they have Written and to give an Account of their Character and Merit which the Author professeth to have been performed for the first Eight Ages in those Volumes which he hath already published intending to continue those which follow until the present And we are so much the more concerned to enter upon a narrow Enquiry into this Book having understood that many Persons do find these first Tomes full of considerable Faults That nothing in this Affair might pass without great Deliberation and a perfect Scrutiny we caused this Book to be read by four Doctors in Divinity of the Faculty of Paris who did read all those Tomes each apart by himself and then conferred a long time together about them of all which they have given us an exact Account in many Meetings We have also our self examined this Book with all possible Attention and have found that this Work is so far from being useful to the Church that it would be on the contrary very prejudicial if we should allow the Sale of it Moreover we desired to hear the Author's Defences that so we might know his Sentiments and present Disposition for which Cause we have granted him as favourable an Audience as was possible for several Meetings in the presence of the same Doctors And as we have found in him an entire Submission to all we should ordain having put into our Hands a Writing signed by himself which is annexed to these Presents in which of the Twelve Articles which we judged chiefly censurable in his Book he doth retract many Propositions advanced by him and testifies in general that he submits himself to our Judgment without any restriction or reservation And as this absolute Submission without which we could not think his Writings sufficient there being in his Book many Propositions censurable which he doth not touch in his Writing secures his Religion and obliges us to spare his Person so there remains nothing more to be done but to give Sentence against the Doctrine of his Book We could have wished that this Work might have deserved only a limited Censure and so would have been satisfied to have marked out of the Author such Changes as he should make for saving the rest of it without proceeding to a full Condemnation and to an entire Suppression of it But the Evil being almost spread through the whole Work we could not dispence with the Condemnation of this Book but are obliged to prohibit the Reading it to all Persons whom it hath pleased God to submit to our Conduct for preventing the Prejudice which it might otherwise do amongst People if such a stop were not put to it that the Church may receive no more Scandal nor Hereticks get any Occasion of drawing Advantage against the Catholicks For these Reasons after having implored the Grace of the Holy Ghost to beseech his Guidance of us we have Condemned and do Condemn the Book entituled A New Library of Ecclesiastick Authors c. by Monsieur Ellies Du Pin Doctor of the Faculty of Paris c. as containing many Propositions false rash scandalous offensive to pious Ears tending to weaken the Proofs of Tradition about the Authority of the Canonical Books and many other Articles of Faith Injurious to Oecumenical Councils to the Holy Apostolical See and to the Fathers of the Church Erroneous and leading to several Heresies We most strictly and under the Penalties prescribed by Law forbid the Reading of this Book to all our Diocesans of either Sex or the causing or advising it to be Read by any Person or having it in their Houses or any other where enjoyning them under the same Censures to return them to us as soon as possible So we command the Officers of our Ecclesiastical Court to see the Execution of our present Ordinance to cause it to be affixed upon the Church Doors of this City and its Suburbs and in every other place where it shall be needful and also to require if it be necessary the Authority of the Magistrates of whose Zeal and Piety we have had Proofs on other Occasions to stop by all due and reasonable Methods the Impression Sale and Vending hereof Given at Paris in our Archiepiscopal Palace the 16 th of April the Year One Thousand Six Hundred Ninty and Three Signed Francis Archbishop of Paris and a little lower by my Lord Wilbault Here followeth the Writing mentioned in this Ordinance signed by the Author of the New Library which he gave into the hands of my Lord the Archbishop Declaration of Monsieur Du Pin. THere being some Persons who after the Reading of my Books of the New Library of Ecclesiastick Authors have testified that they were offended at many places and those Complaints being carried to my Lord Archbishop of Paris who in Quality of proper Judge of Doctrine hath taken them into his Consideration and named some Doctors to search narrowly into this Work and make a Relation of the same to him I do my self acknowledge by a serious Reflection on their Observations that there has indeed dropt from me some Expressions which are hard obscure and that might give some Offence to the Reader some also which may not be true and which against my Design may be brought against the Truth for which I shall always have a Respect and which I do believe ought to be maintained in the Church This obligeth me seeing my Lord the Archbishop hath had the Goodness to discover the same to me in three different Assemblies in which I have not been less touched with his Goodness and Paternal Charity than instructed by his great and clear Light in the presence of the Doctors to whom he committed the Examination of my Book and with whom he himself did Examine it I say this obligeth me to give to what is obscure in that Work the Illustrations which he hath judged and which I may self have perceived necessary to mollify the Expressions which are too hard and to make an Authentick Declaration concerning those which may bear an Ill Sense that it may appear that my Sentiments are Orthodox and that I have transgressed only by inadvertency not sufficienly considering the Terms used nor the Consequences which might be drawn from them To keepthe same Order which my Lord the Archbishop himself observed when he required an Account of all these Places I. I do first acknowledge as I have always owned for Sacred and Canonical Books all those which are contained in the Canon of the Council of Trent Sess 4. in all their Parts I am persuaded that they were all written by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost that it is not lawful in any wise to doubt of their Canonicalness after the Decision of the Church and tho' some were not received as Canonical at first by some particular Churches it is nevertheless true that they were owned in the first Ages of the Church for Books of Holy Scripture and quoted as such by many Fathers Therefore these indefinite Expressions in
my Book The Antient Christians followed the Jewish Canon in the Books of the Old Testament Prel Dissert p. 27. they did not own any other Canonical Books of the Old Testament but those which were in the Canon of the Jews Tom. 1. p. 181. ought not to be understood generally of all Churches nor of all the Fathers in the Three first Centuries My Intention being only tho' my Terms seem more general to distinguish the Books which have been always received as Canonical through all Churches and of which there was never any Ground to doubt in any Church called for this cause Proto-Canonical from those who have not always been received as such through all the Churches and of whose Canonicalness some have doubted named therefore Deutero Canonical I did think that I might hold with Sixtus Senensis that the Canonicalness of the six last Chapters of Esther might be called in question and that I might say with him that it was an Addition to the Book of Esther not comprehended in the Canon of the Council of Trent But seeing they have convinced me that we ought not to apply this Solution to the precise Terms of the Council which admits all these Books contained in its Catalogue for Canonical both in whole and in all their Parts as they have been in use to be read in the Catholick Church Libros integros cum omnibus suis partibus prout in Ecclesia legi Catholici consueverunt I have therefore changed my Sentiment and do now own them for Canonical and so much the rather because the Church hath taken out of them Epistles and Prayers to be said in its Office and Origen St. Augustin St. Jerom and other Fathers do quote Passages out of them The most part of the Reasons which I formerly brought do only prove that these Chapters have another Author than the rest of the Book of Esther except as to some apparent Contradictions in Chronology or History which may be easily reconciled II. As to the second Article which concerns Tradition of which the Fathers are Witnesses and their Writings the Channel by which it is conveyed to us I confess that I have forsaken some Fathers in Points of Faith in which I ought to have defended them as St. Justin and St. Irenaeus concerning the Immortality of the Soul and the Eternal Punishments of the damned because of two difficult Passages which ought to be explained by a great many others where they do acknowledge the Immortality of the Soul and the Eternal Punishments of the damned as I have remarked of St. Justin in the Note x p. 54 by quoting the Passages of this Father where he calls the Punishments of the damned Eternal opposing this word Eternal to the Punishments which should once have an end And as we can prove from St. Irenaeus by many of his Passages and particularly by that of the 47th Chapter of the Third Book where he saith That the Punishment of those who believe not the Gospel is not only Temporal but also Eternal non solum temporalis sed aeterna I have not ascribed the same Sentiment to St. Hilary nor yet to St. Cyril for when I said that St. Hilary asserted that the wicked should be annihilated by the Fire of Hell Tom. 2. p. 76. This as this Father saith is not that they should be totally annihilated but that they are reduced to an Estate which approacheth to nothing non in nihilum dissoluti sed in inane ac leve aridumque protriti And as to St. Cyril I confess that by a mistake I have slipt into the Version of his Passage the Name of Jesus Christ instead of that of God translating the Soul is immortal because of Jesus Christ who gave it immortality where it should be translated because of God who gave it immortality but I had no intention to ascribe to him by this any Error concerning the Immortality of the Soul As to Original Sin I acknowledge it 's a Doctrine of Faith which hath always been believed in the Church it is a Truth of which none shall find that I ever doubted but when I asserted that St. Cyprian was the first that had spoken very clearly of it Tom. 1. p. 142. that the Fathers of the three first Ages seem not to be all agreed whether Children were born in sin and worthy of damnation p. 180. I did not pretend by this to deny that the first Fathers did own it but I intended only that they had not spoke so clearly of it as St. Cyprian However because this may be brought against the Tradition of this Doctrine and that moreover I have found that St. Justin St. Irenaeus Tertullian and Origen do speak very clearly of Original Sin I do declare that I will not maintain these Propofitions nor insist upon the Answers which I have given to the Passages of these Authors to prove that they did not teach Original Sin so clearly as St. Cyprian I acknowledge also that St. Chrysostom believed Original Sin even as St. Augustin hath explained it since excepting the Punishment of Sense for Children dead without Baptism and that he hath not made this Sin consist in the inclination to Evil only but also in the Guilt which is the Principle of it In this Sense is to be understood what I have said of the Agreement of his Opinion with that of Divines Tom. 3. Part. I. p. 35. which I would not oppose to that of St. Augustin as to the main but only as to the way of speaking and as to that Punishment of Sense inflicted on Children dead without Baptism I would have it acknowledged that these Two Fathers are entirely agreed as to the main Point of Doctrine and that both of them taught that Children were born in Sin and that they were purged of it by Baptism I acknowledge that the Name of the Mother of God which the Church giveth to the Virgin is of Apostolical Tradition and that it is not only an Expression Innocent but Sacred in all times of the Church and that not only we may but also that we ought to call the Virgin the Mother of God seeing she is so really and whereever I have used the Term Innocent upon the Occasion of this Name of the Mother of God I have not intended that it had no more but this Quality but designed to shew how far the Obstinacy and Error of Nestorius reached who denied not only that we ought to use this expression but even also that we might do it lawfully I do profess to own the Doctrine of Purgatory as it is held in the Church and as it hath been defined in the Councils of Florence and Trent and that it is a Tenet well established upon the Doctrines of the Fathers of the three first Ages and so it must not be said Universally as I have done in my Answer to the Remarks P. 61 and 64. that we find nothing of it positively in the Fathers of the first three Ages and
the event of what passed at Ephesus was if I may so say under the Power of the Emperor and that the success of the Council depended upon the Resolutions the Court should take I did not thereby intend that the Definition of the Council of Ephesus and the Condemnation of Nestorius depended on the Will of the Emperor as to the Right and Obligation of submitting thereto but only as to the External Execution and Publication For it must have happened if the Emperor had continued to be deceived that he would have Persecuted the Catholicks opposed the Truth and protected Violence and Error for sometime but this is nothing to the Validity of the Council or the Solidity of its Decision which no ways depended on the Judgment of the Emperor nor on the Resolutions of the Court. Having said P. 201. That the Emperor consented to the deprivation of Nestorius and to that of St. Cyril and Memnon because of their Caballing I designed not to approve this Conduct of the Emperor nor to accuse St. Cyril of Caballing but only to mark that the Emperor was prepossessed falsly by Acacius of Berea that St. Cyril and Memnon had Caballed together Tho it seems to me that I have given very solid Answers to the Objections which I have brought against the Council of Ephesus nevertheless because some have been offended at the Objections I agree with them that I had done better not to have related them in a Frenck Book We may also add to the Answers that there was nothing done in the Council with Precipitation That all the Matter was prepared and discussed beforehand That St. Cyril held it not only at the time when it ought to have been held but that it was morally impossible to delay it That the Zeal which actuated this Father was commendable and according to knowledge That there came Bishops from the farthest parts who arrived much before John of Antioch That 't is certain that John of Antioch designed not to come to the Council and that he was very glad to have it begun that he might have a pretext for keeping away from it That Nestorius was sufficiently convinced out of his own Writings of not admitting a real and Hypostatical Union in Jesus Christ That there is no regard to be had to the Judgment of Isidorus Dam. who only spoke by confused Reports That the Error of Nestorius was so evident and so horrible that it was just to Condem it in such Terms as might denote the horror which we ought to have for his Heresie such as these Nestorius another Judas Tom. 3. Part 2. p. 2 14. That they did examin carefully and related faithfully the Extracts of Nestorius's Books in this Synod and lastly that all was transacted there Legally and Canonically As to the Sentiment of Nestorius it is true that he never durst openly say that there were two Christs and two Persons but he said what was equivalent denying the Hypostatical Union of the two Natures admitting only a Moral Union betwixt them as appears by a great many passages in his Writings He held not the Error of Paulus Samosatenus and of Arius concerning the Divinity of the Word who did not admit of any Union of the Divine Nature with the Human as Father Garner hath observed before me but he erred expresly and in formal Terms concerning this Union admitting only betwixt the two Natures an Union Moral and Apparent and not Real and Substantial of which Error it was easie to convince him by his Writings tho he disguised it in some places So when I say Tom. 3. Part 2. p. 42. That if we appeal to his Writings it doth appear that he hath maintained that the Word was united with the Humane Nature by a very intimate and strict union However this is not to to be understood of his true Sentiment nor of all that he hath said but only of some places in which he hath affected as Hereticks do the use of Catholick Terms For in many other place he discovers visibly his Error as I have marked Page 43. p. 215. and if their be any Expressions in my Work which may give another Idea of him I declare that 't is against my intention and I do beseech the Reader to take them in this Sense And when Isaid p. 42. That he always said that he could not own that God was born that God suffered that God died and that his Error consisted only in this I in no wise pretend to make it consist only in the refusal which he made of these Expressions acknowledging that he did really admit a Moral Union betwixt the two Natures and that he would have two Persons in Jesus Christ which was the reason why he would not admit the Consequences of the Unity of one Person alone These words in the beginning of the History of the Council of Chalcedon Tom. 3. Part 2. p. 230. That this Assembly had turned into a confused Rout if the Commissaries of the Emperor had not put a stop to the tumultuary Exclamations which were made there by advertising the Bishops that it was unworthy of them to behave themselves after such a manner I say these words not appearing respectful enough to that Council which I honour I wish I had not used them tho' I did it innocently and without any bad intention When I said Tom. 4. pag. 146. That it had been better not to have moved the affair of the three Chapters I designed that this Censure should only fall upon what preceded the time of the Council and on the Person of Theodorus who stirred up Justinian to push on this Affair As to the Council I acknowledge that as Affairs stood then and seeing how far the Assembly was carried on that it was absolutely necessary for the good of the Church to pass the Condemnation of the three Chapters and that all the Catholicks ought to have submitted to it that they had reason to condemn Theodorus after his Death and that that Conduct of Anathematizing the Dead may be followed as the Church hath often done since that they had reason also to condemn the Letter of Ibas and the Writings of Theodoret thus I disown what I have said to the contrary p. 146. and what follows As to the matter of Images the Worship of which is determined in the second Council of Nice I acknowledge that this Council is a General and Lawful one and that therefore there is a perfect submission due to it acknowledging for an Article of Faith all which it hath decreed and that all its Proofs are not drawn from supposed Monuments and Apocryphal Passages of the Scripture and Fathers which prove nothing that there are there very solid Proofs and unanswerable drawn either from Scripture or the Writings of the Fathers or other Pieces of Antiquity I did not intend to make any comparison betwixt this Council and the false Council of Constantinople against Images nor to speak of them as two opposite Parties I