All that John and Paul believed,
God forbid that I should not!
Chap. VII. p. 389.
It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them ('Arian
doctrines'), or the interpretations brought to support them, that the
ancients, in the best and purest times, either knew nothing of them,
or if they did, condemned them.
As excellent means of raising a presumption in the mind of the falsehood
of Arianism and Socinianism, and thus of preparing the mind for a docile
reception of the great idea itself--I admit and value the testimonies
from the writings of the early Fathers. But alas! the increasing
dimness, ending in the final want of the idea of this all-truths-
including truth of the Tetractys eternally manifested in the Triad;
--this, this is the ground and cause of all the main heresies from
Semi-Arianism, recalled by Dr. Samuel Clarke, to the last setting ray of
departing faith in the necessitarian Psilanthropism of Dr. Priestley.
Ib. p. 41-2, &c.
I cannot but think that Waterland's defence of the Fathers in these
pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic
vigour of judgment. It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first
three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all
reverence for their good gifts. But it appears to me impossible to deny
their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the
interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in asserting the
truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and
for the good of souls, to have believed as true.
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