FATHERS OF THE CHURCH 500 FATHERS OF THE CHURCH
nor Christian antiquitj' as a thing positive ; either of which would have shown thein that the fathers tliem- selves were modern compared to that authorit}' on which the Reformation was founded, and tliat the (iospel was that true antiquity on which all its follow- ers should repose themselves. The consequence of which unhappy error was that, in the long appeal to reason between Protestants and Papists, Ixjth of them going on a common principle of the decisive authority of the fathers, enabled the latter to support their credit against all the evidence of connnon sense and sacred Scripture. At length an excellent writer of the Re- formed [Daille], observing that the controversy was likely to be endless ; for, though the gross corruptions of Poperj' were certainly later than the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, to which the appeal was usually niade, j'et the seeds of them being sown, and begin- ning to pullulate, it was but too plain there was hold enough for a skilful debater to draw t\\& fathers to his own side, and make them water the sprouts they had been planting : observing this, I say, he wisely pi-o- jected to shift the ground, and force the disputants to vary their method botii of attack and defence. In or- der to this, he composed a discourse of the True Use of the Fathers, in which, with uncommon learning and strength of argument, he showed that the fathers were incompetent deciders of the controversies now on foot, since the points in question were not formed into arti- cles till long after the ages in which they lived. This was bringing the fithers from the bench to the table, degrading them from the rank of judges into the class of simple evidence ; in whicli, too, they were not to speak, like Irish evidence, in every cause where the3' were wanted, but only to such matters as were agreed to be witliin. their knowledge. Had this learned critic stopped here, his book had heen free from blnne ; but, at the same time, his purpose had in all likelihood proved very ineffectual, for the obliquity of old prej- ndices is not to be set straight by reducing it to that line of right which barely restores it to integrity. He went much farther; and by showing occasionallj' that they were absurd interpreters of Holy Writ, that they were bad reasoners in morals and very loose evidence in facts, he seemed willing to have his readers infer that, even though tliey had been masters of the sub- ject, yet these other defects would have rendered them very unqualified deciders. However, the worjv of this famous foreigner had great consequences, and espe- ciall}' with ns here at home. The more learned among the nobility (which at that time was of the republic of letters) were the first who emancipated themselves from the general prejudice. It brought the excellent 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, the famous lord Digby, found it of such use to him in his defence of the Reformation against his cousin Sir Kenelm that he has even epitomized it in his fine letter on that subject. But what it has chiefly to boast of is that it gave birth to the two best defenses ever written on the two liest subjects, reUfjion and liberty — I mean Mr. Chillmgworth's Rel'gion of Protestants, and Dr. Jeremy Taylor's Libcrti/ of Prophi'syinff. In a wfird, it may be truly said to be the store-house from whence all who have since written popularly on the character of ihefit/ie7-s have derived their materi ils" (cited in Pref- ace to the Philadolpliia edition of Daille).
3. The other Protestant wing consists of the early writers after the Reformation who sought in the fathers to find weapons against Rome, and of tlieir successors, especially in the Church of England, who h;>ve favor- ed what arc called High-(]hurch views. Among Con- tinental writers, Scultetus {Medullct Thenlofpw Patrum Sf/ntrif/nifi., Frankfort, 1598; Heidell). 161:5 ; Frankfort, 1C34) sought to show that the ante-Nicene fathers had been corrupted and misinterpreted by Roman writers, an"! that Protestant doctrines were nearer to the an-
cient than the Roman Catholic doctrines. The Angli- can divines, from an earl}' period of the Reformation, made great use of the fathers in the controversj^ with. Rome. Moreover, they found, or believed that they found, the fathers verj' serviceable in their warfare for episcopacy. Patristic studies became ftxshionable in the Church ; the great names of Bull, Waterland, Ush- er, Andrews, and many others, show a list of patristic- al scholars hardly excelled in tlie Roman schools. Usher set great store upon the study of the fathers, not simph- on polemical, but also on scientific grounds. Dr. Parr says of him : " Indeed, he had so gieat an esteem of the ancient authors for the acquiring any solid learning, whether sacred or profane, that his ad- vice to young students, either in divinity or antiquit}', was, not to spend too much time in epitomes, but to set themselves to read the ancient authors themselves ; as, to begin with the fathers, and to read them accord- ing to the ages in Mhich they lived (which was the method he had taken himself), and, together with them, carefully to peruse tlie Church historians that treated of that age in which those fathers lived, by which means the student would be better al)le to per- ceive the reason and meaning of divers passages in their writings (which otherwise would be obscure) when he knew the original and growtli of those here- sies and heterodox opinions against which they wrote, and may also better judge what doctrines, ceremonies, and opinions prevailed in the Church in every age, and by what means introduced." Bull and Water- land made great use of the fathers in their discussions of the Trinity. Waterland writes against Daille's charges of obscurity in the fatliers {]Vurl:s, Oxford, 6 vols. 8vo) ; he also wrote on the use and value of ec- clesiastical antiquity in general (iii, GOl-655), and made a rcph' to Barbeyrac's Morale des Peres de Veglise (Amst. 1728). The great dissenting scholar, Dr. Lard- ner, applied the fathers in an apologetical way, with rare learning and skill, in his CiedihUity of the Gofpei History (latest edition, in his Worlds, 10 vols. Svo, Lon- don, 1827). He gives brief but painstaking notices of the history and literature of each of the writers cited, and his work is to this day one of the most use- ful introductions to the study of the writings of an- tiquity'.