fathers, for near, if not full, three hundred years? Is it the practice any where now to worship towards the east, to fast in sackcloth and ashes, and lying prostrate upon the ground, which was the custom in the primitive time? What a clutter would it make, if we should celebrate the nativity of our Lord in May, as it was in some, and in September, as in others of the Greek churches; nor was it ever kept at the time it now is till after Constantine's time, by the Latin church; which taught or imposed it upon the Greek church in the time of Chrysostom. And they who have taken much pains in chronology undertake to demonstrate how that mistake insinuated itself into the church; and Joseph Scaliger thinks he hath made it evident that our Saviour was born about the end of September; and others make it to be on the 24th of September, which was then in the time of the feast of tabernacles, which would answer to the other signal parts of his life, which fell out to be at the other two great feasts: and sure, if this had been thought of, it would have made a very notable alteration in the stating of the Gregorian account or calculation. And if the church could make these changes, why not others, and other times, as observation and experience should find necessary? nor doth it seem a natural thing that religion should arrive at its perfection in its infancy; nor doth it appear that the

church could be in its full vigour in our Saviour's time, or in the time of the apostles; for many learned men believe that the policy of the Christian church could not extend itself till the policy of the Jewish church was determined, which was not till after the destruction of the temple, which was after the death of all the apostles, but only of St John; and from that time it did make indeed a great progress in order and direction, how dark an account soever hath been transmitted to us of it; and that order and direction as the time and the persons made most counselable, and not the same in or to all places. But what, then, shall antiquity be despised by us, and the great learning and piety of the first lights, the reverend fathers of the church, be undervalued, and their judgment looked upon without reverence? God forbid. We resort to antiquity as the best evidence of what was then done, and think we have the same liberty in the perusal of the monuments thereof, those conduits which convey the information of what was then done to us, as in other history, which it may be hath been transmitted with more care and exactness; to consider the improbability of this matter of fact, and so doubt the veracity of it, the prudence and fitness of another, and think it might have been better done. And so we look upon the fathers, and what they said and what they did, with full reverence, though not

with full resignation; we admire their learning and their piety, and wonder how they arrived to either in times of so much barbarity and ignorance in those places where they lived; and thank God for enlightening them to give testimony for him in those ages of darkness and infidelity, and for the instruction and information that we have received from them; and our reverence is the greater to them for having seen so much in so great darkness, and yet we cannot but think that darkness hindered them from seeing all: and when we consider the faction and distemper of the times they lived in, we may, without lessening the estimation we ought to have for them, believe that that distemper and faction might have some influence upon them, and mislead them in some particulars; and when they so often contradict one another in many things, and many of them themselves in some, it cannot be reasonable to oblige us to submit in all things to which they all consent, if our reason makes it manifest to us that they are in the wrong; though I do not know that we do dissent from them in any such particular, yet we see all that they did, and we may modestly believe that they did not see all that we do. It would be a very impudent thing to say that St Austin was not a very pious and devout man, of a most Christian temper and exemplary humility; or that St Jerom was not a very

learned man and a profound scholar; but no degree of modesty will oblige a man to believe that the former had the knowledge of the learned languages, or of all that learning which hath flourished in Europe since that time; or that the other was not a very angry man, easily transported with passion, and did not with all necessary ingenuity set down the words or the sense of his adversary.

We cannot forget St Austin's opinions in many particulars, which are not now received in any church; that God doth not create the soul, but that it is ex traduce, and begotten with the body by the father; that infants who die before baptism are condemned to the torments of hell fire; that the receiving the sacrament is absolutely necessary to all infants after they are baptised, upon that text of our Saviour in St John, Nisi manducaveritis carnem meam, &c. that the saints shall reign a thousand years, according to the opinions of the Chiliasts. All which particulars were believed by most, if not all, the fathers for many hundred years without contradiction or doubt, and yet are not received by any church. Nor can we forget St Jerom's own excuse for himself, when many oversights were objected to him by St Austin, Ut simpliciter fatear, legi hæc omnia, et in mente mea plurima coacervam accito notario, vel mea vel aliena dictavi, nec ordinis, nec verborum interdum nec sensuum memor. Nor

was his excuse better, for somewhat he had writ in his commentary upon St Matthew, Quod tempore angustia coactus fuerit eos summa celeritate dictare; which may very reasonably excuse us, for well weighing and considering what he says, as well as that it is he who says it. And we have the more reason for this, because his presumption in some places is so great, that he takes upon him to contradict the very text of scripture, as (besides what he says upon other texts) in his commentary upon St Paul's epistle to Titus, he very plainly, and without any apology, denies that the inscription upon the altar in Athens was the same that St Luke hath

set it down to be, Ignoto Deo; but says it was, Diis Europa, Asiæ, et Africæ, diis ignotis et peregrinis ; which, I suppose, few men will chuse to believe against the authority of St Paul and St Luke. We may have a very just esteem of the gravity and judgment of St Ambrose, and of the piety and eloquence of St Chrysostome, and yet believe that they were both too credulous in the point of miracles, and may smile at some of those which they too much extolled, because we have the same information which they had. And, not to say any thing of both their expositions upon some places in scripture, which are rejected by most learned men, with great reason, if not evidence of scripture, it is the more wonderful that those holy fathers should be