THELYPHTHORA.
INTRODUCTION.
THE Apostle Paul, 1 Tim. chap. iv. 1–13. foretells many of those errors which afterwards arose in the Christian Church, through the seduction of those evil spirits, which would possess the minds of men, and lead some to teach, and others to follow their pernicious ways.—The Spirit (saith he) speaketh expressly, that, some shall depart from the faith, (i. e. the faith once delivered to the saints. Jude 3.) And he instances one particular among others to be—Forbidding to Marry, ver. 3.—thus disannulling the order of God and Nature, and exposing mankind to all the temptations and mischiefs of unchastity.
These seducing spirits transformed themselves into angels of light, (See 2 Cor. xi. 14.) and taught the Christians to oppose and reject the plain and positive command of God, and, under the deceitful guise of higher degrees of piety, purity, and holiness, to prefer celibacy and virginity, which God has not commanded, before marriage, which He has ordained and commanded, for the propagation, continuance, and preservation of the Human Species.
The precepts and examples of the Hebrew scriptures, in which the mind and will of the Creator were fully revealed, availed nothing—these were thrown aside from bearing their testimony in the matter.—The writings of the New Testament afforded certain passages, which were wrested from their meanings, and distorted and pressed into the service of error and delusion.
This mystery of iniquity (See 2 Thess. ii. 7.) began to work very early; and in some of the earliest apologies of the Christian Fathers, a single life is spoken of in terms, which clearly prove the preference which was given to it in their esteem.
All this was greatly increased—εν υποκρισει ψευδολογων—through the hypocrisy of men speaking lyes, [Castal. in loc.] and laid the foundation of what happened, when, in after times, Churchmen found it very highly to their advantage, to make the world believe, that the antient laws of God, relative to the commerce of the sexes, were all antiquated and abolished—that Jesus Christ had introduced an entire new system—and the Pope, as Christ's Vicar, was to model that system, as He and the Church should think proper.
In order to elucidate and evince this, it shall now be my business to lay before the Reader, in a regular series, the defections of men from the laws and ordinances of the Most High, with regard to the above subjects—by which it will appear, how evidently we stand indebted to Romish priestcraft and superstition, for almost every idea which the system of the Protestants exhibits to us respecting matrimony, and all that concerns it.
I have only to observe, that the writer, whom I chiefly follow in the ensuing collections, is Du Pin, who, though a Romanist, and a doctor of the Sorbonne, was a very honest writer, too much so for the Church he lived in; and therefore he was censured, and bitterly persecuted, at the instigation of the Bishop of Meaux, for speaking his mind so liberally. The free censures which he passed on the writings of the ancient fathers of the Church—and his asserting the privileges of the national churches against the pretensions of the court of Rome—were sufficient to awaken the thunder of the church artillery—and to bring on him a charge of heresy—which ended in a decree of the parliament of Paris, for the suppression of his book.
This is a mode of argumentation which Churchmen have often had recourse to, when the craft has been endangered, and when writings which have threatened the maladie du metier, have appeared before the eyes of the world.
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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