confined within its circle. This, and some manifest mischiefs, which even the warmest of the fathers could not but perceive, made them ever and anon, when in ill humour with a heretic, to execrate the schools of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, &c. and denounce each of them, in their turns, to be the great nurseries of error: as Tertullian did of the chief of them, who calls Plato the common cook and seasoner of heresy*. But, falsely supposing that the evil arose from this or that particular sect, when it had its root in the constitution of them all, they went on exclaiming against their particular doctrines, and theologizing and reasoning on their general principles. We say the fathers would sometimes call the Greek philosophy the nursery of heresy. Nothing is more true. And yet all the difference between the orthodox and the heretics, as far as concerned their application of philosophy to religion, was only from less to more. The orthodox employed it to explain articles of faith; and the heretics to invent them. Thus much for a taste of the didactic theology of the fathers. Their polemic savoured as strongly of the same impure mixture. For, the form of argument, and force of confutation, came froin the same shops : from the teaching rhetors, they learnt the art of reasoning by similitudes and analogies; from the talking orators, that capital argument, called, ad hominem; and from the wrangling philosophers of the academy, the address of using any sort of principles, to support their own opinions, or confute their adversaries. The three lasting bars to the discovery and advancement of truth. But matters still grew from bad to worse; till one black cloud of blind credulity had over-spread the Western world: this soon brought on a spiritual * Omnium Hæreticorum condimentarium. dominion, dominion, which took advantage of the confusions occasioned by the continued inroads of fierce barbarians, to strike its roots deep and wide into the fat and lumpish soil of Gothic ignorance. For as a temporal tyranny supports itself by corrupt manners, so a spiritual establisheth it's usurpation by corrupt doctrines. And, as in large empires subject to the temporal, the luxury of vice runs into delicacies; so, in those subject to the spiritual, the absurdity of doctrines hides itself in subtilties. Hence the original of the SCHOOLMEN'S art; as we find it completed in the PERIPATETIC code of sums and sentences. And this was in the order of things: that what the fanatic visions of the platonic philosophy had brought into the faith, the frigid subtilties of the Aristotelian should support *. And it is observable, that the use the schoolmen made of their disputatious genius, was just the same the sophists had made before them. For triumphant dulness commonly grows wanton in the exercise of imputed wit†. And the Sic and Non of Peter Abelard was now as famous as heretofore the gobanale of Gorgias. At length truth shot its ray into this chaos of disordered reason but it came not directly from it's source; but It is remarkable, that the Mahometan Arabs, by the assistance of the same philosophy, invented the same kind of scholastic theology and, as with superior refinement, in proportion to the subtiler wits of that people; so, with better judgment: for that which obscures reason, will always be a cover for absurdity. +It was held disgraceful when the subtile Doctor was so pressed by his opponent as to have no other way of extricating himself than by quoting Scripture (an expedient, in his ideas, like that of introducing the God in the Machine, which bungling poets were wont to have recourse to). M. Menage tells us he found the following entry in the register of the faculty at Paris-“ Solida "die sexta Julii ab Aurora ad vesperam fuit disputatum, et se quidem tam SUBTILITER, ut ne verbum quidem de tota scrip"tura fuerit allegatum." from from the ferment of such passions as error and corruption are apt to raise amongst those who govern in, and benefit by, that state of confusion. For when a reform happens to arise from within, it cannot be supposed to have its birth in a love of truth; hardly, in the knowledge of it. Generally, some corrupt passion gratifies itself by decrying the grosser errors, supported by, and supporting,, those it hates. The machine thus set a-going, truth hath fair play: she is now in turn to procure friends, and to attach them to her service. This was the case in the revolution we are about to speak of; and is the case of religious reformations in general. For if, in the state of such established error, Providence was to wait till a love of truth had set men upon shaking off their bondage, its dispensations could never provide that timely aid, which we now find they always do to distressed humanity. For when the corruption hath spread so wide, as to make truth, if by chance she could be found, an indifferent object; what is there left, to enable men to break their fetters, but the clashing interests of the corruption itself? And it is knowing as little of the religious, as of the moral course of God's providence, to upbraid those, who have profited of this blessing, with the baseness of the instruments that procured it *. However, the love of truth came afterwards in aid of those, whom St. Paul himself did not think fit to discourage, such as preach Christ even of envy and strife, to carry on the work of reformation. For . * « Si on veut réduire les causes des progres de la réforme à "des principes simples, on verra, qu'en Allemagne ce fut "l'Ouvrage de l'Interêt, en Angleterre celui de l'Amour; et en "France celui de la Nouveauté, ou peut-être d'une Chanson." Voiez, Memoirs pour servir à l'Histoire de Brandebourg de main de Maitre, p. 27. though though the grossness of the corruptions did not straightway make them suspected; yet, being tyrannically imposed, they soon became hated; and that hatred brought on the enquiry; which never ceased but with their detection. And then, those, whose honesty and courage emboldened them to make a secession from an Anti-Christian Church, found no way of standing in their new-recovered liberty, but by supplying their want of power with a superior share of knowledge. To this every thing contributed. They were led, even by the spirit of opposition, to the fountain of truth, the Scriptures; from which they had been so long and violently excluded. And the Scriptures, as we observed, had, amongst their other advantages, this peculiar virtue, to direct and enlarge the mind; by providing it with such objects as were best suited for its contemplation; and presenting them in such lights as most readily promoted its improvement by them. Such too was the gracious disposition of Heaven, that, at the very time these servants of truth were breaking open the recovered treasury of holy writ, the largest source of human learning was ready to pour in upon them. For a powerful nation of fierce enthusiasts, the enemies of the Christian name, had just driven Grecian literature from its natives eats, and forced it to take refuge in the North West of Europe. How admirable are the ways of Providence! and how illustrious was this dispensation! It directed the independent, the various, and the contrary revolutions of these times, to rectify the mischiefs occasioned by the past: whereby that very learning, which, in the first ages, had been perverted to corrupt Christianity, was now employed to purify and restore it: that very philosophy, which had been adopted to invent and explain articles of faith, was now studied only to in struct struct us in the history of the human mind, and to assist us in developing its faculties, and regulating its operations and those very systems which had supported the whole body of school divinity, now afforded the principles proper to overturn it. But in the course of this reform, it was not enough that the bad logic, on which the school-determinations rested, should be reduced to its just value. The service of truth required the invention of a better. A better was invented: and the superiority that followed from its use was immediately felt: So that our adversaries were soon reduced to avail themselves of the same advantages. Thus the true science of humanity opened and enlarged itself: It spread and penetrated through every quarter; till it arrived at that distinguished height in which we place the true glory of these later ages. The advantage of the modern over ancient times, in the successful pursuit of moral science, is now generally acknowledged. And the impartial reader, who hath attended to these brief reflections, will, we presume, find no other cause, to which it can be so reasonably ascribed, as to the genius and the constitution of the Christian religion; whose doctrines reveal the great prinicples of moral truth; and whose discipline establishes a ministry consecrated to its support and service. It is true, indeed, the concurrence of several cross accidents had for many ages deprived the world of these advantages: They had defeated the natural virtue and efficacy of the doctrines; and rendered the discipline vain and useless. For these two parts of the Christian system cannot act but in conjunction: separate them, and its doctrines will abound in enthusiasms, and its discipline, in superstitions. But now, |