N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham
Frere speak highly of Fulgentius.
Ib. p. 352.
For the Fathers were but men, and to speak the truth, their reputes
and authorities did undervalue and suppress the books and writings of
the sacred Apostles of Christ.
We doubtless find in the writings of the Fathers of the second century,
and still more strongly in those of the third, passages concerning the
Scriptures that seem to say the same as we Protestants now do. But then
we find the very same phrases used of writings not Apostolic, or with no
other difference than what the greater name of the authors would
naturally produce; just as a Platonist would speak of Speusippus's
books, were they extant, compared with those of later teachers of
Platonism;--'He was Plato's nephew-had seen Plato--was his appointed
successor, &c.' But in inspiration the early Christians, as far as I can
judge, made no generic difference, let Lardner say what he will. Can he
disprove that it was declared heretical by the Church in the second
century to believe the written words of a dead Apostle in opposition to
the words of a living Bishop, seeing that the same spirit which guided
the Apostles dwells in and guides the Bishops of the Church? This at
least is certain, that the later the age of the writer, the stronger the
expression of comparative superiority of the Scriptures; the earlier, on
the other hand, the more we hear of the 'Symbolum', the 'Regula Fidei',
the Creed.
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