PART II. CENT. dictates of the divine law; the necessity of the diV. vine grace in order to salvation; the nature and existence of human liberty; and other such intricate and perplexing questions. The sacred and venerable simplicity of the primitive times, which required no more than a true faith in the word of God, and a sincere obedience to his holy laws, appeared little better than rusticity and ignorance to the subtile doctors of this quibbling age. Yet so it happened, that many of the over-curious divines, who attempted to explain the nature, and remove the difficulties of these intricate doctrines, succeeded very ill in this matter. Instead of leading men into the paths of humble faith and genuine piety, they bewildered them in the labyrinths of controversy and contention, and rather darkened than illustrated the sacred mysterics of religion by a thick cloud of unintelligible subtilties, ambiguous terms, and obscure distinctions. Hence arose new matter of animosity and dispute, of bigotry and uncharitableness, which flowed like a torrent through succeeding ages, and which all human efforts seem unable to vanquish. In these disputes, the heat of passion, and the excessive force of religious antipathy and contradiction, hurried frequently the contending parties into the most dangerous extremes. Supersti apace. II. If, before this time, the lustre of religion tion grows was clouded with superstition, and its divine precepts adulterated with a mixture of human inventions, this evil, instead of diminishing, increased daily. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked by numbers, and their aid implored by assiduous and fervent prayers; while none stood up to censure or oppose this preposterous worship. The question, how the prayers of mortals ascended to the celestial spirits (a question which afterwards produced much wrangling, and many idle fancies), did not as yet occasion V. PART II. occasion any difficulty; for the Christians of this CENT. century did not imagine that the souls of the saints were so entirely confined to the celestial mansions, as to be deprived of the privilege of visiting mortals, and travelling, when they pleased, through various countries. They were further of opinion, that the places most frequented by departed spirits were those where the bodies they had formerly animated were interred; and this opinion, which the Christians borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, rendered the sepulchres of the saints the general rendezvous of suppliant multitudes [x]. The images of those, who, during their lives, had acquired the reputation of uncommon sanctity, were now honoured with a particular worship in several places; and many imagined, that this worship drew down into the images the propitious presence of the saints or celestial beings they represented; deluded, perhaps, into this idle fancy by the crafty fictions of the heathen priests, who had published the same thing concerning the statues of Jupiter and Mercury [y]. A singular and irresistible efficacy was also attributed to the bones of martyrs, and to the figure of the cross, in defeating the attempts of Satan, removing all sorts of calamities, and in healing, not only the diseases of the body, but also those of the mind [*]. We shall not [+] Lactantius, Divinar. Institutionum, lib. i. p. 164. Hesiodus, Opp. et Dier. ver. 122. Compare with these, Sulpitius Severus, Epist. ii. p. 371. Dial. ii. cap. xiii. p. 474. Dial. iii. p. 512. Eneas Gazæus, in Theophrasto, p. 65. Macarius in Jac. Tollii Insignibus Itineris Italici, p. 197. and other writers of this age. [y] Clementina, Homil. x. p. 697. tom. i. PP. Apostolic. Arnobius, adv. Gentes, lib. vi. p. 254. Casp. Barthius, ad Rutilium Numantian, p. 250. [z] Prudentius, Hymn xi. de Coronis, p. 150, 151. Sulpitius Severus, Ep. i. p. 364. Æneas Gazæus, in Theophrasto, P. 173. V. PART II. CENT. enter here into a particular account of the public supplications, the holy prilgrimages, the superstitious services paid to departed souls, the multiplication of temples, altars, penitential garments, and a multitude of other circumstances, that shewed the decline of genuine piety, and the corrupt darkness that was eclipsing the lustre of primitive Christianity. As there were none in these times to hinder the Christians from retaining the opinions of their Pagan ancestors concerning departed souls, heroes, demons, temples, and such like matters, and even transferring them into their religious services; and as, instead of entirely abolishing the rites and institutions of ancient times, these institutions were still observed, with only some slight alterations; all this swelled of necessity the torrent of superstition, and deformed the beauty of the Christian religion and worship with those corrupt remains of paganism, which still subsist in a certain church. It will not be improper to observe here, that the famous Pagan doctrine, concerning the purification of departed souls, by means of a certain kind of fire, was more amply explained and confirmed now than it had formerly been [a]. Every body knows, that this doctrine proved an inexhaustible source of riches to the clergy through the succeeding ages, and that it still enriches the Romish church with its nutritious streams. Interpreta- III. The interpretation of the Holy Scriptures scripture. employed fewer pens in this century than in the preceding age, in which the Christian doctors were less involved in the labyrinths of controversy. Yet, notwithstanding the multiplication of religious tions of [a] See, particularly concerning this matter Augustin, his book de viii. Questionibus ad dulcitium, N. xiii. tom. vi. opp. p. 121. De fide et operibus, cap. xvi. p. 182. De fide, spe, et charitate, sect. 118. p. 222. Enarratione Psal. xxxv. sect. 3, &c. V. PART IL gious disputes, a considerable number of learned CENT. men undertook this useful and important task. We shall not mention those who confined their illustrations to some one, or a few books of the divine word, such as Victor of Antioch, Polychronius, Philo, Carpathius, Isidore of Cordona, Salonius, and Andrew of Cæsaria. We must not, however, pass over in silence Theodoret and Theodore, bishops of Cyrus and Mopsuestia, the two most famous expositors of this age, who illustrated a great part of the Holy Scriptures by their pious labours. They were truly eminent, both in point of learning and genius; and, free and unprejudiced in their search after truth, they followed the explications of scripture given by their predecessors, only as far as they found them agreeable to reason. The commentaries of Theodoret are yet extant, and in the hands of the learned [b]; those of Theodore are concealed in the east among the Nestorians, though on many accounts worthy to see the light [c]. Cyril, of Alexandria, deserves also a place among the commentators of this century; but a still higher rank, among that useful and learned body, is due to Isidore of Pelusium, whose epistles contain [b] See Simon, Histoire critique des principaux Commentateurs de N. Test. chap. xxii. p. 314; as also his Critique de la Biblioth. Ecclesiast. de Du Pin, tom. i. p. 180. Theodoret wrote Commentaries upon the five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, the Psalms, the Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, the 12 lesser prophets, and St. Paul's 14 Epistles. [c] Jos. Sim. Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. Clem. Vatic. tom. iii. sect. 2. p. 227. Simon, Critique de la Biblioth. Eccles. de Du Pin, tom. i. p. 108. 677. We are assured by Fabricius, upon the testimony of Lambecius, that Theodore's Commentary upon the twelve Prophets is still in being, in MS. in the emperor's library at Vienna. See Fabr. Bibl. Græc. tom. ix. p. 162. See also for an ample and learned account of the writings of this author, Lardner's Credibility, &c. vol. ix. p. 389. CENT. contain many observations, which cast a considerV. able degree of light upon several parts of scripture [d]. PART II. mentators. IV. It is, however, to be lamented, that the Many chimerical and greatest part of the commentators, both Greek weak com- and Latin, following the idle fancies of Origen, overlooked the true and natural sense of the words, and hunted after subtile and hidden significations, for mysteries (as the Latins then termed them) in the plainest precepts of the Holy Scriptures. Several of the Greeks, and particularly Theodoret, laboured with success and precision, in illustrating the books of the New Testament; and their success here is to be principally attributed to their perfect knowledge of the Greek language, which they had learned from their infancy. But neither the Greeks nor Latins cast much light upon the Old Testament, which was cruelly tortured by the allegorical pens of almost all who attempted to illustrate and explain it. For nothing is more common, than to see the interpreters of the fifth century straining all the passages of that sacred book, either to typify Christ, and the blessings of his kingdom, or Antichrist, and the wars and desolations which he was to bring upon the earth, and that, without the least spark of judgment, or the smallest air of probability. Some of more wisdom and V. A few chosen spirits, superior to the others in sagacity and wisdom, were bold enough to judgment. stand up against these critical delusions, and to point out a safer and plainer way to divine truth. This we learn from the epistles of Isidore of Pelusium, who, though he was not himself entirely free from this allegorical contagion, yet censures judiciously, [d] See for an account of these two authors, Simon, Histoire des principaux Commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, ch. xxi. p. 300. |