way of the Stoics and after of the Peripatetics, after that of the Pythagorean, and after that of the Platonists sects. And after, all proved of eminent use in the church of Christ. Yet a certain author speaking of one Apollonius Tyaneus has these words, “That the most Orthodox themselves began to deem him vested with power sufficient for a Deity; which occasioned that so strange a doubt from Justin Martyr, as cited by the learned Gregory, Fol. 37., etc. If God be the Creator and Lord of the World, how comes it to pass that Apollonius his Telisms, have so much over-ruled the course of things! For we see that they also have stilled the Waves of the Sea, and the raging of the Winds, and prevailed against the Noisome Flies, and Incursions of wild Beasts,” et cetera. If so eminent and early a Christian were by these false shows in such doubt, it is the less wonder in our depraved times to meet with what is equivalent thereto. Besides this, a certain author informs me, that “Julian (afterward called the Apostate) being instructed in the philosophy and disciplines of the heathen by Libarius, his tutor, by this means he came to love philosophy better than the Gospel, and so by degrees turned from Christianity to heathenism.”
This same Julian did, when apostate, forbid that Christians should be instructed in the discipline of the Gentiles, which (it seems) Socrates, a writer of the ecclesiastical history, does acknowledge to be by the singular providence of God, Christians having then begun to degenerate from the Gospel and to betake themselves to heathenish learning. And in the
Mercury
for the month of February 1695, there is this account, “That the Christian Doctors conversing much with the writings of the Heathen, for the gaining of Eloquence, A Counsel was held at Carthage, which forbad the reading of the Books of the Gentiles.”
From all which it may be easily perceived, that in the primitive times of Christianity, when not only many heathens of the vulgar, but also many learned men and philosophers had embraced the Christian faith, they still retained a love to their heathen learning, which as one observes being transplanted into a Christian soil, soon proved productive of pernicious weeds, which overran the face of the church, hence it was so deformed as the Reformation found it.
Among other pernicious weeds arising from this root, the doctrine of the power of devils and witchcraft as it is now, and long has been understood, is not the least. The fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, et cetera, being for the elegancy of their language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only introduced, but established, such doctrines to the poisoning of the Christian world. A certain author expresses it thus, “that as the Christian schools at first brought men from heathenism to the Gospel, so these schools carry men from the Gospel to heathenism, as to their great perfection.” And Mr. I. M., 8 in his
Remarkable Providences
, gives an account that (as he calls it) an old counsel did anathematize all those that believed such power of the devils, accounting it a damnable doctrine. But as other evils did afterward increase in the church (partly by such education), so this insensibly grew up with them, though not to that degree, as that any counsel I have ever heard or read of has to this day taken of those anathemas. Yet after this the church so far declined that witchcraft became a principal ecclesiastical engine (as also that of heresy was) to root up all that stood in their way. And besides the ways of trial that we have still in practice, they invented some, which were peculiar to themselves, which, whenever they were minded to improve against any orthodox believer, they could easily make effectual: that deluge of blood which that scarlet whore has to answer for, shed under this notion, how amazing is it.
The first in England that I have read of, of any note since the Reformation, that
This same Julian did, when apostate, forbid that Christians should be instructed in the discipline of the Gentiles, which (it seems) Socrates, a writer of the ecclesiastical history, does acknowledge to be by the singular providence of God, Christians having then begun to degenerate from the Gospel and to betake themselves to heathenish learning. And in the
Mercury
for the month of February 1695, there is this account, “That the Christian Doctors conversing much with the writings of the Heathen, for the gaining of Eloquence, A Counsel was held at Carthage, which forbad the reading of the Books of the Gentiles.”
From all which it may be easily perceived, that in the primitive times of Christianity, when not only many heathens of the vulgar, but also many learned men and philosophers had embraced the Christian faith, they still retained a love to their heathen learning, which as one observes being transplanted into a Christian soil, soon proved productive of pernicious weeds, which overran the face of the church, hence it was so deformed as the Reformation found it.
Among other pernicious weeds arising from this root, the doctrine of the power of devils and witchcraft as it is now, and long has been understood, is not the least. The fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, et cetera, being for the elegancy of their language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only introduced, but established, such doctrines to the poisoning of the Christian world. A certain author expresses it thus, “that as the Christian schools at first brought men from heathenism to the Gospel, so these schools carry men from the Gospel to heathenism, as to their great perfection.” And Mr. I. M., 8 in his
Remarkable Providences
, gives an account that (as he calls it) an old counsel did anathematize all those that believed such power of the devils, accounting it a damnable doctrine. But as other evils did afterward increase in the church (partly by such education), so this insensibly grew up with them, though not to that degree, as that any counsel I have ever heard or read of has to this day taken of those anathemas. Yet after this the church so far declined that witchcraft became a principal ecclesiastical engine (as also that of heresy was) to root up all that stood in their way. And besides the ways of trial that we have still in practice, they invented some, which were peculiar to themselves, which, whenever they were minded to improve against any orthodox believer, they could easily make effectual: that deluge of blood which that scarlet whore has to answer for, shed under this notion, how amazing is it.
The first in England that I have read of, of any note since the Reformation, that
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