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| Chapter XX.—Heathen analogies to Christian doctrine. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
And the Sibyl1811
1811 The Sibylline Oracles are now
generally regarded as heathen fragments largely interpolated by
unscrupulous men during the early ages of the Church. For an interesting
account of these somewhat perplexing documents, see Burton’s
Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of the First Three
Centuries, Lect. xvii. The prophecies of Hystaspes were also commonly
appealed to as genuine by the early Christians. [See (on the Sibyls and
Justin M.) Casaubon, Exercitationes, pp. 65 and 80. This work is a
most learned and diversified thesaurus, in the form of strictures
on Card. Baronius. Geneva, 1663.] | and Hystaspes said that
there should be a dissolution by God of things corruptible. And the philosophers called Stoics teach that
even God Himself shall be resolved into fire, and they say that the world
is to be formed anew by this revolution; but we understand that God, the
Creator of all things, is superior to the things that are to be changed.
If, therefore, on some points we teach the same things as the poets and
philosophers whom you honour, and on other points are fuller and more
divine in our teaching, and if we alone afford proof of what we assert,
why are we unjustly hated more than all others? For while we say that all things have been produced and
arranged into a world by God, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of
Plato; and while we say that there will be a burning up of all,
we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics: and while we affirm
that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after
death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from
punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same
things as the poets and philosophers; and while we maintain that men
ought not to worship the works of their hands, we say the very things
which have been said by the comic poet Menander, and other similar
writers, for they have declared that the workman is greater than the
work.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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