been written by him in the Hebrew tongue: the Epistles of St. Martial, who is said to have been one of the 70 disciples appointed by our Saviour, and one of the first preachers of the Gospel in France. These are all so evidently spurious, that even Natalis Alexander() himself was ashamed to undertake the defence of them; and not only he but all the other writers of the same Church, Baronius, Bellarmine, Sixtus Senensis, Possevine, Espencæus, Bisciola, Labbe, &c. have freely acknowledged the little credit that is to be given to them.

32. But two pieces there are which Alexander is still unwilling to part with; though he cannot deny but that the most learned men, even of his own communion, have at last agreed in the rejecting of them. And those are, the passion of St. Andrew, written (as is pretended) by the Presbyters of Achaia; and the works set out under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite.

33. As for the former of these, I confess there have not been wanting many from the 8th century downwards, who have undertaken the defence of it. Etherius(y) mentioned it about the year 788. Remegius after Peter Damian, Lanfranc, and St. Bernard, still later. And in this last age Baronius, Bellarmine, Labbe, and a few others, have yet more endeavoured to establish its authority. But then, as Du Pin(z) well observes, we do not find that the antients knew of any acts of St. Andrew in particular; nor are the acts we now have, quoted by any before the time of Etherius before mentioned. And yet how they could have escaped the search of the primitive Fathers, had they been extant in their days, it is hard to imagine.

34. But much less is the credit that ought to be giv

(x) Eccles. Hist. § i. tom. i. page 95, 115.

(y) Vid. Natal. Alex. § i. tom. i. page 109. Labbe de Script. Eccles. tom. i. page 3, &c.

(z) Nouvelle Biblioth. tom. i. page 47, 48.

1

en to the pretended works of Dionysius the Areopa. gite; which as Alexander(a) confesses, two very great critics(b) of his own communion, to have denied to have been written by that holy man; so has a third (c) very lately given such reasons to shew that the writings, now extant under his name, could not have been composed by him, as ought to satisfy every considering person of their imposture. For not to say any thing of what occurs every where in those discourses, utterly disagreeable to the state of the Church in the time that Dionysius lived: can it be imagined that if such considerable books as these had been written by him, none of the antients of the first four centuries should have heard any thing of them? or shall we say that they did know of them, as well as the Fathers that lived after, and yet made no mention of them, though they had so often occasion to have done it, as Eusebius and St. Jerome, not to name any others, had?

35. In short, one of the first times that we hear of them, is in the dispute between the Severians and Catholics about the year 532, when the former produced them in favour of their errors, and the latter rejected them as books utterly unknown to all antiquity, and therefore not worthy to be received by them.

36. It is therefore much to be wondered, that after so many arguments as have been brought to prove how little right these treatises have to such a primitive antiquity; nevertheless, not only Natalis Alexander, but a man of much better judgment, I mean Emanuel Schelstrat, (d) the late learned keeper of the Vatican library, should still undertake the defence of them. When they were written, or by what author, is very

(a) Natal. Alex. § i. vol. i. page 136. Labbe de Script. tom. i. in Dionysio.

(b) He might have added several others; see Bellarm. de Script. page 56.

(c) Du Pin Novelle Biblioth. tom. i. page 90.

(d) Vid. Cave Hist. lit. § iv. page 177.

uncertain: but as Bishop Pearson(e) supposes them to have been first set forth about the latter end of Eusebius's life, so Dr. Cave(ƒ) conjectures, that the elder Apollinarius may very probably have been the author of them. Others there are(g) who place them yet later, and suspect Pope Gregory the great to have had a hand in the forgery. And indeed the arguments which our very learned Mr. Dodwell(2) brings to prove that they were originally written by one of the Roman Church, are not without their just weight. But whatever becomes of this, thus much is certain, that these books were not written before the middle of the 4th century, and therefore are without the compass of the present undertaking.

37. And now having taken such a view as was necessary for the present design, of all those other pieces which have been obtruded upon the world for Apostolical writings, besides what is either here collected, or has been before published in the sacred books of the New Testament; I suppose I may with good grounds conclude, that the little I have now put together, is all that can with any certainty be depended upon, of the most primitive Fathers: and therefore that from these, next to the holy Scriptures, we must be content to draw the best account we can of the doctrine and discipline of the Church, for the first hundred years after the death of Christ.

e) Vindic. Ignat. part i. c. 10.

) Loc. supr. cit.

(g) Daille apud Pearson. loc. supr. cit.

(h) Dodwell de Sacerdot. Laicor. cap. viii. § iii. page 389.

OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE FOLLOWING TREATISES, AND THE DEFERENCE THAT OUGHT TO BE PAID TO THEM UPON THE ACCOUNT OF IT.

This is shewn from the following considerations :-1. That the authors of them were contemporary with the Apostles, and instructed by them. 2. They were men of an eminent character in the Church; and therefore to be sure such as could not be ignorant of what was taught in it. 3. They were very careful to preserve the doctrine of Christ in its purity, and to oppose such as went about to corrupt it. 4. They were men not only of a perfect piety, but of great courage and constancy; and therefore such as cannot be suspected to have had any design to prevaricate in this matter. 5. They were endued with a large portion of the holy Spirit, and as such, could hardly err in what they delivered as a necessary part of the Gospel of Christ. And 6. Their writings were approved by the Church in those days, which could not be mistaken in its approbation of them.

BUT secondly, and to proceed yet farther the following collection pretends to a just esteem, not only upon the account of its perfection, as it is an entire collection of what remains to us of the Apostolical Fathers, but yet much more from the respect that is due to the authors themselves, whose writings are here put together.

2. If first, we consider them as the contemporaries of the holy Apostles, some of them bred up under our Saviour Christ himself, and the rest instructed by those great men whom he commissioned to go forth and preach to all the world,() and endued with an extraordinary assistance of his blessed spirit for doing of it:(k) we cannot doubt but that what they deliver to us, must be, without controversy, the pure doctrine of the Gospel; what Christ and his Apostles taught, and what they had themselves received from their own mouths. This is the last deference we can pay to the authors here set forth, to look upon them as the faithful deliverers of the doctrine and practice

(i) Mat. xxviii. 19. Mark xvi. 15.
(k) Luke xxiv, 49. Acts i. 8. Acts ii

of the Church in those most early times; when here sies were not as yet so openly broke out in it, nor the true faith so dangerously corrupted with the mixture of those erroneous opinions, which afterwards more fatally infected the minds of men, and divided the Church into so many opposite parties and factions. So that here then we may read with security, and let me add, with respect too: and not doubt but that what these holy men deliver to us, in all the funda mental articles of it, is as certainly the true doctrine of Christ, as if we had received it like them, from our Saviour and his Apostles.

3. But secondly, the authors of the following pieces had not only the advantage of living in the Apostolical times, of hearing the holy Apostles, and conversing with them, but were most of them persons of a very eminent character in the Church too; men raised up to the highest pitch of dignity and authority, in some of the most famous Churches of the world, chosen by the Apostles to preside in their own proper Sees; at Rome, at Antioch, at Smyrna; one of them set apart by the express command of the holy Ghost, to be the companion of St. Paul in his work of the ministry; and the rest for the most part commended for their rare endowments, in the inspired writings of the holy Scriptures delivered to us. And therefore we may be sure that such men as these must needs have been very carefully instructed in the mystery of the Gospel, and have had a most perfect knowledge of faith as it is in Jesus.

4. Had they been some ordinary and obscure writers, even of the Apostolical times, men of no note, no authority in the Church; though still whilst we had a good account of their integrity, the very advantage of the age wherein they lived, would have rendered their discourses justly venerable to us, yet should we not perhaps have been obliged to pay such a deference to their writings, as not to make allowance for some lesser defects, or mistakes, that might have hap