this passage in his Church Triumphant as containing the words of
Athanasius, without any allusion to its decided spuriousness, or even to
its suspicious character; yet when he is pronouncing his judgment on the
different works assigned to Athanasius, declaring the evidence against
this treatise to be irresistible, he condemns it as a forgery. [Bellarm.
de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, Cologne, 1617, vol. vii. p. 50.]

Since, however, this passage has been cited in different Roman Catholic
writers of our own time as containing the words of Athanasius, and in
evidence of his genuine belief and practice, and that without an
allusion even to any thing doubtful and questionable in its character,
it becomes necessary to enter more in detail into the circumstances
under which the passage is offered to our notice.

The passage is found in a homily called The Annunciation of the Mother
of God. How long this homily has been discarded as spurious, or how long
its genuineness had been suspected before the time of Baronius, I have
not discovered; but certainly two centuries and a half ago, and
repeatedly since, it has been condemned as totally and indisputably
spurious, and has been excluded from the works of Athanasius as a
forgery, not by members of the Reformed Church, but {182} by most
zealous and steady adherents to the Church of Rome, and the most
strenuous defenders of her doctrines and practice.

The Benedictine editors[64], who published the remains of St. Athanasius
in 1698, class the works contained in the second volume under two heads,
the doubtful and the spurious; and the homily under consideration is
ranked, without hesitation, among the spurious. In the middle of that
volume they not only declare the work to be unquestionably a forgery,
assigning the reasons for their decision, but they fortify their
judgment by quoting at length the letter written by the celebrated
Baronius, more than a century before, to our countryman, Stapleton. Both
these documents are very interesting.

[Footnote 64: Here I would observe, that though the Benedictine
editors differ widely from each other in talent, and learning,
and candour, yet, as a body, they have conferred on Christendom,
and on literature, benefits for which every impartial and
right-minded man will feel gratitude. In the works of some of
these editors, far more than in others, we perceive the same
reigning principle--a principle which some wi