_, not as
_authorities_. They are witnesses of an existing state of things, and
their treatises are, as it were, _histories_,--teaching us, in the first
instance, matters of fact, not of opinion. Whatever they themselves
might be, whether deeply or poorly taught in Christian faith and love,
they speak, not their own thoughts, but the received views of their
respective ages. The especial value of their works lies in their opening
upon us a state of the Church which else we should have no notion of. We
read in their writings a great number of high and glorious principles
and acts, and our first thought thereupon is, "All this must have had an
existence somewhere or other in those times. These very men, indeed, may
be merely speaking by rote, and not understand what they say; but it
matters not to the profit of their writings what they were themselves."
It matters not to the profit of their writings, nor again to the
authority resulting from them; for the _times_ in which they wrote of
course _are_ of authority, though the Fathers themselves may have none.
Tertullian or Eusebius may be nothing more than bare witnesses; yet so
much as this they have a claim to be considered.

This is even the strict Protestant view. We are not obliged to take the
Fathers as _authorities_, only as _witnesses_. Charity, I suppose, and
piety will prompt the Christian student to go further, and to believe
that men who laboured so unremittingly, and suffered so severely in the
cause of the Gospel, really did possess some little portion of that
earnest love of the truth which they professed, and were enlightened by
that influence for which they prayed; but I am stating the strict
Protestant doctrine, the great polemical principle ever to be borne in
mind, that the Fathers are to be adduced in controversy merely as
testimonies to an existing state of things, not as authorities. At the
same time, no candid Protestant will be loth to admit, that the state of
things to which they bear witness, _is_, as I have already said, a most
grave and conclusive authority in guiding us in those particulars of our
duty about which Scripture is silent; succeeding, as it does, so very
close upon the age of the Apostles.

Thus much I claim of consistent Protestants, and thus much I grant to
them. Gregory and the rest may have been but nominal Christians.
Athanasius himself may have been very dark in all points of doctrine, in
spite of his twenty years' exile and hi