Amos Bronson Alcott by Ralph Emerson

 

Here now prepares A B A to go to England after so long & strict acquaintance as I have had with him for seven years. I saw him for the first time in Boston in 1835. What shall we say of him to the wise Englishman?

He is a man of ideas, a man of faith. Expect contempt for usages which are simply such. His social nature & his taste for beauty & magnificence will betray him into tolerance & indulgence, even, to men  & to magnificence, but a statute or a practice he is condemned to measure by its essential wisdom or folly.

He delights in speculation, in nothing so much and is very well endowed & weaponed for that with a copious, accurate, & elegant vocabulary; I may say poetic; so that I know no man who speaks such good English as he, and so inventive withal. He speaks truth truly; or the expression is adequate. Yet he knows only this one language. He hardly needs an antagonist, - he needs only an intelligent ear. Where he is greeted by loving & intelligence persons his discourse soars to a wonderful height, so regular, so lucid, so playful, so new & disdainful of all boundaries of tradition & experience, that the hearers seem no longer to have bodies or material gravity, but almost they can mount into the air at pleasure, or leap at one bound out of this poor solar system.

I say this of his speech exclusively, for when he attempts to write, he loses, in my judgment, all his power, & I derive more pain than pleasure from the perusal. The Boston Post expressed the feeling of most readers in its rude joke when it said of his Orphic Sayings that they ‘resembled a train of 15 railroad cars with one passenger.’

He has moreover the greatest possession both of mind & of temper in his discourse, so that the mastery & moderation & foresight, & yet felicity, with which he unfolds his thoughts, are not to be surpassed. This is of importance to such a broacher of novelties as he, & to one baited, as he is very apt to be, by the sticklers for old books or old institutions. He takes such delight in the exercise of this faculty, that he will willingly talk the whole of a day, and most part of the night, & then again tomorrow, for days successively, and if I, who am inpatient of much speaking, draw him out to walk in the woods or fields, he will stop at the first fence & very soon propose either to set down or to return. He seems to think society exists for this function, & that literature is good or bad as it approaches colloquy, which is its perfection. Poems &  histories may be good, but only as adumbrations of this; and the only true manner of writing the literature of a nation would be to convene the best heads in the community, set them talking, & then introduce stenographers to record what they say. He so swiftly & naturally plants himself on the moral; sentiment in any conversation that no man will ever get any advantage of him unless he be a saint as Jones Very* was. Every one else Alcott will put into the wrong.

It must be conceded that it is speculation which he loves & not action. Therefore he dissatisfies everybody & disgusts many. When the conversation is ended, all is over. He lives tomorrow as he lived today for further discourse, not to begin, as he seemed pledged to do, A New Celestial life. The ladies fancied that he loved cake; very likely; most people do. Yet in the last two years he has changed his way of living which was perhaps a little easy & self indulgent for such a Zeno, so far as to become ascetically temperate. He has no vocation to labor, and, although he strenuously preached it for a time, & a made some effort to practice it, he soon found he had no genius for it, and that it was a cruel waste of his time. It depressed his spirits even to tears.

He is very noble in his carriage to all men, of a serene & lofty aspect & deportment in the street & in the house, of simple but graceful & majestic manners, having a great sense of his own worth, so that not unwillingly will he give his hand to a merchant, though he be never so rich, - yet with a strong love of men, and an insatiable curiosity concerning all who are distinguished either by their intellect or by their character. He is the most generous & hospitable of men, so that he has been munificent in his long poverty, as Mr. Perkins in his wealth, or I should say more munificent. AS for his hospitality, every thing in tye form of man that entered his door as a suppliant would be made master of all the house contained. Moreover every man who converses with him is presently made sensible that although this person has no faculty or patience for our trivial hodiernal labors, yet if there were a  great courage , a great sacrifice, a self immolation to be made, this & no other is the man for a crisis, - and with such grandeur, yet such temperance in his mien.

(Such a man with no talent for household uses, none for action, and whose taste is precisely that which is most rare & unobtainable, could not be popular, he could never be a doll, nor a beau, nor a bestower of money or presents, nor even a model of good daily life to propose to virtuous young persons. His greatness consists in his attitude merely; of course he found very few to relish or appreciate him; and very many to dispraise him.) Somebody called him a ‘Moral Sam Patch.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Patch

Another circumstance marks this extreme love of speculation. He carries all his opinions & all his condition & manner of life in his hand, &, whilst you talk with him, it is plain he has put out no roots, but is an air-plant, which can readily & without any ill consequences be transported to any place. He is quite ready at any moment to abandon his present residence & employment, his country, nay, his wife & children, on very short notice, to put any new dream into practice which has bubbled up in the effervescence of discourse. If it is so with his way of living, much more so is it with his opinions. He never remembers. He never affirms anything today because he has affirmed it before. You are rather astonished, having left him in the morning with one set of opinions, to find him in the evening totally escaped from all recollection of them, as confident of a new line of conduct, & heedless of his old advocacy. Sauve qui peut (run for your life!).

Another effect of this speculation is that he is preternaturally acute & ingenious to the extent sometimes of a little jesuitry in his action. He contemns the facts so far that his poetic representations have the effect of a falsehood, & and those who are deceived by them ascribe the falsehood to him: and sometimes he plays with actions unimportant to him in a manner not justifiable to any observers but those who are competent to do justice to his real magnanimity & conscience.

Like all virtuous persons he is destitute of the appearance of virtue, and so shocks all [persons of decorum by the imprudence of his behavior & the enormity of his expressions. . . .

This man in his spirit entertained all vast & magnificent problems. None came to him so much as the most universal. He delighted in the fable of Prometheus; in all the gigantic pictures of the most ancient mythologies; in the Indian & Egyptian traditions, in the history of magic, of palmistry, of temperament, of astrology, of whatever showed any impatience of custom & limits, any impulse to dare the solution of the total problem of man’s nature, finding in every such experiment an implied pledge & prophesy of worlds of Science & Power yet unknown to us. He seemed often to realize the pictures of the old Alchemists; for he stood brooding on the edge of discovery of the Absolute from month to month, ever & anon affirming that it was within his reach, & nowise discomforted by uniform short comings.

The other tendency of his mind was to realize a reform in the Life of Man.

This was the steadily returning, the monotonous topic of years of conversation. This drew him to a constant intercourse with the projectors & saints of all shades who preached or practiced any part or particle of reform, & to continual coldness, quarrel, & non-intercourse with the scholars & men of refinement who are usually found in the ranks of Conservatism. Very soon the Reformers whom he had joined would disappoint him; they were pitiful persons,  & , in their coarseness & ignorance, he began to pine again for literary society. In these oscillations from the Scholars to the Reformers, & back again, he spent his days.

His vice, an intellectual vice, grew out of this constitution, & was that to which almost all spiritualists have been liable, - a certain brooding on the private thought which produces monotony in the conversation, & egotism in the character. Steadily subjective himself, the variety of facts which seem necessary to the health of most minds, yielded him no variety of meaning, & he quickly quitted the play on objects, to come to the Subject, which was always the same, viz. Alcott in reference to the World of Today.

From a stray leaf I copy this: Alcott sees the law of man truer & farther than any one ever did. Unhappily, his conversation never loses sight of his on personality. He never quotes; he never refers; his only illustration is his own biography. His topic yesterday is Alcott on the 17th of October; today, Alcott on the 18th of October; tomorrow, on the 19th. So it will always be. The poet rapt into future times or into deeps of nature admired for themselves, lost in their laws, cheers us with a lively charm; but this noble genius discredits genius to me. I do not any more such persons to exist. Part of this egotism in him is a certain comparing eye which seems to sour his view of persons prosperously place, & to make his conversation accusing & minatory. He is not self-sufficing & serene.

* Jones Very (1813-1880) was the oldest of six children of Jones Very, a ship’s captain, and Lydia Very. He entered Harvard his sophomore year and finished second in his class in 1836, then served as a tutor in Greek while he studied at Harvard Divinity School. In April 1838, he met Emerson through Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Emerson took an instant liking to him, and wrote to Peabody that he felt ‘anew’ in his company. In the fall of 1838, college authorities decided that Very- overcome with religious enthusiasm – had gone insane, relieved him of his duties, and committed him to the McLean Asylum for a month.. Over the next year and a half Very would produce a unique body of religious poetry – all the product, he would claim, of the ‘holy spirit.’ In 1839, Emerson selected and edited these poems and saw them through the press; Very’s Essays and Poems received almost no critical attention at the time but was highly regarded by Emerson and his circle. By the mid-1840s, Very’s religious enthusiasm had waned, he moved back in with his family in Salem, filling temporarily vacant pulpits in the neighboring towns when need arose, and continued to write poetry.

 

The Garden

I saw the spot where our first parents dwelt;

And yet it wore to me no face of change,

For while amid its fields and groves, I felt

As if I had not sinned, nor thought it strange;

My eye seemed but a part of every sight,

My ear heard music in each sound that rose;

Each sense forever found a new delight,

Such as the spirit’s vision only knows;

Each act some new and ever-varying joy

Did my Father’s love for me prepare;

To dress the spot my ever fresh employ,

And in the glorious whole with Him to share;

No more without the flaming gate to stray,

No more for sin’s dark stain the debt of death to pay.

………………………………………………………………..

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), the son of poor Connecticut farmers, was largely self-educated. He began working in a local clock factory at age 14, and left home at 17, earning a living as an itinerant peddler in the Carolinas and Virginia. He returned to Connecticut in 1823, and accepted several teaching positions. Soon after his marriage to Abigail May in 1830, he began to set up experimental schools, doing away with rote leaning and corporal punishment. The most successful of these, his Temple School (where he was assisted by Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller),operated from 1835 to 1839; it closed amid controversies over his heretical methods and his admission of an African-American girl. Emerson met Alcott in 1835 and soon after called him ‘the most extraordinary man, and the highest genius of the time.’ After the failure of his experiment in communal living, Fruitlands, in 1844, Alcott and his family barely managed to make ends meet (in the mid-1850s, Emerson helped to raise money from local citizens to help support them). Those circumstances were relieved in 1859, with his appointment as Concord’s superintendent of schools. Though Emerson was sometimes irritated by Alcott’s egotism ( he ‘never loses sight of his own personality,’ he noted) they remained close friends throughout their lives; the day Emerson died, Bronson’s daughter Louisa May Alcott wrote in her journal that Emerson had been ‘the nearest and dearest Friend father has ever had.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Journals 1841-1877; Lawrence Rosenwald, editor; The Library of America, 2010; Journal K, 1841, page 91-95/ Biographical Sketches.

Intro to Best American Crime Reporting 2008 by Jonathan Kellerman

A small proportion of human beings – perhaps 1 percent of any given population- is different from the rest of us in ways that wreak havoc on the rest of us.

The cardinal traits of this bunch include superficiality; impulsiveness; self-aggrandizement to the point delusion; callousness; and, when it suits, outright cruelty. Truth and principle don’t intrude upon the world of disrupters. When they don’t lapse into tell-tale glibness, the more socially adroit among them come across as charming, sometimes overwhelmingly charismatic.

They project a preternatural calm that isn’t an act. Their resting pulse rate tends to be low, they don’t sweat readily – literally and figuratively – nor do they react strongly to pain and fear.

Because of their eerily quiet nervous system, they don’t learn readily from experience.

If anybody can fool the polygraph, they can.

Intellectually, they understand the necessity for rules and regulations, but only for others. They are exempt from all that nonsense because they are special.

The smarter ones among them  eschew violence. Not because they abhor bloodletting, but because they realize violence is usually a counterproductive strategy. Some of the cleverest among them run successful Ponzi  schemes or engage in hugely profitable insider securities trading. Others rise to the boards of corporations where they coordinate felonies of a subtler nature.

The most ambitious and, arguably, the most dangerous among them fix their eyes on the Oscar of amorality known as political power. Chameleons adroit at tailoring their behavior to the needs of others, they often win elections. Sometimes they simply take by force. In either event, when one of them runs a country, things get really ugly.

The stupid ones, on the other hand, opt for offenses that range from petty to horrific and rarely pan out. They’re more likely to end up behind bars.

The disrupters don’t comprise the majority of incarcerated criminals. That distinction belongs mostly to people who make poor choices due to bad habits.

When the nasty 1 percent do commit crimes, the offenses are frequently stunningly audacious, cold-blooded, vicious, and terrifying to the rest of us. Because their actions are beyond our ken, we are sometimes seduced into believing the circular logic of their defense attorneys:

Anyone who could chop up six women has to be insane.
Anyone who could poison her own children for insurance money must be crazy.

 

Wrong.

Insanity – a legal, not a medical concept- simply refers to the inability to understand the essential wrongness of one’s acts. The disrupters understand damn well.

They just don’t care.

People who get paid to produce jargon have termed the disruptors psychopaths, sociopaths, possessors of antisocial personalities. For the most part, the labels are interchangeable and emanate from political points of view.

Psychopath implies an internal mental state. Jargonmeisters who favor an emphasis on individual responsibility go for that one.

Those who prefer to blame an external force, typically that nebulous bogeyman known as ‘society,’ prefer sociopath.

Antisocial personality is a stab at sounding medically diagnostic without giving away one’s bias.

“Bad Guy’ would be just a good a label.

Foolish bad guys  commit the crimes that bore us.

High-level bad guys – who view crime as a job- begin their iniquitous careers with misdemeanors, but they learn quickly, zipping up the criminal ladder, because they’re smart but lack an effective stoop mechanism.

The most evil among us commit outrages that enthrall, capturing our attention precisely because the internal world that motivates them is so chillingly barren that they might  as well have been reared on Pluto.

The most evil among us do the stuff covered by the media genre known as ‘true crime.’

Back in the good old days, ‘true crime’ meant delightfully lurid  and judgmental pulp magazines, frequently marketed with covers depicting scantily-clad women in the grips of slavering brutes. Think  Thrilling Detective. A secondary outlet was true-crime’ books, generally paperback originals, with authorial and editorial emphasis on the bloody and ghastly.

The occasional masterpiece of reporting that ventured beyond the ghoulish explication of body fluids and viscera to skillfully explore the events, persona, and sometimes the sick-joke happenstance leading to ‘senseless’ crime did occasionally elbow its way above the slush pile.  (Think of the books of the late Jack Olsen.) But that was the exception; this was low-rent territory.

That hasn’t changed, but the vehicle of delivery has. Nowadays, ‘true crime’ most frequently refers to that ironically cruel Grand Guignol mislabeled ‘reality TV.’ And since television is a cheap, quick high for those simply interested in a violence fix, it has achieve rapid dominance. (A fact that might also be explained by the prevalence of amoral, even psychopathic, individuals in what’s known in my hometown, L. A., as ‘The Industry.’ What better way to capture psychopaths than to have their portraits painted by other psychopaths?)

The pulps and softcover originals may not have been refined, but they did possess a certain shameless charm. Sadly, they’ve been wounded grievously, perhaps incurably, by trash TV. But an occasional full-lengthy true-crime masterpiece continues to surface and thrive for the same reason that high quality crime novels seem impervious to the video onslaught and remain staples of any best seller list: a great book is able to plumb the depths of human motivation in the way that TV and movies- essentially impressionistic vehicles- cannot.

For the most part, though, the best true-crime writing today appears on the pages of magazines.

This book showcases the best of the best.

While the ultimate goal of crime-beat reporting – understanding what drives people toward evil – is eons away from being achieved and may in fact never be achieved, the stories in this book will satisfy you intellectually and emotionally because you will be moved to think, feel, puzzle, and sometimes to self-examine.

Everyone of these gems is penned by an individual with a strong distinctive voice, leading to a varied and fascinating lot, stylistically and contextually. And the topics are a deliciously eclectic mix. Sure, there are a few serial lust killer tales. How could there not be? But each has something especially provocative to say about that most terrible of patterns.

At times, the accounts in this book explore crime in the highest places, reminding us that a geopolitical focus should not obscure the fact that evil deeds emanate from evil people. Particularly fascinating is an account of the strategic planning leading to the capture of the Islamo-fascist kingpin Abu Musab al Zarqawi – a tale that is unquestionably one of the finest police procedurals ever written.

The always provocative essayist Malcolm Gladwell has produced a compelling examination of a topic near and dear to my heart: exposure of the confidence game that is criminal profiling. But even if I didn’t agree with him completely, I’d love the piece because it’s witty, incisive and beautifully written.

The eminent humorist Calvin Trillin abandons any pretense of levity in his fascinating look at the genesis of violence on an isolated Canadian island – one of those obscure locales, struggling for its very existence in the face of a rapidly changing world, that few of us are likely to visit. And even if we did ferry over, we couldn’t capture the place, or the people, the way Trillin does.

Two of the stories deal with life in prison. One illuminates the perspective of a complex man who’s spent a good part of his life on death row – as a custodian of the condemned. The other allows us to peek into the mind of one of the most dangerously violent offenders in the United States and offers a hint of what it might be like to occupy his private hell.

There’s a great unsolved mystery – an eerily suggestive psychological autopsy exploring the death of an emotionally tortured, one-shot-wonder master novelist, that manages to leave the reader grandly satisfied. To unforgettable portrayals of habitual liars, one of whom just might be telling the truth when the truth is most devastating, will leave you thinking about them long after you’ve read their final paragraphs.

The morally complex account of the painful intersection between public outrage and the attempt, by an undeniably evil man, to do something good leaves us with more questions than answers, but they are questions that need to be faced.

All in all, a page-turning look at the myriad faces of evil.
This is the new face of quality true crime literature.
Bad guys at their worst, writers a their best.

 

The Prolegomena of Jean Hardouin

 

[The purpose of this post is to demonstrate the polemics of defending a conspiracy theory, which arrived fully clothed in the early modern period . Paradoxically, the one progenitor that strikes me as particularly significant would be John Calvin, who argues on the other side of the particular question. Part II summarizes the true doctrine that Jean Hardouin is protecting from conspirators]

 

Part I

I here enter upon a very important, but very invidious undertaking. It is my intention, with the assistance of God, as long as He grants me life, to show that all the writings which are commonly thought to be old, are in fact, with certain exceptions to be presently named, suppositions, and the fabrication of an unprincipled crew of literary men.

The exceptions are, the Books held by the Church to be sacred and canonical, and six Profane Writers, four Latin, two Greek. Meanwhile I do not declare war upon other writers, unless upon the enemies of the Almighty, of Christ, of the supreme Pontiff, and of Royal authority.

Surely we may be as rigid in our criticism and repudiation of false monuments from which in the slightest degree our holy Religion suffers injury, as are judges in a court when they test and reject documents which are concerned with men’s fortunes and estates, if any note of falsity appears in them. Now if there be but one faulty notation of time any instrument, a Court will decisively and with great and just indignation reject and repudiate the instrument. How much more vehemently should we vociferate, and how much more justly, when our holy Religion is assailed and undermined!

Religion itself and Christian Piety demand that we should deliver them at some lesser risk from a greater peril.  The danger is less, if the falsehood of certain facts or allegations which have hitherto obtained credit is acknowledged; but greater, nay, by far the greater danger is, if those alleged facts are left unquestioned, and so our faith is gradually injured and overthrown.

Let men, if they will, call the opinions I have here advanced ravings; I care not, so long as I can discredit the doctrines which I denounce as impious and heretical in those writings; I care not, so long as I can warn and teach my readers to abhor them, what men may think of me; I care only to preserve the faith concerning the true God, concerning Christ, concerning ever head and chapter of our holy faith, sound and whole.

What matters it, I pray you, that no one before my time said what I have just said, and that I adduce no authority or witness from the ancients in my support? Supposing that I had a forerunner, would that affect the question of truth? Or because he had long passed away, would that render him worthier of support? I pray you not to believe in men, but in sound arguments.

If I had an equal genius to any of these old writers, if a desire came into my mind to print something under the feigned name of any of those authors, whose works are believed to have perished if I were to write it on parchment, with ink specially prepared for the purpose of making the writing appear in the course of a few years some 600 or 800 years old; if I were to transfer into that work certain excerpts from old writers who are commonly supposed to be genuine and sincere, with the view to induce belief in my  work and its great age; tell me, would it not be right for any one to try and find out and detect any hidden fraud and impiety that he might suspect? Certainly he would be justified in doing so. And certainly one who is first and foremost a Catholic and a Theologian must be thought at liberty to do the like in reference to all writings which have not yet undergone such censure.

Petavius [a noted Jesuit Chronicler], for example, was the first to deny that certain works had been written by Athanasius, which the Benedictines ascribe to his authorship, and he was right. And they were also justified who revised the works ascribed to Augustine and Bernard, and who cut them down by one half, which they repudiated. They had the same acumen to discern that they were not all of the same style and vein. Tell me, am I not to enjoy the same license, when I use arguments none the less certain, nay, more convincing? The Apostle says to all, Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.

It may be asked, How could it be that the Atheism which I profess to have clearly discovered in these writings, escaped the Scholastic Theologians of former ages? But I ask in turn how it could come to pass that in this very age, when we have more Theologians, and not less gifted, this iniquity escapes them, especially considering how much clearer our books are, owing to the art of Printing? Doubtless in part the cause of this has been that when the Theologians joined hands against Heretics, they perused only those heads of Doctrine in the alleged monuments of the ‘Fathers’ on which debate had arisen; they did not arrive at the fountain-head of these Dogmata. All were intent upon the object of making the testimonies opposed to them tell in favor of their own respective parties; for example, on the Eucharist, on Penitence, on the efficacy of Grace, and other controverted heads. In this conflict each thought himself successful in proportion to his ingenuity. But if they had weighed the whole literature with the like care, had they put their fingers on the sources, had they perceived that Atheism was taught by these false ‘Fathers,’ doubtless they would have recognized the whole fraud; they would have seen that from Atheism nothing sound, nothing but what is most alien  from Catholic Faith, in the Eucharist and other heads could follow. They would have understood that the writings which they have treated with great reverence, because they believed them to have come from the ‘Fathers’, were indeed detestable.

It is no wonder that so many impious writings were not in former times suspected of impiety. They lay hid on the shelves of libraries. They were brought out in a furtive and secret manner, and by degrees. Very few men knew anything of them. But now in our day, when a great number of similarly impious writings are in the hands of all, not only in France, but also in Belgium, Germany, England, and elsewhere, shall no one censure them? Can you wonder at the stupor of former ages – from the fourteenth, in which I think these writings were framed- and or wonder at the stupor of our contemporaries? Can you wonder that the Church has not pronounced on these matters, seeing that the writings in question have never been brought before the tribunal of the Church?  Neither the Church – that is the supreme Pontiff – nor a Council gives judgment upon books, unless there has been a proper judicial interpellation.

 

I say that before the present the vast fraud could not be detected. No one could persuade himself or make others believe that all monuments are false and suppositions that had been believed to have been written in some fifteen former ages, unless he had studied them with sedulous attention. The whole system of the impious crew, of which each student took up his own part, could not be understood except by the diligent consideration of each and every part of it. But it is only in our own time that nearly all the writing have been brought forth from the Libraries. They are of the same kind with those  extant, as will be readily understood by any one who is convinced of the falsity of those in our hands.

 

The Catholics, then, could not readily recognize the impieties in these writings, nor could the Heretics lay open what they had discovered. Both acknowledge the alleged ‘Fathers’. The Catholics were not at liberty altogether to repudiate them; that their Sons might not be said to depart from the ‘Fathers’ Nor did it occur to the Heretics to cast off writers who supported, as they knew, their own impious hypothesis. Moreover, their object was to show that they were not of recent origin, that they were not the fancies of new doctrines; and they needed the suffrages of these alleged witnesses.

Surely Catholic prelates ought to permit me, or any better man, to detect the mystery of iniquity, and bring it into the open light of day. Otherwise they may well fear lest some impious adversary come forward and publish the wicked doctrines in the monuments of the alleged ‘Fathers,’ and find support among men, who do not wish to toil as they toiled in getting up Editions, nor acquire the ill repute connected with evil and impious doctrine, whether it be not understood, or which is worse, championed and defended. Soon, unless God avert the ill, the whole Christian world will become atheist against its will.

Assuredly it is all but necessary that a member of the Society of Jesus should detect this wicked craft and malice. For there is scarce another Family of the Priesthood which has not been deceived by some notable book offered to it under the name of some distinguished man in that Family; which book it has forthwith decreed by all means and arts to defend. Thus the Dominicans have ‘Thomas Aquinas, ‘Vincent of Beauvais,’ ‘Moneta’, ‘Reiner,’ and others. The Franciscans have ‘Bonaventura, Alensis, ‘Scotus’. The Carmelites have ‘Thomas Walden.’ Other families have other names.

But the Benedictines have a whole legion of them.

Therefore, if at any time the holy Apostolic See would pronounce a judgment on my censure against ‘Augustine,’ ‘Bernard,’ and ‘Thomas’ (these three writers by the help of God I have dispatched; also most of the Councils; I am going to deal with other matters in like manner, while life lasts); I say when that day, greatly desired by me, shall come, let not the Holy See admit  consultation members of any Regular Family, which thinks it has produced from its bosom any of those old writers, and which desires to preserve them at any price. Let the Holy See employ Secular Theologians, or men of incorrupt integrity out of those very Families, who will look after the good of Religion alone. Let them desire preserve her alone, though all else perish.

The providence of God has hitherto permitted quarrels of Theologians on the opinions of Augustine, Thomas, etc. God cares little about controversies of that kind so long as the faith continues sound and whole, the faith which is necessary for all to salvation. In this faith neither can He suffer the Roman Church, nor has He suffered the Catholic Theologians to err. Meanwhile, not one of those works has been approved by the Apostolic See ex cathedra, - that is, after examination instituted and the hearing of advocates on either side on the question of the falsity or sincerity of these works. Enough for the Roman Church  her own faith, her own tradition, without the help of ‘Augustine.’ Or any other private person whatever. She derives her authority an her magisterial power from none, except Christ and the Holy Spirit promised to her; she should be taught by none, she should teach all, as Mother and Mistress. Nothing so strongly proves the authority of the Roman Church and the providence of God in conserving the true faith through the Holy Apostolic See, as the fact that she has never been corrupted, and will never suffer herself to be corrupted by so many great names of distinguished writers, whether Greek or Latin.

 

Thirty-six years ago, in the year 1693, and afterwards on more than one occasion I declared that the spuriousness of the ‘old writers’ had become most plain and obvious to me. Then certain Catholics, good and well-meaning men, but of no large views, raised a cry against me. They did not observe that the Calvinists of Holland or Germany vociferated much more loudly. They, forsooth, well knew that if ‘Augustine’ were snatched from them – if he were convicted of atheism – their famous phrase    ‘All Augustine is ours’ would bear this sense- ‘A scoundrel and a foe of he true Deity is all for us.’ In point of fact, the fellow who assumed and bears the name of ‘Augustine’; teaches absolute atheism under the guise of Christian language.

Some one may say, ‘Are you then wiser than so many men of genius, who read the old writings, and did not observe that they were impious?’ I will answer in the words of one of that wicked crew itself, in those forsooth, of Lactantius book ii, chapter 8:-

Above all, in a matter that is vital it behooves each man to consult himself and to rely on his own judgment and proper senses for the purpose of considering and investigating the truth, rather than to be deceived by the errors of others, as if himself devoid of reason. God gave to all a measure of wisdom, that they might investigate unheard-of things, and perpend things heard. Because you have had predecessors in time, it does not follow that they have succeeded you in wisdom, which, if it is given equally to all, cannot be wholly enjoyed by those who went before. To be wise, i.e., to seek the truth is innate in all; and therefore they cease to be wise who, without any judgment, approved what our ancestors invented, and are led like cattle by others. They are deceived in this, that under the influence of the name of ‘elders and ancestors,’ they do not think that they can be wiser, because they are later, or that others are foolish, having the name of ‘elders.’ What hinders that we should take examples from themselves; so that even as those who made false inventions handed down them down to posterity, so we who find the truth should hand down better things to our posterity?’

To listen to this, nothing assuredly incites us but the desire of seeing the truth, which is contained in the one most Holy Catholic religion.

|But it will be asked, ‘Why are so many literary monuments attacked, which have been received in good faith by so many ages?’ Is there so much good in those errors, or is so much evil feared, if the truth should be laid open, as there is in the fact that Books should be in the hands and before the eyes of all, which have been written by a gang of men, enemies to the Catholic truth – and written with no other design than to remove God entirely from the world, and to overthrow the whole of the doctrines of the Christian faith? Those books foster, and will foster, endless and interminable quarrels in the Church, until their nature and quality are recognized. If one should make clearer than the light of noon that the rise and birth of them fell within the last 400 years – that is, in the fourteenth century- would this be a light boon to Christendom?  Should it not be preferred to any other gain, if any other there could be?

Why did God so long delay the exposure of the fraud? The answer is, He suffered it to be committed that He might one day triumph over it; and he delayed to show it to Catholics until as I have said, all the books, or at least the greater part, and the most important books had been brought out of the Libraries, had been fairly edited and could be conveniently read and understood, and tested by the marginal references. This has come to pass in our own time; hardly before. How helpful are these aids to students, students well know. I judge them to be so important that, before they we afforded, I do not believe the designs of the wicked crew could have been detected

In was the month of August, 1690, that I began to scent fraud in Augustine and his contemporaries; in the month of November I suspected the same in all; and I detected the whole  in the month of May, 1692, after I had written down long extracts from particular Greek and Latin writers. In this labor I toiled almost to the point of disgust and weariness, though I had often moments of great delight in the discovery of the truth.

On the question of the good faith of ‘Cyril, Theodore, Augustine, Jerome’ and others, special treatises have been published, and the strife is not yet at an end. If one were to make clear that the authors of such strife emerged from the infernal regions into the world about 400 years ago, to pursue their ill design of publishing the impious writings under the names of the Saints and others – ought you not to thank such a man, if he proves the point by perspicuous arguments? For who would undertake the advocacy of impious writings?

Part II

The Royal Psalmist, singing ‘The Heavens do tell, etc., and the Wise Man, chapter xiii 3-5, and Paul, and other sacred books, prove that God exists from His admirable works; that is, they teach of a Workman distinct from His works, and that by a real distinction, the greatest conceivable – no distinction alone, but real separability. He exists infinite ages before the world that he made; and He can will forever to annihilate the same. None of those writers, none of those falsely named ‘Fathers’ proved the existence of God by this argument – that all things hold together by the Truth by which they are formally true; or from this argument, that there is a certain universal Reason, the Light of rational minds. But such was New Gospel of the false ‘Fathers.’

By the great Providence of God it came to pass that they whom the Lord Christ desired to be the first Doctors of the Church were common men, plebeians, men of the lowest vulgar herd. For if he had chosen out Philosophers, or other men of the highest ability, there would now be the greatest temptation in the Church, and occasion of suspicion –whether what ought to be understood by the name of God is not that rather which is expounded in the writings of the false ‘Fathers’; and is greedily taken out of them – the Essence of Essences and as the new philosophers and Jansenists say- rather than what we Catholics worship.

God provided against this evil. First he sent Moses, to teach the true God as creator of Nature. Afterwards he sent Christ, who as a greater prophet should teach greater things in God. He taught that God could do many things above Nature, much greater things than he did in creation; that he subsisted in a sublimer manner than he who was known by the Jews. God made nothing in vain. It was necessary that Christ should teach us the three Persons in God, that he should make known and require belief in the miracle of the Eucharist. Otherwise, credence would readily be given to the falsely called ‘Fathers’; and new atheists ,that there was no other God than theirs; if there was nothing in the world that does not appear to have been made according to the laws of motion and mechanics – immutable laws which nature follows, as they reason.

But in reply to this it must be said that Atheists cannot fit their Nature or Essences of Essences, or the Laws of Motion, the Ternary number of Persons, who are really distinct from one another, because of the double vital operation of intellect and will. The Miracle in the perpetual and continuous reproduction of the Body of Christ under the species of Bread, the former substance being destroyed, infers that God must be other than the Nature of Things, the Essence of Essences, and Truth or formal Reality of Things. Both these propositions had to be laid before the faithful that they might understand that the deity proposed for worship by the faithful was not the object of worship which they themselves had learned from Moses, and Christ, and the Apostles and their own ancestors and elders. For Nature and Truth can do nothing but what the human mind can conceive; cannot subsist in any manner beyond our intelligence. That the faith of the true God might be preserved and conserved, it behooved that greater things should be revealed to the Christians concerning Him than to the Jews. Especially God foresaw what has actually happened, that the Rabbis of the Jews would be, many of them, carried away into that Atheism – deceived by the Cabbalistic books, which the same impious crew conflicted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.