are often observed to have done this very thing We are therefore to conclude that they have been forced to it out of some special Design and that they did it as they use â—o speak by Oeconomy or particular Dispâ—nsation seâ—ing that it is evident that the greatest part of them were very able Men. St. Hierome by namo recommending the going in Pilgrimage to Jerusalem went thus far as 〈◊〉 say †That it was a part of our Faith to go and 〈◊〉 in â—â—ose places where the feet of our Saviour once stâ—â—d and to 〈◊〉 a sighâ— of the 〈◊〉 which at this day continue fresh both of his Nativity Cross and Passion Now how doth this agree with that large Discourse which he hath made in another place to a quite contrary sense namely in his Epistle to Paulinus where at length concluding he gives him this Reason of the length of his Discourse * To the end 〈◊〉 he that thou maist not think that any thing is wanting to the compleating of thy Faith because thou hast not visited Jerusalem or that we are any whit the better for having the opportunity of dwelling in this place And here he concurs with Gregory Nâ—ssen who â—ath written a Discourse expresly against the opinion of those †Who account it to be one of the parts of Piâ—â—y to have visited Jerusalem Let any rational Man therefore now judge whether or no this course must not necessarily embroil and inwrap in a world of almost inexplicable Difficulties the Writings of the Fathers For how is it possible that we should be able to judge when they speak as they thought and when not Whether they mean really what they say or whether they make but a flourish only Whether the Bread which they shew us be to deceive or to feed us Whether the Problems they propose be solid or slippery ones Whether their Positions be Dogmatical or Oeconomical Certainly if our Court judgments were framed after this manner we should never hope to have an end in any suit of Law For as for that which S. Hierome saith That an intelligent and favourable Reader ought to judge of those things which seem hard out of the rest of the Discourse and not presently to accuse any Author of blockishness for having delivered in one and the same Booâ— two contrary Opinions I confess that this is very true but yet it doth not remove the Difficulty For how intelligent and discerning a Man soever the Reader be it will very often be impossible for him to make a right judgment in this particular as for example when those other things are wanting which S. Hierome would have a Man to make the measure of his judgment or when one bringeth us no more of an Author save only a bare Sentence the Chapter and Book where these words are which have need to be explained being quite out of his memory And how many such are alledged every day in our Disputations What can we now do or which way shall we turn our selves if meeting with a Passage out of any of the Fathers that needeth to be explained we can find no other place in him concerning the same Point or if there be none found but what is as doubtful as the other or that is not in some other Book controverted it self Who shall regulate us amidst such Contradictions as these But which is yet worse those things which S. Hierome prescribeth us for a Rule and direction to our judgment are now in these days of ours very unseasonable as being harsh as to the one side and pleasing to the other according to mens several affections and interest according to which they are wont to interpret and judge of the Fathers whereas we should rather search in them which way we are to direct our judgments And that favourableness which S. Hierome requireth in us cannot be here of any use at all but may possibly besides do very much hurt For the greater the affection is that we bear to any Father the greater care and pains will we take in vindicating his words and interpreting them in a sense as far different as we can from what we have long since condemned as Erroneous and Unsound though possibly this may have been his real sense and opinion As for example in those Passages before-cited out of S. Hierome and Gregory Nyssen the Protestant accounteth that a very harsh piece of Doctrine which yet his Adversary is very well pleased with the one of them sweats and torments himself much in the explaining of such a Passage as appears very easie to the other the one takes that for Text which the other accounts but as a Gloss And thus the greater affection men bear to the name and authority of any one of the Fathers the more do they labour and use their utmost endeavours to bring him over to speak to their Opinion that is to say in plain truth to force him out of his own it being impossible that we should hold both Opinions at once We shall here therefore conclude That how clear and express so ever the Words of the Fathers may be yet nevertheless will it very often so fall out as that we cannot have any assurance that we have their Sense expressed in them whether it be in their Expositions of the Scriptures or in their Homilies and Sermons before the People or lastly in their Disputations with their Adversaries touching their Faith CHAP. VII Reason VII That the Fathèrs have not always held one and the same Belief but have sometimes changed some of their Opinions according as their Judgment hath grown riper through Study or Age. AMongst all the Ecclesiastical Writers the Pen men of the Old and New Testament only have received the knowledge of Divine things by an extraordinary Inspiration the rest have acquired their knowledge by the ordinary means of Instruction Reading and Meditation in such sort as that this Knowledge came not unto them in an instant as it did to the others but increased in them by degrees ripening and growing up by little and little in proportion as they grew in years whence it is that their Writings are not all of them of the same weight nor of the same Value For who seeth not that what they as it were sportingly wrote in their younger years is of much less consideration than those other Pieces which they wrote in their riper age Who for instance would equal the Authority of that Epistle of S. Hierome to Heliodorus written by him when he had but newly left the Rhetorick Schools being yet a Child and full of that innocent and inconsiderate Heat which usually attendeth those years to that of those other graver Pieces which he afterwards sent abroad into the Church when he had now arrived to his full strength and ripeness of Wiâ— and to the perfection of his Studies S. Augustine hath left us a remarkable Testimony that the Fathers profited by Age and Study in the Knowledge of
than a Thousand and Twenty five or Thirty years or thereabout So likewise when Epiphanius writeth that Moses was but Thirty years old when he brought forth the Children of Israel out of Egypt whereas the Scriptures clearly testifie that he was Fourscore years of age And so where he affirmeth That the taking of the City of Jerusalem happened sixty five years after the Passion of our Saviour Christ And truly the Chronology of all the Ancients is generally very strange and for the most part very far wide of the truth as hath been observed and also proved at large by all the Moderns as Scaliger Petavius and others But these matters are so very nice and ticklish that oftentimes the most diligent Inquirers into them may chance to mistake I shall therefore forbear to insist any longer upon this Particular and shall now lay before you some examples of another nature and such as shall most evidently discover the security and negligence of these Authors Justin Martyr speaking of the Translation of the LXX Interpreters saith that Ptolemy King of Egypt sent his Ambassadors to Herod King of Judaea Whereas the truth of the story is that he sent to Eleazar the High Priest Two hundred forty and odd years before Herod came to be King of Judaea Epiphanius tells us in two or three places that the Peripateticks and Pythagoreans were one and the same Sect of Heathen Philosophers which yet were as much different one from the other as the Stoicks and Epicureans were as every Child knoweth The same Author confidently affirmeth also though contrary to the saith of all Ancient History that the several Sects and Opinion in Philosophy sprung from some certain Mysteries brought to Athens by Orpheus and others and that the Stoicks believed the Immortality and Transmigration of Souls both which are as false the one as the other and likewise that Nebuchadonosor sent a Colony into the Country about Samaria after the taking of Hierusalem whereas in truth it was Salmanassar who had so done long before the others time What can you think of him when you find him mistaken in such things as happened not many years before he was born as namely when he says that Arius died before the Council of Nice and when he relates the story of Meletius and his Schism clean otherwise than the Truth of it was Justin Martyr likewise assures us for a certain Truth that in the Reign of the Emperour Claudius there was erected at Rome a Statue to Simon Magus in the River Tiber betwixt the two Bridges with this Inscription TO THE HOLY GOD SIMON whereas as our Learned Criticks now inform us it was only an Inscription to one of the Pagan Dâ—miâ—gods in these Words â—SEMONI DEO SANCO which this Good Father mistook instead of Semoni reading Simoni and for Sanoo reading Sancto Eusebius saith and St. Hierome divers times repeateth it after him that Josephus the Jewish Historian reporteth that at the time of our Saviours Passion the Heavenly Powers forsook the Temple of Hierusalem and that there was a great noise heard and a voice saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us depart hence and yet nevertheless the Truth of the story is that Josephus reported this to have happened at the same time when the City was besieged that is to say above Thirty five years after the Death of our Saviour The same Authors and in a manner all others after them have constantly delivered as a certain Truth that Philo Judaeus in that Book of his entituled De Vitâ Contemplativâ describeth unto us the manner of Life of the Christian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Monks and yet that Book of Philo which we have at this day under this Title proclaimeth loud enough that he there speaks not of the Christians but of the Essenes who were one of the three Sects among the Jews as hath been observed by Scaliger and by divers others after him We have touched how St. Ambrose without giving us any Account of his Reasons why he doth so understands by Gog and Magog mentioned in Ezckiel the Nation of the Goths who in his time over-run all Christendom He tells us in another place with the very same confidence that Zacharias the father of John Baptist was the High Priest of the Jews which yet Baronius hath clearly proved to be false Thus you see how little the Later Writers are beholding to those that went before them as to this Particular Epiphanius affirmeth that Pison which was one of the Four Rivers that watered the Terrestrial Paradise mentioned by Moses was the same that the Indians and Ethiopians call Ganges and the Greeks Indus which River passing at length through Ethiopia discharged it self at last into the Ocean at Cales What wonderful strange Geography have we got here if at least we may call it by this name which jumbleth together the East and the West and confoundeth and maketh all one Places which are very near a whole Hemisphere distant from each other St. Basil also who is otherwise an Excellent Author hath mistaken likewise though not so much the course of the River Danubius for he hath only made it to spring out of the Pyrenean Mountains The speaking of these Rivers puts me in mind that all the Fathers do unanimously understand by Gihon one of the Rivers of Paradise the River Nilus which hath so deceived Cardinal Perron also as that he so delivers it to us as the express Text of the Scriptures by this means making it guilty of a manifest absurdity how innocent soever in it self it be and free from intending any such thing seeing that it is evident that neither in the Hebrew Greek nor Latine Text it is ever said that the River Nile watered the Land of Paradise it being only a Dream of the Fathers that one of these Rivers of Paradise must needs have been the Nile though this Fancy of theirs as Scaliger makes it appear and as it is confessed by †Petavius also is built upon no ground or reason at all Neither hath their Philosophy also been sometimes less wonderful than their Geography as for example when Tertullian maintains that Plants are endued both with sense and understanding too So likewise where Epiphanius holds that it is possible for a Dead Man to return to Life again without the Reunion of the Soul to the Body As also where S. Ambrose saith That the Sun to the end he may allay his extreme Heat refresheth himself with the Nourishment which he draweth up from the Waters and that from hence it is that we sometimes see him appear as it were all over wet and dropping with Dew And so again where you have some of them entertaining the Doctrine of the Spherical Figure of the Heavens with very great scorn and maintaining That it is onely as it were an Arch which is
Book of his De Anima He also with Irenaeus shuts up the Souls of Men after they are departed this Life into a certain Subterraneous place where they are to remain till the Day of Judgment the Heavens not being to be opened to any of the Faithful till the end of the World onely he allows the Martyrs their entrance into Paradise which he fancies to be some place beneath the Heavens and here he will have them continue till the Last Day It is thy Blood saith he which is the onely Key of Paradise And this place whither the Souls of the Dead go is to continue close shut up till the end of the World according to him who besides is of a quite contrary Opinion from that of Justin Martyr spoken of before and maintains That all Apparitions of Dead Men are onely meer Illusions and Deceits of the Devil and that this Inclosure of the Souls of Men shall continue till such time as the City of the New Jerusalem which is to be all of Precious Stones shall descend Miraculously from Heaven upon the Earth and shall there continue a Thousand years the Saints so long living in it in very great Glory and that during this space the Resurrection of the Faithful is to be accomplished by degrees some of them rising up sooner and some later according to the difference of their Merits And hence are we to interpret that which he says in another place to wit That small Sins shall be punished in Men by the Lateness of their Resurrection and That when the Thousand years are expired and the Destruction of the World and the Conflagration of the Day of Judgment is past we shall all be changed in a moment into the Nature of Angels I pass by his Invectives against Second Marriages and also his evil Opinion of all Marriage in General these Fancies being a part of the Discipline of Montanus his Paraclete But as for his Opinions touching the Baptism of Hereticks he hath many Fellows among the Fathers who held the same namely That their Baptism signified nothing and therefore they never received any Heretick into the Communion of the Catholick Church but they first rebaptized him Cleansing him saith he both in the one and in the other Man that is to say both in Body and Soul by the Baptism of the Truth accounting an Heretick to be in the same or rather in a worse condition than any Pagan And as for the rest he is so far from pressing Men to the Baptizing of their Children while they are young which yet is the present Custom of these Times that he allows and indeed perswades the Contrary not onely in Children but even in Persons of Riper years counselling them to defer it every Man according to his Condition Disposition and Age. And as his Opinion touching this Particular is not much different from that of the Anabaptists of our Time so doth he not much dissent from them neither in some other For he will not allow no more than they do that a Christian should take upon him or execute any Office of Judicature or That he should condemn or bind or imprison or examine any Man or that he should make War upon any or serve in War under any other saying expresly That our Saviour Christ by disarming S. Peter hath from henceforth taken off every Soldiers Belt Which is as much as to say That the Discipline of Christ alloweth not of the Profession of Soldiery So that I cannot but extremely wonder at the Confidence shall I say or rather the Inadvertency of some who will needs perswade us from a certain Passage of this Author which themselves have very much mistaken that this so Innocent and Peaceable Father maintained That Hereticks are to be punished and to be suppressed by inflicting upon them temporal punishments which rigorous proceeding was as far from his thoughts as Heaven is from Earth I shall add here before I go any further that he held that our Saviour Christ suffered death in the Thirtieth year of his Age which is manifestly contrary to the Gospel And he thought also that the Heavenly Grace and Prophecy ended in St. John Baptist the Fulness of the Spirit being from henceforth transferred unto our Saviour Christ St. Cyprian who was Tertullians very great Admirer calling him absolutely The Master and who never let any day pass over his head without reading something of him hath confidently also maintained some of the aforesaid Opinions as namely among others that of the Nullity of Baptism by Hereticks which he desendeth every where very stiffely having also the most Eminent Men of his time consenting with him in this Point as namely Firmilianus Metropolitan of Cappadocia Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria together with the Councils of Africk Cappadocia Pamphilia and Bithynia notwithstanding all the Anger and the Excommunication also of Stephen Bishop of Rome who for his part held a particular Opinion of his own allowing of the Baptism of all sorts of Hereticks without rebaptizing any of them as it appeareth by the Beginning of the LXXIV Epistle of St. Cyprian whereas the Church about some LXV years after at the Council of Nice declared Null the Baptism of the Samosatenians by permitting as it seems that all other Hereticks whatsoever should be received into the Church without being rebaptized But the Fathers of the * II. General Council went yet further rebaptizing all those no otherwise than they would have done Pagans who came in from the Communion either of the Eunomians Montanists Phrygians or Sabellians or indeed any other Hereticks whatsoever save only the Arrians Macedonians Sabbatians Novatians Quartodecimani and Apollinarians all which they received without Rebaptization as you may see in the Greek Copies of the said Council and the VII Canon which Canon you also have in the Greek Code of the Church Universal Num. CLXX And thus you see that Stephen and Cyprian maintained each of them their own particular Opinion in this point the one of them admitting and the other utterly rejecting the Baptism of all manner of Hereticks whereas the two aforenamed General Councils neither admitted nor rejected save only the Baptism of some certain Hereticks only But St. Cyprian however seems to have dealt herein much more fairly than his Adversary seeing that He patiently endured and was not offended with any of those who were of the contrary Opinion as it appears clearly by the Synod of Carthage and as it is also proved by St. Hierome whereas Stephen according to his own hot cholerick Temper declared publickly against Firmilianus his Opinion and Excommunicated all those that dissented from himself The same blessed Martyr of our Saviour Jesus Christ was carried away with that Errour also of his time touching the Necessity of administring the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist to all persons when they were Baptized and
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