1. The scholastic theology (q. v.) began with com- ments upon citations from the fathers, considered as au- thoritative (sententicc). Wiien the Reformation began, the Roman divines found themselves driven anew to the fathers for authority for the doctrines and prac- tices which Lutlier and his coadjutors showed to be ■without foundation in Scripture. More loudly than even the scholastics did the controvertists of tiiis pe- riod proclaim the authority of patristic tradition in settling questions of faith. We have here a clear po- lemical reason for the view taken of the fathers in Ro- man tlieology (see it stated in Alzog, Patrologie, § 3; and compare the articles Faith, Rulk of ; Tradi- tion). Not unnaturally, then, have the Roman the- ologians been the most diligent workers in this field of Christian literature. But, on the other hand, the Roman theory that questions of doctrine can only l;e settled by councils (or by pope and council), has not been without effect in leading Homan writers to depre- ciate the early writers, or, at least, to see their defects clearly. So Petavius, whose Opus Be Th''ol.igicis Dorj- matihns (Paris, 1644-50 ; new edit. vol. i, Roma?, 1857, fol.) is a store-house of patristical learning, points out the theological errors of Athenagoras, Tertullian, and
others, with great clearness. So also J. H. Newman, in the Introduction to his Essay on the Becelopment of Christian Doctrine (p. 12-15, N. V. edit.), dwells upon the "incompleteness'' and even of the " errors" of the ante-Nicene theology, even in the hands of such fa- thers as Irenaius, Gregory, and Cyprian. This whole Introduction may be considered as an argument against the so-called Tractarian view of the authority of the fathers, and especiall}' against the validity and practi- cability of the much-vaunted dictum of Vincentius Lir- inensis (q. v.), quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab om- nibus InKlilum est. All the recent Roman writers who adopt the theory of " development" (q. v.) write in the same vein.
2. The Protestant theologians have, until a late pe- riod at least, been divided into two wings on this ques- tion of the " right use of the fathers." One of these wings may be represented by Milton (f 1674) and by Daille (f 1670). Milton, .in his tract on Prelatical Epis- copacy, speaks, in his strong wa}', of those who, "not content with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of Scripture, seek to themselves teachers, and cannot think any doubt resolved until they run to that undi- gested heap and fry of authors which they call antiq- uity. Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers." But yet, he adds, in another part of the same tract, " He tliat thinks it the part of a well-learned man to have read diligently the ancient stories of the Church, and to be no stranger in the volumes of the fathers, shall have all judicious men consenting with him ; not hereby to control and new-fangle the Scriptures, God forbid ! but to mark how corruption and apostasj' crept in by degrees, and to gather up, wherever we find the remaining sparks of original truth, wherewith to stop the mouths of our adversaries, and to bridle them with tlieir own curb who willingly pass by that which is orthodoxal in them, and studiously cull out that which is commentitious and best for their turns; not weigh- ing the fathers in tlie balance of Scripture, but Scrip- ture in the balance of the fathers. If we, therefore, making first the Gospel our rule and oracle, shall take the good which we light on in the fathers, and set it to oppose the evil which other men seek from them, in this way of skirmish we shall easily master all super- stition and false doctrine ; but if wo turn this our dis- creet and wary usage of them into a blind devotion to- wards them, and whatsoever we find written b}^ them, we both forsake our own grounds and reasons which led us at first to part from Rome, that is, to hold the Scriptures against all antiquity ; we remove our cause into our adversaries' own court, and take up there those cast principles whicli will soon cause us to solder up with them again, inasmuch as, believing antiquity for itself in any one point, we bring an engagement upon ourselves of assenting to all that it charges npon us." Milton, it is plain, was writing against the An- glican admirers of antiquity as much as against the Roman Catholics.
Daillo wrote a treatise, De Vera Usu Patrum (1636; Am. ed. The Bight Use of the Fathers, Philadel. 1842, 12ino), which formed an epoch in the history of opin- ion on this subject. Warburton, in his Introduction to Julian, speaks of the work, its occasion and issues, as follows: "When the great defection was made from the Church of Rome back again to the Church of Christ, the Reformed, though they shook oflT the tyranny of the pope, could not disengage themselves from the unbounded authority of the fathers, but car- ried that prejudice with thein, as they did some others of a worse complexion, into the Protestant religion. For in sacred matters, as novelty is suspicious and an- tiquity venerable, they thought it for their credit to have the fathers on their side. Tliey seemed neither to consider antiquity in general as a thing relative,