Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

CHAP.III. orders (of which this is the plainest that he can Year after find). And the antipædobaptists have taken it from him; and made use of it for their purpose.

the apo

stles.

VI. If this pass for current, then we must say that Baronius' account of his age is the truest; and further, that he was yet two or three years younger than he makes him. For if he had been full thirty years old at the year 354, he would still have been born a little before his father's baptism, and two years before his ordination. But the words are σXedov τрiакоσтTòv, almost the thirtieth ;' which in a poem may indeed pass, though he were but twentyseven or twenty-eight.

We must say likewise, that all that he himself, and Rufinus, and Gregorius Presbyter, do speak of his old age, must be understood of a præmatura senectus, caused by his sickliness, which he often mentions. And that Suidas, when he makes him live to ninety years old, mistakes at least twentyseven years: which might possibly be, since he 880. wrote 600 years after Gregory was dead: and that what he himself says of his mother's experience of the Divine liberality, before her husband's conversion, must refer to something else. And that Gre840. gorius Presbyter, (who also lived near 600 years after St. Gregory,) if his meaning be to speak of the time when he left Athens and went home, as the thirtieth year of his studies, must be mistaken by taking what Gregory himself had said of the thirtieth year, for the thirtieth of his studies, (as others have since done,) which, according to this supposition, must be but almost the thirtieth (viz. the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth) of his life. And that Mr. Du Pin (who has gone a middle way,

stles.

making him to be born anno 318P, which falls seven CHAP.III. years before his father's baptism,) does yet place his birth eight or nine years too soon. For if he was the apo born after his father's priesthood, it must be anno 327 or 326 at soonest. And possibly the numerical fgure in the text of Mr. Du Pin is mistaken by the printer: for in the index at the end of the tome, it is printed 328. And according to this account, he was but sixty-one or sixty-two when he died. And his father and mother (for they were much of one age) were about fifty, when he [the son] was born. Which is old for a woman to have children: and yet she had one, if not more children, after her son Gregory.

And then also we must say, that this Gregory the elder was as singular in this practice of keeping his children unbaptized; as Mr. Johnson has shewed him to be in the point of passive obedience : and as the papists will say he was in getting children after his being in holy orders.

I hope the reader will pardon the length of this disquisition, and the uncertain issue of it at last: for he will perceive by it how difficult it is to find the birth or age, even of such whose later years Lave been never so well noted. I lighted on one thread more, which I thought might have directed in this labyrinth. I observed that St. Gregory once speaks of St. Basil, as having been about the same are with himself. For he says at the end of the funeral oration", which he makes for him. This *elogium is given thee, O Basil! by a tongue that

Nouvelle Biblioth. tom. ii.

Jalan the Apostate. [chap ix. Svo. Lond. 1682.]

[ocr errors][merged small]

Year after

the apo

stles.

[ocr errors]

CHAP.III. was wont to be most acceptable to thee, kai oμoTiμov Kaì λikos, and by one of the same function, and of the same age with thee.' If then I could find St. Basil's age, it would, I thought, direct me in that of his friend Gregory; at least so near, that we should not mistake thirty years. But I cannot find readily the account of St. Basil's age any more than of the other, and am quite out of the humour of entering on a new search after any body's age. 279. St. Basil died 379, (the first day of that year). This was ten or eleven years before Gregory died. St. 289. Basil, as well as St. Gregory, is often spoken of as an old man; and yet by this last account he must be but fifty-one, or thereabouts, when he died.

But then, on the other side, that same oration on St. Basil (in which Gregory mixes so many of his own concerns, that it is a sort of history of both their lives) does by many circumstances, too little and too long to be repeated, shew that they were 254. but young men when they left Athens. He says, that when they declared their purpose of returning home from thence; not only all their intimates and

6

equals of the same age with them, "Akes,' but also many of the doctors there, expressed a great regret at their leaving the university so soon, being very unwilling to part with them. Which makes it probable that they themselves were but young masters of arts; and so confirms Baronius' opinion, that they were but thirty, or almost thirty, and not fiftyfour, as they must have been by the other account.

Besides, St. Gregory in that oration recounting the great examples of Christian fortitude that had been in Basil's family, and speaking of the great persecution that was in Pontus under Maximinus,

siles.

relates how great a share the grandfathers of Basil CHAP.111. had in it. Whereas if St. Basil himself had then year afier been about ten years old, (as he must have been by the apo the first account,) his father, rather than his grand- 210. fathers, would have been likely to be mentioned. I said in the former editions, that that one plain place aforesaid, which makes this Gregory born after his father's baptism and ordination, did seem to oversway all the reasons of chronologers to the contrary. But I have since minded another absurdity that attends it. St. Hierome de Scriptoriss Eccl. speaks of Gregory as having been his master: Præceptor meus, quo scripturas expla• rante, didici. Now St. Hierome himself was born in the year 329, and it is not likely that he would speak so of one that was but four years older than Limself. Perhaps it may be more likely that a word may be misprinted, than so many absurdities allowed. I shall determine nothing, but leave it to others.

VII. The antipædobaptists have taken notice of no other children of that Gregory the elder, but this his son Gregory. But he had two other children, a daughter Gorgonia, and a son Cæsarius. There is no account whether Gorgonia were elder or younger than her brother Gregory; save that Elias Cretensis (if he knew any better than we) makes Eer to be younger. If she were elder, she must have been born before her father was a Christian; since it is the hardest matter that may be to bring her brother Gregory's years within that compass. However that were, she was not baptized in in

* Comm. in Greg. Naz. Orat. 19. [apud Greg. Op. tom. ìì. P701. edit. Paris. 1630.]

the apo

stles.

CHAP.III. fancy; and being afterward left to her own discreYear after tion, she did not receive baptism till a little before she died, when she was so old as to have grandchildren, whom she had instructed in the Christian faith. Her husband also, whom she had married (as it seems by her brother's words at her funeral) while he was a heathen, was by her prevailed on to be baptized with her. She died before her father, who died before St. Basil. And since St. Basil died, as was said, on New Year's Day 379, it seems to have been 375 at the soonest, when she died. Her brother Gregory was then, by the last account of his age, but forty-eight. It is very unlikely then that she was younger, having then grandchildren of such

an age.

Cæsarius was younger than either of them, and died the first of them. And though Gregory's words at his funeral, concerning his baptism, are not very plain for the time of it: yet they seem to intimate that he had then lately received it. And indeed (to observe this here once for all) the far greatest part of those that were not baptized in infancy, but were left to take their own time for it, we find to have put it off from time to time till they were apprehensive of death, excepting such as went into orders, or the like. But we find no baptized person, except this Gregory, that did so leave his children unbaptized.

If all the children of this elder Gregory were born after their father's Christianity, and yet left unbaptized; it is the instance but of one man's practice. And there is some more excuse for a t Naz. Orat. in Laudem Gorgoniæ, [Orat. 8. edit. Benedict.] u Orat. in Laudem Cæsarii. [Orat. 7. edit. Benedict.]

« AnteriorContinuar »