Waterland is quite in the right so far;--but the penal laws, the
temporal inflictions--would he have called for the repeal of these?
Milton saw this subject with a mastering eye,--saw that the awful power
of excommunication was degraded and weakened even to impotence by any
the least connection with the law of the State.
Ib. p. 127.
--who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses,
or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the
Apostle may he further illustrated by his own practice, recorded by
Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a
disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at
the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath
should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth.
Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',--[Greek: legon auto chairein],--(2
'John', 11,) is a spirituality, not a mere civility. If St. John knew or
suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been
some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some
probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus.
Ib. p. 128.
They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the
Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all
men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith.
O, no, no, not 'them!' 'Error quidem, non tamen homo errans,
abominandus': or, to pun a little, 'abhominandus'.
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