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These undifferentiated or mixed arguments are quite frequently to be seen in the patristic writings, and serve to illustrate the eclectic character of their thoughts, often presenting in one passage the forms of the theistic arguments peculiar to two opposed schools in Greek philosophy; and they also indicate how incidentally and naïvely the Fathers used such weapons, not taking the trouble to differentiate one form from the other, though they could not have been ignorant of such distinctions.
Under these circumstances, it may be imagined that the establishment of a scientific frontier between the earlier realm of supposed fact and the later of asserted delusion, had its difficulties; and torrents of theological special pleading about the subject flowed from clerical pens; until that learned and acute Anglican divine, Conyers Middleton, in his "Free Inquiry," tore the sophistical web they had laboriously woven to pieces, and demonstrated that the miracles of the patristic age, early and late, must stand or fall together, inasmuch as the evidence for the later is just as good as the evidence for the earlier wonders.
Yet these indirect symptoms are so striking that even an outsider, if at all observant, need not fear to misinterpret them. Taken externally, Protestantism is, of course, a form of Christianity; it retains the Bible and a more or less copious selection of patristic doctrines. But in its spirit and inward inspiration it is something quite as independent of Judea as of Rome.
It is this ambiguous origin of the institution which explains how the Fathers could hold that private property was not natural, that it grew out of men's vicious and sinful desires, and at the same time that it was a legitimate institution. Janet takes the same view of the patristic utterances on this subject: 'What do the Fathers say? It is that in Jesus Christ there is no mine and thine.
Yet one other effort I made to save myself from the difficulties I foresaw in connexion with this final breach with Christianity. There was one man who had in former days wielded over me a great influence, one whose writings had guided and taught me for many years Dr. Pusey, the venerable leader of the Catholic party in the Church, the learned Patristic scholar, full of the wisdom of antiquity.
"Quite so, John, quite so; no one is more bitterly conscious of the defects of this exposition than myself meagre and superficial to a degree, both in the patristic references and the experimental application; but we are frail creatures, John, and it is doubtful whether the exposition of any book should extend unto a generation.
It is one of the peculiarities of a really sound argument that it is susceptible of the fullest development; and that it sometimes leads to conclusions unexpected by those who employ it. To my mind, it is impossible to refuse to follow Dr. Newman when he extends his reasoning, from the miracles of the patristic and mediæval ages backward in time, as far as miracles are recorded.
But in the way of such an attempt comes the prompt objection that the Articles were actually drawn up against "Popery," and therefore it was transcendently absurd and dishonest to suppose that Popery, in any shape patristic belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption authoritatively sanctioned would be able to take refuge under their text. This premiss I denied.
In this, as in previous works, he rides his hobby, which was a strange perversion of patristic notions, to the death; and a few years later he returned to the charge in one of the wildest, craziest books that ever was written by human pen.
Then, wherever the patristic statements give us the opportunity of comparing Marcion's text with the Synoptic and this they do very largely indeed the two are found to coincide with no greater variation than would be found between any two not directly related manuscripts of the same text.
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