Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/104

10 : which began with Episcopius and others in the seventeenth century, and which has greatly tended to encourage a habit of explaining away the mysteries of the faith in almost all Protestant countries. The fact seems to be, that the extremes of the Predestinarian doctrine, violently pressed as they were at the Synod of Dort, produced their natural result, a violent reaction: and the minds of men not being prepossessed with the salutary antidote of reverence for primitive tradition (which antidote had been systematically withholden, lest Presbyterianism should lose influence through it) were ready to give up any thing else, when they had once given up the creeds and definitions of their own Churches. When these divines were pressed with the testimonies of the Fathers, the spirit of their answers was such as the following: "Never shall any advice drive me into the fruitless toil of studying the Fathers; which is more like grinding in a prison-house than any thing else. I envy no man the credit he may acquire in such a frivolous insignificant pursuit. Others, for me, may have all the glory of much reading and great memory, whoever they are, who can find pleasure in wandering and rocking about in that vast ocean of Fathers and Councils." And (let it be well observed) this founder of the liberal school goes on distinctly to avow, that "he takes no great pains," nor ever did, "to acquaint himself with the writings of the Fathers:" whom, indeed, he grudges to call "the Fathers," accounting it a name of too much reverence. On this, our learned Bishop Bull remarks, what is much to our present purpose, as showing how cheap thoughts of the Primitive Church might naturally lead some steps towards heresy. "Much, indeed, were it to be wished that Episcopius had excepted the Fathers and writers of the three first centuries, at least. Had he spent more time on them, it would never have been regretted either by himself or the Church. For it would have saved him from representing the Arian and Socinian doctrines, regarding the Person of our, as having been, in the judgment of the early Churches, erroneous indeed, but not so bad as heretical ."