casion to have done it, as Eusebius and St. Jerome had not to name any others.

31. In short, one of the first times that we hear of them, is in the dispute between the Severians and Catholics about the year 532, when the former produced them in favour of their errors, and the latter rejected them as books utterly unknown to all antiquity, and therefore not worthy to be received by them.

d

Hist. lit. giv.

e Vindic. Ig nat. part i. c.

f Loc. supr.

32. It is therefore much to be wondered, that after so many arguments as have been brought to prove how little right these treatises have to such a primitive antiquity; nevertheless, not only Natalis Alexander, but a man of much better judgment, I mean Emanuel Schelstrat, the late learned keeper of the Vatican library, & Vid. Cave should still undertake the defence of them. When they p. 177. were written, or by what author, is very uncertain: but as Bishop Pearsone supposes them to have been first set forth about the latter end of Eusebius' life; so Dr. Cavef 10, conjectures, that the elder Apollinarius may very proba- cit. bly have been the author of them. Others there are g Pearson. loc. who place them yet later, and suspect Pope Gregory the supr. cit. great to have had a hand in the forgery. And indeed the arguments which our very learned Mr. Dodwell A Dodwell de brings to prove that they were originally written by one Laicor. cap. of the Roman Church, are not without their just 389. weight. But whatever becomes of this, thus much is certain, that these books were not written before the middle of the 4th century, and therefore are without the compass of the present undertaking.

33. And now having taken such a view as was necessary for the present design, of all those other pieces which have been obtruded upon the world for Apostolical writings, besides what is either here collected, or has been before published in the sacred books of the New Testament; I suppose I may with good grounds conclude, that the little I have now put together, is all that

38

Daille apud

Sacerdot.

viii. iii. p.

can with any certainty be depended upon, of the most primitive Fathers: and therefore that from these, next to the Holy Scriptures, we must be content to draw the best account we can of the doctrine and discipline of the church, for the first hundred years after the death of Christ.

!

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

THE AUTHORITY OF THE

FOREGOING TREATISES,
AND THE DEFERENCE THAT OUGHT TO BE PAID
TO THEM UPON THE ACCOUNT OF IT.

This is shown from the following considerations:-1. That the au-
thors of them were contemporary with the Apostles, and instruct
ed by them. 2. They were men of an eminent character in the
church; and therefore such as could not be ignorant of what was
taught in it. 3. They were very careful to preserve the doctrine
of Christ in its purity, and to oppose such as went about to corrupt
it. 4. They were men not only of a perfect piety, but of great
courage and constancy; and therefore such as cannot be suspect.
ed to have had any design to prevaricate in this matter. 5. They
were endued with a large portion of the Holy Spirit, and as such,
could hardly err in what they delivered as a necessary part of the
Gospel of Christ. And 6. Their writings were approved by the
church in those days, which could not be mistaken in its approba-
tion of them.

But secondly: The foregoing collection pretends to a
just esteem, not only upon the account of its perfection,
as it is an entire collection of what remains to us of the
Apostolical Fathers, but yet much more from the respect
that is due to the authors themselves, whose writings are
here put together.

2. If first, we consider them as the contemporaries of the holy Apostles, some of them bred up under our Saviour Christ himself, and the rest instructed by those great men whom he commissioned to go forth and preach to all the world, and endued with an extraor- xxviii 19. dinary assistance of his blessed spirit for doing it: we & Luke xxiv cannot doubt but that what they deliver to us, must be, & Acts

i Matt.

Mark xvi. 15

49; Acts

without controversy, the pure doctrine of the Gospel; what Christ and his apostles taught, and what they had themselves received from their own mouths. This is the last deference we can pay to the authors here set forth, to look upon them as the faithful deliverers of the doctrine and practice of the church in those early times; when heresies were not so openly broke out in it, nor the true faith so dangerously corrupted with the mixture of those erroneous opinions, which afterwards more fatally infected the minds of men, and divided the church into so many opposite parties and factions. So that here then we may read with security, and let me add, with respect too: and not doubt but that what these holy men deliver to us, in all the fundamental articles of it, is as certainly the true doctrine of Christ, as if we had received it like them, from our Saviour and his Apostles.

3. But secondly, the authors of the foregoing pieces had not only the advantage of living in the Apostolic times, of hearing the holy Apostles, and conversing with them, but were most of them persons of a very eminent character in the church: men raised up to the highest pitch of dignity and authority, in some of the most famous churches in the world, chosen by the Apostles to preside in their own proper Sees; at Rome, at Antioch, at Smyrna; one of them set apart by the express command of the Holy Ghost, to be the companion of St. Paul in his work of the ministry; and the rest for the most part commended for their rare endowments, in the inspired writings of the Holy Scriptures delivered to us. Therefore we may be sure that such men as these must have been very carefully instructed in the mystery of the Gospel, and have had a most perfect knowledge of faith as it is in Jesus.

4. Had they been ordinary and obscure writers, even of the Apostolic times, men of neither note nor authority in the church; (though still whilst we had a good

account of their integrity, the very advantage of the age wherein they lived, would have rendered their discourses justly venerable to us,) yet. should we not have been obliged to pay such a deference to their writings, as to make allowance for some trifling defects, or mistakes, that might have happened to them. But having to do with men, not only instructed in common by the Apostles, with the other Christians of those days, but particularly bred up, and instituted by them for the work of the ministry; having here the writings of men who had attained to such a perfect knowledge in the mystery of godliness, and were judged to have been so well grounded and settled in it, as to deserve to be raised up by the Apostles themselves to the government of such eminent churches as those over which these holy men were overseers; it is plain that we cannot with any reason doubt of what they deliver to us, as the Gospel of Christ; but ought to receive it, if not with equal veneration, yet but with a little less respect than we do the sacred writings of those who were their masters and in

structors.

5. Thirdly the foregoing authors were not only eminent men, and bred up under such mighty advantages, and so well instructed in the knowledge of the Gospel, as I have now observed; but they were moreover persons of a consummated piety, adorned with all those Christian virtues they so affectionately recommend to us. Especially, they were zealous watchmen over their churches; careful to instruct them in the true faith and doctrine of Christ, and no less careful to preserve them against the contagion of those heresies, which even in their days began to corrupt the purity of it. Hence we read with what a holy zeal that blessed martyr Ignatius first, and then his fellow disciple St. Polycarp, set themselves against those who would instil some other doctrines into the minds of their people, than what the Apostles had delivered unto them: what wise