5. But some of the opponents of an undue reverence for the fathers have not been wanting in just appre- ciation of their historical value. Dr. W. L. Alexan- der (^Anglo-Catholicism not Apostolical, Edinb. 1843, Svo) gives the following caution against under-esti- mating the importance and value of the fathers : " Tliere has been among Protestants a great deal of foolish talking and much jesting that is anj-thing but convenient upon this subject. Men who have never read a page of the fathers, and who could not read one we.e they to trj', have deemed themselves at lili- crty to speak in terms of scoffing and supercilious contempt of these venerable luminaries of the early Churcli. Because Clement of Eome believed in the existence of the phoenix, and because Justin Martyr thought the sons of God who are said in Genesis to have intermarried with the daughters of men were angels, who for the loves of earth were willing to fore- go the jo_v9 of heaven ; and V)ecause legends and old wives' fables enow are found in almost all the fathers, it has been deemed wise to reject, despise, and ridicule the whole body of their writings. The least reflection will suffice to show tlie unsoundness of such an infer- ence. "What should we saj' of one who, because lord Bacon held man}' opinions which modern science has proved to be false, should treat the Novum Orrjamim •with contempt? or of one who should deem himself entitled to scoff at Richard Baxter because in his Saints' first that able and excellent man tries to prove the existence of Satan by quoting instances of his ap- paritions, and of his power over witches? There is no man, however good or great, tiiat can get quite be- yond the errors and credulities of his age. It be- comes us, therefore, in dealing with the writings of a former generation, to take care that, in rejecting the bad, we do not also despise the good ; and especially that we be not found availing ourselves of advantages which have reached us through the medium of these writings, while we ignorantly and ungratefully dis- honor the memory of those by whom these writings were penned." In the height of the so-called Tracta- rian controversy in England, Isaac Taj'lor wrote his Ancient Christianitt/ and the Doctrines of the Ovfird Tracts (Lond. 183J)', 2 vols. Svo; 2d ed. 18-14; reprint of vol. i, I'hila. 1840, limo) for the jiurpose of laying "open tlie real condition, moral, spiritual, and ecclesi- astical, of the ancient Church;" and the chief aim and tendency of the book is to lessen the authority of the fathers, especially of those of the ante-Nicene period. Yet even he devotes a chapter to show tlie dependence of the modern Church upon the ancient, and to dep- xecate a "setting at naught" of patristical learning.
" It is not, we may be sure, those who possess much of this indispensable learning that in any such way set it at nauglit; and it is an acknowledged rule in all walks of science and literature that the scoft's and cap- tious objections of the ignorant need not be seriously replied tq — 'know what you are speaking of, and then contemn it.' Now the mere fact of applying any com- prehensive terms, either of admiration or contempt, to a body and series of writers, stretching through seven hundred or a thousand j'ears, and these writers natives as they were of distant countries, some of them simple and rude, while others were erudite and acconijilished, may be taken as a proof of heedlessness, regarding the matter in hand, sufficient to excuse a silent disregard of the objection it involves. These 'fathers,' thus grouped as a little band by the olyectors, were some of them men of as brilliant genius as any age has pro- duced ; some commanding a flowing and vigorous elo- quence, some an extensive erudition, seme conversant with the great world, some whose meditations had been ripened by j-ears of seclusion, some of them the only historians of the times in which the}- lived, some the chiefs of the philosoph}' of their age ; and if we are to speak of the whole as a series or body of writers, they are the men who, during a long a;ra of deepening barbarism, still held the lamp of knowledge and learn- ing, and, in fact, afl'ord us almost all that we can now know, intimately, of the condition of the nations sur- rounding the Mediterranean, from the extinction of the clastic tire to the time of its rekindling in the four- teenth century. The C hurch was the ark of all things that had life during a deluge of seven hundred years. Such is the group which is often conveniently dismiss- ed with a concise phrase of contempt by fome ! It may be suspected thatver}' many of the delighted ad- mirers of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Bo- man Emj.ire are little aware of the extent of Gil4jon's obligations to- — the fathers. AA'ere it possilde to draw ofl" from that seductive work the entire materials de- rived b}- the indefatigable author fn m the ecclesiasti- cal compartment of his library, it is no small propor- tian of the splendor, the accuracy, the correct drawing, the vivid coloring, which are its chaim and praise, that would be found wanting. Well would it liave been if some of the professed champions and hittt.ri- ans of Christianity had been as tin roughly conversant with the remains of Christian anticpiity as was its most dangerous assailant. The ignorance of whidi we are here complaining has once endangered our faith as Christians, and it is now endangering our faitli as Protestants. Kearl}' of the sane quality, and usually advanced hy the same paities, is the portentous insin- uation, or the told and appalling averment, that there was little or no genuine Christianity in tlie Morld from the times of Justin jMartyr to those of Wicklifi'e, cr of Luther ! and the inference from this assumption is that we are far more likely to be led astriiv than edi- fied bj' looking into the literature of this vast territory of religious darkness. I must leave it to those who entertain any such sombre belief as this to repel, in the iiest n;anner they are able, those fiery darts of in- fidelity w hich will not fail to be hurled at Christianitj' itself as often as the opinion is professed. Such per- sons, too, must expound as they can our Lord's jiart- ing promise to his servants. Notions of this sort, and there are many of like kind, all take their rise from some narrow and sectarian hypothesis concerning Christianity. We do not, perhaps, find, during cer- tain cycles of the Church's history, that style or dia- lect which, by an intimate association of ideas, has combined itself with our religious sentiments, and therefore it is to us and our peculiar feelings as if Christianitj"^ itself had actually not been extant at such times. If these are our feelings, it is well that we get rid of them with all speed. Christianity is ab- solute truth, bearing with various effect, from age to age, upon our distorted and discolored human nature,