Page:A Reply to the Remarks on Noble's Appeal.pdf/16

10 of the Church furnish the following information (p. 74). "Petavius consents that the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity should so far rest on the mere declaration of the church, that before it was formally defined, there was no heresy in rejecting it, provided he can thereby gain for Rome the freedom of making decrees unfettered by the recorded judgments of antiquity. This it was which excited the zeal of our great theologian, Bishop Bull, whom I will here quote, both in order to avail myself of his authority, and because of the force and clearness of his remarks. In the introduction then of his celebrated work, after enumerating certain heretical and latitudinarian attempts to disparage the orthodoxy of the ante-Nicene centuries, he speaks as follows of Petavius:—

But I am beyond measure astonished at that great and profoundly learned man, Dionysius Petavius; who, for all the reverence which he professes for the Nicene Council, and his constant acknowledgment that the faith confirmed in it against the Arians, is truly Apostolic and Catholic, yet makes them an admission, which, if it holds, goes the full length of establishing their heresy, and of disparaging, and so overthrowing the credit and authority of the Nicene Council; namely, that the rulers and fathers of the church before its date were nearly all of the very same sentiments as Arius…… What was Petavius's view in so writing, it is difficult to say. Some suspect that he was secretly an Arian, and wishing insidiously so to recommend the heresy to others. This was the opinion of Sandius, the heretical writer, 'whom I just now mentioned…… However, Petavius's own writings make it, I think, abundantly clear, that this pretender's supposition is altogether false. If some underhand purpose must be assigned for his writing as he did, and it be not sufficient to ascribe it to his customary