Joyeuse Bishop of Ostia above five and fourty Years after the time when Mâ—uns de Marca saith That France received the Council of Trent wherein this Pope complains very bitterly of the refusal which they still made in France to approve this Council and to submit to its Decisions Whatsoever it is most of the Doctors of the Romish Church do agree that to know the difference which the Council of Trent hath put between things dogmatical pertaining to Religion and things meerly ritual and belonging to Discipline the most certain Rule to judge by is the Anathemas that are fasten'd on them And therefore since that Council hath Anathematiz'd all those who do not approve the Worship of Saints it follows that the Fathers of that Council did look upon this Worship as a thing of great moment and necessity in Religion and not as one of those Practices and Ceremonies which though they be allowed to be very good and profitable yet may be left out or changed at the will and pleasure of the Pope and Church But let them say what they please certain it is that the Romish Church does not only believe that it is necessary to Salvation to call upon Saints but is moreover bound to believe so And their Doctors pretend that this piece of service to Saints is commanded in the Scripture wresting I know not how many Texts to make them apparently comply with their fancy and utter what they would be at Now if we believe that God hath commanded a Worship there is no doubt but we ought also to believe that we cannot omit the peformance thereof without puting our Salvation to stake But what can they say for those Services that are established in so many places to the honour of such Saints as owe all their being to the forgeries of a parcel of Monks and the credulity of a deluded People Whereas instead of declaring these Practices to be necessary the Church of Rome ought to acknowlege that they fall short of being even good and profitable And therefore that Church must confess that it hath erred and is yet involved in error The Eight Shift is that of some Doctors of the Romish Church who do deplore the excess that the Worshiping of Saints is grown to and protest altogether that if in some places some Saints that never were are Worshiped they are but local practices tolerated though not approved by the Church This is the Rock on which do split every day the Learning Piety Knowledge and Conscience of many Ecclesiasticks in the Church of Rome who being desirous of Salvation and having made a considerable study in Religion yet comparing the mischief of that false Worship with the consequences of a Separation think it much safer for their Souls to live in a corrupted Church and to groan under its Errors than to make a breach of Charity by separating from its Communion In which they are like those cowardly and unworthy Citizens who while a generous Deliverer hazards his Fortune and his Life to preserve to them both their Laws and Country are content with folded Arms to wish him good success and prosperity and if he chances to fail in the attempt will also bewail and pity him Of which sort of People a great Man used to say that they were the most useless of all Friends for that having the Vertue of wishing us well and shedding some tears for us they had not yet courage enough to afford us their Assistance For indeed all these good Wishes and Lamentations are no remedy to the misfortunes of a Church or Country Works they are and honest endeavours which God requires at our hands and not timorous Wishes and unprofitable Vows If some of the Romish Party do sigh at the sight of a Worship which they think dishonourable to their Church why do they not likewise joyn with those who apply themselves to reform it I believe there are but few very amongst them who have not heard of the wholsom Advices of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her Indiscreet Votaries and of the Pastoral Letter which a Bishop of France adjoyn'd thereto recommending them to the perusal and practice of all the good Christians of his Diocess This was just the time and a fair occasion for those Doctors who bewail so much in private the Abuses of their Church to appear and to speak had not some unworthy considerations stop'd them in the way and made them Speechless The Prelates the Universities Rome it self condemned those wholesom Advices no body having Piety and Courage enough to defend them while Error and Falshood found a World of Zealous Protectors Crasset a Jesuite stood in the defence of all the Excesses of the Bonaventures and Bernardines And the Sorbonne by giving their Approbation to his Works condemned likewise both the wholesom Advices and the pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Tournay How can they say then that most of those things which we find fault with in the Church of Rome are but local Practices or Excesses only tolerated and not approved by the Church Those very things which we disallow are of such a nature that a bare toleration of them hath the force of an Approbation For they are not Dogmatical Errours nor empty Speculations but Errours in the Practice and False worship in the publick Service of Religion Which whenever a Christian Society does tolerate it gives thereby a sufficient ground to believe that it approves them likewise Yet had not all our just Complaints upon this matter power enough to induce the Commissioners of the Index Expurgatorius to expunge the scandalous Excesses of their Bonaventure Bernardine of Siena and Gabriel Biel. The Congregation of the Holy Office and that de Ritibus are very well informed of the Honours paid in divers Places to the Souldiers of the Thebean Legion But let the Protestants prove as clear as the Day the Forgery of their Martyrdom these imaginary Beings consecrated by a blind Superstition are permitted notwithstanding still to retain all the Deferences of Honour and Worship formerly paid to them A Ninth evasion of the Romish Party is that we cannot they say condemn their worshipping of Saints without involving both the Fathers the Church of the first Ages and the most ancient Christians in the same Condemnation But this Accusation which they enter against us with so much confidence is wholly groundless The truth is that in the times of St. Basil St. Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen in the East of St. Ambrose St. Jerom St. Austin and St. Paulinus in the West some Practices may be observed which have been in the After-Ages the Origine of the false Worship paid to the Saints The People beginning then to esteem a little too much of their Reliques they flock'd from all parts to their Sepulchers and with an extraordinary zeal they celebrated the memorial of them the Preachers in the mean time by Rhetorical Figures directing their Speech to them in such manner as if
one would think hardly any thing in Ecclesiastical Antiquity that hath escaped the strict Examination of judicious Criticks some Learned Men indeed have suspected the Passion of the Thebean Legion to have been a Fiction but none of them had the Courage to oppose an Opinion which they saw so Universally established If general Approbation might be admitted as a Proof there would be scarce any Opinion more Probable than that of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion if we consider the great number of grave and Learned Authors who have all asserted it as an undoubted matter of Fact Rome Geneva the Lutherans the Church of England and generally all Christian Societies have given Credit to the History of this Legion and that no doubt upon account of the Honour which they imagined the Martyrdom of it did to the Christian Religion by the wonderfulness of the Action the greatness of Soul and the Glorious Characters of the Persons that suffered John Lewis Fabritius relates the Example of the Thebean Legion in his Learned Dissertation concerning the just Limits of humane obedience in order to establish this so important a Maxim in Morality That we ought always to side with God whenever there is more certainty and evidence in the Prohibitions of God than in the Ordinances of Princes Archbishop Usher a Man of so vast a knowledge in Ecclesiastical Antiquity fell into the same common opinion And the Martyrdom of the Thebean Souldiers making for him in his Book of Regal Power he lays as great a stress upon it as if it were a thing of unquestionable certainty The famous Grotius speaks twice of it in his Learned Book de jure Pacis Belli and makes use of it as that which of all things he least doubted the Truth of And though since the death of these two great Men the exactness of Criticism upon the Works of the Fathers hath been much improved yet the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion is still cryed up amongst those other popular Errours the World is fallen in Love with Edward Fuller Bishop of Glocester hath made it one of the Ornaments of a very fine Treatise composed by him upon the great Design of Christianity which is the Sanctification of Men. And Doctor Cave one of the Prebends of Windsor brings in with great great Pomp the History of this Legion in that Work of his in which he gives us a very fine Representation both of the Religion and Manners of the Primitive Christians There is scarcely I confess any Divine who hath out-done him in the Study of Church History as may appear by the great Volume he hath given us upon the Writings of the Fathers Now how great a respect soever we have for the extraordinary merit of these Learned Authors we ought to reject their Errours be they never so Ancient There is no prescription against Truth and a long prepossession gives no right at all to Errour I have seen saith one of our Old Writers the Birth of many Miracles in my time and though they no sooner saw the Light but they were stifled we do however foresee the course they would have taken had they happened to have lived to their full Age. For the main business is to find out out the end of the thread then you may wind as much as you please and there is a greater distance from nothing to the least thing that may be than there is from that least to the greatest that can be imagined A private Errour first causeth a publick one and then that publick Errour occasions other private ones Thus the whole work goes on patch'd up and fashioned by a succession of several hands so that the remotest witness knows more of the matter than the nearest and the last inform'd is better perswaded of it than the first This was exactly the way the Passion of the Thebean Souldiers first crept into the World and then insensibly got credit in the Church And they have been for these Eight or Nine Hundred Years in a quiet Possession of the glory of their Martyrdom and do enjoy it peacably to this day under the shadow and Authority of the greatest Names and the most renowned Doctors of all Christian Communions Now that we may distinguish the Romance from the History we must remove all the Mists which the Legendaries and Martyrology-makers have spread over it For the support of so much of it as is purely Romantick there are alledged Manuscripts and Old Writings and we must shew that those who do pretend the greatest skill in Antiquities are lyable to mistakes CHAP. IV. That the most skilful Men are sometimes mistaken in the Judgments they make upon the Works of the Ancients IT will Evidently appear from what shall be said hereafter that Baronius Peter Francis Chifflet Archbishop Usher and Grotius have been mistaken in their Judgments concerning the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion and the Relation Fathered upon Eucherius For Criticks are not always in the right Though they have contributed much to the reviving of Learning yet it does not thence follow that even the most skilful Men in that Science are infallible It hath very often happened that they have taken false Copies for Originals and set upon Modern Writings the worth and value due to those of Antiquity Those who have any skill in Medals know that the most understanding Men themselves are apt sometimes to be mistaken If one Examines the first Edition of the Praestantiora Imperatorum Numismata of Mr. Vaillant Printed at Paris in the Year 1682 there one will find the Medals of Germanicus of Nero Drusus his Father of the Emperour Claudius of Julia Wife to Severus and of Gordianus Affricanus the Son the Price and Rarity whereof this Medalist does mightily Extol But if you cast your Eye upon the Second Edition of 1692. there you will find the same Medals very much debased Mr. Vaillant acknowleging the three first to be suspicious and the two last absolutely false He praiseth likewise in the same Work one of Trajan's Medals with a Pillar and an Owl on the top of it And in his Remarks upon Scelecta Numismata Seguini Published at Paris in the Year 1684. he confesseth ingenuously that the same was Counterfeit 'T is no less usual to be deceived in matter of Statues and Basso-Relievos then in Medals We have a great many Examples of this kind but it will suffice to give here only one single instance Vazari tells us that Michael Angelo to convince some Vertuosos and Antiquaries who valued nothing but what was Ancient of the rashness of their Judgment in such cases made a Cupid and buried it under the ruines of an Old Building having first broken off one of its Arms which he kept at home All the Lovers of the Art came immediately to look upon it and no Body did so much as question the Antiquity of the piece till Michael Angelo shewed them the Arm which he had kept by
have brought great incomes to the Monastery of Agaunum They make St. Sigismond to give to it a great number of Villages and very considerable Lands in the Dioceses of Vienna Lions Grenoble and of the Cities of Aâ—â—te Avanches Lausanne and Besanson c. The Cheat indeed was worth the making But we must confess that the makers thereof were not very skilful in their contrivance of it The truth is that in those times People were so credulous that they gave Credit to the grossest tales They were contriv'd and conceiv'd under the shadow of Monkish Holiness and were brought forth into the World without contradiction or any Body to oppose them The Monk who Forged this Council makes both King Sigismond and the Bishops to say very ridiculous things The Country Peasants of Valesia would now speak better Sense Le Cointe observeth that the Acts of this Council are Dated in the beginning of the last of April and towards the end of the Ides of May That it is said at first that the Council was held at Agaunum and again that it was Assembled near that place Which shews the poor Monk hardly knew what he did He adds that Sixty Bishops met together at Agaunum and in Sigismond's time there were not above Seven and Twenty Bishops in all throughout the whole Kingdom of Burgundy He saith that Theodorus Bishop of Sion in Valesia asked what should be done with the Bodies of the Thebean Souldiers that laid yet unburied upon the Ground And in St. Sigismond's time there was no Bishops-See at Sion The Bishops-See was transferred thither not till many Years after it having always been before at a place which is called Martignac or Martigni which is the Ancient Octodurum So that this Theodorus being contemporary with King Sigismond ought to have been call'd Octodurensis Episcopus and not Sedunensis as the Council-Forger hath done But the thing we ought chiefly to observe is that both Labbe and Cossart place this Council in the Year 516. The Acts do expresly mention that when it was held the Buildings which King Sigismond ordered to be made at Agaunum were finished and wanted only to be Dedicated and appointed to their use This Prince saith in the beginning of his Deed of Gift that he makes Hinnemond Abbot of the Monastery of Agaunum which by the help of God he hath Built in his Kingdom of Burgundy And a little before he says that all the Bishops do represent to him that the Reliques of Mauricius Exuperius Candidus and Victor ought to be deposited in the New Church which he hath caused to be Built The Bishops of this pretended Council are there chiefly taken up with regulating the singing of Psalms the Offices Observances and whatever was to be Practised in that Monastery Now the business is to know whether the Passion of the Thebean Legion which we assert to be false is anteriour to that Council or happen'd after its sitting If they say it is anteriour we ask how could the Author of it speak of a Monastery which was not yet Built and of Rules not yet establish'd If it be answered that this Passion was Written after the sitting of the Council which according to Labbe and Cossart met in the Year 516. it follows that St. Eucherius is not the Author of this Passion since he died in the Year 440. If the Acts of this Council be compared with the Passion one cannot but suspect that the Impostour who composed it had before his Eyes the Acts of this Council 'T is said in these Acts that the Bishops consulted with King Sigismond what Discipline was to be set up in the Monastery of Agaunum and that the Rules which should be prescrib'd to the Monks might be so framed as to last for ever And the Author of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Souldiers as it is related both by Baronius and Surius saith that they never cease Day nor Night to sing Psalms and Hymns in the Agaunian Monastery this practice having been established by the Blessed King and Martyr St. Sigismond and being still in force there to this very day But that the Acts of this Council are forged Father Le Cointe hath given infallible proofs And whereas Labbe and Cossart place this Council in the Year 516. we should not fear being much mistaken if we charged the Forgery upon some Impostor of the Seventh or Eighth Century For these and the like Writings are the Titles and Foundations both of the Worship vast Power and Immense Revenues of the Church of Rome 'T is true we are told that the Manuscripts of these things are kept in the Vatican Library or in that of Florence and that they have all the Characters of an uncontroulable Antiquity But Marsham a man very well skilled in distinguishing between Old and Modern Manuscripts adviseth us to trust to them so much the less by how much the Older they are said to be And he is favoured in his Opinion by Papebrook a Jesuite who observes that you 'l scarcely find any Acts or Manuscripts true and sincere from the Reign of Dagobert the First upwards that is beyond the Year of our Lord 640. Which is much about the time in which the Fables which we are now Examining were invented 'T is strange indeed that Father Mabillon one of the most Eminent Men in Europe in that kind of Learning should Condemn the Opinion both of Marsham and Papebrook He thinks that these two Learned Men were mistaken and to prove it he reports some Acts of the 6 th or 7 th Age but this is nothing to the purpose for Marsham and Papebrook did never deny but there were true Acts ancienter than the Reign of Dagobert the First but they only affirmed that these Writings are very scarce and can hardly be found so that Father Mabillon to have an occasion to contradict these two great Men makes them say absolutely what they only meant with a restriction And besides 't is one thing to go about to prove from the Words of some Authors that there have been Kings before Dagobert the First who made Gifts in Writing to several Churches and another to prove that these Writings do yet continue and have been handed down to us and that they have not been worn out by time lost or destroyed by the Accidents and Revolutions which have happened in the course of so many Ages nor falsify'd and corrupted by the covetousness ignorance and infidelity of Men. The first of these two things which is not in question Father Mabillon takes upon him to prove but saith not one word of the second which he ought to have proved But here is the business Papebrook is plain and downright because he being a Jesuite is of an Order of a very new Date and which therefore needs not go up and search very high for Titles Whereas Father Mabillon is a Benedictine Monk of the Congregation of St. Maur. And St. Benet's Order hath a
more exact and copious than any that had appear'd before For he thought that St. Jerom and Beda had handled this matter too carelesly and it is even reported That the Emperor Charles the Bald to whom he dedicated his Book had set him at work And therefore it is more likely that he did every thing answerable to the Zeal of his Age for Martyrs and Reliques Which notwithstanding his diligence and all the care he took could effect no more than the Discovery which he made of two other Theb. Souldiers namely Cassius and Florentius who are also recorded by Helinand But further had it passed for current at that time that the three Saints in St. Maximus's Sermon were Theb. Souldiers 't is very improbable that they could have escaped the diligent Search of Vsuard If after this any one should alledge to us the Lives of Saints as the Legends of Octavius Aventitius and Soluter we have no other Answer for them but that there are none so blind as they that will not see But since it hath so fallen out that Maximus his Sermon hath given us an occasion to speak of St. Ambrose we ought not to pass by without some Reflection the Silence of this Father in this particular viz. concerning the Theb. Legion and their Martyrdom though in an hundred places of his Works he speaks of Saints and famous Martyrs in general The time he lived was not long after that wherein it is supposed that the Theb. Legion was cut off He was Bishop at Milan not very far distant from Agaunum where this Martyrdom is said to have happened and he had conversed sometimes with Theodorus Bishop of Octodurum or Martigni where Agaunum is situated Both these Bishops were present at the Council of Aquileia assembled to give a decision in the cause of Palladius and Secundianus Arrian Bishops in Illyria They met again at Milan where Theodorus signed the Letter which St. Ambrose and the other Bishops wrote to Pope Siricius concerning the condemnation of Jovinian who had uttered blasphemous Expressions against the Virginity of the Blessed Mother of God And though the false St. Eucherius in the Letter already related does write to the Bishop Salvius That Theodorus whom he calls vir anterioris Temporis had informed Isaac Bishop of Geneva of all the circumstances of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion it does not appear that he ever spoke of it to St. Ambrose seeing there is not the least notice tak'n of it in all the Works of this Father But let us come now to another sort of Writers and ask the Fathers who have composed Chronologies or Church-Histories These perhaps will tell us something of the Martyrdom of the Theb. Legion for this is not so inconsiderable a Transaction as can be suppos'd to have been overlook'd or lost amongst the Croud of those great Events which they had to relate It is a memorable matter of Fact worthy of their Pens and to be recommended to Posterity for it is the Martyrdom of a whole Legion and the most Famous Historians of the Church either liv'd at the time of this suppos'd Martyrdom or wrote about a hundred Years after I mean Eusebius Socrates Sozomen Theodoret Evagrius Jerom Orosius Sulpitius Severus If this Martyrdom were true it is impossible that they should have been ignorant of it and had they known it 't is not to be imagin'd they would all have conspired together to leave us in the dark about it To begin with Eusebius of whom those who favour him least as Joseph Scaliger do yet agree that with great care he hath search'd into the Original Pieces concerning the Foundation of the First Sees the succession of their Bishops the Persecutions moved by enraged Pagans against the Primitive Christian Religion the many Conflicts of the Blessed Martyrs for its Defense and the Victories which their Faith and constancy have obtained over Infidelity and Errour St. Jerom or whosoever is the Author of the Letter to Chromatius and Heliodorus agrees with the Remarks of President Cousin upon the care and diligence of Eusebius in collecting the Acts of the Martyrs It is said in that Letter that the Emperour Constantine at his arrival at Cesarea permitted Eusebius to ask him whatever he had most a mind to and that Eusebius desired him to command that they should send him from all the Courts and Tribunals of Judicature throughout the Empire all the Processes Tryals and Sentences concerning Martyrs that so he might be particularly inform'd of their right Names Qualities and Numbers and also of the different kinds of their Torments and Death and of the Provinces Towns and Days of their Excecutions and lastly with what Patience and Courage they had suffered their Torments Therefore Antipater Bishop of Bostra in Arabia thinking to obscure the Glory and Reputation of Eusebius said in his confutation of Origen's Apology I allow Eusebius to be excellently vers'd in History and that there is nothing in the Monuments of Antiquity which he is unacquainted with but the Emperours Authority favouring his design it was an easy thing for him to gather up whatever Writings were scattered all over the World So that Eusebius having so many ways of being imformed of the Truth of the Agaunian Martyrdom no body can deny but he is a well qualify'd Witness to be call'd and heard upon this Matter of Fact And so much the rather because he not only was alive at the time of this Martyrdom but of age to know what was then transacted In the first Book of Constantine's Life he saith that in his youth he first saw this Prince in Palestina in the Retinue of the Emperour Dioclesian And in the Third Book of his Church History speaking of Dionysius of Alexandria he saith that it was in his time that he was raised to the Honour of the Episcopal Chair seeing therefore that it is agreed on all hands that Dionysius of Alexandria dyed in the twelfth Year of the Empire of Gallienus's Reign Eusebius his Birth must necessarily precede the Death of this Prince The Learned Doctor Cave conjectures that he was born about the Year 270. As to the time of Gallienus's Death we are under great uncertainties Cardinal Baronius placeing it in the Year 269 upon the Testimony of Eusebius who will have him to have Reigned but fifteen years but Antonio Pagi is of a different opinion and thinks he lived some few Years longer and this upon the Authority of a Medal of Gallienus spoken of by Mezabarba with this Inscription P. M. TR. PO. XVI CON. VII So that it appears to be a difficult thing to assign precisely the time of Eusebius his birth But it is not our business here to cast the Horoscope of this Father or to make an exact Calculation of the time of his Nativity it is sufficient to our purpose that the circumstances here specify'd will make it appear that Eusebius was at least fifteen or sixteen Years old when Maximian went into