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    learned Father has not favoured us with any particulars of these interesting spirits ; has said nothing of the ample wings of fire , which , we doubt not , the daemons of Homer and Pindar spread out , nor described the laughing eyes of Horace ' s Familiar , nor even the pointed tail of the short devil of

    Martial ; but we own we should like to see such cases of possession in our days $ and though we Reviewers are a kind of exorcists , employed to cast out the eivil daemon of scribbling , and ; even pride ourselves upon having performed some notable cures ; from such dfemoniacs we would refrain with

    reverence y ' nay , so anxiously dread the escape of the spirit , that , for fear of accidents , we would not suffer a saint to come near them . The belief of a miilenium or temporal reign of Christ , during which the faithful were to be indulged in all sorts

    of sensual gratifications , may be reckoned among those gross errors , for which neither the parch nor the academy are accountable , but which grew up in the rank soil of oriental fanaticism , and were nursed into doctrines of Christianity bv the Fathers . Though the world ' s best religion

    comes from the East , its very worst superstitions have sprung thence also ; as in the same quarter of the heavens arises the sun-beam that gives life to the flower , and the withering gale that blasts it * There is scarcely one of these fantastic opinions of the Fathers that jniay not be traced among the fables of the antient Persians and Arabians .

    The voluptuous Jerusalem of St . Justin and Irenaeus may be found in those glorious gardens of 1 ram , which were afterwards converted into the Paradise of the "Faithful by Mahomet ; and their enamoured ' -Sons of God '

    may be paralleled in the angels Harut and Marut of Eastern story , who , bewildered by the influence of wine and beauty , forfeited their high celestial rank , and were degraded into teachers of magic upon earth . The mischievous absurdity of some of the moral doctrines of the Fathers ; the

    state of apathy to which they would reduce their Gnostic or perfect Christian y their condemnation of marriage and their Monkish fancies about celibacy ; the extreme to which they carried their notions of patience , even to the prohibition of all resistance to asmressioa , though th

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    aimed at life itself ; the strange doctrine of St . Augustine , that the Saint * are the only lawful proprietors of the things of this world , and that the wicked have no right whatever to their possessions , however human laws may decree to the contrary - ,

    the indecencies in which too many of them have indulge 4 in their writings ; the profane frivolity of Tertullian , in making God himself prescribe the length and measure of women ' s veils , in a special revelation' to some ecstatic spinster ; and the moral indignation with which Clemens Alexandrin u *

    inveighs against wjiite bread , periwigs , coloured stuffs and lap-dogs ! all these , and many more such puerile and pernicious absurdities open a wide field of weedy fancies , for ridicule to skim , and good sense to trample upon : - -But we must content ourselves with

    referring to the works that have been written upon this subject j particularly to the treatise * de la Morale des Peres * of Barbeyrac ; which , though as dull and tiresome as could reasonably be expected from the joint effort * of the Fathers of the Church and a

    Law professor of Groningen , abundantly proves that the moral tenets of these holy men are for the most part unnatural , fanatical and dangerous ; founded upon false interpretations of

    holy writ , and the most gross and anile ignorance of human nature ; and that a community of Christians , formed upon their plan , is the very Utopia of monkery , idleness and

    fanaticism . Luckily , the impracticability of these wretched doctrines was in general a sufficient antidote to their mischief : But there were two maxims , adopted and enforced by many of the Fathers , which deserve to be branded

    with particular reprobation , not only because they acted upon them continually themselves , to the disgrace of the holy cause in which they were engaged , but because they have transmitted their contamination to posterity , and left the features of

    Christianity to this day disfigured by their taint . The first of these maxims—we give it in the words of Mosheim—was , * that it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie , when by such means the liVterests of the church may be promote ed . To this profligate principle the world owes , not only the fables and forgeries of these primitive times , butt

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    13 The Father .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1815, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1756/page/18/