from the unbounded authority of the FATHERS; but carried that prejudice with them (as they did some others, of a worse complexion) into the REFORMATION. For, in religious matters, novelty being suspicious, and antiquity venerable, the Reformed thought it for their credit to have the FATHERS on their side. They seemed neither to consider antiquity in general as a thing relative, nor Christian-antiquity as a thing positive: either of which considerations would have shewn them, that the FATHERS themselves were modern, compared to that authority on which the Reformed founded their churches; and that the GOSPEL was that true antiquity on which they should repose their confidence *. The effect of this error was, that in the long appeal to truth between Protestants and Papists (both of them going on a common principle, that the authority of the FATHERS was decisive), the latter were enabled to prop up their credit against all the evidence of common sense and sacred scripture. *The Roman Catholics have long objected to us the antiquity of their church, as one of its greatest supports. But none of them have been so ingenuous as the excellent author of L'Esprit des Loix, "L'anto point out wherein the force of this argument consists. tiquité (fays he) convient à la Religion, parce que souvent nous croyons plus les choses à mesure qu'elles sont plus reculées: car nous n'avons pas dans la tête des idées accessoires tirées de ces tems-là qui puissent les contredire." Vol. II. p. 203, 8vo ed. Force we see it has. But then unluckily it lyes in the supposition of Popery's being a false, not a true church. For though false religion acquires an advantage from the oblivion of those discrediting. circumstances which attended its original, and of which by time we are now deprived; yet true religion receives much damage from the same effects of time; because several circumstances, long since lost, which accompanied its birth, must needs have greatly con⚫ firmed its character. For it is as much in the nature of things that the circumstances attending truth should confirm it, as that the circumstances attending error should detect it. At length an excellent writer of the Reformed religion, observing that the controversy was likely to be endless (for though the gross corruptions of Popery were certainly later than the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, to which the appeal was usually made, yet the seeds of them being then sown, and beginning to pullulate, it was but too plain there was hold enough for a skilful debater to draw the FATHERS to his own side, and make them water the sprouts they had been planting); M. Daillé, I say, observing this, wisely projected to shift the ground, and force the disputants on both sides to vary their method of attack as well as of defence. In order to this he composed a discourse Of the true use of the Fathers*. In which, with admirable learning, and force of argument, he shewed, that the FATHERS were incompetent Deciders of the controversies now on foot; since the points in question were not formed into articles till long after the ages in which those FATHERS lived. This was bringing them from the bench to the table; degrading them from the rank of judges, into the class of simple evidence; in which Daillé too was not for suffering them to speak, like Irish Evidence, in every cause where they were wanted, but only to such matters as were agreed to be within their competence. Had this learned critic stopped here, his book had been free from blame; but then in all likelihood his honest purpose had been rendered ineffectual: for old prejudices are not to be set straight by barely reducing the obliquity to that straight line which just restores it to its rectitude. He went much further and by shewing, occasionally, that they were absurd interpreters of scripture; that they were bad reasoners in morals; and very loose evidence in facts; he seemed willing to have his reader infer, that, even * De l'Emploi des Peres. though though they had been masters of their subject, yet these other defects would have rendered them very unqualified deciders. However, the work of this famous foreigner had great consequences: and especially with us here at home. The more learned amongst the nobility (an order, which, at that time, was of the republic of letters) were the first who emancipated themselves from the general prejudice. It brought the incomparable Lord Falkland to think moderately of the FATHERS, and to turn his theological inquiries into a more useful channel. And his great rival in arts, though not in virtue, the famous Lord Digby, found it of such use to him, in his defence of the Reformed religion against his cousin Sir Kenhelm, that he has even epitomised l'emploi des Peres, in his fine Letter on that subject. But, what it hath chiefly to boast is, that it gave birth to the two best defences ever written, on the two best of subjects, Religion and Liberty; I mean Mr. Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, and Dr. Fer. Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying. In a word, it may be truly said to be the storehouse, from whence all who have since written popularly on the character of the FATHERS have derived their materials. Dr. Whitby, in whose way they fell as Interpreters of Scripture, hath, in imitation of the pattern Daillé set him, made a large collection from their writings, to expose their talents for criticism*. In the same manner, and in a larger volume, Mr. Barbeyrac afterwards treated their pretensions to the science of Ethics : And now of late the very learned and ingenious Dr. Middeton, finding them in the support of Monkish miracles, hath written as largely to prove *Dissert. de S. S. interpretatione secund. Patres. La Morale des Peres, &c. their testimony in matters of fact to be none of the strongest. So that these several constituent parts of their character being thus taken up in their turns; and the whole order exposed, as incompetent judges of doctrine, as trifling interpreters of scripture, as bad.moralists, and as slippery evidence; it is no wonder the English reader, who only measures them by such representations, should be disposed to think very irreverently of these early lights of the Christian Church. But, let us divest ourselves of prejudice, whether we think with the few or the many; and we shall soon understand that in the heat of a contention evidence will be apt to be overrated. Nay, when fairly estimated, no reflecting man will think himself able to form a true judgment of a character, when no more of it is laid before him than a collection of its blots and blemishes. Till of late, there were always some who could preserve their candour and moderation, which in religion and politics, where our highest interests are concerned, is no easy matter; and these men were wont to say, "That though we should indeed suppose the fathers to be as fanciful divines, as bad critics, and as unsafe moralists, as Daillé, Whitby, and Barbeyrac, are pleased to represent them, yet this would take little from the integrity of their evidence and what we want of them is only their testimony to facts." But now, even this small remain of credit is thought too much to be allowed them; and, of this, the learned author of the Free Inquiry, by exposing their excessive credulity in point of false miracles*, hath laboured to deprive *« Videmus, quanto dignitatis detrimento hic error credendi recipiendique omnia facilitas affecerit ex ecclesiasticis historiis "nonnullas; deprive them. But, controversy apart, their testimony to common facts may yet stand good. I see no reason why their veracity should be brought in question when they bear witness to the state of religion in their own times, because they disgraced their judgment, in giving ear to every strange tale of Monkish extraction. The. most learned and virtuous divine of the barbarous ages is the venerable Bede; and the honestest as well as most discerning historian of those, or perhaps of any age, is Matthew Paris: yet their propensity to recount the wonderful exceeds all imagination. Neither learning, judgment, nor integrity, could secure them against the general contagion. Now, if this disposition was in them (as is confessed) only the vice of the times, is it not unjust to ascribe the same disposition in the fathers, to the vice of the men? But our folly has ever been, and is likely to continue, to judge of antiquity by a modern standard : when, if we would form reasonable ideas of it, we should weigh it with its own. We examine the conceits of a BASIL or an AUSTIN, on the test of the improved reasoning of our own times. And we do well. It is the way to read them with profit. But when, from a contempt of their logic, which follows this comparison, we come to despise their other accomplishments of parts and learning, we betray gross ignorance or injustice. To know the true value of the fathers, we should place them by their contemporaries, the Pagan writers of greatest estimation; and if they suffer in their neighbourhood; e'en let them stay, where most of them already are, with the grocers. But it is a fact. none "nonnullas; quæ nimis faciles se præbuerunt, in prodendis trans"cribendisque miraculis, à martyribus, eremitis, anachoretis, et "aliis sanctis viris, atque ab eorum reliquiis, sepulcris, sacellis, imaginibus editis." Bacon de Augm. Scien. |