Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n
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A36721
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An historical dissertation upon the Thebean Legion plainly proving it to be fabulous / by John Dubourdieu ...; Dissertation historique et critique sur le martyre de la légion thébéenne. English
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Dubourdieu, Jean, 1652-1720.
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1696
(1696)
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Wing D2409; ESTC R17246
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111,591
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210
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AN Historical Dissertation UPON THE THEBEAN LEGION Plainly proving it to be Fabulous BY JOHN DVBOVRDIEV M. A. Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Schomberg and Leinster and one of the Ministers of the French Church in the Savoy LONDON Printed for R. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-Garden 1696. TO THE Right Honourable My LORD MOUTHERMER Eldest Son to the Right Honourable The Earl of MOUNTAGUE Master of the Wardrobe and one of his Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord I Could not deny my self the Pleasure of Dedicating this little Book to your Lordship having the Honour of seeing you twice or three times a Week but never without being Charm'd with you Behaviour and your many Excellent Qualities The ill Practices of this Age have so far infected the Noblemen and made them so solicitous of their private Interests that it is to be feared we may live to see those times return again upon us when Mens worth was measured by their Riches and Persons of Quality were proud of their ignorance Ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosius auro At nunc barbaria est grandis habere nihil One cannot without grief see so many Young Noblemen the Hopes of the Church and Flower of the State spend the best of their Years in Pleasures and Idleness And tho' they have no Noble Qualities which can Entitle them to the Worlds respect yet they still hope to recommend themselves to their esteem by their Noble Birth their Splendid Living and the flattery of Sycophants But you my Lord are far from thinking that the advantages of Nature and Fortune can make amends for all other Defects or ought to incline you to despise the Study of Curious Arts and Polite Learning The constant Application by which you improve those rare Talents you brought into the World with you the great attention you give to the Instructions of your Masters the pleasure you take in having your Judgment informed and the Impression which right Notions make upon you do clearly discover the just Opinion you have of what things are truly worthy of Honour Tu sola animos mentemque peruris Gloria te viridem videt immunemque Senectae Thamisis in ripa stantem juvenesque Vocantem As the Roman Noblemen used to return from Athens and Marseilles laden with the Spoils of Greece and perfected in the choicest Studies that they might be qualified for sitting and speaking in the Senate doubtless My Lord you are moved by the same Spring when you consider that the Parliament to which your Birth will one Day call you is the most August Assembly in the World whose greatness was never perhaps so well understood as since this present War when we see all Europe waiting upon their Consultations and that their Winter Resolutions Govern the Actions of the Summer How happy are you My Lord in a Wise and a kind Father who has added to so solid a Judgment so great Experience of the World who not thinking it sufficient to give you the ablest Masters in all Sciences reserves the inspection of your Studies and Education to to his own fondness and care And how Happy is your Father in such a Son who makes so good use of his Admonitions and Example and by the Blossoms of your Spring promise him so fruitful an Autumn But that which strikes me most in you My Lord is the observing as often as I have the Honour of waiting on you that the pleasure you take in sound Literature and gentile Studies which would otherwise be your chief delight do yield to your stronger Love of Virtue and Honesty What may we not expect from that regard you have for your Preceptors that Complaisance to your Equals and Courtesie to your Inferiours the acknowledgments you pay unawares to those whose Duty is to serve you your generous Inclinations your sweet Nature your Modesty and Affability which Charm every Body that comes near you the perfect Obedience and profound Respect which you pay to your Father on all occasions and above all your Religion and Piety which added to all your other rare Qualities shew you to be the Care of Heaven which seldom or never bestows so many Excellencies on the same Person sparguntur in Omnes In te mixta fluunt quae divisa beatos Efficiunt collecta tenes I think My Lord I may very well be allowed to quote Latin Authors to you since you already understand their Language and its needless to speak of the Progress you have made in the French after having seen an Answer which Mr. de St. Euremont wrote to a Letter you sent him whereby it appears how full of admiration he was at your Wit the Correctness of your Style and justness of your Thoughts and when Mr. de St Euremont has decided so much in your Favour it 's better than if your Lordship had the Approbation of the whole French Academy I beseech God to confirm you more and more in his Love and Fear and fill you with the Blessings of his Holy Spirit I am My LORD Your most Humble and most Obliged Servant John Dubourdieu AN Historical Dissertation UPON THE MARTYRDOM OF THE Thebean Legion CHAP. I. The Occasion of this Essay THE Duke of Schomberg whom I had the Honour to serve as Chaplain arrived at Turin the 18 th of July 1691. He found the State of Affairs there in a bad Posture and the People in a great Consternation The French had lately Fortified Carmagnole Coni was Besieg'd and given over for lost Monsieur la Hoguette had forced the Passages of the Valley of Aoste which gave him entrance into the Country of Verceil and the Frontiers of the Milanese Our Army instead of making some motion to disturb the Enemy Incamped upon the Descent of Mountcallier being Spectators of the waste and burning of the Plains below Turin dreaded every hour being invested There was an universal fear and the retreat of the Princesses to Verceil added yet more to the terrour of the Inhabitants The Favourers of France gave out publickly that his Royal Highness would unavoidably be stripp'd this Campaigne of all his Territories and that he had no way left but to submit to the King's mercy Certain it is that without that firmness and greatness of Soul which his Royal Highness shewed on this occasion all had then been lost and though the beginning of his Reign seems to prognosticate a series of Heroick Actions yet this part of his History will be none of the less Illustrious Emmanuel Philibert oppressed during the Wars between Charles the V. and Francis the I. sunk at last under the weight of his Misfortunes He had the weakness to take upon him the Name of St. Mark 's Son and that he might be assisted by the Venetians he Sacrificed to that Republick the prcedency he had in all the Courts of Europe The Affairs of his now Royal Highness were almost as desperate Nevertheless a manly and undaunted Air did always appear on
him to convince them of their Errour and to shew them how easily they might be imposed upon in a matter wherein they pretended to so much skill But mistakes of this kind have been yet more frequently made by those who have imployed their-Criticks upon those Heathen Authors which have been left to us either by the Grecian or Latin Antiquity Every Body knows the witty trick Muret put upon Scaliger how he composed some Verses and told him he had found them in an Old Manuscript And how Scaliger who boasted that he was very well â—cquâ—inted with the genius and Style of every Age both in Prose and Verse found immediately an Ancient Author for those Verses of Muret's making And being afterwards informed they were of his composing he revenged himself of him by a Distich upon his Cheat. These feigned and Counterfeit Works were not unknown to Ancient Greece since the Learned of those times made it their Study to find them out Dionysius Longinus made a Treatise upon the same Subject and we should be informed now of a great many Fabulous Relations inserted into Histories had not the ill Fate of Learning deprived us of the Works of that excellent Critick But seeing that Men have naturally a respect for things which belong to Religion one would think that they should not suffer themselves to be mis-led by those who have made it their business to impose upon the World by inventing Fables and Publishing supposititious Ecclesiastical Writings and Transactions Nevertheless by what Misfortune I know not these frauds have been more frequent in the Church than any where else and it is impossible to Summ up the mistakes they have occasioned amongst the Learned in all Christian Societies So many spurious Writings and supposititious Facts were made and Published even in the three first Ages of Christianity that Amphilochius Bishop of Iconium so much esteemed by St. Basil one of the most worthy Fathers of the Church composed a whole Book of them which is cited in the Acts of the Seventh Council There was scarcely any thing to be seen to make use of Fontanel's Words in his History of Oracles but false Gospels false Epistles of the Apostles false Histories of their Lives c. The chief Men of the Church have been sometimes deceived c. They did not always narrowly examine what seemed to favour Religion The heat and fervour they felt when they fought for so good a cause did not always suffer them to chuse the best Weapons And the Distemper was so far from lessening in the following Ages that it still more increased and tâ—e boldness in inventing Fables and Forging false Lives of Martyrs and Saints went so far and became so common that the Church thought it necessary to put a stop to it by the Authority of its Canons For in the Council of Constantinople held in the Year 692 under Justinian the Younger the Church condemned in the 63 d Canon the false Passions and Fabulous Lives of Saints and Martyrs A great number of Learned Men have endeavoured in these latter times to find out these supposititious Writings and to ascribe to every Author the Works belonging properly to him And they would undoubtedly have been more succesful in it had they not been mis led as well as the People by Interest or Partiality For oftentimes both their Minds and Pens are sway'd by prejudice and Passion As if a Work were good or bad Ancient or Modern as it chanced to be look'd upon by Protestant or Popish Eyes false and supposititious if contrary to their Opinions but Ancient and of the true stamp if it proved fovourable to them But though they should be allowed to have been free from Prejudice and Passion yet it is no strange thing to see Men differ in their Judgments This follows necessarily the different applications and Natural inclinations of their minds Some view things only on one side and some on another The greatest part fix themselves before they have well examined all the Reasons that are and may be produced on both sides And sometimes it happens that Men concern themselves for some Works as they do for some Persons without knowing why they are more for those than for the others Hence it is that the Writers of the same Church do not always agree in their Opinions Cardinal Baronius speaks of the Recognitions attributed to St. Clement as of a sink full of filthiness and lies Whereas Bellarmine maintains that they are St. Clement's own or of some other Author as Ancient and as Learned as he The same difference in Opinions is observed amongst the Protestants concerning St. Ignatius's Letters though these Letters are generally and with good reason look'd upon as one of the fairest Monuments of the Apostolick Age. And Mr. Dupin in his Bibliotheca nova sets aside in a hundred places the Judgment and Authority of his Friends Possevinus Sixtus of Siena Rainaldus Bellarmine Labbe and other Writers of his Religion who have Criticis'd upon the Works of the Fathers This shews that the most Learned may sometimes be mistaken in their Judgments upon the Works of the Ancients Nor is this much to be wondered at since the intricacy and confusedness wherewith some Transactions are related and the distance of the time wherein they happened make it a very hard matter for us now to discern Truth from Falshood Criticks borrow most part of their Light from the Quality of the Manuscripts and sometimes these Manuscripts the Antiquity whereof sounds so high with some Men are but Modern Writings And particularly we shall consider in another place wh a Judgment one ought to pass upon a Relation of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion which Peter Francis Chifflet took out of an Ancient Manuscript of St. Claudius's Monastery But 't is now time to come to our Proofs CHAP. V. That St. Eucherius Bishop of Lions â—s not the Author who wrote that Passion of the Thebean Souldiers which both Surius and Baronius have followed THE first proof we bring against the Relation of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion is That it is clear and plain that St. Eucherius Bishop of Lions is not the Author of it and that his Name hath been set to it by some Cheat to gain more Credit thereto from the esteem which the Church always had for the extraordinary Virtues and Merits of this great Prelate To be convinced of this 't will suffice to mention only one passage wherein 't is said of Sigismond King of Burgundy That they never cease Night nor Day to sing Psalms and Hymns in the Monastery of Agaunum And that this Holy Praclice first appointed there by the blessed King and Martyr St. Sigismond is observed there to this very day It visibly appears from this place that when this Relation was made King Sigismond was dead It follows moreover from thence that it must have been compos'd several Years after the Death of this Prince since that Author after he