomuch that he leaveth undecided not only whether the Sun and the other Stars be endued with Reason but also whether the World it self be a Living Creature or not He that will but exactly and carefully read the rest of the Fathers may very easily observe in their Writings divers Errours of the like nature and a man shall scarcely meet with any one Father of any Note or Repute from whom some such thing or other hath not escaped As for my own part who have taken upon me this troublesom Business very unwillingly I shall content my self with these few Instances already set down seeing they do in my Judgment make this Business very clear the discovery whereof I have been necessitated to undertake though I wish rather they might have been concealed For seeing that these so eminent Persons who were of the greatest Repute amongst all the Ancients have through Humane Infirmity fallen into such Errors in Point of Faith what ought we to expect from others who come very much behind these both in respect of their Antiquity Learning and Holiness of Life Since Justin Martyr Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Cyprian Lactantius Hilary Ambrose Hierome Augustine and Epiphanius that is to say the most Eminent and most Approved Persons that ever were have yet stumbled in many places and have quite fallen in some other what hath Cyril Leo Gregorius Romanus and Damascene done who have come after them and in whom hath appeared both much less Gallantry of Spirit and Sanctity than in the Former Besides if these Men have been mistaken in matters of so great Importance some of them for Instance in the Point touching the Nature of God some touching the Humanity of our Saviour Christ others touching the Quality of our Soul and some touching the State and Condition thereof after Death and touching the Resurrection why for Gods sake must they needs be Infallible when they speak of the Points now debated amongst us Why may
not the same thing have hapned to them in the one that hath so manifestly befallen them in the other It is not very probable as we have said before that they so much as ever thought of our Differences and it is much more improbable that ever they had any intention of being our Judges in the Decision of them as we have before proved But now put the Case that they were acquainted with the Business and that they did intend to clear our Doubts and to give us their Positive Determination touching the same in their Books who shall assure us that they have had better success here than they had in so many other things wherein we have before heard them give their Verdict so utterly against all Justice and Reason He that hath erred touching the Point of the Resurrection is it not possible that he should be in an Errour touching the State of the Soul after this Life He that could be ignorant what the Nature of Christ's Body was must he Necessarily have a Right Judgment touching the Eucharist I do not see what solid Reason of this Difference can possibly be given It cannot proceed but from one of these two Causes neither of which have yet any place here For it happens sometimes that he who is deceived in one Particular hath yet better fortune in another by reason perhaps of his taking more heed to and using more Attention in the Consideration of the Later than he did in the Former or else by reason that one of the Points is easier to be understood than the other For in this Case though his Attention be as great in the one as in the other yet notwithstanding he may perhaps be able to understand the easie one but shall not be able to master the hard one But now neither of these Reasons can be alledged here For why should the Ancients have used less Care and Attention in the Examination of those Points wherein they have erred Or why should they have used more in those Points which are at this day controverted amongst us Are not those Ancient Points of Religion of as great Importance as these Latter Is there less danger in being ignorant touching the Nature of God than touching the Authority of the Pope or touching the State of the Faithful in the Resurrection than touching the Punishment of Souls in Purgatory the Real Qualities of the Body of Christ than the Nature of the Eucharist the Cup of His Passion than the Cup of His Communion Is it more Necessary to Salvation to know Him Sacrificed upon the Altar than Really Suffering upon the Cross Who sees not that these Matters are of equal Importance or if there be any Difference betwixt them that those Points wherein the Fathers have erred are in some sort more Important than those which we now dispute about We shall therefore conclude That if they had had both the one and the other before their eyes they would questionless have used as much Diligence at least and Attention in the Study of the one as of the other and consequently in all probability would have been either as successful or else have erred as much in the one as in the other Neither may it be here objected That those Points wherein they have failed are of more difficulty than those other wherein these Men will needs have them to have been Certainly in the Right for whosoever shall but consider them more narrowly he will find that they are equally both easie and difficult or if there be any difference betwixt them in this Particular those which they have erred in were the easier of the two to have been known For I would fain have any Man tell me what he thinks in his Conscience whether it be not as easie to judge by Reason and by the Scripture whether or no the Saints shall dwell upon the Earth after the Resurrection as it is to determine whether after they are departed this Life they shall go into Purgatory or not Is it a harder matter to know whether the Angels are capable of Carnal Love than it is to judge whether the Pope as he is Pope be Infallible or not And if it be answered here That the Church having already determined these Latter Points and having not declared it self at all touching the other hath taken away all the Difficulty of the one but hath left the other in their former Doubtful State this is to presuppose that which is the main Question or rather it is manifestly False the Church in the First Ages having not that we know of passed any Publick and Authentick Judgment touching the Points now in controversie as we have before already proved Forasmuch therefore as these Holy Men if at least they had any thought at all of these our Quarrels had an equally Clear Insight in these things both according to all Reason and all Probability they would have also come unto them with an equal both Attention and Affection And I believe that there is no Man but sees that if they might erre in the Decision of the one it is altogether as Possible that they might be mistaken also in their Judgment upon the other Now those Books of theirs which are left us proclaim aloud and openly enough as we have seen by those few Testimonies which we have but just now produced out of them that they have erred and sometimes also very grievously touching those First Questions it remaineth therefore that we say That their Judgment is not any whit more Infallible in our present Controversies I could be content that you had demonstrated to any Protestant by clear and undeniable Reasons that S. Hilary in those Passages which are produced out of him for the same purpose hath Positively taught the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and I could be well contented that he should grant you the same which yet perhaps he will never do However after all he hath this still to put you in mind of namely that this is the self-same S. Hilary who in the same Book maintains That the Body of Christ felt no Pain at all upon the Cross And if he were in an Error in this Particular why must he Necessarily be in the Right in the other The Question touching the Body of Christ is of as great Importance as that of the Eucharist and it is besides much more Clearly decided in the Scriptures where there is nothing in the Earth that obligeth in the least degree to fancy any such thing of the Body of Christ as S. Hilary hath done but where on the contrary there seems to be some kind of Ground for the Opinion which he is pretended to have had touching the Eucharist Forasmuch therefore will the Protestant say as that in a thing which is of equal Importance and of much less Difficulty he hath manifestly erred who can assure me that in this Point here which is both less Necessary and more Difficult he may not also
according to the Laws of a legitimate Disputation to alledge for the proof of any Point in debate any other Principles than what they do allow of it is evident that they attribute to the Fathers nothing less than such an Authority For in the Confessing of Faith they declare in the very beginning of it That they hold the Scriptures to be the Rule of their Faith and as for all other Ecclesiastical Writings although they account them to be useful yet nevertheless do they not conceive that a man may safely build any Article of Faith upon them And indeed seeing that they believe as the tell you immediately after that the Scripture containeth all things necessary both for the service of God and the Salvation of mens Souls they have no need of any other Judge and should in vain have recourse to the Writings of the Ancients the Authority whereof how great soever it be is still much less both in it self and also in respect of us than that of the Bible In the next place they seriously profess that their intent is to reform the Christian Doctrine according to this Rule and to retain firmly what Articles of Faith soever are therein delivered and to reject constantly all those that are not there found laid down how high and eminent soever the Authority be that shall resciâ—d the one or establish the other in the Belief of Men. It is not Lawful say they for Men nor yet for the Angels themselves either to add to or to diminish from or to alter it neither may Antiquity nor Customs nor Multitude nor Judgments nor Humane Wisdom nor Definitive Sentences nor Edicts nor Decrees nor Councils nor Visions nor Miracles be brought in opposition to it but on the contrary rather all other things ought to be examined regulated and reformed by it These be their own Words If therefore they will not depart from this their Belief which is as it were the Foundation and Key of their whole Reformation they cannot receive the Fathers who lived in the Second Third and Fourth and so in the following Centuries as Judges nor yet Absolutely and Simply as Witnesses in the Points of Faith For they all hold That that Pure Simple and Holy Doctrine which was taught and preached by the Apostles at the beginning of Christianity and delivered over unto us by themselves in the New Testament hath been by little and little altered and corrupted Time which changeth all things continually mixing among it some Corruption or other sometimes a Jewish or a Heathenish Opinion and sometimes again some Nice Observation otherwhiles some Superstitious Ceremony or other whilst one building upon the Foundation with Stubble another with Hay a third with Wood the Body seems at length by little and little to have become quite another thing than it Anciently was we having in stead of a Palace of Gold and of Silver a House built up of Plaister Stone Wood and Mud and the like pitiful Stuff In like manner say they as we see that Brooks of Water the farther distant they are from their Springs the more Filth they contract and the more doth their Water lose of its first Purity And as a Man the more he groweth in years the more doth that Native Simplicity which appeared in him in his Infancy decay his Body and his Mind are changed and he is so much altered by little and little through Study Art and Cunning that at length he seemeth to be clean another Man In like manner say they hath it â—ared with Christianity And here they presently urge that notable Passage out of S. Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians where he speaks of a Great Falling away which then in his time began already to work secretly and insensibly but was not to break forth till a long time after as you see it is in all Great Things whether in Nature or in the Affairs and Occurrences that happen to Mankind which are all conceived and hatched slowly and by degrees and are sometimes a whole Age before they are brought forth Now according to this Hypothesis which as I conceive is equally common to us of France and all other Protestants whatsoever the Doctrine of the Church must Necessarily have suffered some Alteration in the Second Age of Christianity by admitting the Mixture of some New Matter into its Belief and Policy and so likewise in the Third Age some other Corruption must necessarily have got in and so in the Fourth Fifth and the rest that follow the Christian Religion continually losing something of Its Original Purity and Simplicity and on the other side still contracting all along some new Impurities till at length it came to the highest Degree of Corruption in which condition they say they found it and have now at last by the Guidance of the Scriptures restored it to the self-same State wherein it was at the Beginning and have as it were fixed it again upon its true and proper Hinge from whence partly by the Ignorance and partly by the Fraud of Men during the space of so many Ages together it had by little and little been removed This therefore being their Opinion they cannot admit of as the Rule of all their Doctrine the Writings of any of the Fathers who lived from the Apostles time down to ours without betraying and contradicting themselves For according to what they maintain touching the Progress of Corruption in Religion there hath been some Alteration in the Christian Doctrine both in the Second Third and all the following Ages And then again according to what they conceive and believe of their own Reformation their Doctrine is the very same that was in the time of the Apostles as being taken immediately out of their Books If therefore they should examine it by what the Fathers of the Second Century believed there must necessarily be something found in the Doctrine of the Fathers which is not in theirs and the Difference will be much greater if the Comparison be made betwixt it and the Doctrine of the Third Fourth and the following Ages in all which according to their Hypothesis the Corruption hath continually encreased For if their Doctrines were in every respect conformable to each other and had in them neither more nor less the one than the other there must necessarily then follow one of these two things namely That either this Corruption which they presuppose to be in the Belief and Politie of the Church is not that Secret which worked in S. Paul's time or else That their Reformation is not the Pure and Simple Doctrine of the Apostles the Members of which Division are contradictory to those two Positions which as we have said they all of them unanimously maintain So that to avoid this Contradiction it concerns them constantly to persevere in that which they profess is their Belief in their Confession of Faith to wit That there are no Ecclesiastical Writings whatsoever that are of so sufficient Authority as
that a Man may safely build upon them and make them the Judges of Faith and That the Holy Scripture is the onely Rule by which all these things are to be examined And this is that which they All agree upon as far as I have either read or known as any Man may see in the Books of Calvin Bucer Melancthon Luther Beza and the rest who all relie upon the Authority of the Scriptures onely and admit not of any part of the Authority of the Fathers as a sufficient Ground whereon to build any Article of their Belief It is true I confess that some of their First Authors as namely Bucer Peter Martyr and J. Jewell Bishop of Salisbury and in a manner all the Later Writers also alledge the Testimonies of the Fathers but if you but mark it it is onely by way of Confutation and not of Establishing any thing They do it onely to overthrow the Opinions of the Church of Rome and not to strengthen their Own For though they hold That the Doctrine of the Fathers is not so Pure as that of the Apostles yet do they withal believe that it is much Purer than that which is at this day taught by the Church of Rome the Purity of Doctrine having continually decayed and the Impurity of it encreased in such sort as that the further they are removed from the Time of the Apostles the nearer they approach as they say towards the afore-mentioned Falling away spoken of by S. Paul Although the Protestants therefore allow the Scriptures onely for the True Foundation of their Faith yet notwithstanding do they account the Writings of the Fathers to be Necessary also and of good use unto them first of all in the Proving this Decay which they say hath hapned in Christianity and secondly for the making it appear that the Opinions which their Adversaries now maintain were not in those days brought into any Form but were as yet onely in their Seeds As for example Transubstantiation was not as yet an Article of Faith notwithstanding that long ago they did innocently and not foreseeing what the Issue might prove to be believe some certain things out of which being afterwards licked over by passing through divers several Languages Transubstantiation was at length made up So likewise the Supremacy of the Pope had at that time no place in the belief of Men although those small Threds and Root-strings from whence this Vast and Wonderful Power first sprung long since appeared in the World And the like may be said of the greatest part of those other Points which the Protestants will not by any means receive And that this is their Resolution and Sense appears evidently by those many Books which they have written upon this Subject wherein they shew Historically the whole Progress of this Decay in Christianity as well in its Faith as in its Polity and Discipline And truly this their Design seemeth to be very sufficient and satisfactory For seeing that they propose nothing Positively and as an Article of Faith Necessary to Salvation which may not easily and plainly be proved out of the Scripture they have no need to make use of any other Principle for the Demonstration of the Truth Furthermore seeing that those Positive Articles of Faith which they believe are in a manner all of them received and confessed by the Church of Rome as we have said before in the Preface to this Treatise there is no need of troubling a Mans self to prove the same those things which both Parties are agreed upon being never to be proved but are always presupposed in all Disputations Yet notwithstanding if any one have a mind to be informed what the Belief of the Fathers hath been touching the said Articles it is an easie matter for them to make it appear that they also believed all of them as well as themselves as for Example That there is a God a Christ a Salvation a Sacrament of Baptism a Sacrament of the Eucharist and the like Truths the greatest part whereof we have formerly set down in the Beginning of this Discourse And as for those other Articles which are proposed to the World besides all these by the Church of Rome it is sufficient for them that they are able to answer the Arguments which are brought to prove them and to make it by this means appear that they have not any sure Ground at all and consequently neither may nor ought to be received into the Faith of Christians And this is the Vse that the Protestants make of the Fathers evidently making it appear to the World out of them that they did not hold the said Articles as the Church of Rome doth at this day So that their alledging of the Fathers to this purpose onely and indeed their Whole Practice in these Disputes declare evidently enough that they conceive not the Belief of the Church of Rome to be so perfectly and exactly conformable to that of Antiquity especially of the Four or Five First Ages which accords very well with their Hypothesis touching the Corruption of the Christian Doctrine But yet no Man may conclude from hence That they do allow of the Authority of the Fathers as a sufficient Foundation to ground any Article of Faith upon for this is repugnant both to their Doctrine and to the Protestation which they upon all occasions make expresly to the contrary So that I cannot but extremely wonder at the Proceeding of some of our Modern Authors who in their Disputations with the Protestants endeavour to prove the Articles of their Faith by Testimonies brought out of the Fathers whereas the Protestants never go about to make good their own Opinions but onely to overthrow those of their Adversaries by urging the Fathers Testimonies For seeing that they of the Church of Rome maintain That the Church neither hath nor can possibly err in Points of Faith and That its Belief in Matters of Faith hath always been the same that it is at this day it is sufficient for the Protestant to shew by comparing the Doctrine of the Ancient Fathers with that of the Church of Rome that there is great Difference betwixt them neither doth this in any wise bind them to believe throughout whatsoever the Fathers believed it being evident according to their Hypothesis that there may have some Errors crept into their Belief though certainly not such nor so gross ones as have been since entertained by the Church in the Ages succeeding We shall conclude therefore That the Protestants acknowledge not neither in the Fathers nor in their Writings any so Absolute Authority as renders them capable of being received by us as our Supreme Judges in Matters of Religion and such from whom no Appeal can be made Whence it will follow That although the Fathers might really perhaps have such an Authority yet notwithstanding could not their Definitive Sentence put an end to any of our Controversies and therefore it concerns the Church of Rome to have
no such Doctrine was ever preached to Mankind either by our Saviour Christ or by His Apostles For what Probability is there that those Holy Doctors of Former Ages from whose hands Christianity hath been derived down unto us should be Ignorant of any of those things which had been Revealed and Recommended by our Saviour as Important and Necessary to Salvation It is true indeed that the Fathers being deceived either by some False manner of Argumentation or else by some Seeming Authority do sometimes deliver such things as have not been revealed by our Saviour Christ but are evidently either False or Ill grounded as we have formerly shewed in those Examples before produced by us It is true moreover that among those things which have been revealed by our Saviour Christ in the Scripture which yet are not Absolutely Necessary to Salvation the Fathers may have been ignorant of some of them either by reason that Time had not as yet discovered what the sense of them was or else because that for lack of giving good heed unto them or by their being carried away with some Passion They did not then perceive what hath since been found out But that they should all of them have been Ignorant of any Article that is Necessarily Requisite to Salvation is altogether Impossible For after this Account They should all have been deprived of Salvation which I suppose every honest Soul would tremble at the thought of I say then and as I conceive have sufficiently proved in this Treatise that an Argument which concludeth the Truth of any Proposition from the Fathers having maintained the same is very Weak and Ill-grounded as supposing that which is Clearly False namely That the Fathers maintained nothing which had not been Revealed by our Saviour Christ For this would be such a kind of Argumentation as if a man should prove by the General Agreement herein of the Fathers that all the Departed Souls are shut up together in a certain Place or Receptacle till the Day of Judgment or that the Encharist is Necessarily to be administred to Little Infants and the like where every one sees how Insufficient and Invalid this way of Argumentation is And to say the truth such is the Proceeding of the Church of Rome when they go about to prove by the Authority of the Fathers those Articles which they propose to the World and which are rejected by the Protestants I say moreover that to conclude upon the Nullity or Falseness of any Article that is not of the number of those that are Necessary to Salvation from the general Silence of the Fathers touching the same is a very Absurd way of Arguing as supposing a thing which is also Manifestly False Namely that the Fathers must Necessarily have seen and Clearly known All and every of those things which Jesus Christ hath revealed in His Word Such a kind of Argument would it be thought among the Franciscans if any one should conclude against them from the Silence of the Fathers that our Saviour Christ hath not at all revealed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without Sin But yet I confess again on the other side that in those Points that are accounted as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation an Argument that should be drawn from the General Silence of the Fathers to prove the Nullity or Falseness of it would be very Pertinent and indeed Unanswerable As for example His manner of Argumentation would be very Rational and Solid that should conclude that those Means of Salvation which are proposed by a Mahomet suppose or a David George or the like Sectaries are Null and contrary to the Will of our Saviour Christ how much soever these Men may seem to Honour Him seeing that none of ehe Ancient Christians speak so much as one syllable of it and are utterly ignorant of all those Secrets that these Wretches have preached to their Disciples and delivered as Infallible and Necessary Means of Salvation After this manner did Irenaeus dispute against the Valentinians and other of the Gnosticks who vented their own sensâ—less Dreams and Absurd Issues of their Own Brain saying That the Creator of the World was but an Angelâ— and that there were above Him certain Divine Powers which They called Aeones that is to say Ages some of them making more of these and others fewer and some reckoning to the number of CCCLXV and an infinite number of other the like Prodigies never shewing any Ground for the same either in Reason or out of the Scripture Irenaeus therefore that he might make it appear to the World that this so Strange Doctrine was produced out of their Own Brain only goes about and visiteth the Arohives of all the Churches that had been either Planted or Watered by the Holy Apostles turns over all their Records Evidences and Ancient Monuments and these Aeones Achamot and Barbele of the Gnosticks no where appearing nor so much as any the least Part or Trace of them He concludeth that the Apostles had never delivered over any such thing to their Disciples neither by Writing nor by Word of Mouth as these Impostors pretended they had For certainly if they had done so the memory of it could not have been so utterly lost This is also the Method that Tertullian followed in his Disputations against these very Hereticks and others the like in the 22 Chapter of his Book De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos and in other places The Practice of these Great Persons who made use of it themselves will here serve to prove unto us that this Course is Right and Good And thus you see that the Authority of the Fathers is of very great Use in the Church and serveth as an Out-work to the Scriptures for the repelling the Presumption of those who would forge a New Faith But forasmuch as those who broach New Doctrines of their own Head do Ordinarily slight the Holy Scriptures as those very Hereticks did whom Iraeneus confuted who impudently accused Them of not being Right and that they are of no Authority and speak in very Ambiguous Terms and that they are not able to inform a man of the Truth unless they are acquainted with Tradition the Truth having been delivered as These men pretended not in Writing but by Word of Mouth For this Reason I say and for other the like are the Writings of the â—athers of very great Use in these Disputes and I conceive This to be one of the Principal ends for which the Divine Providence hath in despite of So many Confusions and Changes preserved so many of them safe down to our times If therefore the Protestants should propose of their Own Head and should press as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation any Positive Article which doth not at all appear in Antiquiâ—y without all Question this Course might with very good Reason be made use of against Them But it is most Evident that there is no such thing at all in their Belief for
they maintain only such things as are eithe Expresly delivered in the Scriptures or else are Evidently deduced from thence and such as have also been expounded the greatest part of them and interpreted by the Ancients not in their own private Writings only but even in their Creeds and Synodical Determinations also They pretend not either to any Particular Revelation oâ— Secret Tradition or any other New Principle of Doctrine Their Faith is grounded only upon the Old and which is the Most Authentick Instrument of Christianity the New Testament Only in their Expositions either of the Doctrines therein Contained or other Passages They produce some few things that are not at all found in the Fathers But these things being not Necessary to Salvation the Argument which is brought from the Silence of the Fathers herein is not sufficient to prove the Falseness of them Time Experience Assistance of others and the very Errours also of the Fathers having as They say now laid that Open to Them which was Heretofore more Difficult and hard to be discovered and taken notice of in Divine Revelation Who knoweth not that a Dwarf mounted upon a Giants shoulders looketh higher and seeth further than the Giant himself It would be ridiculous in any man that should conclude that That which the Dwarf pretends to discover is not at all in Nature because then the Giant must also have seen it Neither would He be much wiser that should accuse the Dwarf of Presumption because forsooth He hath told Us that whereof the Giant said not a word seeing that it is the Giant to whom the Dwarf is beholding for the greatest part of His Knowledge And this is Our Case say the Protestants We are mounted upon the Shoulders of that Great and High Giant Antiquity That advantage which we have above it by its means enables us to see many things in Divine Revelation which it did not see But yet however this cannot be any occasion of Presumption to us because we see more than it did for as much as it is this very Antiquity to which we owe a great part of this our Knowledge It is Certainly therefore very Clear that as for the Protestants and what concerns the Positive Points of Their Faith they are wholly without the Compass of this Dispute And as for those of the Church of Rome They cannot for the Reasons before given make any Advantage of the Testimony of the Ancients for the proving of any of those Points of Doctrine which They maintain save only of those wherein their Adversaries agree with them and therefore if they would have us to come over to Their Belief They must Necessarily have recourse to some other kind of Proofs But yet I do not see but that we may very well make Inquiry into Antiquity touching many Articles which are now maintained by those of the Church of Rome and if we find that the Ancients have not said any thing at all of the same we may then positively conclude That they are not to be accounted as any part of the Christian Religion I confess that there are some of them against which this Argument is of no force at all as namely those which they do not account Necessary to Salvation and which both the Ancients heretofore might have been and we also at this day may be ignorant of But certainly this Argument in my Judgment would be utterly unanswerable against such Points as they press as Necessary and whereon indeed they would have our Salvation wholly to depend As for Example The Supreme Authority of the Pope and of the Church which owneth him as Its Head The Adoration of the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass the Necessity of Auricular Confession and the like For if so be they are of so great Importance as they would make us believe it would be a Point of high Impiety to say That the Fathers knew not any thing at all of them in like manner as it would be a most absurd thing to maintain That though they did know them they would not yet speak any one word of them in all those Books which we have of theirs at this day And if they had said any thing at all of them in their Writings we have no reason in the World to suspect that possibly those Passages where mention was made of them may have been rased out or corrupted and altered by false hands seeing that this Piece of Knavery would have been done to the disadvantage of those who had these Books in their Custody We have rather very good reason to suspect that whatsoever Alterations there are they have been made in favour of the Church of Rome as we have proved before in the First Book If therefore after so long a time and after so many Indexes as they of the Church of Rome have put forth and so great a desire as they have had to find these Doctrines of theirs in the Writings of the Fathers and the little Conscience that they have sometimes made of foisting into the Writings of the Fathers what they could not find there We can still notwithstanding make it appear that they are not to be found there at all After all this I say who can possibly doubt but that the Fathers were ignorant of them Who will ever be perswaded to believe that they held them as Necessary to Salvation And if they were not known to be such then how can any body imagine that they should at length come to be such now My Opinion therefore is That although the Authority of the Fathers be not sufficient to prove the Truth of those Articles which are now maintained by the Church of Rome against the Protestants although the Ancients should perhaps have believed the same it may notwithstanding serve to prove the Falseness of them in case that we should find by the Fathers that the Ancients were either wholly ignorant of them or at least acknowledged them not for such as they would now have us believe them to be which is a Business that so nearly concerns the Protestants as that to be able to bring about their Design I conceive they ought to employ a good part of their time in reading over the Books of the Ancients Onely it is requisite that either Party when they undertake so tedious and so important a Business as this is should come very well provided of all Necessary Parts as namely of the Knowledge of the Language and of History and should also be very well read in the Scriptures and that they use herein their utmost Diligence and Attention and withal read over exactly whatsoever we have left us of the Fathers not omitting any thing that Possibly they can get because a little short Passage many times gives a Man very much Light in the finding out their Meaning and not think as some who much deceive themselves do that they perfectly know what the Sense and Belief of the Ancients was because