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
to give me leave to set down here the whole Passage at length As for these kind of Books saith he speaking of those Books which we Write not with Authority of Commanding but only out of a Design of exercising our selves to benefit others we are so to read them as not being bound necessarily to believe them but as having a liberty left us of judging of what we read Yet notwithstanding that we may not quite shut out these Books and deprive posterity of the most profitable labour of exercising their Language and Stile in the handling and treating of hard Questions we make a Distinction betwixt these Books of Later Writers and the Excellency of the Canonical Authority of the Old and New Testament which having been confirmed in the Apostles time hath since by the Bishops who succeeded them and the Churches which have been propagated throughout the World been placed as it were upon a high Throne there to be reverenced and adored by every Faithful and Godly Vnderstanding And if we chance here to meet with any thing that troubleth us and seemeth Absurd we must not say that the Author of the Book was ignorant of the truth but rather that either our Copy is false or the Interpreter is mistaken in the sense of the place or else that we understand not him aright And as for the Writings of those other Authors who have come after Them the number whereof is almost infinite though coming very far short of this most sacred Excellency of the Canonical Scriptures a man may sometimes find in them the very same truth though it shall not be of equal Authority And therefore if by chance we here meet with such things as seem contrary to the Truth by reason perhaps of our not understanding them only we have our Liberty either in reading or hearing the same to approve of what we like and to reject that which we conceive not to be so right So that except all such passages be made good either by some certain reason or else by the Canonical Authority of the Scriptures and that it be made appear that the thing asserted either really it or else at least that it might have been he that shall reject or not assent to the same ought not in any wise to be reprehended And thus far have we S. Augustine testifying on our side as well here as in many other places which would be too long to be inserted here that those opinions which we find delivered by the Fathers in their Writings are grounded not upon their bare Authority but upon their Reasons and that they bind not our belief otherwise than so far forth as they are consonant either to the Scripture or to Reason and that they ought to be examined by the one and the other as proceeding from persons that are not infallible but possibly may have erred So that it appears from hence that the course which is at this day observed in the World is not of sufficiency enough for the discovery and demonstration of the truth For we are now in doubt suppose what the sense and meaning is of such a piece of Scripture Here shall you presently have the judgment of a Father brought upon the said place quite contrary to the Rule S. Augustine giveth us who would have us examine the Fathers by the Scriptures and not the Scriptures by the Fathers Certainly according to the judgment of this Father the Protestant though a Passage as clear and express as any of the Canons of the Council of Trent should be brought against him out of any of the Fathers ought not to be blamed if he should answer that he cannot by any means assent unto it unless the truth of it be first proved unto him either by some certain Reason or else by the Authority of the Canonical Scriptures and that then and not till then he shall be ready to assent unto it So that according to this Account we are to alledge not the Names but the Reasons of Books to take notice not of the Quality of their Authors but of the Solidity of their Proofs to consider what it is they give us and not the face or hand of him that gives it us and in a word to reduce the dispute from Persons to Things And S. Jerome also seemeth to commend unto us this manner of Proceeding where in the Preface to his second Commentary upon Hosea he hath these words Then saith he that is after the Authors of Books are once departed this life we judge of their worth and parts only not considering at all the Dignity of their Name and the Reader hath regard only to what he reads and not to the Author whose it is So that whether he were a Bishop or a Lay-man a General and a Lord or a common Souldier and a Servant whether he lie in Purple and in Silk or in the vilest and coursest rags he shall be judged not according to his degree of honour but according to the merit and worth of his Works Now he here speaks either of matter of Right or of Fact and his meaning is that either we ought to take this course in our Judgments or else it is a plain Affirmation that it is the practice of the World so to do If his words are to be taken in the first sense he then clearly takes away all Authority from the bare Names of Writers and so would have us to consider the Quality only and weight of their Writings that is to say their Reasons and the force of the Arguments they use If he be to be understood in the second sense he seemeth not to speak truth it being evident that the ordinary course of the world is to be more taken with the titles and names of Books than with the things therein contained But supposing however that this was S. Hieroms meaning we may notwithstanding very safely believe that he approveth of the said course for as much as having this occasion of speaking of it he doth not at all reprehend it If therefore thou hast any mind to stand to his judgment lay me aside the Names of Augustine and of Hierome of Chrysostome and of Cyril and forget for this once the Rochet of the first and the Chair of the second together with the Patriarchal Robe of the two last and observe what they say and not what they were the ground and reason of their opinions and not the dignity of their persons But that which makes me very much wonder is that some of those who have been the most conversant in Antiquity should trouble themselves in stuffing up their Books with declamatory expressions in praise of the Authors they produce not forbearing to recount to you so much as the Nobleness of their Extraction the choiceness of their Education the gallantry of their Parts the eminency of their See and the greatness of their State This manner of writing may perhaps suit well enough with
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
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
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
the precepts of Rhetorick but sure I am that it agreeth ill enough with S. Hierom's rule which we gave you a little before But let us now observe out of some other more clear and express passages of his what the judgment of this great Aristarchus and Censor of Antiquity hath been touching this Point I know saith he writing to Theophilus Patriarch of Alexandria that I place the Apostles in a distinct rank from all other Writers for as for them they always speak truth but as for those other they erre sometimes like Men as they were What could he have said more expresly in confirmation of our Assertion before laid down There are others saith he both Greeks and Latins who have erred also in Points of Faith whose Names I need not here set down lest I might seem to defend Origen by the Errors of others rather than by his own Worth How then can we confide in them unless we examine their Opinions by their Reasons I shall faith the same Author read Origen as I read others because I find he hath erred in like manner as they have done And in another place speaking in general of Ecclesiastical Writers that is of those which We now call Fathers and of the Faults and Errors that are found in their Books It may be saith he that either they have erred out of meer ignorance or else that they wrote in some other Sense than we understand them or that their Writings have by degrees been corrupted through the ignorance of the Transcribers or else before the appearing of that impudent Devil Arius in the World they let some things fall from them innocently and not so warily as they might have done and such as can hardly escape the Cavils of wrangling Spirits Which Passage of his is a very excellent and remarkable one and containeth in it a brief yet a clear and full Justification of the greatest part of what we have hitherto delivered in this our Discourse Do but think therefore with how much circumspection we are to read and to weigh these Authors and how careful we ought to be in examining in their Books whether there be not either some fault committed by the Transcriber or some obscurity in the Expression or some negligence in the Conception or lastly some error in the Proposition In another place having set down the Opinions As for their Expositions he resuseth them openly whensoever they do not please him Thus doth he find fault with the Exposition which is given by the greatest part of the Fathers of the Word Israel which they will have to signifie A Man seeing God Notwithstanding that those who interpret it thus are Persons of very great both Authority and Eloquence and whose very shadow saith he in sufficient to bear us down yet cannot we chuse but follow the Authority of the Scriptures and of the Angel and of God who gave this Name of Israel rather than the Power of any Secular Eloquence how great soever it be And in his CXLVI Epistle written to Pope Damasus he saith That there are some who not considering the Text conceive Superstitiously rather than Truly that these words in the beginning of the XLIV Psalm Eâ—â—ctavit cor meum verbum bonum My heart is inditing a good matter are spoken in the Person of the Father And yet the greatest part of those who lived in the time of Arius and a little after him understood these words in the same sense It was likewise the General Opinion in a manner of all Men That Adam was buried upon Mount Calvary and in the very same place where our Saviour Christ was crucified And yet S. Hierome rejecteth this Opinion and which is more he makes himself merry with it without any scruple at all So likewise there were some among the afore-named Ancient Fathers who out of a Pious Affection which they bare to S. Peter maintained That he denied not God but Man and that the sense of the Words of his Denial is I know not him to be a Man for I know that he is God The Intelligent Reader saith the same S. Hierome will easily perceive how idle and frivolous a thing this is to accuse our Saviour as guilty of a Lie by excusing his Apostle For if S. Peter did not deny him our Saviour must necessarily then have lied when he said unto him Verily I say unto thee c. He takes the same liberty also in reprehending S. Ambrose who understands by Gog spoken of in the Prophet Ezechiel the Nation of the Gothes neither do those other Fathers scape his Lash who pleasing themselves too much with their Allegories take Bosra in Isaiah for the Flesh whereas it signifies a Fortress I might here produce very many the like Passages but these few shall now serve as a Taste onely For who seeth not by this time that these Holy Men took not the Fathers who went before them for the Judges or Arbitrators touching the Opinions of the Church and that they did not receive their Testimonies and Depositions as Oracles but reserved the Right which S. Augustine alloweth to every Man of examining them by the Rule of Reason and of the Scripture Neither are we to take any notice at all of S. Hierome when he seems to except out of this number the Writings of Athanasius and of S. Hilary writing to Laeta and telling her That her Daughter Paula might walk securely and with firm footing by the Epistles of the one and the Books of the other and therefore he counselleth her to take delight in these Mens Writings forasmuch as in their Books the Piety of Faith wavereth not And as for all other Authors she may read them but rather to pass her judgment upon them than to follow them For first of all although perhaps there should be some Piece of a Father that should have no Error at all in it as questionless there are many such yet would not this render the Authority of the same Infallible How many such Books are there even of the Moderns wherein neither the one Party nor the other hath been able to discover any the least Error in matter of Faith And yet I suppose no Man will presently conclude from hence that we ought to admit of these Authors as Judges of our Faith A Man may there find of several Authors touching a certain Question that had been proposed unto him that so the Reader might make choice of the best he gives this Reason of his so doing Because saith he we ought not according to the Example of Pythagoras his Scholars to have an eye to the Prejudicated Opinion of the Proposer but rather the Reason of the Thing Proposed Which words of his do sufficiently confirm the Sense which we have formerly given of that Passage of his in the Preface to his second Commentary upon Hosea He presently afterwards adds My purpose is
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
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
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
by him making good that which is Doubtful by that which is Certain and clearing that which is Obscure by that which is Evident And this is the Rule that I conceive we ought to walk by in the Disputes that are betwixt us at this day The Word of God is our Common Book let us therefore search into It for that upon which we may ground our own Belief and by which we may overthrow the Opinion of our Adversary As for example it is there said clearly and expresly That that which our Saviour Christ took at his Last Supper was Bread and herein we All agree But it is not at all there expressed whether this Bread were afterward changed or annihilated or not And this is now the Question in Dispute amongst us We ought therefore according to the Counsel of Scholarius to prove this by some other things which are there delivered clearly And if thou dost this thou hast got the Victory If not I do not at all see why or how thou canst oblige any one to believe it In like manner the Scripture telleth us in as express Terms as may be That our Saviour Christ commanded His Apostles to Take and Eat and to Drink that which He gave them in Celebrating the Eucharist But It doth not at all say that he commanded them to Offer the same in Sacrifice either Then or Afterwards And this is now the Question which it concerns those of the Church of Rome if they will have us believe it to prove by some other things which are clearly and expresly delivered in the Word of God The Scripture in like manner saith expresly That Jesus Christ is the Mediator betwixt God and Man and That He is the Head of the Church and That He purgeth us by His Blood from our Sins Now in all this both Sides are fully agreed But it is not at all there expressed That the Departed Saints are Mediators and That the Pope is the Head of the Church and That our Souls are in part cleansed from their Sins by the Fire of Purgatory And herein lies the Controversie betwixt us The Learned Scholarius his Opinion herein would now be that certainly those who propose these Points as Articles of Faith deduce and collect them from some things which are clearly delivered in the Scriptures for otherwise they are not to be pressed as Truths And although that in matters of Religion or indeed in any other things of Importance a Man may very well be excused for not believing a thing when there appears not any such Reason as may oblige him to believe it yet notwithstanding if those who reject the Articles now debated betwixt us have a mind to go further yet and to prove positively the Falseness of them you see this Author hath laid them down the way by which they are to proceed He accounteth those very absurd that require at your hands that you should shew them all things expresly delivered in the Scripture and this ought principally to be understood of Negative Propositions of which no Science giveth you any certain account forasmuch as to go about to number them all up would be both an infinite and also an unprofitable useless piece of Work It is sufficient to deliver the Positive Truth For as whatsoever rightly followeth thereupon is True in like manner whatsoever clasheth with or contradicteth the same is False wouldst thou therefore demonstrate those Propositions that are pressed upon thee to be False Do but compare them with those things that are clearly and expresly delivered in the Scripture And if thou findest them contrary to any thing there set down receive them not by any means As for example If a Protestant not contenting himself with having answered all those Reasons which are brought to prove that there is such a Place as Purgatory shall yet desire to go further and to make it appear that the Opinion is False he is in this case to have recourse to the Scriptures and to examine it by those things which are there clearly and expresly delivered touching the State of the Soul after it is departed this Life and touching the Cause and Means of the Expiation of our Sins and the like And if the Opinion of Purgatory be found to contradict any thing there delivered then according to Scholarius it ought not to be received by any means But the brevity which we proposed to our selves in this Discourse permitteth us not to prosecute this Point any further As for the Second Question it is no very hard matter to resolve it For although we do not indeed allow any Supreme and Infallible Authority to the Writings of the Fathers yet do we not therefore presently account them Vseless If there were nothing of Vse in Religion saving what was also Infallible we should have but little good of any Humane Writings Those who have written in our own Age or a little before are of no Authority at all either against the one or the other Party Yet notwithstanding do we both read them and also reap much benefit from them How much more advantage then may we make by studying the Writings of the Fathers whose Piety and Learning was for the most part much greater than that of the Moderns S. Augustine believed them not in any thing otherwise than as he found what they delivered to be grounded upon Reason and yet notwithstanding he had them in a very great esteem The like may be said of S. Hierome who had read almost all of them over notwithstanding that he takes liberty sometimes to reprove them something sharply where he finds them not speaking to his mind Though you should deprive them not onely of this Supremacy which yet they never sought after but should rob them also of their Proper Nomes yet notwithstanding would they still be of very great Vse unto us For Books do not therefore profit us because they were of such or such a Man 's Writing but rather because they instruct us in those things that are Good and Honest and keep us out of Errour and make us abhor those things that are Vicious Blot out if you please the Name of S. Augustine out of the Title of those excellent Books of his De Civitate Dei or those other which he wrote De Doctrinâ Christianâ His Writings will instruct you never a whit the less neither will you find any whit the less benefit by them The like may be said of all the rest First of all therefore you shall find in the Fathers very many earnest and zealous Exhortations to Holiness of Life and to the Observation of the Discipline of Jesus Christ Secondly you shall there meet with very strong and solid Proofs of those Fundamental Principles of our Religion touching which we are all agreed and also many excellent things laid open tending to the right understanding of these Mysteries and also of the Scriptures wherein they are contained In this very particular their Authority may be of
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
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
lawful and also very useful to pray to Saints departed and to Angels That our Souls after death before they enter into Heaven are to pass through a certain Fire and there to endure grievous Torments thus satisfying for their Sins That one neither may nor ought to receive the holy Eucharist without having first confessed himself in private to a Priest That none but the Priest himself that consecrated the Eucharist is bound by right to receive it in both kinds And a great number of other Opinions which their Adversaries protest plainly That they cannot with a safe conscience believe And these Points are the ground of the whole Difference betwixt them the one Party pretending That they have been believed and received by the Church of Christ in all Ages as revealed by him and the other maintaining the contrary Now seeing that none of these Tenets having any ground from any Passage in the New Testament which is the most Ancient and Authentick Rule of Christianity the Maintainers are fain to fly to the Writings of the Doctors of the Church which lived within the four or five first Centuries after the Apostles who are commonly called the Fathers my purpose is in this Treatise to examine whether or no this be a good and sufficient means for the decision of these Differences And for this purpose I must first presuppose two things which any reasonable Person will easily grant me The first is That the Question being here about laying a Foundation for certain Articles of Faith upon the Testimonies or Opinions of the Fathers it is very necessary that the Passages which are produced out of them be clear and not to be doubted of that is to say such as we cannot reasonably scruple at either touching the Author out of whom they are alledged or the Sense of the Place whether it signifie what is pretended to For a Deposition of a Witness and the Sentence of a Judge being of no value at all save onely for the reputation of the Witness or Judge it is most evident that if either proceed from Persons unknown or suspected they are invalid and prove nothing at all In like manner if the Deposition of a Witness or Sentence of a Judge be obscure and in doubtful Terms it is clear that in this case the Business must rest undecided there being another Doubt first to be cleared namely What the meaning of either of them was The second Point that I shall here lay down for a Foundation to the ensuing Discourse is no less evident than the former namely That to allow a sufficiency to the Writings of the Fathers for the deciding of these Controversies we must necessarily attribute to their Persons very great Authority and such as may oblige us to follow their Judgment in Matters of Religion For if this Authority be wanting how clear and express soever their Opinions be in the Articles now controverted it will do nothing at all toward their Decision We have therefore here two things to examine in this Business The first is Whether or not we may be able now certainly and clearly to know what the Opinion of the Fathers hath been touching the Differences now in hand The second Whether their Authority be such as that whatever faithful Person shall clearly and certainly know what their Opinion hath been in any one Article of Christian Religion he is thereby bound to receive that Article for True For if the Church of Rome be but able to prove both these Points it is then without all dispute that their Proceeding is good and agreeable to the End proposed there being so many of the Ancient Fathers Writings alledged at this day by them But if on the contrary side either of these Two things or both of them be indeed found to be doubtful I should think that any Man of a very mean Judgment should be able to conclude of himself That this way of Proof which they have hitherto made use of is very insufficient and that therefore they of necessity ought to have recourse to some other more proper and solid way in the Proof of the Truth of the said Opinions which the Protestants will not by any means receive THE FIRST BOOK CHAP. I. REASON I. Touching the Difficulty of knowing the Sense of the Fathers in reference to the present Controversies in Religion drawn from hence Namely Because there is very little extant of Their Writings for the Three First Centuries IF we should in this particular take the same course which some Writers of the Church of Rome make use of against the Holy Scriptures it would be a very easie matter to bring in question and render very doubtful and suspected all the Writings of the Fathers For when any one alledgeth the Old or New Testament these Gentlemen presently demand How or by what means they know that any such Books were truly written by those Prophets and Apostles under whose Names they go If therefore in like manner when these Men urge Justin Irenaeus Ambrose Augustine and the like one should take them short and demand of them How and by what means they are assured that these Fathers were the Authors of those Writings which at this day go under their Names it is very much to be doubted but that they would find a harder Task of it than their Adversaries in justifying the Inscriptions of the Books of Holy Writ the Truth whereof is much more easie to be demonstrated than of any Humane Writings whatsoever But I pass by this too-artificial way of Proceeding and onely say That it is no very easie matter to find out by the Writings of the Fathers what hath really beeen their Opinion in any of those Controversies which are now in debate betwixt the Protestant and the Church of Rome The Considerations which render the knowledge of this so difficult are many I shall therefore in this First Part handle some of them onely referring the rest to the Later examining them one after another The first Reason therefore which I shall lay down for the proving of this Difficulty is The little we have extant of the Writings of the Ancient Fathers especially of the First Second and Third Centuries which are those we are most especially to regard For seeing that one of the principal Reasons that moveth the Church of Rome to alledge the Writings of the Fathers is to shew the Truth of their Tenets by the Antiquity which they reckon as a Mark of it it is most evident that the most Ancient ought to be the most taken notice of And indeed there is no question to be made but that the Christian Religion was more pure and without mixture in its beginnings and Infancy than it was afterwards in its Growth and Progress it being the ordinary course of Things to contract Corruptions more or less according as they are more or less removed from their first Institution As we see by experience in States Laws Arts and Languages the Natural Propriety 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
but certainly not on their side who maintain them affirmatively But however this is a most certain truth That throughout the whole Body of the genuine Writings of these Fathers you shall not meet with any thing expresly urged either for or against the greatest part of these Opinions I shall most willingly confess That the belief of every Wise man makes up but One entire Body the Parts whereof have a certain correspondence and relation to each other in such sort as that a Man may be able by those things which he delivers expresly to give a guess what his Opinion is touching other things which he declares himself not at all in it being a thing utterly improbable that he maintains any one Position which shall manifestly clash with his other Tenets or that he rejects any thing that necessarily followeth upon them But besides that this manner of Disputation presupposeth that the Belief of the Ancient Fathers hangs all close together no one Position contradicting another but having all its Parts united and depending one upon another which notwithstanding is not altogether unquestionable as we shall shew elsewhere Besides all this I say it requireth also a sharp piercing Wit which readily and clearly apprehends the Connexions of each several Point an excellent Memory to retain faithfully whatever Positions the Ancients have maintained and a solid Judgment free from all pre-occupation to compare them with the Tenets maintained at this day And what Man soever is endued with all these Qualities I shall account him the fittest Man to make profitable Use of the Writings of the Fathers and the likeliest of any to search into the bottom of them But the mischief of it is that Men so qualified are very rare and hard to be found I shall add here That if you will believe some certain Writers of the Church of Rome this whole Method is vain and useless as is also that which makes use of Argumentation and Reason means which are insufficient and unable in the judgment of these Doctors to bring us to any certainty especially in Matters of Religion wherein their Opinion is we are to rely upon clear and express Texts onely So that according to this account we will not if we be wife believe that the Fathers held any of the aforenamed Points unless we can find them in express terms delivered in their Writings that is to say in the very same terms that we read them in the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent Seeing then that according to the Opinion of these Men those Testimonies onely are to be received which are express and likewise that of these Points now controverted there is searcely any thing found expresly delivered by the Fathers we may in my Opinion very Logically and reasonably conclude that it is if not an impossible yet at least a very difficult thing according to these Men to come to the certain knowledge of the Opinion of the Ancients touching the greatest part of the Tenets of the Church of Rome which are at this day rejected by the Protestants CHAP. III. Reason III. That those Writings which go under the Names of the Ancient Fathers are not all truly such but a great part of them suppositions and forged either long since or of later Times I Come now to more important Considerations these two former though they are not in themselves to be despised or neglected being yet but trivial ones in respect of those which follow For there is so great a confusion in the most part of these Books whereof we speak that it is a very hard thing truly to find out who were their Authors and what the Meaning and Sense of them is The first Difficulty proceeds from the infinite number of Forged Books which are falsly attributed to the Ancient Fathers The like having hapned also in all sorts of Learning and Sciences insomuch that the Criticks at this day are sufficiently troubled in discovering both in Philosophy and Humanity which are forged and supposititious Pieces and which are true and legitimate But this Abuse hath not reigned any where more grosly and taken to it self more liberty than toward the Ecclesiastical Writers All Men complain on this both on the one side and on the other and labour all they can to deliver us from these Confusions though oftentimes with little success by reason of the eagerness of their Passion by which they are carried away ordinarily judging of Books according to their own Interest rather than the Truth and rejecting all those that any whit contradict them but defending those which speak of their side how good or bad soever they otherwise chance to be So that to say the truth they judge not of their own Opinions by the Writings of the Fathers but of the Writings of the Fathers by their own Opinions If they speak with Us it is then Cyprian and Chrysostome if not it is some Ignorant Modern Fellow or else some Malicious Person who would fain cover his own filthiness under the rich Garment of these excellent Persons Now if it were Passion onely that rendered the Business obscure we should be able easily to quit our hands of it by stripping it and laying it open to the World and all moderate Men would find enough to rest satisfied with But the worst of it is that this Obscurity oftentimes falls out to be in the things themselves so that it is a very hard and sometimes an impossible thing to clear them whether it be by reason of the Antiquity of the Errour or else by reason of the near resemblance of the â—alse to the True For these Forgeries are not new and of yesteryesterday but the Abuse hath been on foot above fourteen hundred years It is the complaint of the greatest part of the Fathers That the Hereticks to gain their own Dreams the greater Authority vented them under the Names of some of the most eminent Writers in the Church and even of the Apostles themselves Amphilochius Bishop of Iconium who was so much esteemed by the great S. Basil Archbishop of Caesarea wrote a particular Tract on this Subject alledged by the Fathers of the Seventh Council against a certain Passage produced by the Iconoclasts out of I know not what idle Treatise entituled The Travels of the Apostles And I would to God that Tract of this Learned Prelate were now extant if it were it would perhaps do us good service in discovering the Vanity of very many ridiculous Pieces which now pass up and down the World under the Names of the Primitive and most Ancient Christians S. Hierome rejecteth divers Apocryphal Books which are published under the Names of the Apostles and of their first Disciples as namely of S. Peter of Barnabas and others The Gospel of S. Thomas and the Epistle to the Laodiceans are put in the same rank by the Seventh Council Now if these wretched Knaves have been thus sawcy with the Apostles as to make use of
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
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
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
and that there can be no great danger either in putting in or at least in leaving any thing in that may yield assistance to it whatsoever the issue of either of these may in the end prove to be And hence hath it come to pass that we have so many ancient Forgeries and also so many strange stories of Miracles and of Visions many taking a delight in feigning as S. Hierome says great Combats which they have had with Devils in Desarts all which things are meerly fabulous in themselves and acknowledged too to be so by the most intelligent of them yet notwithstanding are tolerated and sometimes also recommended to them forasmuch as they account them useful for the setling or encreasing either of the Faith or Devotion of the People What will you say if at this day there are some even of those Men who make profession of being the greatest haters in the world of these subtilties who cannot nevertheless put forth any Book but they must needs be lopping off or falsifying whatsoever doth not wholly agree with the Doctrine they hold for true fearing as themselves say lest such things coming to the eye of the simple Common People might infect them and possess their Heads with new Fancies So firmly hath this Opinion been of old rooted in the Nature of Man Now I will not here dispute whether this proceeding of theirs be lawful or not I shall only say by the way That in my judgment it is a very great shame for the Truth to be established or defended by such falsifications and shifts as if it had not sufficient Weapons both defensive and offensive of its own but that it must be fain to borrow of its Adversary and it is besides a very dangerous course too because that the discovery of any one Cheat oftentimes renders their Cause who practised it wholly suspected insomuch that by making use of such slights as these in Christian Religion either for the gaining to you or confirming the faith of some of the simpler People it is to be feared that you may give distaste to the more understanding sort and so by this means at length may chance to lose the Affections of the simpler sort too But whatsoever this course of Cheating be either in it self or in its Consequences it is sufficient for my purpose that it hath been a long time practised in the Church in matters of Religion for proof whereof I shall here produce some Instances The Hereticks have always been accused of using this Artifice but I shall not here set down what Alterations have been made by the Ancientest of them even in the Scriptures themselves If you would have a Taste of this Practice of theirs go but to Tertullian and Epiphanius and you shall there see how Marcion had clipped and altered the Gospel of S. Luke and those Epistles of S. Paul which he allowed to be such Neither have those other of the Ages following been any whit more conscientious in this Particular as may appear by those Complaints made by Ruffinus in his Exposition upon the Apostle's Creed and in another Treatise written by him purposely on this Subject which is indeed contradicted by S. Hierome but onely in his Hypothesis as to what concerned Origen but not absolutely in his Thesis and by the like Complaints of S. Cyril and divers others of the Ancients and among the Moderns by those very Persons also who have put forth the General Councils at Rome who inform us in the Preface to the First Volume That Time and the Fraud of the Hereticks have been the cause that the Acts of the said Councils have not come to our hands neither entire nor pure and sincere that which hath remained of them and before they grievously bewail that we should be thus deprived of so great and so precious a Treasure Now this Testimony of theirs to me is worth a thousand others seeing it comes from such who in my opinion are evidently interested to speak quite otherwise For if the Church of Rome who is the pretended Mistress and Trustee of the Faith hath suffered any part of the Councils to perish and be lost which is esteemed by them as the Code of the Church what then may the rest have suffered also And what may not the Hereticks and Schismaticks have been able to do And if all these Evidences have been altered by their Fraud how shall we be able by them to come to the knowledge of the Sense and Judgment of the Ancients I confess I am very much amaâ—ed to see these Men make so much reckoning of the Acts of the Councils and to make such grievous Complaints against the Hereticks for having suppressed some of them For if these things are of such use why then do they themselves keep from us the Acts of the Council of Trent which is the most considerable Council both for them and their Party that hath been held in the Christian Church these eight hundred years If it be a Crime in the Hereticks to have kept from us these precious Jewels why are not they afraid lest the blame which they lay on others may chance to return upon themselves But doubtless there is something in the Business that renders these Cases different and I confess I wonder they publish it not the simpler sort for want of being otherwise informed thinking perhaps though it may be without cause that the reason why the Acts of this last Council are kept so close from them is because they know that the publishing of them would be either prejudicial or at least unprofitable to the Greatness of the Church of Rome And they also again on the other side conceive that in those other Acts which they say have been suppressed by the Hereticks there were wonderful Matters to be found for the greater advancing and supporting of the Church of Rome Whatsoever the Reason be I cannot but commend the Ingenuity of these Men who notwithstanding their Interest which seemeth to engage them to the contrary have yet nevertheless confessed That the Councils which we have at this day are neither entire nor uncorrupted But let us now examine whether or no even the Orthodox Party themselves have not also contributed something to this Alteration of the Writings of the Primitive Church Epiphanius reports That in the true and most correct Copies of S. Luke it was written that Jesus Christ wept and that this passage had been alledged by S. Irenaeus but that the Catholicks had blotted out this Word fearing that the Hereticks might abuse it Whether this Relation be true or false I must relie upon the Credit of the Author But this I shall say That it seems to me a clear Argument That these Ancient Catholicks would have made no great scruple of blotting out of the Writings of the Fathers any Word that they found to contradict their own Opinions and Judgment and that with the same Liberty that they inform us
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
Synodical Decrees of certain Bishops lately Printed at Paris Wo wo to speak with the Prophet to these mischievous Knaves who do not only lay such treacherous snares for the venerable Chastity and Integrity of the Muses but do also most impudently and wickedly dâ—flour under a false and counterfeit pretence of Religion even the Muses themselves accounting this jugling to be but a kind of Pious Fraud But we do not here write against these Men it is sufficient for us to give a hint only of that which is as clear as the Sun namely that these Men have altered and corrupted by their Additions in some places and gelding of others very many of the Evidences of the Ancients Belief These are they who in this Period of the XII Epistle of S. Cyprian written to the People of Carthage I desire that they would but patiently hear our Counsel c. that our Fellow-Bishops being assembled together with us we may together examine the Letters and Desires of the Blessed Martyrs according to the Doctrine of our Lord and in the presence of the Confessors secundum vestram quoque sententiam and according as you also shall think convenient have maliciously left out these words secundum vestram quoque sententiam By which we may plainly understand that these Men would not by any means have us know that the Faithful People had ever any thing to do with or had any Vote in the Affairs of the Church These be they who in his Fortieth Epistle have changed Petram into Petrum a Rock into S. Peter and who following the steps of the ancient Corrupters have foisted in in his Tract De Vnitate Ecclesiae here and there as they thought fit whole Periods and Sentences against the faith of the best and most uncorrupted Manuscripts as for example in this place He built his Church on him alone S. Peter and commanded him to feed his sheep and in this He established one sole Chair and this other The Primacy was given to Peter to shew that there was but one Church and one Chair of Christ and this Who left the Chair to Peter on which he had built his Church Which are Additions that every one may see what they aim at These are the Men who cannot conceal the regret they have for not having suppressed an Epistle of Firmilianus Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia who was one of the most Eminent Persons in his Time which Epistle Manutius had indeed omitted in his Roman Edition of S. Cyprian but was afterward put in by Morellius in his amongst the Epistles of S. Cyprian to whom it was written and all because it informs us how the other Bishops in ancient Times had dealt with the Pope So that we may hence observe of what temper these Men have always been and may guess how many the like Pieces have been killed in the Nest Out of the like Shop it is that poor S. Ambrose is sent abroad but so ill accoutred and in so pittiful a plight that Nicolas Faber hath very much be wailed the corruption of him For those Gentlemen who have published him being over ingenuous as he saith in another mans Works have changed mangled and transposed divers things and particularly they have separated the Books of the Interpellation of Job and of David which were put together in all other Editions and to do this they have by no very commendable example foisted in and altered divers things and they have likewise done as much in the First Apologie of David and more yet in the Second where they have rased out of the eighth Chapter five or six Lines which are found in all the ancient Editions of this Father They have also attributed to this Author certain Tracts which are not his as that Of the Forbidden Tree and that other upon the last Chapter of the Proverbs And we may by the way also take notice That this is the Edition which they followed who printed S. Ambrose his Works at Paris Anno. 1603. Such hands as these they were that have so villanously curtailed the Book Of the Lives of the Popes written by Anastasius or rather by Damasus leaving out in the very Entry of it the Authors Epistle Dedicatory written to S. Hierome because it did not so well suit with the present temper of Rome leaving out in like manner in the Life of S. Peter the Conclusion of all which I shall here set down as it is found in all Manuscripts He consecrated S. Clement Bishop and committed to his Charge the Ordering of his Seat or of the whole Church saying As the Power of Binding and Loosing was delivered to me by my Lord Jesus Christ in like manner do I commit to thy charge the appointing of such Persons as may determine of such Ecclesiastical Causes as may arise that Thou thy self mayst not be taken up with worldly cares but mayst apply thy whole studies only to Prayer and Preaching to the People After he had thus disposed of his Seat he was â—rowned with Martyrdom This is the Testament that S. Peter made but it hath been suppressed and kept from us because in it he hath charged his Successors with such Duties as are quite contrary both to their Humour and Practice And in another place in the same Book in stead of Papa Vrbis that is to say The Pope or Bishop of the City namely of Rome as all Manuscripts have it these worshipful Gentlemen will needs have us read Papa Orbis that is The Bishop of the whole World forasmuch as this is now the Stile of the Court and this hath now long since grown to be the Title of the Bishop of Rome These are the Men who in Fulbertus Bishop of Chatres where he cites that remarkable Passage of S. Augustine This then is a Figure commanding us to communicate of the Passion of the Lord have inserted these words Figura ergo est dicet Haereticus It is a Figure then will an Heretick say cunningly making us believe this to be the saying of an Heretick which was indeed the true sense and meaning of S. Augustine himself and so cited by Fulbertus These be the very Men also who in S. Gregory have changed Exercitus Sacerdotum into Exitus Sacerdotum reading in the 38 Epistle of his fourth Book thus All things c. which have been foretold are accomplished The King of Pride he speaks of Antichrist is at hand and which is horrible to be spoken the Failing or end of Priests is prepared Whereas the Manuscripts and it is so cited by Bellarmine too read an Army of Priests is prepared for him These be they who have made Aimonius to say That the Fathers of the pretended VIII General Council had ordained the Adoration of Images according as had been before determined by the Orthodox Doctors Whereas he wrote quite contrary That they had ordained otherwise than had been
Passage of S. Basil alledged by themselves triumphed as if they had got the day baffling and affronting the Greeks in a very disdainful manner and giving them very harsh Language also used notwithstanding such an odd kind of Logick to perswade the receiving of the Exposition which they gave as that even at this day in the last Edition of S. Basil's Works Printed at Paris and Revised by Fronto Ducaeus the Latin Translation follows in this Particular not their Exposition but that of the Greek Schismaticks And some of the Protestants having also had the same success in some particular Points controverted betwixt themselves it lies open to every Mans observation how much obscurity there is found in the Passages cited by both Sides If Tertullian was of the Opinion of the Church of Rome in the Point concerning the Eucharist what could he have uttered more dark and obscure than this Passage is of his in his Fourth Book against Marcion Christ having taken Bread and distributed it to his Disciples made it his Body in saying This is my Body that is to say The Figure of my Body If S. Augustine held Transubstantiation what can the meaning be of these words of his The Lord stuck not to say This is my Body when he delivered onely the Sign of his Body If these Passages and an infinite number of the like do really and truly mean that which Cardinal Perron pretends they do then was there never any thing of obscurity either in the Riddles of the Theban Sphinx or in the Oracles of the Sibyls If you look on the other side you shall meet with some other Passages in the Fathers which seem to speak point-blank against the Protestants as for example where they say expresly That the Bread changeth its nature and That by the Almighty Power of God it becomes the Flesh of the Word and the like And so in all the Controversies betwixt them they produce such Passages as these both on the one side and on the other some whereof seem to be irreconcileable to the Sense of the Church of Rome and some other to the Sense of their Adversaries If Cardinal Perron and those other subsime Wits of both Parties can have the confidence to affirm that they find no difficulty at all in these Particulars we must needs think that either they speak this but out of a Bravado setting a good face upon a bad matter or else that both the Wits and Eye-sight of all the rest of the World are marvelous dull and feeble in finding nothing but Darkness there where these Men see nothing but Light But yet for all this if there be not obscurity in these Writings of the Fathers and that very much too how comes it to pass that even these very Men find themselves ever and anon so tormented to find out the meaning of them How comes it to pass that they are fain to use so many words and make tryal of so many tricks and devices for the clearing of them Whence proceeds it that so often for fear of not being able to satisfie their Readers they are forced to cry down either the Authors or the Pieces out of which their Adversaries produce their Testimonies What strange Sentences and Passages of Authors are those that require more time and trouble in the clearing Them than in deciding the Controversie it self and which multiply Differences rather than determine them oftentimes serving as a Covert and retreating-place to both Parties The sense and meaning of these words is debated This is my Body For the explaining of them there is brought this Passage out of Tertullian and that other out of S. Augustine Now I would have any Man speak in his conscience what he thinks whether or not these words are not as clear or clearer than those Passages which they alledge out of these Fathers as they are explained by the different Parties I desire Reader no other judge than thy self whosoever thou art only provided that thou wilt but vouchsafe to read and examine that which is now said upon these places and withal consider the strange Turnings and Windings-about that they make us take to bring us to the right sense and meaning of them In a word if the most able Men that are did not find themselves extreamly puzled and perplexed in distinguishing the Legitimate Writings of the Fathers from the Spurious it is not likely that the Censors of the Low-Countries who are all choice pickt Men should be forced to shew us so ill an Example of finding a way to help our selves when the Authority of the Ancients is strongly pressed against us by our Adversaries as they do in excusing the expressions of the Fathers sometimes by some handsomlâ— contrived invention and imputting some convenient probable sense upon them That which hath been said I am confident is sufficient to convince any reasonable Man of the Truth of this Assertion of ours namely that it is a very hard matter to understand the sense and opinions of the Fathers by their Books But that we may leave no doubt behind us let us briefly consider some few of the principal Causes of this Difficulty Certainly the Fathers having been Wise Men all of them both spoke and wrote to be understood insomuch that having both the will and the ability to do it it seemeth very strange that they should not be able to attain to the end they aimed at But we must here call to mind what we have said before namely that these Controversies of ours being not in their time yet sprung up they had no occasion neither was it any of their design either to speak or write any thing of them For these Sages stirred up as few doubts in matters of Religion as they could Besides that their times furnished them with sufficient matter of Disputes in Points which were then in agitation without so much as thinking of Ours now on foot And they have very clearly delivered their sense in all those Controversiâ—s which they have handled Even Tertullian himself who is the most obscure amongst them all hath notwithstanding delivered himself so clearly in the debates betwixt him and Marcion and others that there is no place left for a Man to doubt what his opinions were in the points debated of I am therefore fully perswaded that if they had lived in these times or that the present Controversies had been agitated in their times they would have delivered their judgment upon them very plainly and expresly But seeing they have not touched upon them but only by the By and as they câ—me accidentally into their way rather than upon any set purpose we are not to think it strange if we find them not to have spoken out and given their sense clearly as to these Debates of ours For as any Man may easily observe in the ordinary course of things those things that happen without design are never clear and full but ambiguous and doubtful and oftentimes
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
the Truth when as in his old age taking Pen in hand he reviewed and corrected all that he had ever written during his whole Life faithfully and ingenuously noting whatsoever he thought worthy of reprehension and giving us all those his Animadversions collected together in the Books of his Retractations which in my judgment is the most glorious and most excellent of all those many Monuments which he hath left to Posterity whether you consider here the Learning or the Modesty and Sincerity of the Man S. Hierome reporteth that Origen also long before had in his old age written an Epistle to Fabianus Bishop of Rome wherein he confesseth That he repented him of many things which he had taught and written Neither is there any doubt but that some such like thing may have hapned to most of the other Fathers and that they may have sometime disallowed of that which they had formerly believed as true Now from this consideration there falls in our way a new Difficulty which we are to grapple with in this our Inquiry into the true genuine sense of the Fathers touching our present Controversies For seeing that the Condition and Nature of their Writings is such it is most evident that when we would make use of any of their Opinions it will concern us to be very well assured that they have not only sometime either held or written the same but that they have moreover persevered in them to the end Whence Vincentius Lirinensis in that Passage of his which is so often urged for the making use of the Ancient Authors in deciding our present Controversies thinks it not fit that we should be bound to receive whatsoever they have said for certain and undoubted Truth unless they have assured and confirmed it unto us by their Perseverance in the same as he there speaketh Cardinal Perron also evidently sheweth us the same way by his own practice for disputing about the Canon of the Holy Scriptures which he pretendeth to have been always the very same in the Western Church with that which is delivered unto us by the III Council of Carthage where the Maccabees are reckoâ—ed in among the rest and finding himself hardly pressed by some certain Passages alledged by the Protestants out of S. Hierome to the contrary he answereth the Objection by saying among other things That this Father when he wrote the said Passages was not yet come to the ripeness of his Judgment and perfection of his Studies whereas afterwards when he was now more fully instructed in the truth of the Sense of the Church he changed his Opinion and retracted as this Cardinal saith both in general and in particular whatsoever he had before written in those three Prologues where he had excluded the Maccabees out of the Canon And so likewise to another Objection brought to the same purpose out of the Commentaries of S. Gregory the Great he gives the like answer saying That S. Gregory when he wrote that Piece was not yet come to be Pope but was a plain Deacon only being at that time employed at Constantinople as the Popes Nuncio to the Greeks Now these Answers of his are either insufficient or else it will necessarily follow from hence That we ought not to rest certainly satisfied in the Testimony of any Father except we first be assured that not only he never afterwards retracted that Opinion of his but that besides he wrote it in the strength and ripeness of his Judgment And see now how we are fallen into a new Labyrinth For first of all from whence and by what means may we be able to come truly and certainly to the knowledge of this Secret when as we can hardly meet with any light Conjectures tending to the making of this Discovery namely Whether a Father hath in his old age changed his Opinion touching that Point for which it is produced against us or not If they had all of them been either able or willing to have imitated the Modesty of S. Augustine we should then have had little left to trouble us But you will hardly find any either of the Ancients or of those of Later times that have followed this example unless it be Cardinal Bellarmine who hath lately thought good to revive this Piece of Modesty which had lain dead and buried for the space of so many Ages together by writing a Book of Retractations which Book of his is very diversly received by the Learned as well of the one as of the other Religion But yet if you will stand stiff upon it with Cardinal Perron and not allow the saying of a Father to be of any value unless it were written by him after the Ripeness of his Studies I shall then despair of our ever making any Progress so much as one step forward by this means in the business in hand For will the one and the other Party say upon every Testimony that shall be produced against them how do we know whether this Father had yet arrived to the Ripeness of his Judgment when he wrote this Book or not Who can tell whether or no those days of his Life that he enjoyed after the Writing hereof might not have bestowed as well clearness on his Understanding as Whiteness on his Head and have changed his Judgment as well as his Hair We suppose here that no such thing appeareth in any of his other Writings How many Authors are there who have changed their Opinions and yet have not retracted what they had formerly written But suppose now that we should have lost that particular Tract wherein the Author had given Testimony of the changing of his Opinion what should we do in this cafe If Time should have deprived us of S. Augustine's Retractations and some other of his later Writings as it hath of an infinite number of other Pieces both of his and other of the Fathers which would have been of as great importance to us we must certainly have thought that he had believed that the Cause of Predestination is the Prescience or Foreseeing of the Faith of Men reading but what he saith in one of the Books which he first wrote namely That God hath not elected the Works of any Man according to his Prescience seeing that it is He himself that gives the same to a Man But that he hath elected his Faith by His Presâ—ience that is He hath elected those who He foresaw would believe his Word that is to say He made choice of them to bestow His Holy Spirit upon that so by doing Good Works they might attain everlasting Life Now would the Pelagians and Semipelagians have brought this Passage as an infallible Argument that S. Augustine was of their Opinion but that his Retractations and his other Books which were written afterwards in his later time clearly make it appear that this Argument is of no force at all forasmuch as this Learned Father having afterwards better considered of this Point wholly altered
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
taken up all of them with their particular Charges and Imployments did not know of some opinions of the Prelates of their Age or that either their Modesty or their Charity or the little Eloquence and Repute they had abroad might have made them conceal the same The other Objection is drawn from hence because that these Doctors of the Ancient Church who held some opinions different from those which we read at this day in the Fathers did not publish them at all But I answer first of all that every Man is not able to do so In the next place those that were able were not always willing to do so Divers other Considerations may perhaps also have hindred them from so doing and if they are Wise and Pious Men they are never moved till they needs must And hence it is that oftentimes those opinions which have less truth in them do yet prevail because that Prudence which maintains the True Opinion is Mild and Patient whereas Rashness which defends the False is of a Froward Eager and Ambitious Nature But now let us but imagine how many of the Evidences of this Diversity of opinion may have been made away by those several ways before represented by us as namely having been either devoured by Time or suppressed by Malitious Men for fear lest they should let the World see the Traces of the Truth which they would have concealed But that I may not be thought to bring here only bare Conjectures without any proof at all I shall produce some Examples also for the confirming and clearing of this my Assertion Epiphanius maintains against Aerius whom he ranks among his Haeresiarchae or Arch Hereticks that a Bishop according to the Apostle Saint Paul and the Original Institution of the thing it self is more than a Priest and this he endeavours to prove in many words answering all the Objections that are made to the contrary If you but read the Passage I am confident that when you had done you would not stick to swear that what he hath there delivered was the general opinion of all the Doctors of the Church it being very unlikely that so Great and so Renowned a Prelate would so slatly have denied the opinion which he disputed against if so be any one of his own familiar friends had also maintained the same And yet for all this Saint Hierome who was one of the Principal Lights of our Western Church and who lived at the same time with Epiphanius who was his intimate Friend and a great admirer of his Piety saith expresly that Among the Ancients Bishops and Priests were the same the one being a name of Dignity and the other of Age. And that it may not be thought that this fell from him in discourse only he there falls to proving the same at large alledging several Passages of Scripture touching this Particular and he also repeats the same thing in two or three several places of his Works Whereby it evidently appears that even Positions which have been quite Contradictory to the opinions which have been delivered and maintained by some of the Fathers and proposed in what terms soever have notwithstanding been sometimes either maintained or at least tolerated by some others of 〈◊〉 less Authority S. Hierome himself hath â—alâ— extreamly foul upon Ruffinus and hath traduced divers of his opinions as most Pernicious and Deadly and yet notwithstanding we do not any where find that ever he was accounted as an Heretick by the rest of the Fathers But we shall have occasion hereafter to consider more at large of the like Examples and shall only at present observe that if those Books of S. Hierome which we mentioned a little before should chance to have been lost every Man would then assuredly have concluded with Epiphanius that no Doctor of the Ancient Church ever held that a Bishop and a Priest were one and the same thing in its Institution Who now after all this will assure us that among so many other opinions as have been rejected here and there by the Fathers and that too in as plain terms as these of Epiphanius none of them have ever been defended by some of the Learned of those times Or is it not possible that they may have held them though they did not write in defence of the same Or may they not perhaps have written also in deâ—ence of them and their Books have been since lost How small is the number of those in the Church who had the Ability or at least the 〈◊〉 to write And how much smaller is the number of thoâ—â— whose Wriâ—ings have been able to secure themselves against either the Injury of Time or the Malice of Men It is objâ—cted against the Protestants as we have touched before that S. Hierome commendeth and maintaineth the Adoration of Reliques But yet he himself testifieth that there were some Bishops who defended Vigilantius who held the contrary opinion whom he according to his ordinary Rhetorick calleth His Consorts in Wickedness Who knows now what these Bishops were and whether they deserved any such usage at S. Hieromes hands or no For the Expressions which he useth against them and against their opinion are so full of Gall and of Choler as that they utterly take away all credit from his Testimony But we have insisted long enough upon this Particular and shall therefore forbear to instance any further in others For as much therefore as it is Impossible to discover exactly out of the Fathers what hath been the sense and judgment of the Ancient Church whether taken Universally or Particularly or whether you take the Church for the whole Body of Believers or for the Prelates and Inseriour Clergy only I shall here conclude as formerly that the Writings of the Ancients are altogether Insufficient for the proving the Truth of any of those Points which are at this day controverted amongst Us. THE SECOND BOOK CHAP. I. That the Fathers are not of sufficient Authority for the Deciding of our Controversies in Religion Reason I. That the Testimonies given by the Fathers touching the Belief of the Church are not always True and Certain WE have before shewed how hard a matter it is to discover what the Sense of the Fathers hath been touching the Points at this day controverted in Religion both by reason of the small number of Books we have left us of the Fathers of the First Centuries and those too which we have treating of such things as are of a very different nature from our present Disputes and which besides we cannot be very well assured of by reason of the many Forgeries and monstrous Corruptions which they have for so long a time been subject to as also by reason of their Obscurity and Ambiguity in their Expressions and their representing unto us many times the Opinions rather of others than of their Authors besides those many other Imperfections which are found in them as namely their not informing us in
from the Father to the Son this doubt I say of his manifestly proveth that the Church had not as yet at that time embraced or concluded upon the former of these Opinions it being a thing utterly improbable that so modest a Man as S. Augustine was would have cast off the general Opinion of the Church and have taken up a particular Fancy of his own But the Passion wherewith S. Hierome was at that time carried away against Ruffinus a great part of the Learned Men of his time being also of the said Opinion easily wrought in him a belief that it was the Common Judgment and Opinion of the whole Christian Church From the same Root also sprung that Errour of John Bishop of Thessalonica if at least it be an Errour who affirmed That the Opinion of the Church was That Angels are not wholly Incorporeal and Invisible but that they have Bodies though of a very Rare and thin Substance not much unlike those of the Fire or the Air. For those who published the General Councils at Rome conceive this to have been his own private Opinion onely And if so neither shall we need at present to examine the Truth of this their Conceit you then plainly see that the Affection this Author bare to his own Opinion carried him so far away as to make him father upon the whole Church what was indeed but his own particular Opinion though otherwise he were a Man who was highly esteemed by the VII Council which not onely citeth him among the Fathers but honours him also with the Title of a Father Epiphanius must also be excused in the same manner where he assures us That the Church held by Apostolical Tradition the Custom which it had of meeting together thrice a Week for the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist which yet Petavius maketh evidently appear not to have been of Apostolical Institution The Mistakes of Venerable Bede noted and censured elsewhere by Petavius are of the fame nature also The Belief of the Church if I mistake not saith he is That our Saviour Christ lived in the Flesh Thirty three Years or there about till the time of his Passion And he saith moreover That the Church of Rome testifieth that this is Its Belief by the Marks which they yearly set upon their Tapers upon Good Friday whereon they always inscribe a Number of Tears which is less by Thirty three than the common Aera of the Christians He likewise saith in the same place That it is not lawful for any Catholick to doubt whether Jesus Christ suffered on the Cross the XV day of the Moon or not Now Petavius hath proved at large that both these Opinions which Beda delivers unto us as the Churches Belief are nothing less than what he would have them The curious Reader may observe many the like Carriages in the Writings of the Fathers but these here already set down in my judgment do sufficiently justifie the doubt which I have made namely that we ought not to receive as Certain Truths the Testimony which the Fathers give touching the Belief of the Church in their Time Nevertheless that we may not seem to make a breach upon the Honour and Reputation of the Fathers I say that though we should grant that all their Depositions and Testimonies in this Particular were certainly and undoubtedly True yet notwithstanding would they be of little use to us as to our present purpose For first of all there are but very few Passages wherein they testifie plainly and in direct Terms what the Belief of the Church in their Time hath been touching the Points now controverted amongst us This is the Business of an Historian rather than of a Doctor of the Church whose Office is to teach to prove and to exhort the People committed to his Charge and to correct their Vices and Errours telling them what they ought to do or believe rather than troubling them with Discourses of what is done or believed by others But yet when they do give their Testimony what the Belief and Discipline of the Church in their time was this Testimony of theirs ought not to extend save onely to what was apparently such and which besides was apparent to themselves too Now as we have formerly proved they could not possibly know the Sense and Opinions of every particular Christian that lived in their time nor yet of all the Pastors and Ministers who were set over them but of some certain Particular Christians onely Forasmuch therefore as it is confessed even by those very Men who have the Church in greatest esteem that the Belief of Particular Churches is not infallible we may very easily perceive that such Testimonies of the Fathers as these can standus in very little or no stead seeing they represent unto us such Opinions as are not always certainly and undoubtedly True and which consequently are so far from confirming and proving ours as that they rather stand in need of being examined aud proved themselves But yet suppose that the Church of Rome did hold that the Beliefs of Particular Churches were Infallible which yet it doth not yet would not this make any thing at all against the Protestants forasmuch as they are of the clean contrary Opinion Now it is taken for granted on all hands that Proofs ought to be fetched from such things as are confessed and acknowledged by your Adversary whom you endeavour to convince otherwise you will never be able to move him or make him quit his former Opinion Seeing therefore that the Testimonies of the Farthers touching the State of the Faith and Ecclesiastical Discipline of their Times are of this Nature it remaineth that we now consider their other Discourses wherein they have delivered themselves not as Witnesses deposing what they had seen but as Doctors instructing us in what they believed And certainly how Holy and Able soever they were it cannot be denied but that they were still Men and consequently were subject to Error especially in matters of Faith which is a Business so much transcending Humane Apprehension The Spirit of God onely was able to direct their Understandings and their Pens in the Truth and to withhold them from falling into any Error in like manner as it directed the Holy Prophets and Apostles while they wrote the Books of the Old and New Testament Now we cannot be any way assured that the Spirit of God was present always with them to enlighten their Understandings and to make them see the Truth of all those things whereof they wrote They neither pretend to this themselves nor yet doth any one that I know of attribute unto them this Assistance unless it be perhaps the Author of the Gloss upon the Decrees who is of Opinion that we ought to stand to all that the Fathers have written even to the least tittle who yet is very justly called to a round account for this by Alphonsus Ã
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
the Word of God as that all that went before them had both seen and acknowledged the same The Consideration whereof was both Pleasing and Useful unto them For what can more delight a Faithful Heart than to find that the chiefest and most Eminent Persons in the Church had long since held the same Opinions touching our Saviour Jesus Christ and His Grace that We now hold at this day But yet it does not hence presently follow that though these Holy men should have met with these Articles of our Faith in the Writings of their Predecessours only without finding any Foundation of them in the Canonical Scriptures they would notwithstanding firmly have believed and embraced the same contenting themselves with the Bare Authority of their Predecessours S. Augustine professeth plainly that in such a Case they might better have rejected them and not be blamed for so doing neither than have received them unless they would incur the imputation of being over Credulous For it is a point of too much Credulity to believe any thing without Reason and He further affirmeth that where men speak without either Scripture or Reason their bare Authority is not sufficient to oblige us to believe what they propose unto us So that it hence appeareth that Humane Testimonies are alledged not to prove the Truth of the Faith but only to shew the Clearness of it after it is once well grounded Now the Question at this day betwixt us and the Church of Rome is not concerning the Clearness of the Truth of the Articles they believe and press upon the World but it yet lies upon them to prove even the very Ground and Foundation of them Shew me therefore will a Protestant here say either out of some Text of Scripture or else by some Evident Reason that there is any such place as Purgatory and that the Eucharist is not Bread and that the Pope is the Monarch and Head of the Church Universal and then I shall be very glad to try if for our greater comfort we may be able to find in the Authors of the Third or Fourth Century these Truths embraced by the Fathers of those times But to begin with these is to invert the Natural Order of things We ought first to be assured that the Thing is before we make inquiry whether it hath been believed or not For to what purpose is it to find that the Ancients believed it unless we find withal in their Writings some Reason of this their Belief And again on the other side what harm is it to us to be ignorant whether Antiquity believed it or not so long as we know that the Thing is And whereas there are some who to establish the Supream Authority of the Fathers alledge the Counsel which Sisinnius a Novatian and Agellius his Bishop gave of old to Nectarius Archbishop of Constantinople and by him to Theodosius the Emperour which was that they should demand of the Arrians whether or not they would stand to what the Fathers who died before the breaking forth of their Heresie had delivered touching the Point debated betwixt them this is hardly worth our consideration For this was a Trick only devised by a subtil head and which is worse by a Schismatick and consequently to be suspected as a Captious Proposal purposely made to entrap the Adverse party rather than any free and ingenuous way of Proceeding For if this manner of Proceeding had been right and good how came it to pass that among so many Catholick Bishops as there were none of them all advised it How came it to pass that they were so ignorant of the Weapons wherewith the Enemies of the Church were to be encountred How came it about that it should be proposed only by a young fellow who was a Schismatick too And if it were approved of as right and good Counsel why did Gregory Nazianzene S. Basil and so many other of the Fathers who wrote in that Age against the Arrians deal with them wholly in a manner out of the Scriptures And certainly those Holy men besides their Christian Candor which obliged them to this way of Proceeding took a very wise course in so doing For if this Controversie had been to be decided by the Authority of Humane Writers I know not how any man should have been able to make good that which this Gallant so confidently affirmeth in the place aforecited namely That none of the Ancients ever said that the Son of God had any beginning of his Generation considering those many strange Passages that we yet at this day meet with touching this Particular in the Books of the First Fathers which is the reason also why the Arrians alâ—ledged their Testimonies as we see they do in the Books of Athanasius Hilary and others of the Ancients who wrote against them But what need we insist so long upon a Story which is rejected by Cardinal Baronius as being an idle Tale devised by Zozomene who was a Novatian in favour of those of his own Sect. The Counsel of Vincentius Lirinensis which he gives us in a certain little Discourse of his which is very highly prised by Gennadius is accounted by many men much more worthy of our Consideration For having first told us that he speaks not of any Authors Save only of such who having holily wisely and constantly lived preached and persevered in the Catholick Faith and Communion obtained the favour at length either to dye faithfully in Christ or else had the happiness of being crowned with Martyrdom for Christs sake he further addeth That we are to receive as undoubtedly true certain and definitive whatsoever all the aforesaid Authors or at least the greatest part of them have clearly frequently and constantly affirmed with an Vnanimous Consent receiving retaining and delivering it over to others as it were joyntly and making up all of them but one Common and Vnanimous Council of Doctors But this Passage of his is so far from advancing the Supreme Authority which some would attribute to the Fathers in Matters of Faith that on the contrary I meet with something in it that makes me more doubt of their Authority than I did before For I find by this mans discourse that whatsoever his reason was whether good or bad he clearly appears to have had a very great desire of bringing all Differences in Religion before the Judgment seat of the Fathers and to the same end he labours to prove with the same eagerness and passion that their Judgment is inâ—allible in these Cases But in the mean time I find him so perplexed and troubled in bringing out that which he would have as that it appears sufficiently that he saw well enough that what he desired was not so agreeable to Truth For he hath so qualified his Proposition and bound it in with so many Limitations as that it is very probable that if all these Conditions which he here requires were any where to be found we might
Vincentius should have cleared by this excellent course of his some Point or other which had been controverted he must have thanked the Fire the Water the Moths or the Worms for having spared those Authors which he made use of and for having consumed all those other that wrote in favour of the Adverse Party for otherwise he should have been an Heretick And if we should decide our Differences in Matters of Faith after this manner we should do in a manner as he did who gave Judgment upon the Suits of Law that came before him by the Chances he threw with Three Dice Do but imagine now what an endless labour it would be for a Man either to go and heap up together and run over all the Authors that ever have written one with another or else to distinguish them into their several Ages they wrote in and to examine them by Companies And do but imagine again what satisfaction a Man should be able to get from hence and where we should be in case we should find as it is possible it may sometimes so fall out as we shall shew hereafter that the Sense and Judgment of this Greatest Part should prove to be either contrary to or perhaps besides the Sense and Meaning either of the Scriptures or of the Church And again how senseless a thing were it to make the Suffrages of Equal Authority of Persons that are so Unequal themselves either in respect of their Merit Learning Holy Life and Soundness of Faith and that a Rheticius whom S. Hierome censured so hardly a little before should be reckoned Equal with S. Augustine or a Philastrius be as good a Man as S. Hierome There is perhaps among the Fathers such a One whose Judgment is of more weight than a Hundred others and yet forsooth will this Man have us to make our Doubles and our Sons to go for as much as our Crowns and Pistols And lastly What reason in the World is there that although perhaps the Persons themselves were equal in all things we should yet make their Words also of equal force which are oftentimes of very different and unequal Authority some of them having been uttered as it were before the Bar the Books having been produced both Parties heard and the whole Cause througly examined and the other perhaps having been cast forth by their Authors at all adventure as it were either in their Chamber or else in Discourse walking abroad or else perhaps by the By while they were treating of some other Matter But our Friend here to prevent in some sort this later Inconvenience requires that the Word of this Greatest Part which he will allow to be fit to be Authorised must have been uttered by them Clearly Often and Constantly and then and not till then doth he allow them for Certain and Undoubted Truth And now you see he is got into another Hold. For I would very fain be informed how it is possible for us to know whether these Fathers which we thus have called out of their Graves to give us their Judgment touching the Controversies in Religion affirmed those things which we find in their Writings Clearly Often and Constantly or not If in this his pretended Council of Doctors you will not allow the Right of giving their Suffrage to those of whom it may be doubted that they either expressed themselves obscurely or gave in their Testimonies but seldom or have but weakly maintained their own Opinion I pray you tell me whom shall we have left at last to be the Judges in the Decision of our present Controversies As for the Apostles Creed and the Determinations of the Four First General Councils which are assented unto and approved of by all the Protestant Party I confess we may by this way of Trial allow them as Competent Judges in these Matters But as for all the rest it is evident by what hath been delivered in the First Part of this Treatise that we can never admit of them if they are thus to be Qualified and to have all the afore-mentioned Conditions We may therefore very well conclude That the Expedient here proposed by this Author is either Impossible or else not so safe to be put in practice so that I shall rather approve of S. Augustine's Judgment touching the Authority of the Fathers I should not have insisted so long upon the Examination of this Proposal of his had I not seen it to have been in so high Esteem with many Men and indeed with some of the Learned too For in earnest after S. Augustine and S. Hierome have delivered their Judgments it matters not much what this Man shall have believed to the contrary But yet before we finish this Point let us a little examine this Author both by S. Augustine's and by his own Rule before laid down S. Augustine thinks us not bound to believe the Saying of any Author except he can prove the Truth of it unto us either by the Canonical Scriptures or else by some Probable Reason What Text of Scripture or what Reason hath this Man alledged to prove the Truth of what he hath proposed So that whatsoever his Opinion be he must not take it amiss if according to the Advice and Practice of S. Augustine we take leave to dissent from him especially considering we have so many Reasons to reject That which he without any Reason given would have us to receive And thus you see that according to the Judgment of S. Augustine the Saying of this Vincentius Lirinensis although you should reckon him among the most Eminent of the Fathers doth not at all oblige us to give our Assent unto it And yet you will find that his Testimony would be yet of much less force and weight if you but examine the Man by his own Rule For according to him we are not to hearken to the Fathers except they both Lived and Taught Holily and Wisely even unto the hour of their Death Who is there now that will pass his word for him that he himself was one of this number Who shall assure us that he was not either an Heretick himself or at least a Favourer of Hereticks For is it not evident enough that he favoured the Semipelagians who at that time swarmed in France railing against the very Name and Memory of S. Augustine and who were condemned by the whole Church Who may not easily see this by his manner of Discourse in his Commonitorium tending this way where he seems to intimate unto us under hand That Prosper and Hilary had unjustly slandered them and that Pope Celestine who also wrote against them had been misinformed And may not he also be strongly suspected to have been the Author of those Objections made against Prosper which are called Objectiones Vincentianae Vincent's Objections The great Commendations also which are given him by Gennadius very much confirm this suspicion it being clear that this Author was of the same Sect
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
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
all this it hath not only be called in Question but hath been even utterly condemned also who seeth not that the Consent of many Fathers together although any such thing were to be had upon all the Points now in Debate would yet be no sufficient Argument of the Truth of the same But I shall pass on to the rest We have before heard how that Tertullian St. Cyprian who was both a Bishop and a Martyr Firmilianus Metropolitan of Cappadocia Dionysius Patriarch of Alexandria together with the Synods of Bishops both of Africk Cappadocia Cilicia and Bithynia held all that the Baptism of Hereticks was invalid and null St. Basil who was one of the most Eminent Bishops of the whole Eastern Church held also in a manner the very same Opinion and that a long time too after the Determination of the Council of Nice as appeareth by the Epistle which he wrote to Amphilochius which is also put in among the Publick Decrees of the Church by the Greek Canonists And yet this Opinion is now confessed by all to be Erroneous Many in like manner of the Fathers as namely Tertullian Clemens Alexandrinus Lactantius and Africanus believed that our Saviour Christ kept the Feast of the Passeover but once only after his Baptism And yet notwithstanding this Consent of theirs the Opinion is known to be very false as Petavius also testifieth and besides is expresly contrary to the Text of the Gospel I shall not here say any thing of the Opinion of St. Chrysostom St. Hierome St. Basil and the Fathers of the Council held at Constantinople under the Patriarch Flavianus who seem all to have held that an Oath was utterly unlawful for Christians under the New Testament Neither shall I take any notice in this place of that Conceit of Athanasius St. Basil and Methodius as he is cited by John Bishop of Thessalonica who all believed that the Angels had Bodies to whom we may also add as we have shewed before St. Hilary Justin Martyr Tertullian and very many more of the Fathers who would all of them have the Nature of Angels to be such as was capable of the Passions of Carnal love of which number is even St. Augustine also Whosoever should now conclude from hence that this Fancy of theirs which yet is of no small importance is a Truth would he not be as sharply reproved for it by the Romanists as by those of Geneva But I must not forget that besides St. Cyprian St. Augustine and Pope Innocent I. whose Testimonies we have given in before all the rest of the Doctors in a manner of the first Ages maintained that the Eucharist was necessary for young Infants if at least you dare take Maldonat's word who affirms that this Opinion was in great Request in the Church during the first Six Hundred years after our Saviour Christ Cassander also testifieth that he hath often observed this Practice in the Ancients as indeed is also witnessed by Carolus Magnus and by Ludovicus Pius who lived a long time after the Sixth Century both of which assure us that this Custom continued in the West even in their time as they are cited by Cardinal Perron and the Traces of this Custom do yet remain to this day amongst those Christians who are not of the Communion of the Latine Church For Nicolaus Lyranus who lived somewhat above three hundred years since observed That the Greeks accounted the Holy Eucharist so necessary as that they administred it to little Children also as well as Baptism And even in our Fathers time the Patriarch Jeremias speaking in the name of the whole Creek Church said We do not only Baptize little Children but we also make them partakers of the Lords Supper And a little after we account saith he both Sacraments to be necessary to Salvation for all persons namely Baptism and the Holy Communion The Abyssines also make their Children in like manner Communicate of the Holy Eucharist as soon as ever they are Baptized Which are most evident Arguments that this false Opinion touching the Necessity of the Eucharist hath been of old maintained not by three or four of the Fathers only but by the Major part and in a manner by all of them For we do not hear of so much as one among all the Ancient Fathers who rejected it in express Terms as the Council of Trent hath done in these later Times To conclude the Jesuit Pererius hath informed us and indeed the observation is obvious enough to any man that is never so little conversant in the Writings of those Authors who lived before St. Augustines time that all the Greek Fathers and a considerable part also of the Latines were of Opinion that the Cause of Predestination was the Fore sight which God had either of Mens Good Works or else of their Faith either of which Opinions he assures us is manifestly contrary both to the Authority of the Scriptures and also to the Doctrine of St. Paul So that I conceive we may without troubling our selves any further in making this envious Inquiry into the Errours of the Fathers conclude from what hath been already produced that seeing the Fathers have Erred in so many Particulars not on singly but also many of them together Neither the private Opinion of each particular Father nor yet the unanimous Consent of the Major part of them is a sufficient Argument certainly to prove the Truth of those Points which are at this day controverted amongst Us. CHAP. V. Reason V. That the Fathers have strongly contradicted one another and have maintained Different Opinions in Matters of very Great Importance BEssarion a Greek born who was honoured with the Dignity of Cardinal by Pope Eugenius IV. as a Reward of his earnest desires to and the great pains he took in endeavouring a Reconciliation betwixt the Eastern and the Western Church in a Book which he wrote upon this Subject to the Council of Florence will have the whole Difference betwixt the Greek and Latine Churches to be brought before the Judgment Seat of the Fathers And for as much as he knew that unless the Judges did all agree and were of one Opinion the Cause especially in Matters of Religion necessarily remains undecided he strongly labours to prove that he hath all the Fathers consenting not only with him but which is yet much harder to prove that they are all of the same Opinion also among themselves insomuch that he commands us when ever there appeareth any contrariety in their Writings that we should accuse our own ignorance rather than blame them for contradicting each other We may conclude therefore from what is here laid down by this Author who was both as acute and as Learned a man as any was at this Council that to render the Fathers capable of being the Judges of our Controversies it is necessary that they should be
sense and meaning of these words lest otherwise by misinterpreting the same you might chance to fall into the one or the other of these two Precipices If you have recourse to the Fathers in this case you shall have some of them referring it to the Vnion of the Affection and of the Will and others again to the Vnity of Essence and of Nature So likewise this other passage in the same Evangelist My Father is greater than I is very considerable also in the Question touching the Divinity of Jesus Christ And yet there are some among the Fathers who understand the words as spoken indefinitely of the Son of God although the rest of them do ordinarily restrain them to his Humanity These words also of St. John The Word was made Flesh are of no small consideration in the Disputes against Nestorius and Eutyches Now if you bring the business before the Fathers you shall have some of them expounding these words by comparing them with those passages in St. Paul where it is said that Christ was made sin and a Curse for us but St. Cyril saith that we must take heed how we interpret the words so It would be an endless Task if I should here go about to reckon up all the Differences and Contrarieties of Judgment that are to be found in the Fathers Those that have a mind to see any more of them may have recourse to some of our late Commentators whose usual course is to bring in all together the several Interpretations of the Fathers upon those Books which they Comment upon as Maldonate hath done upon the Gospels Cardinal Tolet upon St. John Bened. Justinianus upon the Epistles of St. Paul and others where they will find that there is scarcely any one Verse that the Ancients have understood all of them after one and the â—ame manner And which is yet worse than this besides this Contrariety and Difference of Interpretation you will often meet with very many cold and empty Expositions and it is very seldom that you shall find there that solid simplicity which we ought to expect from all those who take upon them the Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures For as much therefore as we many times meet with Contrariety of Judgment as well in their Expositions of the Scriptures as in their Opinions we may safely conclude that they are not of sufficient Authority to be admitted as the Supreme Judges of our Controversies that Contradiction which is often found amongst them evidently shewing that they are not Infallible Judges such as it is requisite that they should be for the making good of all those Points which are at this day maintained by the Church of Rome against the Protestants CHAP. VI. Reason VI. That neither those of the Church of Rome nor the Protestants do acknowledge the Fathers for their Judges in Points of Religion but do both of them reject such of their Opinions and Practices as are not for their Gust An Answer to two Objections that may be made against what hath been here delivered in this Discourse THus far have we laboured to prove that the Writings of the Fathers have not Authority enough in themselves for to be received as Definitive Sentences passed upon our Differences in Religion Let us now in the last place see how much they have in respect of us For although a Sentence of Judgment should be good and valid in it self as being pronounced by one who is a competent and lawful Judge duly and according to the Forms of Law yet notwithstanding would not this serve to determine the Controversie if so be the Authority of this Judge be denied by either of the Parties unless as it is in worldly Affairs the Law be armed with such a Power as is able to force those that are obstinate to submit to Reason for as much as the Question is here touching Religion which is a Holy and Divine thing to the embracing whereof men ought to be perswaded and not compelled since force hath no place here For although perhaps they could compel men outwardly to render some such respect to the Writings of the Fathers yet notwithstanding would not this serve to make any impression of the Belief of the same in the heart of any one The same Divisions would still remain in the minds of men which you are first of all to pull up by the roots if ever you intend to reconcile them to each other and to make them agree in Point of Religion For the certain determination therefore of all Differences of this nature it is necessary that both Parties be perswaded that the Judge who is to pronounce Sentence upon the same hath as much Authority as it requisite for that purpose Notwithstanding therefore that the Fathers should have clearly and positively pronounced what they had thought touching the Point in hand which yet they have not done as we have proved before Let us suppose further that they had been endued with all those qualities which are requisite for the rendring a man fit to be a Supreme Judge and from whom there can be no Appeal which yet is not so as we have already clearly proved yet notwithstanding would all this be to no purpose unless this Authority were acknowledged by both Parties The Old Testament is a Book which was written by Divine Inspiration and is endued with so supreme an Authority as that every part of it ought to be believed Yet doth not this work any whit at all with a Pagan because he doth not acknowledge any such excellent worth to be in it In like manner is it between the New Testament and the Jew neither can it decide the Differences betwixt the Jews and us not because it is not of sufficient Authority in it self but because it is not so to the Jew And indeed he were worthy to be laughed at whosoever should alledge in disputing against the Pagans the Authority of the Old Testament or that of the New for the bringing of a Jew over to our Belief Suppose therefore that the Writings of the Fathers were clear upon our Questions nay which is more let it be granted moreover if you please that they were written by Divine Inspiration and are of themselves of a full and undeniable Authority I say still that they cannot decide our Debates if so be that either of the Parties shall refuse to acknowledge this great and admirable dignity to be in them much less if both Parties shall refuse to allow them to have this Priviledge Let us now therefore see in what account the several Parties have the Fathers and whether they acknowledge them as the Supreme Judges of their Religion or at least as Arbitrators whose definitive Sentence ought to stand firm and inviolable As for our Protestants of France whom their Adversaries would fain perswade if they could to receive the Fathers for Judges in Religion and to whom consequently they ought not
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
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