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
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
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
then safely perhaps rely upon the Writings of the Fathers But then on the other side it is so very difficult a matter to meet with such a Conjunction of so many several Quâ—lifications as that I very much doubt whether we shall be ever able to enjoy this happiness or not For first of all for the persons of those men whose Testimonies we alledge he requireth that they should be such as not only Lived but also Taught and which is more persevered too not only in the Faith but in the Communion also of the Catholick Church And then for fear of being surprised and taken at this Word he comes over us with a new supply and qualifies his words with a Restriction of Three Adverbs and tells Us that they must have lived and taught Holily Wisely and Constantly But yet this is not all for besides all this they must have either died in Christ or for Christ So that if they Lived but did not Teach or if they both Lived and Taught but did not Persevere or if they both Lived Taught and also Persevered in the Faith but not in the Communion or else in the Communion but not in the Faith of the Catholick Church or if they yet Lived and Taught Holily but not Wisely or on the contrary Wisely but not Holily and if in the last place after all this having performed all the Particulars before set down they did not at last die either in Christ or for Christ they ought not according to this mans Rule be admitted as Witnesses in this Case Certainly he might have stopped here and not have gone on still with his Modifications as he doth limiting the number and the words of these witnesses For what Christian ever made scruple of receiving the Opinion of such a one as had both Holily Wisely and Constantly lived and taught in the Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church For you might hence very well rest assured that whatsoever he had delivered was True and consequently Fit to be believed for how could he have taught Wisely and Constantly if he had taught any False Doctrine All tha he here therefore promiseth us is no more but this That we should be sure not to be deceived provided that we believed no other Doctrines save what were Holy and True This Promise of his is like that which little Children are wont to make when they tell you that you shall never die if you but eat always Neither do I believe that there is any man in the World so perverse and wilful as not readily to assent to such a man as he assuredly knew to be so qualified as Vincentius Lirinensis would here have him to be But seeing that it is necessary that we should first know the Quality of the Witness before we hear him it remaineth in my judgment that before we do so much as hear any of the Fathers we ought to be first assured that he was so qualified in every particular according to Vincentius his Rule before layed down Now I would very fain have any one inform me how it is possible for us to know this Who will assure us that Athanasius St. Cyrill or what other Father you please both Lived Taught Persevered and Died Holily Wisely and Constantly in the Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church This can never be done without a most Exact Inquiry made both into their Life and their Doctrines which is an Impossible thing considering the many Ages that have passed from Their times down to Ours But yet supposing that this were a Possible thing it would nevertheless be of no use at all as to this Authors purpose For He will have us hear the Fathers to the end that we may be by Them instructed in the Truth Now that we may be rightly informed whether or no they were so Qualified as is before required we ought necessarily to know first of all what the Truth is For how is it otherwise possible that we should be able to judg whether they have taught Holily and Wisely And if you were before-hand instructed in the Truth what need have you then to hear Them and to desire to be instructed in it by Them You may indeed make use of them for the Illustration and Confirmation of that which you knew before but you cannot learn any Truth from them which you knew not before And if you understand the Maxime before alledged in another sense and take this Wisdom and Holiness this Faith and Communion of the Catholick Church therein mentioned for a shadow onely and the Superficies and Outward Appearance of these things and for a Common and Empty Opinion grounded meerly upon the Publick Voice of the People and not upon an Exact Knowledge of the thing it self it will then prove to be manifestly False those Persons who have but the Outward Appearance only and not the Reality of these Qualities being no way fit to be admitted as Witnesses much less to be receiv'd as the Supreme Judges in the Point of the Christian Faith So that this Proposition is either Impossible if you understand it as the words seem to sound or else it is False if you take it in any larger sense The like Exceptions may be made against those other Conditions which he there further requires touching the Number and the Words of these Witnesses For he alloweth not the force of a Law to any thing but what hath been delivered either by All or else by the Greatest part of them If he here by All mean All the Fathers that ever have been or but the Greatest Part of them onely he then puts us upon an Impossibility For taking the whole Number of Fathers that ever have been the Greatest and perhaps too the Best Part of them have not written any thing at all and among those that have written how many hath Time devoured and how many hath the False Dealings of Men either wholly suppressed or else corrupted and altered It is therefore evidently Impossible to know what the Opinions have been either of All or of the Greatest Part of the Fathers in this sense And if he restrains this All and this Greatest Part to those who appear at this day either in their own Books or in Historians and the Writings of other men it will concern us then to inquire Whether or no by All he means All promiscuously without distinguishing them by their several Ages wherein they lived or else Whether he would have us distinguish them into several Classes putting together in the same Rank all those that lived in one and the same Age and receiving for Truth whatsoever we find to have been held and confirmed by the greatest part of them Now both these ways agree in this one thing namely that they render the Judgment of the Christian Faith wholly Casual and make it depend upon divers and sundry Accidents which have been the Cause of the Writings of the Fathers being either preserved or lost For put the case that
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
no such Doctrine was ever preached to Mankind either by our Saviour Christ or by His Apostles For what Probability is there that those Holy Doctors of Former Ages from whose hands Christianity hath been derived down unto us should be Ignorant of any of those things which had been Revealed and Recommended by our Saviour as Important and Necessary to Salvation It is true indeed that the Fathers being deceived either by some False manner of Argumentation or else by some Seeming Authority do sometimes deliver such things as have not been revealed by our Saviour Christ but are evidently either False or Ill grounded as we have formerly shewed in those Examples before produced by us It is true moreover that among those things which have been revealed by our Saviour Christ in the Scripture which yet are not Absolutely Necessary to Salvation the Fathers may have been ignorant of some of them either by reason that Time had not as yet discovered what the sense of them was or else because that for lack of giving good heed unto them or by their being carried away with some Passion They did not then perceive what hath since been found out But that they should all of them have been Ignorant of any Article that is Necessarily Requisite to Salvation is altogether Impossible For after this Account They should all have been deprived of Salvation which I suppose every honest Soul would tremble at the thought of I say then and as I conceive have sufficiently proved in this Treatise that an Argument which concludeth the Truth of any Proposition from the Fathers having maintained the same is very Weak and Ill-grounded as supposing that which is Clearly False namely That the Fathers maintained nothing which had not been Revealed by our Saviour Christ For this would be such a kind of Argumentation as if a man should prove by the General Agreement herein of the Fathers that all the Departed Souls are shut up together in a certain Place or Receptacle till the Day of Judgment or that the Encharist is Necessarily to be administred to Little Infants and the like where every one sees how Insufficient and Invalid this way of Argumentation is And to say the truth such is the Proceeding of the Church of Rome when they go about to prove by the Authority of the Fathers those Articles which they propose to the World and which are rejected by the Protestants I say moreover that to conclude upon the Nullity or Falseness of any Article that is not of the number of those that are Necessary to Salvation from the general Silence of the Fathers touching the same is a very Absurd way of Arguing as supposing a thing which is also Manifestly False Namely that the Fathers must Necessarily have seen and Clearly known All and every of those things which Jesus Christ hath revealed in His Word Such a kind of Argument would it be thought among the Franciscans if any one should conclude against them from the Silence of the Fathers that our Saviour Christ hath not at all revealed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without Sin But yet I confess again on the other side that in those Points that are accounted as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation an Argument that should be drawn from the General Silence of the Fathers to prove the Nullity or Falseness of it would be very Pertinent and indeed Unanswerable As for example His manner of Argumentation would be very Rational and Solid that should conclude that those Means of Salvation which are proposed by a Mahomet suppose or a David George or the like Sectaries are Null and contrary to the Will of our Saviour Christ how much soever these Men may seem to Honour Him seeing that none of ehe Ancient Christians speak so much as one syllable of it and are utterly ignorant of all those Secrets that these Wretches have preached to their Disciples and delivered as Infallible and Necessary Means of Salvation After this manner did Irenaeus dispute against the Valentinians and other of the Gnosticks who vented their own sensâ—less Dreams and Absurd Issues of their Own Brain saying That the Creator of the World was but an Angelâ— and that there were above Him certain Divine Powers which They called Aeones that is to say Ages some of them making more of these and others fewer and some reckoning to the number of CCCLXV and an infinite number of other the like Prodigies never shewing any Ground for the same either in Reason or out of the Scripture Irenaeus therefore that he might make it appear to the World that this so Strange Doctrine was produced out of their Own Brain only goes about and visiteth the Arohives of all the Churches that had been either Planted or Watered by the Holy Apostles turns over all their Records Evidences and Ancient Monuments and these Aeones Achamot and Barbele of the Gnosticks no where appearing nor so much as any the least Part or Trace of them He concludeth that the Apostles had never delivered over any such thing to their Disciples neither by Writing nor by Word of Mouth as these Impostors pretended they had For certainly if they had done so the memory of it could not have been so utterly lost This is also the Method that Tertullian followed in his Disputations against these very Hereticks and others the like in the 22 Chapter of his Book De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos and in other places The Practice of these Great Persons who made use of it themselves will here serve to prove unto us that this Course is Right and Good And thus you see that the Authority of the Fathers is of very great Use in the Church and serveth as an Out-work to the Scriptures for the repelling the Presumption of those who would forge a New Faith But forasmuch as those who broach New Doctrines of their own Head do Ordinarily slight the Holy Scriptures as those very Hereticks did whom Iraeneus confuted who impudently accused Them of not being Right and that they are of no Authority and speak in very Ambiguous Terms and that they are not able to inform a man of the Truth unless they are acquainted with Tradition the Truth having been delivered as These men pretended not in Writing but by Word of Mouth For this Reason I say and for other the like are the Writings of the â—athers of very great Use in these Disputes and I conceive This to be one of the Principal ends for which the Divine Providence hath in despite of So many Confusions and Changes preserved so many of them safe down to our times If therefore the Protestants should propose of their Own Head and should press as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation any Positive Article which doth not at all appear in Antiquiâ—y without all Question this Course might with very good Reason be made use of against Them But it is most Evident that there is no such thing at all in their Belief for
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
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
corrected by the Hypocrisie or false shew of Reprehension and that by this means both the one and the other might be saved whilst the one who stood up for Circumcision followed S. Peter and those other who refused Circumcision applaud and are taken with S. Paul's Liberty S. Augustine utterly disliking this Exposition of S. Hierome wrote unto him in his ordinary grave and meek way modestly declaring the Reasons why he could not assent unto it which Epistles of his are yet extant The other answers him a thousand strange things but particularly he there protesteth That he will not warrant for sound whatever shall be found in that Book of his And to shew that he doth not do this without good reason he setteth down a certain Passage out of his Preface to it which is very well worth our Consideration For after he hath named the Writings of Origen Didymus Apollinaris Theodorus Herâ—clas Eusebius Emisseâ—us Alexander the Heretick and others he adds That I may therefore plainly tell the truth I confess that I have read all these Authors and collecting together as much as I could in my memory I presently called for a Scribe to whom I dictated either my own Conceptions or those of other Men without remembring either the Order or the Words sometimes or the Sense Do but think now with your self whether or no this be not an excellent rare way of Commenting upon the Scriptures and very well worthy both to be esteemed and imitated by us He then turneth his Speech to S. Augustine saying If therefore thou lightedst upon any thing in my Exposition which was worthy of reprehension it would have stood better with thy Learning to have consulted the Greek Authors themselves and to have seen whether what I have written be to be found in them or not and if not then to have condemned it as my own private Opinion And he elsewhere gives the same answer to Ruffinus who upbraideth him for some absurd Passages in his Commentaries upon the Prophet Daniel Now according to this reckoning if we would know whether or no what we meet with in his Commentaries be his own proper Sense or not we must first turn over the Books of all these ancient Greeks that is to say we must do that which is now impossible to be done seeing that the Writings of the greatest part of them are utterly lost and must not attribute any thing to him as his proper Opinion how clearly and expresly soever it be delivered unless we are first able to make it appear that it is not to be found in any of those Authors out of whose Writings he hath patched up his Commentaries For if any one of them be found to have delivered any thing you here meet with you are to take notice that it belongeth to that Author S. Hierome in this case having been onely his Transcriber or at most but his Translator So that you may be able perhaps by the reading of Books in this manner collected to judge whether the Fathers have had the skill to make a handsom and artificial Connexion and Digestion of those things which they took out of so many several Authors or not but whether or no they believed all that they have set down in their Books you will be no more able to discover than you can judge what Belief any Man is of by the Books he transcribeth or can guess at the Opinions of an Interpreter by the Books he translateth Whence we may conclude that testimonies brought out of such Books as these are of little or no force at all either for or against us And this seemeth to have been the Opinion of Cardinal Bellarmine also where to a certain Objection brought out of one of S. Hierome's Books he makes this Answer That the Author in that place speaketh according to the Opinion of others as he often doth in his Commentaries upon the Epistle to the Ephesians and in other places The like course hath Cardinal Perron taken where the Protestants have urged against the Church of Rome the Authority of S. Hilary touching the Canon of the Scriptures of the Old Testament confidently answering That the Notes cited out of that place of S. Hilary are not his but Origen's in his Commentary upon the First Psalm part of whose Words he had transcribed and put into his own Prologue upon the Psalms and yet S. Hilary neither so much as nameth Origen nor yet gives us any intimation at all whether we are to receive what is there spoken touching the Scriptures as from Origen or from himself And the ground of this Answer of his is taken from what S. Hierome hath testified in divers places namely that S. Hilary hath transcribed the greatest part of his Commentaries out of the said Origen Now if we but rightly consider the account which S. Hierome hath given as we shewed before of all Commentaries in general how can we have any assurance whether that which the Fathers deliver in these kind of Writings be their own proper Opinion or only some other Man 's transcribed And if we can have no assurance hereof how can we then account them of any force at all either for or against us So that it is most evident that this Method which the Fathers have observed in their Expositions of the Scriptures must needs render the things themselves very doubtful how clearly and expresly soever they have delivered themselves But hath it not concerned them to be more careful in their Homilies or Sermons and to deliver nothing there save only what hath been their own proper Opinion and Belief May we not at least in this particular rest assured that they have spoken nothing but from their very soul and that their Tongues have vented here their own Opinions only and not those of other Men Certainly in all reason they should not have uttered any thing in this Sacred Place from whence they taught their People save what they conceived to have been most true And yet besides what we have formerly noted as to this particular namely that they did not always speak out the whole truth but concealed something of it as not so fit for the ears either of the Pagans or of the weaker sort of Christians Cardinal Perron that great and curious Inquirer into all the Customs of the Ancients hath informed us that in regard of the aforesaid Considerations they have sometimes gone further yet For in expounding the Scriptures to the People where the Catechumeni were present if by chance they fell upon any Passage where the Sacraments were spoken of that they might not discover these Mysteries they would then make bold to wrest the Text a little and instead of giving them the true and real Interpretation of the Place which they themselves knew to be such they would only present their Auditory with an Allegorical and Symbolical and as this Cardinal saith an Accidental and Collateral one only to give them some
his own Opinions and Observations as Apostolical and which hath not used his utmost endeavour to gain them the Repute of being Vniversal S. Hierome allows every particular Province full liberty to do herein as they please Let every Province saith he abound in its own Sense and let them account of the Ordinances of their Ancestors as of Apostolical Laws It is true indeed that he speaks in this place onely of certain Observations of things which are in themselves indifferent But yet that which he hath permitted them in these Matters they have practised in all other I shall not here trouble my self to produce any other Reasons to prove the Difficulty of this Inquiry because I should then be forced to repeat a great part of that which hath been already delivered For if it be a very hard matter to attain to any certain knowledge what the Sense of the Writings of the Fathers is as we have proved before how much more difficult a thing will it be to discover whether their Opinions were the Opinions of the particular Churches wherein they lived or else were the Opinions of the Church Universal in their Age the same things which cause Obscurity in the one having as much or rather more reason of doing the like in the other And if you would fully understand how painful an Undertaking this is do but read the Disputations of the Learned of both Parties touching this Point where you shall meet with so many Doubts and Contradictions and such diversity of Opinions that you will easily conclude That this is one of the greatest Difficulties that is to be met withal throughout the whole Study of Antiquity CHAP. XI Reason XI That it is impossible to know exactly what the Belief of the Ancient Church either Vniversal or Particular hath been touching any of those Points which are at this day controverted amongst us BEfore we pass on to the Second Part of this Treatise it seemeth not impertinent to give the Reader this Last Advertisement and to let him know that though all these Difficulties here before represented were removed yet notwithstanding would it still be impossible for us to know certainly out of the Fathers what the Judgment of the whole Ancient Church whether you mean the Church Universal or but any considerable Part thereof hath been touching the Differences which are now on foot in Religion Now that we may be able to make the truth of this Proposition appear it is necessary that we should first of all explain the Terms We understand commonly by the Church especially in these Disputations either all those Persons in General who profess themselves to be of the said Church of what Condition or Quality soever they be or else in a stricter sense the Collective Body of all those who are set over and who are Representatives of the Church that is to say the Clergy So that whether you speak of the Church Universal or of some Particular Church as for example that of Spain or of Carthage this Term may be taken in either of these two senses For by the Church Universal we understand either all those Persons in general who live in the Communion of the Christian Church whether they be of the Laity or of the Clergy or else those Persons onely who are Ecclesiastici or Church-men as we now call them For in the Primitive Times all Christians that lived in the Communion of the Catholicks were called Ecclesiastici In like manner by the Church of Carthage is meant either generally All the Faithful that live in the particular Communion of the Christian Church of Carthage or else particularly and in a stricter sense the Bishop of Carthage with his whole Clergy Now I do not believe that there is any Man but will easily grant me that if we take the Church in the First sense it is impossible to know by way of Testimony given of the same what the Sense and Judgment of it hath been in each several Age touching all the Points of Christian Religion We may indeed collect by way of Discourse what hath been the Belief of the True Members of the Church For there being some certain Articles the Belief whereof is necessarily requisite for the rendring a Man such an one whosoever rightly understands which these Articles be he may certainly conclude that the True Church whether Universal or Particular hath believed the same But now in the first place this doth not extend to all the Points of Christian Religion but onely to those which are Necessary besides which there are divers others concerning which we may have not only different but even contrary Judgments too and yet not thereby hazard the loss either of the Communion of the Church or of our Inheritance of everlasting Salvation So then this Ratiocination concludeth not save onely of those who are the True Members of the Church For as for those who make but an outward Profession onely of the Truth it being not at all necessary that they should be saved there is in like manner no more necessity of their embracing those Beliefs which are requisite for that end They may under this Mask hide all manner of Opinions how Impious soever they be Lastly that which makes most for our purpose is That this Knowledge is acquired by Discourse whereas we speak here of such a Knowledge as is collected by the hearing of several Witnesses who give in their Testimonies touching the thing which we would know Now the Fathers having written with a purpose of informing us not what each particular Man believed in their time but rather what they thought fit that all Men should have believed we must needs conclude That certainly they have not told us all that they knew touching this particular And consequently therefore partly their Charity and partly also their Prudence may have caused them to pass by in silence all such Opinions either of whole Companies or of particular Persons as they conceived to be not so consonant to the Truth But supposing that they had not any of these considerations and that they had taken upon them to give us a just Account each Man of the Opinions of his particular Church wherein he lived it is evident however that they could never have been able to have attainēd to the end of this their Design For how is it possible that they should have been able to have learnt what the Opinion of every single Person was amongst so vast a Multitude which consisted of so many several Persons who were of so different both Capacities and Dispositions Who will believe that S. Cyprian for example knew all the several Opinions of each particular Person in his Diocess so as to be able to give us an account of the same Who can imagine but that among such a Multitude of People as lived in the Communion of his Church there must needs have been very many who differed in Opinion from him in divers Points of Religion Even
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
to read the Ancients to prove all things and to hold fast that which is good and not to depart from the Faith of the Catholick Church according to the Rule which he hath commended unto us in his LXXVI Epistle where he adviseth us to read Origen Tertullian Novatus Arnobius Apollinaris and some other of the Ecclesiastical Writers but with this caution that we should make choice of that which is good but take heed of embracing that which is not so according to the Apostle who bids us prove all things but hold fast onely that which is good And this is the course he constantly takes censuring with the greatest Liberty that may be the Opinions and Expositions of all those who went before him He gives you freely his Judgment of every one of them affirming That Cyprian scarcely touched the Scriptures at all that Victorinus was not able to express his own Conceptions that Lactantius is not so happy in his Endeavours of proving our Religion as he is in overthrowing that of others that Arnobius is very uneven and confused and too luxuriant that S. Hilary is too swelling and incumbred with too long Periods I shall not here set before you what he saith of Origen Theodorus Apollinaris and of the Chiliasts whose professed Enemy he hath declared himself and whom he reproveth very sharply upon all Occasions whensoever they come in his way and yet himself confesseth them all to have been Men of very great Parts giving even Origen himself who is the most dangerous Writer of them all this Testimony That none but the ignorant can deny but that next to the Apostles he was one of the greatest Masters of the Church But that I may not meddle with any but such whose Names have never been cried down in the Church do but mark how he deals with Rhetitius Augustudunensis an Ecclesiastical Author There are saith he an infinite number of things in his Commentaries which in my judgment shew very mean and poor and a little after He seemeth to have had so ill an Opinion of others as to have a conceit that no Man was able to judge of his Faults He taketh the same liberty also in rejecting their Opinions and Expositions and sometimes not without passing upon them very tart Girds too He justifies the Truth of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament and findeth an infinite number of Faults in the Translation of the LXX against almost the general consent not onely of the more Ancient Writers but also of those too who lived in his own time who all esteemed it as a Divine Piece He scoffs at the conceit of those Men who believed that the LXX Interpreters being put severally into Seventy distinct Cells were inspired from above in the Translation of the Bible Let them keep saith he speaking of his own Backbiters by way of scorn with all my heart in the Seventy Cells of the Alexandrian Pharos for fear they should lose their Sails of their Ships and be forced to bewail the loss of their Cordage perhaps the same Truth as S. Augustine saith a little before but it will not be of equal Authority with that of the Canonical Books Besides as Cardinal Baronius hath observed this last Passage of S. Hierome ought to be understood onely in the Point touching the Holy Trinity concerning which there were at that time great Disputes betwixt the Catholicks and the Arians for otherwise if his words be taken in a General sense they will be found to be false as to S. Hilaries particular who hath had his failings in some certain things as we shall see hereafter In a word although S. Hierome were to be understood as speaking in a General sense as his words indeed seem to bear yet might the same thing possibly happen to him here which he hath observed hath oftentimes befallen to others namely to be mistaken in his Judgment For we are not to imagine that he would have us have a greater Opinion of him than he himself hath of other Men. And S. Augustine told him as we have before shewed that he did not believe that he expected Men should judge any otherwise of him And I suppose we may very safely keep to S. Augustine's Judgment and believe with him that S. Hierome had never any intention that we should receive all his Positions as Infallible Truths but rather that he would have us to read and examine his Writings with the same freedom that we do those of other Men. And if we have no mind to take S. Augustine's word in this Particular let us yet take S. Hierome's own who in his second Commentary upon the Prophet Habakkuk saith And thus have I delivered unto you my sense in brief but if any one produce that which is more exact and true take his Exposition rather than mine And so likewise upon the Prophet Zephaniah he saith We have now done our utmost endeavour in giving an Allegorical Exposition of the Text but if any other can bring that which is more Probable and agreeable to Reason than that which we have delivered let the Reader be swaied by his Authority rather than by ours And in another place he speaketh to the same purpose in these words This we have delivered according to the utmost of our poor Ability and have given you a short touch of the divers Opinions both of our own Men and of the Jews yet if any Man can give me a better and truer Account of these Things I shall be very ready to embrace the same Is this now I would fain ask to bind up our Tongues and our Belief so as that we have no further liberty of refusing what he hath once laid down before us or of searching into the Reasons and Grounds of his Opinions No let us rather make use of that Liberty which they all allow us let us hearken to them but as they themselves advise us when what they deliver is grounded upon Reason and upon the Scriptures If they had not made use of this Caution in the reading of those Authors who went before them the Christian Faith had now been wholly stuffed up with the Dreams of an Origen or an Apollinaris or some other the like Authors But neither the Excellency of the Doctrine nor yet the Resplendency of their Holy Life which no Man can deny to have shone forth very eminently in the Primitive Fathers were able so to dazle the eyes of those that came after them as that they could not distinguish betwixt that which was Sound and True in their Writings and that which was Trivial and False Let not therefore the Excellency of those who came after them hinder us either from passing by or even rejecting their Opinions when we find them built upon weak Foundations You see they confess themselves that this may very possibly be we should therefore be left utterly inexcusable if after this their
so charitable Admonition we should still believe all they say without examining any thing I take it for a Favour saith S. Ambrose when any one that readeth my Writings giveth me an account of what Doubts he there meeteth withal First of all because I may be deceived in those very things which I know And besides many things escape us and some things sound otherwise to some than perhaps they do to me I shall further here desire the Reader to take notice how careful the Ancients were in advising those who lived in their own time to take a strict Examination of their Words As for example where Origen adviseth That his Auditors should prove whatsoever he delivered and that they should be attentive and receive the Grace of the Spirit from whom proceedeth the discerning of Spirits that so as good Bankers they might diligently observe when their Pastor deceiveth them and when he preacheth unto them that which is Pious and True Cyrill likewise in his Fourth Catechesis hath these Words Believe me not saith he in whatsoever I shall simply deliver unless thou find the things which I shall speak demonstrated out of the Holy Scriptures For the Conservation and Establishment of our Faith is not grounded upon the Eloquence of Language but rather upon the Proofs that are brought out of the Divine Scriptures If therefore they would not have those who heard them speak vivâ voce to believe them in any thing unless they had demonstrated the Truth of it out of the Scriptures how much less would they have us now receive without this Demonstration those Opinions which we meet with in their Books which are not onely mute but corrupted also and altered so much and so many several ways as we have formerly shewed Certainly when I see these Holy men on one side crying out unto us that they are Men subject to Errours and that therefore we ought to consider and examine what they deliver and not take it all for Oracle and then on the other side set before my eyes these Worthy Maxims of the Ages following to wit That their Doctrine is the Law of the Church Vniversal and That we are bound to follow it not only according to the sense but according to the Bare Words also and that we are bound to hold all that they have written even to the lest tittle This representation I say makes me call to mind the History of Paul and Barnabas to whom the Lycaonians would needs render Divine Honour notwithstanding all the resistance these Holy men were able to make who could not forbear to rend their garments through the Indignation they were filled with to see that service paid to themselves which was due to the Divine Majesty alone running in amongst them and crying out aloud Sirs why do ye these things We also are Men of like passions with you For seeing that there is none but God whose word is certainly and necessarily True and seeing that on the other side the Word whereon we ground and build our Faith ought to be such who seeth not that it is all one as to invest Man with the Glory which is due to God alone and to place him in a manner in his Seat if we make His Word the Rule and Foundation of our Faith and the Judge of our Differences concerning It I am therefore stedfastly of this Opinion that if these Holy men could now behold from their blessed Mansions where they now live in bliss on high with their Lord and Saviour what things are acted here below they would be very much offended with this False Honour which men confer upon them much against their Wills and would take it as a very great injury offer'd them seeing that they cannot receive this Honour but to the Prejudice and Diminution of the Glory of their Redeemer whom they love a thousand times more than Themselves Or if from out their Sepulchres where the Reliques of their Mortality are now laid up they could but make us hear their sacred voice they would I am very confident most sharply reprove us for this Abuse and would cry out in the words of S. Paul Sirs why do ye these things We also were Men of like Passions with you But yet what need is there either of ransacking their Sepulchers and disturbing their Sacred Ashes or of calling down their Spirits from Heaven seeing that their voice resoundeth loud enough and is heard so plainly in these very Books of theirs which we so imprudently place in that seat which is only due to the Word of God We have heard what the Judgment was of S. Augustine and of S. Hierome the two most eminent Persons in the Western Church touching this Particular let us not then be all afraid having such examples to follow to speak freely our Opinions But now before we go any further I conceive it will be necessary that we answer an Objection that may be brought against us which is that Athanasius S. Cyrill and S. Augustine himself also often times cite the Fathers Besides what some have observed that the Fathers seldom entered into these Lists but when they were provoked by their Adversaries I add further that when we maintain that the Authority of the Fathers is not a sufficient Medium to prove an Article of Faith by we do not thereby presently forbid either the reading or the citing of them The Fathers often quote the Writings of the Learned Heathens the Oracles of the Sibylls and Passages out of the Apocryphal Books Did they therefore think that theâ—e Books were of sufficient Authority to ground an Article of Faith upon God forbid we should entertain so ill an Opinion of them Their Faith was grounded upon the Word of God But yet to evidence the Truth more fully they searched into Humane Records and by this Inquiry made it appear that the Light of the Truth revealed unto Them had in some degree shot its beams also even into the Schools of Men how Close and Shady soever they had been But if they should have produced no other but Humane Authority they would never have been able to have brought over any one person to the Faith But after they had received by Divine Revelation the Matter of our Faith it was very wisely done of them in the next place to prove not the Truth but the Clearness of It by these little Sparks which shot forth their light in the Spirits of Men. And for some the like Reason did S. Augustine Athanasius Cyrill and many other of them make use of Allegations out of the Fathers For after that each of these had grounded upon the Authority of Divine Revelation the Necessity and Efficacy of Grace the Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and the Union of the Two Natures in Christ they then fell to producing of several Passages out of those Learned Men who had lived before Them to let men see that this Truth was so clear in
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
was watred with Tigris and Euphrates there had been neither River nor Willow nor any Aquatick Tree The same Author also demandeth as if it had been a most indissoluble Question if taken in the Literal sense who the Daughter of Babylon is and why she is called Miserable which is so easie a Question as that any Child almost might very easily resolve it without torturing the Text with Allegories So likewise in his exposition of the 146 Psalm he understandeth by the Clouds wherewith God is said to cover the Heavens the Writings of the Prophets and by the Rain which he prepareth for the Earth the Evangelical Doctrine by the Mountains which bring forth Grass the Prophets and Apostles by the Beasts he understands Men and by the young Ravens the Gentiles assuring us withal that it would not be onely Erroneous but rather very Irreligious to take these words in the Literal sense May not this be called rather Sporting with than Expounding of the Scriptures So likewise in another place speaking of the Fowls of the Air which our Saviour said neither reaped nor gathered into Barns he understands by these the Devils and by the Lilies of the Field which spin not the Angels I should much abuse the Readers patience if I should here set down the strange Discourses he hath upon the Story of the two Possessed with Devils who were healed by our Saviour in the Country of the Gergesens and upon the Leap which the Devils made the neighbouring Herd of Swine take into the Sea and of the Swine-herds running away into the City and of the Citizens coming forth and intreating our Saviour to depart out of their Coasts or if I should but give you the whole entire Exposition which he hath made of these words Vers 29. Chap. 10. of St. Matthew Are not two Sparrows sold for a Farthing c. where by the two Sparrows he understandeth Sinners whose Souls and Bodies having been made to flye upward and to mount on high sell themselves to sin for meer Trifles and things of no value by this means becoming both as one the Soul by sin thickning as it were into a Body and such other like wild Fancies the reading whereof would astonish a man of any judgment rather than edifie him Neither is St. Ambrose any whit more serious where expounding those words of our Saviour Matth. 17. 20. If you have Faith as a grain of Mustard seed ye shall say to this Mountain Remove hence to yonder place c. By this Mountain saith St. Ambrose is meant the Devil It would be too tedious a business to set down here at length all that might be collected of this nature out of him he that hath any mind to see more Examples of this kind may read but his Homilies upon the 118. Psalm which Piece of his will indeed be otherwise very well worth any mans reading as being a very excellent one and full of Eloquence and sound Doctrine But yet perhaps a man would find it a troublesom business to make any handsom defence for him where he makes bold sometimes to use the Sacred words of the Scriptures in his own sportful Fancies as where he applies to Valentinian and Gratian that which is spoken of Christ and the Church in the Canticles O that thou wert as my Brother that sucked the breasts of my Mother When I should find thee without I would kiss thee c. I would lead thee and bring thee into my Mothers house c. I would cause thee to drink of Spiced Wine and of the juyce of my Pomegranates His left hand should be under my head and his right hand should embrace me In this place saith he is meanâ— the Emperour Gratian of Râ—nowned Memory who teâ—â—eth his Brother that he is furnished with the fruits of divers Vertues And to the same purpose doth he make Application of divers other Passages of this Sacred Canticle and with so great Licence as to say the truth no Poet ever lashed out with more liberty and freedom than he hath done in that Book of his I shall here purposely pass by what I might produce of this nature out of Gregory Nazianzen St. Augustine and almost all the rest of the Fathers for this that we have already brought is enough and indeed more than we needed for our present purpose Let the Reader therefore now judge whether or no the Fathers by this their manner of Writing have not clearly enough witnessed against themselves that their Intention when they wrote these their Books never was either to bound and determine our Faith or to decide our differences touching the same I must needs confess that they were Persons who were endued with very large Gifts of the Spirit and with a most lively and clear Understanding for the diving into the Truth But yet those that have the greatest â—hare of these Gifts have it yet to very little purpose if so be they imploy it not all and every part of it to the utmost of their power when the business they are to treat of is of so great both difficulty and importance and such as to the deciding and discussing whereof we can never bring either more attention or diligence than is needful Now that the Fathers have not observed this Course in their Writings appeareth clearly enough by what hath been formerly said Their Books therefore are not to be received by us either as Definitive Sentences or Final Judgments upon our present Controversies I confess that these small trivial Errors ought not to take off any thing of the Opinion we have of the Greatness and Gallantry of their Parts I believe they might very easily have avoided the falling into them if they would but have taken the pains to have looked a little better about them And I â—m of Opinion that they fell into them meerly by inadvertency only which may also sometimes happen even to the greatest Masters that are in any Sciences whatsover I shall as willingly also yield to you if you desire it that they have sometimes done these things purposely letting fall here and there throughout their Writings such little slips from their Pen sportingly and by way of Recreation or else out of a design of exercising our Wits But certainly whatsoever the Reason were seeing that they had no mind to use any more either care or diligence in the composing of their Books we may very well and indeed we ought to conclude from hence that they had never any Intention that these Books of theirs should be our Judges These Innocent Faults these Mistakes these Oversights these Forgetfulnesses and these Sportings of theirs do sufficiently declare for their part that we are to make our Addresses to some others and that they have not so sadly delivered their Opinions as if they had sate on the Seat of Judgment but rather have spoken as in their Chamber venting their own private Opinions only and not as our
Judges These Considerations joyned to what hath been said in this particular by some of the chiefest and most eminent among themselves as we have formerly shewed do make it in my Judgment evidently enough appear that their own will and desire is that we should not embrace their Opinions as Oracles or receive them as Definitive Sentences but that we should rather examine them by the Scriptures and by Reason as being the Opinions of Doctors who were indeed very able and excellent Men but yet notwithstanding they were still Men subject to Errour and who had not always the good Fortune to light upon what was true and sound and who peradventure even in this very Case in hand have not always done what they might by reason of their employing either less time or less and diligence than they should have done if at least they had had any serious purpose of doing their utmost endeavour in this Particular CHAP. IV. Reason IV. That the Fathers have erred in divers Points of Religion not only singly but also many of them together I Conceive that that which hath been delivered in the two preceding Chapters is sufficient to make it appear to any moderate man that the Authority of the Fathers is not so Authentick as People commonly imagine it to be Thou therefore whosoever thou art if thou beest but an indifferent and impartial Reader mayest omit the reading of this and the following Chapter both which I am fain to add though much against my will to answer all Objections that may yet be made by perverse and obstinate persons For the prejudice wherewith they are before-hand possessed may hinder them perhaps from seeing the clearness of Reason and from hearing the voice of the Fathers themselves whose words they perhaps will be ready to impute to their modesty rather than they will consent to yield unto them no more honour than they themselves require The stubbornness therefore of these men and not any need that thou hast of my doing so hath constrained me to lay aside some of that Respect that I bear towards Antiquity and hath obliged me to give them a sight of some Errours of the Fathers which are of much more importance than the former if by this means at least I may be able to overcome this their obstinacy For when they shall but see that the Fathers have erred in divers very considerable Points I hope they will at length confess that they had very good Reason gravely to advise us not to believe or take upon Trust any of their Opinions unless we find that they are grounded either upon the Scriptures or else upon some other Truth I confess I enter upon this Inquiry very unwillingly as taking very little pleasure in discovering the Infirmities and Failings of any Men especially of such as are otherwise thought worthy of so great Estimation and Honour but yet there is nothing in the World â—how precious or dear unto us soever it be that we ought not to account as Dung if it be compared with Truth and the Edification of men And I am verily perswaded that even these blessed Saints themselves were they now alive again would give us thanks for the pains we have taken in endeavouring to make men see that they were but men and would account themselves beholding to us for having taken the boldness upon us for the same reason to discover those Imperfections and Failings of theirs which Divine Providence hath suffered them to leave behind them in their Writings to the end only that they might serve as so many Arguments to us of their Humanity If there be any notwithstanding that shall take offence hereat I must intreat them once again to consider that the perversness only of those men with whom I have to deal hath forced me to this Irreverence if at least we are to call it so together with the desire I have to manifest to the World so important a Truth as this is If I would go about to defend my self by Examples I could here make use of that of Cardinal Perron who to justifie the Church of Romes interdicting the reading of the Bible to any of the Laity save only such as should be allowed so to do makes no more ado but falls to laying open to the view of the World not all the Faults for there are no such there but all the False Appearances of Faults that are found in the Bible making a whole Chapter expresly of the same How much more lawfully then may we adventure here to expose to publick view some few of the Failings of the Fathers unto whom we owe infinitely less Respect than unto God only to moderate a little and to allay the heat of that excessive Devotion that most men bear towards their Writings that so the one Party may be perswaded to seek out for some other Weapons than the Authority of these men for the defence of their Opinions and that the other Party may not so easily be induced to give ear to the bare Testimony of Antiquity It was the Saying of a Great Prince long since that the vilest and most shameful Necessities of his Nature were the things that most clearly evinced him that he was a Man and no God as his flattering Courtiers would needs have made him believe he was Seeing therefore it stands us so much upon to know that the Fathers were but Men let us not be afraid to produce here this so clear and so evident Argument of their Humanity Let us boldly enter into their most hidden Secrets and let us see what ever Marks of their Humanity they have left us in their Writings that we may no longer adore and reverence their Authority as if it were wholly Divine Yet I protest here before I begin that I will not make any advantage at all of those many Arguments of their Passion which we meet withal partly in their own Writings and partly in the Histories of their Life I heartily wish rather that all of this kind might be buried in an Eternal Oblivion and that we would account of them as of Persons that were most accomplished for Purity and Innocency of Life as far forth at least as the frail Condition of Humane Nature can bear I shall only touch upon the Errours of their Belief and those things wherein they have failed not in Living but in Writing The most Ancient of them all is Justin Martyr a man so renowned in all Ancient Histories for his great Knowledge both in Religion and Philosophy and also for the Fervency of his Zeal which is so evidently manifesied by his suffering a Glorious Martyrdom for our Saviour Jesus Christ And yet for all this how many odd Opinions do we meet withal in his Books which are either very trivial or else are manifestly false Do but hear how he speaks of the Last Times immediately preceding the Day of Judgment and the end of the World As for me saith he and the rest of
piece of Labour in hand if he should go about to win the Franciscan Friers over to this Belief S. Ambrose one of the most Firm Pillars of the Church in his Time is not yet free from the like Failings no more than the rest For first of all he agrees with S. Hilary in this last Point and maintains That All in General shall be proved by Fire at the Last Day and that the Just shall pass through it but that theVnbelievers shall continue in it After the end of the World saith he the Angels being sent forth to sever the Good from the Bad shall that Baptism be performed when all Iniquity shall be consumed in a Furnace of Fire that so the Just may shine like the Sun in the Kingdom of God their Father And although though a Man be such a one as Peter or as John yet nevertheless shall he be Baptized with this Fire For the Great Baptizer shall come for so I call Him as the Angel Gabriel did saying He shall be Great and shall see a multitude of People standing before the Gate of Paradise and shall brandish the fiery Sword and shall say unto those who are on his Right Hand who are not guilty of any grievous Sins Enter ye in c. He says the same in another place also where he exempteth none from this Fiery Trial save onely our Saviour Christ alone It is Necessary saith he that All that desire to return into Paradise should be proved by this Fire For it is not without some Mystery that it is written That God having driven Adam and Eve out of Paradise He is said to place at the Entrance of Paradise a Flaming Sword which turned every way All must pass through the Flames whether it be John the Evangelist whom our Saviour loved so much that He said concerning him to Peter c. Or whether it be Peter himself who had the Keys of Heaven committed unto him and who walked upon the Sea He must be able to say We have passed through the Fire c. But as for S. John this Brandishing of the Flaming Sword will soon be dispatched for him because there is no Iniquity found in him who was so beloved of the Truth c. But the other that is Peter shall be tried as Silver is and I shall be tried like Lead I shall burn till all the Lead is quite melted down and if there be no Silver at all found in me wretched Man that I am I shall be cost into the lowest Pit of Hell As for the Resurrection of the Dead his Opinion is That All shall not be raised at once but by degrees one after another by a Long yet Certain Order those who were Believers rising first according to the degrees of their Merits Whereto we are to refer that which he hath elsewhere delivered saying That Those who are raised up in the First Resurrection shall come to Grace without Judgment but as for the rest who are reserved for the Second Resurrection they shall burn with Fire till they have fulfilled the full space of time betwixt the First and the Second Resurrection or if they do not finish this time they shall continue very long in their Torments I shall leave to the Reader to take the pains in examining whether or no that Passage of his can be reconciled to any good sense where he says That before the Publication of the Law of Moses Adultery was not an unlawful thing We are to take notice in the first place saith he that Abraham living before the giving of the Law by Moses and before the Gospel in all Probability Adultery was not as yet forbidden the Crime is punished after the time of the Law made which forbiddeth it for things are not condemned before the Law but by the Law and whether those Discourses of his which you meet with in his Books De Instit Virg. ad Virg. de Virg. and in other places do not much disgrace and cast Slurs upon the Honour of Marriage I shall also leave to the Consideration of the Judicious Reader whether there be more of Solidity or of Subtilty in that Exposition which he gives us of the Promise made by God to Noah after the Flood telling him That he had set his Bow in the Clouds to be a Token of a Covenant betwixt him and the whole Earth upon which words S. Ambrose utterly and fiercely denies that by this Bow is meant the Rain-bow but will have it to be I know not what strange Allegorical Bow Far be it from us saith he that we should call This God's Bow for This Bow which is called Iris the Rain bow is seen indeed in the Day time but never appears at all in the Night And therefore he understands by this Bow the Invisible Power of God by which He keepeth all things in one certain Measure enlarging and abating it as he sees cause Neither do I know whether that Opinion of his which you have in his First Book De Spiritu Sancto is any whit more justifiable where he affirms That Baptism is avialable and Legitimate although a Man should Baptize in the Name either of the Son or of the Holy Ghost onely without mentioning the other two Persons of the Trinity Epiphanius as he was a Man of a very good honest and plain Nature and if I may have leave to speak my own Opinion a little too Credulous and withal very eager and fierce in maintaining whatsoever he thought was Right and True so hath he the more easily been induced both to deliver and to receive things for Solid which yet were not so and to stand stifly in the defending of them after he had once embraced the same It would take up both too much time and Paper if I should go about to give you a List of all those things wherein he hath failed if you please you may have an Account of a good number of them in the Notes of the Jesuite Petavius his Interpreter who makes bold to correct him many times and sometimes also very uncivilly too As first of all he accuseth him of Obscurity and of Falshood also in the Opinion he held touching the Year and Day of our Saviour's Nativity saying that some of his Expressions touching this Point are more Obscure and Dark than the Riddles of Sphinx And truly he hath reason enough to say so of what he hath delivered touching the Year of our Saviours Nativity but as for the Day of that Year whether it were the Sixth of January as Epiphanius held with the Church of Egypt or else whether it were the Twenty fifth of December which is the General Opinion at this day I think it very great rashness for any Man to affirm either the one or the other neither of these Opinions having any better Ground the one than the other He likewise in plain terms gives him the Lie upon that place
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
all of the same Judgment and Opinion in Point of Religion And certainly this is a most clear Truth For if there be any Contradiction amongst them or Dissenting in Opinion they will leave our Controversies more Perplexed rather than Decided and in stead of Uniting will rather Distract us and rend us into many Parts That we may therefore be able to come to the knowledge of the Truth in this Particular it will concern us first of all to examine whether that which Bessarion addeth hereupon be true also or not namely That the Opinions of the Fathers do never clash one with the other touching the Points of our Religion Now although this were so yet would it not Necessarily follow from hence that their Judgment must needs be therefore Infallible forasmuch as even an Error may either by the Consent of the several Parties or by Accident or else by some other the like means happen to meet with an Unanimous Entertainment by several Persons But now in case this should prove to be false then certainly we may make this Infallible Conclusion That we ought to seek out for other Judges of our Controversies than the Writings of the Fathers We shall therefore shew by way of addition to the rest of our Proofs that this Assertion of his is more Bold than True and that there are very many Real Differences to be found among the Ancient Fathers in Matters of Religion We have already touched before upon some of them by the bye onely as lying in our way speaking of other Matters and therefore we shall onely lightly run them over again as namely first of all That Disagreement in Opinion of the most Ancient among the Fathers Justine Martyr Irenaeus and Tertullian on the one side and Dionysius Alexandrinus Gregory Nazianzene and S. Hierome on the other the First of these promising us very seriously the Delights and Pleasures of a Thousand years and the Diamonds and the Saphires of a New Earthly Jerusalem with all its Glory and Prosperity but the other very coursely and in downright Terms reproving this their Conceit as being an idle Fancy fit to be entertained by Little Children and Old Women only and which seems to have been derived rather from the Dreams of the Jews than from the Doctrine of the Apostles The like to this was that Difference betwixt the Bishops of Asia and Pope Victor about the Observation of Easter-day and of Cyprian and Stephen about the Baptism of Hereticks in all which Differences the Heat was so high as that it went on as far as to Excommunicating each other If Bessarion now could but make it appear to us that these were not Real but Seeming Contradictions onely I should then make no question at all but that he would as easily reconcile Fire and Water or whatever things else in Nature are the most Contrary the one to the other We have heard that Tertullian maintained That the Soul was Ex Traduce and was propagated from the Father to the Son by the Natural Course of Generation and that S. Augustine likewise enclined to the same Opinion to whom if we will believe S. Hierome we must add a very considerable number of the Western Church also who were all of the same Perswasion But S. Hierome rejects them all and their Opinion and says That the Soul is created Immediately by God at the very instant that it is united to the Body adding withal as we have formerly noted unto you That this is the Belief of the Church in this Point S. Hierome and those of his Faction held That all that Reprehension used by S. Paul to S. Peter which we find mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians was onely a Feigned Business purposely Acted betwixt the two Apostles by an Agreement made betwixt themselves S. Augustine with those of his Side maintains the contrary and says That the thing was Real and was meant heartily and seriously and as it is related by S. Paul and that there was no Cunning or Under-hand Dealing in the Business or any Scene laid betwixt S. Peter and him And S. Hierome pursued this Dispute with so much heat and earnestness as that besides those Epistles of his which are full of Gall and Choler written against S. Augustine touching this Particular he yet in his Commentaries also which were Pieces that he wrote in his Quieter Tempe◠many times takes occasion to gird underhand at S. Augustine upon this old Quarrel betwixt them So that certainly he must needs be quite out of his Wits whoever shall seriously go about to maintain that these two Fathers were perfectly of One Opinion and agreed upon this Point Justine Martyr is of Opinion that it was the Real Ghost of Samuel that appeared to Saul being raised up by the Enchantments of the Witch at Endor Others say it was but a Fantasm Some of them hold That the meeting together of the Faithful at the Eucharist thrice a week is an Apostolical Tradition Others believe the contrary Some enjoyn us to Fast on Saturdays others forbid the same under the penalty of being accounted no less than the Murtherers of Christ Some of them conceive that our Saviour Christ suffered Death in the Fortieth or Fiftieth year of his Age Others again would perswade us that he died in the Thirtieth or Thirty first year of his Age Both which Opinions are manifestly contrary to the Text of the Gospel which tells us clearly That after his Baptism that is to say after the Thirtieth year of his Age he conversed above Three and under Five years upon the Earth Some of them as we are informed by these Latinized Greeks allow of these Terms Cause and Effect in the Doctrine of the Trinity but some others again do not so Some of them are of Opinion That there is a certain Order or Distinction of Priority in the Persons of the Trinity others again there are who will not endure to hear of this Expression Those of the Western Church call the Son only The Image of the Father but the Greek Church maketh this Name extend to the Holy Ghost also S. Basil will not allow of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in discoursing of the Son Others again make use of it without any scruple at all I doubt very much whether Bessarion had ever seen the Apologies and Invectives of S. Hierome and of Ruffinus who were yet both of them Fathers and of good Repute too in the Church both that of their own time and of the Ages following although they were not both of them of equal Esteem Neither do I believe he remembred that Quarrel that there was betwixt Theophilus and Epiphanius on the one part and S. Chrysostome on the other For certainly their Carriage toward each other in this their Debate doth not shew them to have been so very good Friends and so well agreed upon the Point debated But now to overthrow this
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
good use unto you and may serve as a Probable Argument of the Truth For is it not a wonderful thing to see that so many Great Wits born in so many several Ages during the space of Fifteen hundred years and in so many several Countries being also of so different Tempers and who in other things were of so contrary Opinions should notwithstanding be found all of them to agree so constantly and unanimously in the Fundamentals of Christianity that amidst so great diversity in Worship they all adore one and the same Christ preach one and the same Sanctification hope all of them for one and the same Immortality acknowledge all of them the same Gospels find therein all of them Great and High Mysteries The exquisite Wisdom and the inestimable Beauty it self of the Discipline of Jesus Christ I confess is the most forcible and certain Argument of the Truth of it yet certainly this Consideration also is in my Opinion no small proof of the same For I beseech you what Probability is there that so many Holy Men who were endued as it appeareth by their Writings with such Admirable Parts with so much strength and clearness of Understanding should all of them be so grosly overseen as to set so High a Price and Esteem upon this Discipline as to suffer even to Death for it unless it had in it some certain Heavenly Virtue for to make an Impression in the Souls of Men What likelyhood is there that Seven or Eight Dogs and as many Atheistical Hogs that Bark and Grunt so Sottishly and Confusedly against This Sacred and Venerable Religion should have better luck in lighting upon the Truth than so many Excellent Men who have all so Unanimously born Testimony to the Truth As for Atheists their Vicious Life ought to render their Testimony suspected to every one notwithstanding they may be otherwise as indeed they conceive themselves to be Able Men. For I beseech you what wonder is it if a Whoremaster or a Bawd or an Ambitious person cry down that Discipline that condemneth these Vices to Everlasting Fire that he that drowneth himself every day and at length vomiteth up his Soul in Wine should hate that Religion which forbiddeth Drunkenness upon pain of Damnation The great Reason that these men have to wish that it were False must needs make any man cease to wonder at their pronouncing it to be False To take any notice of what such wretched Things as these say is all one as if you should judge by taking the Opinion of Common Strumpets of the Equity or Injustice of the Laws that enjoin people to live Honest But the case is clean otherwise with these Holy Men who have so Constantly and so Unanimously taught the Truth of the Christian Religion For seeing they were Men born and brought up in the very same Infirmities with other men we cannot doubt but that they also Naturally had strong Inclinations to those vices which our Saviour Christ forbiddeth and very little Affection to those Virtues which He commandeth For as much therefore as notwithstanding all this They have yet all of them Constantly 〈◊〉 intained that His Doctrine is True Their Testimony certainly in this case neither can nor ought in any wise to be suspected So that although They had not any of those Great and Incomparable Advantages of Parts and Learning above the Enemies of Christianity Their â—are word however is much rather to be taken than the Othersâ— seeing that these men are manifestly carried away by the force of their own vile Affections of which the other cannot possibly be suspected Guilty And as for those Differences in Opinion which are sometimes found amongst Them touching some certain Points of Religion some whereof we have formerly set down these thing are so far from taking off any thing from the weight of Their Testimonies as that on the Contrary they add rather very much unto the same For this must acquit their Consenting of all suspicion that some perhaps might have that it proceeded from some Combination or some Correspondence and Mutual Intelligence When thou findst them so disagreeing among themselves touching so many several Points it is an evident Argument that they have not learnt their knowledge from one another nor yet have all agreed upon the same thing by common Deliberation but have all of them collected it out of a serious Examination and Consideration of the things themselves And if we received no other Benefit by the Writings of the Fathers than this yet were this however very much But now that the Benefit and Contentment which we shall receive from this Consideration may not be interrupted and disturbed by our meeting with so many several Private Opinions of theirs we are to take notice that Christianity consisteth not in Subtilties nor in the great number of Articles The Efficacy of them is much more Considerable than the Number A great part of these Points of Faith and the end of all the â—est is Sanctification that is to say A pure worship of God and A Hearty Charity towards Men. Thou maist therefore boldly conclude That Man to be a true Observer of This Discipline that thou shalt find to have a True and Right Sense and Apprehension of these Two Points Though perhaps he be ignorant of those Other that lie rather in Speculation than in Practise thou oughtest not to reject him for that And if being carried away with his own Curiosity or some other reason he chance to err in some of those other Articles bear with him notwithstanding As God forgives us our Sins so doth He also forgive us our Errours The Hay and the Stubble and the Chaffe shall be consumed But yet He that buildeth therewith shall be saved if so be He but hold fast to the Foundation Neither oughtest thou to be troubled if thou now and then meetest with some Ignorant or perhaps some Erroneous Passages in the Fathers touching these Points They are never a whit the less Christians for this and may for all this have been most Faithful Servants of Jesus Christ There is not any Face in the World so Beautiful but that it hath some Speckle or Blemish in it Yet is it not either the less esteemed or the less beloved for this The Natural condition of Mortal Men and Things is to have some Mixture in it of Imperfection But now besides what hath been hitherto said we may in my opinion make another very Considerable Vse of the Fathers For there sometimes arise such troublesome Spirits as will needs broach Doctrines devised of their own Head which are not at all grounded upon any Principle of the Christian Religion I say therefore that the Authority of the Ancients may very Properly and Seasonably be made use of against the Impudence of these Men by shewing that the Fathers were utterly Ignorant of any such Fancies as these men propose to the World And if this can be proved we ought then certainly to conclude that
be mistaken The same hath he to reply upon you touching those other Allegations which you produce out of the rest of the Fathers every one of whom hath either Really erred oâ— else Possibly might have erred in Matters of Religion Neither can you hope that any Solid Answer should be given to these things especially if you but consider that the Practice both of the Fathers and also of our Adversaiies themselves hath clearly confirmed this our Position For S. Augustine in that Dispute of his which he maintained against S. Hierome seeing him produce the Testimonies of Seven Authors he taking no notice at all of the words of the first four of them answers no more but this That some of them were guilty of Heresie and the rest of Error Which Answer is very Insufficient unless you allow that the Testimony of a Man who hath erred in any one particular Point of Faith is Null and Invalid The Fathers of the II Council of Nice took the very same Course in answering an Objection brought against them by the Iconoclasts who alledged a certain Passage for themselves out of Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea answering them no more but this That the Author they cited was an Arian We need not examine whether this Answer of theirs be true or no and if so whether it be to the purpose or not It is sufficient for us that it appears hence by their making use of this kind of Answer that they took it for granted that he that had failed in one Point was not to be trusted in any other Cardinal Perron and the rest of the Learned of that Party oftentimes makes use of the same Shift rejecting the Testimonies that are brought against them out of Socrates or Sozomen two Ecclesiastical Historians because they say they were Novatians Those who put forth the General Councils at Rome disauthorize Gelasius Cyzicenus who was the Compiler of the Acts of the Council of Nice by producing many gross Oversights committed by him in that Piece of his Forasmuch therefore as we are not to build upon the Authority of any Author that may justly be accused of Error it is most evident that the Authority of the greatest part and indeed in a manner of all the Fathers may very well be called in Question seeing that you will hardly find any one of them that is not liable to this Exception But it will here be objected perhaps by some especially that although it be confessed that the Opinion of one Single Father possibly may be and many times is really False yet however it is a very hard or indeed an impossible thing that what hath been delivered unanimously by many of them together should be otherwise than True But we have answered something already to this Objection where we took occasion to examine that Maxime of Vincentius Lirinensis touching this Particular And in short this is all one as if having confessed that every particular Person of such a Company is sick of some Disease we should notwithstanding still deny that the whole Company taken all together can possibly fall into any Common Distemper of Body It is not indeed altogether so probable that Many should be sick of any Disease as that One single Person should yet neither is the thing altogether impossible especially when the Disease is Contagious and besides not so well Known as for the most part the Errors of Great Persons are whose very Name bears them out and makes them easily received by the Ordinary sort who run after them and suck them in without the least suspicion at all But yet if Reason will not do the turn let Experience however perswade us to receive this Truth For it is most evident that some of those Errors before-specified have been maintained not by One nor by Two nor by Three of the Fathers onely but by Many by the Major part and sometimes also by All the Fathers of the same Age at least of all those whose Names and Writings have come to our hands We have heard how that Justin Martyr maintained the Opinion of the Millenaries which is both manifestly false in it self and also very dangerous in its Consequences Now this Opinion he did not maintain alone the rest of the Learned of his time were in a manner all of the same Perswasion as it appeareth by his own words For writing against Tryphon and the Jews that held with him he saith That if they had by chanâ—e met with some who bare the Name of Christians but did not believe this Article of Faith blaspheming the God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob and saying That there shall be no Resurrection of the Dead but that the Souls immediately after Death are transported up to Heaven they must not take these Persons for Christians no more than in speaking truly and precisely the Samaritans or any other Sect of Judaism ought to be called Jews The False Christians which he here speaks of were the Valentinians and others of the Gnostickâ— He goes on by and by and says But as for me and the rest of us who are Right and Orthodox in our Opinions and who are perfectly Christians we know that there shall be both a Resurrection of the Flesh and that the Saints shall afterwards also spend a thousand years in Jerusalem which shall be rebuilt beautified and enlarged By which words of his he seems to testifie That all the Catholicks in his time maintained this Erroneous Opinion and that the Hereticks onely rejected it I know very well that he confesseth before That there were divers who were Perfect and Religious Christians who yet did not embrace the said Opinion But let any Man that can reconcile these two contrary Sayings That all Orthodox Christians held this Opinion and That there were some of the Orthodox Party that did not receive the same Let any Man that will search also into Justin's Works and see whether this Contradiction hath not been foisted in by the Zeal of the following Ages who haply might take offence at the Business in seeing such an Opinion fathered upon all the True Christians by so great a Martyr It is sufficient for us that however it appears clearly by this Passage that a very great part of the Doctors and of the Faithful People of those times maintained this Errour We see that Irenaeus who lived in the same time and also Tertullian who followed not long after him were both of the same Perswasion no one Man all this while that we hear of offering to contradict them Eusebius and S. Hierome and divers other Authors inform us That Papias Bishop of Hierapolis who flourished about the Year of our Lord CX was the Author of this Opinion It followeth then from hence That the Consent of all the Fathers that are now extant who lived in the same Age and maintained all the same Opinion is no infallible Argument of the Truth And if you go down â—ower you will
find that the very same Error was defended by several Doctors of very great Repute in the Church S. Hierome who in divers places of his Commentaries hath excellently and solidly refuted this foolish Fancy says That many among the Learned Christians had maintained the same and to those whom we have already mentioned He addeth Lactantius Victorinus Severus and Apollinaris who is followed in this Point saith he in another place by great multitudes of Christians about us insomuch that I already foresee and presage to my self how many folks anger I shall incur hereby namely because he every where spoke against this Opinion Whence it plainly appears that in his time that is to say about the beginning of the Fifth Century it was still in great request in the Church And indeed how fierce soever he seem to be in his Onset yet he dares not condemn this Opinion absolutely Although we embrace not this Opinion saith he yet can we not condemn it for as much as there have been divers Eminent Personages and Martyrs in the Church who have maintained the same Let every man abound in his own sense and let us leave the judgment of all things to God Whence you see as we may observe by the way that the Fathers have not always held an Opinion in the same degree that we do For St. Hierome conceived this to be a Pardonable Errour which yet we at this day will not endure to hear of If it be here answered that the Church in the Ages following condemned this Opinion as erroneous this is no more than to say that the Churches in the Ages following acknowledged that the joynt Consent of many Fathers together touching one and the same Opinion is no solid Proof of the Truth of the same If Dionysius Alexandrinus had been of any other judgment he would never have written against Irenaeus as he did as St. Hierome also testifieth in one of his Books of Commentaries before cited And if we are to have regard to Authority only the Judgment of the succeeding Church cannot then serve us as a certain Guide in this Question to inform us on which side the Truth is For to alledge it in this Case were rather to oppose one Authority against another than to decide the Controversie As Dionysius Alexandrinus St. Hierome Gregory Nazianzene and others conceived not themselves bound to submit to the Authority of Justin Martyr Irenaeus Lactantius Victorinus Severus and others so neither are we any more bound to submit to theirs For their Posterity oweth them no more Respect than they themselves owed to their Ancestors It seemeth rather that in Reason they should owe them less because that look how far distant in time they are from the Apostles who are as it were the Spring and Original of all Ecclesiastical Authority so much doth the Credit and Authority of the Doctors of the Church lose and grow less If Antiquity as we would have it be the Mark of Truth then certainly that which is the most Ancient is also the most Venerable and the most Considerable And if there were no other Argument but this against the Authority of many Fathers unanimously consenting in any Opinion yet would it clearly serve to lessen the same but there are yet behind many others some whereof we shall here produce We have heard before Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian and St. Augustine affirming all of them that Heaven shall not be opened till the Day of Judgment and that during this space of time the Souls of all the Faithful are shut up in some subterraneous place except some small number of those who had the Priviledge of going immediately to Heaven The Author of those Questions and Answers that go under the name of Justin Martyr maintains the same Opinion as you may see in the Answers to the LX and LXXIV Questions And that I may not unprofitably spend both Time and Paper in bringing in all the particular Passages I say in General that both the Major Part and also the most Eminent Persons among the Ancient Fathers held this Opinion either absolutely or at least in part For besides Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian and St. Augustine and the Author of those Questions and Answers we before mentioned which is a very Ancient Piece indeed though falsly fathered upon Justin Martyr it is clear that Origen Lactantius Victorinus St. Ambrose St. Chrysostome Theodoret Oecumenius Aretas Prudentius Theophylact St. Bernard and among the Popes Clemens Romanus and John XXII were all of this Opinion as is confessed by all neither was this so admirable and general Consent of theirs contradicted by any Declaration of the Church for the space of Fourteen Hundred years neither yet did any one of the Fathers so far as we can discover take upon him to refute this Errour as Dionysius Alexandrinus and St. Hierome did to refute the Millenaries all the rest of the Fathers being either utterly silent as to this Particular and so by this their silence going over in a manner into the Opinion of the Major Part or else contenting themselves with declaring sometimes here and there in their Books that they believed that the Souls of the Saints should enjoy the sight of God till the Resurrection never formally denying the other Opinion But that which doth further shew that this Opinion is both very Ancient and hath been also very Common among the Christians is because that even at this day it is believed and defended by the whole Greek Church neither is there any of all those who make Profession of standing to the Writings of the Fathers as the Rule of their Faiths who have rejected it save only the Latines who have expresly also established the contrary at the Council of Florence held in the year of our Lord 1439. which is not above Two Hundred and Twelve years ago Do but fancy now to your selves a Vicentius Lirinensis standing in the midst of this Council and laying before them his own Oracle before mentioned which is That we ought to hold for most certainly and undoubtedly true whatsoever hath been delivered by the Ancients unanimously and by a Common Consent and do but think whether or no he should not have been hissed out by these Reverend Fathers as one that made the Truth which is holy and immutable to depend upon the Authority of Men For these men regarded not at all neither the Multitude nor the Antiquity nor the Learning nor the Sanctity of the Authors of this foolish Opinion but finding it to be false without any more ado rejected it as they thought they had good Reason to do and withal ordained the contrary Now I am verily perswaded that there are very few Points of Faith among all those which the Church of Rome would have the Protestants receive for which there can be alledged either more or more clear and evident Testimonies out of the Fathers than for this For as much therefore as that after