Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians Before the Time of Constantine the Great (Volume 2 ); Or, an Enlarged View of the Ecclesiastical History

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1813 Excerpt: ... greater readiness and alacrity, perceive and wor-Cent. ship the Supreme Deity. He was also averse Ui_. to marriage, inasmuch as its object was the rheS»turpropagation of bodies /. In what way, or by ninUufyflem what authorities Saturninus supported his tenets ,,eosr' and Y Irenæus does not fay that all the followers of Saturninui abstained from animal food, but merely that many of them did so, and that not a few weak persons were vastly captivated by this sort of self-denial. It appearB then, that Saturninus either left his disciples at liberty to abstain from animal sood or not, according to their pleasure, or that he did not prescribe a course of discipline equally harsh and severe to all. Of the two, the latter strikes me as the moll probable. His sollowers, J should conceive, were arranged much in the way that was afterwards adopted by Manes and others, i. e. divided into disciples of the sirst and second class. The latter, not aspiring to any very superior degree of fanctity and virtue, although they never exceeded the bounds of sobriety and moderation, yet made use of the fame kinds of bodily aliment as other men; but the former, being anxious to dispel those clouds with which the mind was subject to be enveloped from its connection with the body, and to arrive at a clearer knowledge of the Deity, allowed themselves no sort of bodily sustenance, except of the most slender kind. After this manner also, ought we, I think, to understand what is faid by ancient writer;; of the Saturninians-having been prohibited from marrying. For although Irenæus states these men to have looked upon marriage and generation as of Satanic origin, from whence it necessarily follows that they must have regarded all sexual intercourse as absolutely unlawful, it...