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Excerpt from Tracts for the Times: On the Mysticism Attributed to the Early Fathers of the Church
One would think it impossible to go beyond this in the way of disparagement; but so it is, that in the course of the century which has elapsed since Whitby and Middleton, a yet more disrespectful, because more summary, way of dealing with the Fathers has become current. Whitby and Middleton did think it necessary to appear to have examined what is really to be found in Antiquity; and the former especially exhibits, throughout his treatise above-mentioned, what on his principles must be called a morbid anxiety, to confirm his own views on several important subjects, (on original sin, for example, and the natural condition of infants,) by the testimony of the very writers, whom he is most busy in disparaging. But in our day, perhaps, the more usual course is, for persons, who do not even pro fess any acquaintance with those writers, beyond vague impres sions received from report or quotation, to dispose of their authority in any controverted point, under the notion, understood or expressed, that the Fathers were Mystics, and need not be regarded at all.
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