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Thus he returned to England in 1664, attired in French pantaloon breeches, and with little French affectations in his manner, but without vices, and with a smattering of patristic learning. He was sent by his father to study law at Lincoln's Inn. He was to be a courtier, and in that position it would be both becoming and convenient to have some knowledge of the law.
All this time he was pursuing his Patristic and other historical studies with unflagging vigour, always writing new lectures, always maintaining his love of abstract knowledge and his eager desire to add to his already vast stores of learning.
No researches have yet been made in those regions which might reasonably be regarded as the primitive habitat of man. We are thus carried back immeasurably beyond the six thousand years of Patristic chronology. It is difficult to assign a shorter date for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of a million of years, and human existence antedates that.
This eminent position they held for many centuries; indeed, it was not until near the period of the Reformation that they were deposed. The great critics who appeared at that time, by submitting the Patristic works to a higher analysis, comparing them with one another and showing their mutual contradictions, brought them all to their proper level.
The Fathers may be divided into two groups, the ante-Nicene and the post-Nicene writers, and also into the Greek and Latin Fathers. But as I am not writing for theological students, I will not attempt any further analysis of the various patristic schools. Those who wrote previous to 325 A.D. belong to the ante-Nicene group; those who wrote after that date, to the post-Nicene group.
The reason for this is not far to seek, and is one that throws light also on the motive with which the patristic writers made use of these arguments.
But this evidence is in itself a fact to be considered 'Why do these gentlemen tell this tale? we ask; but Dr. Carpenter puts the testimony on the level of patristic tattle many centuries old, written down, on no authority, long after the event.
Its famous Amphitheatre, coeval with the great Coliseum at Rome, and the best preserved Roman Amphitheatre in the world, I had not time to visit. Its numerous churches, with their frescoes and paintings, I less regret not having seen. Its Biblioteca Capitolare, which is said to be an unwrought quarry of historic and patristic lore, I should have liked to visit.
Funk has pointed out, one can scarcely cite a single patristic opinion which can be said clearly to hold that usury is against justice, whilst there are, on the contrary, certain undercurrents of thought in many writers, and certain explicit statements in others, which tend to show that the Fathers would not have been prepared to deal so harshly with usurers, did usurers not treat their debtors so cruelly.... Of keen philosophical analysis there is none.... On the whole, we find the teachings of the Fathers crude and undeveloped.
But he has a further claim to notice as the master of a celebrated pupil. Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, a name eminent among patristic authors, and not inconsiderable in humane letters, had, like Cyprian, been a professor of rhetoric, and embraced Christianity in mature life.
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