ilia proponere, argumentari ut Hbet, aliud loqui, ahud agere, pancm, ut dicitur, ostendere, lapidem tenere. In sequenti autem aperta frons et, ut 464 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. tion of Augustine, who, in advance of liis age, rightly con- demned falsehood in every form. 5. Several church fathers, like Augustine, Martin of Tours, and Gregory I., themselves concede that in their time exten- sive frauds with the relies of saints were abeady practised ; and this is confirmed by the fact that there were not rarely numerous copies of the same relics, all of which claimed to be genuine. 6. The ISTicene miracles met with doubt and contradiction even among contemporaries, and Sulpitius Severus makes the important admission that the miracles of St. Martin were better knowu and more firmly believed in foreign countries than in his own.' 7. Church fathers, like Chrysostom and Augustine, contra- dict themselves in a measure, in sometimes paying homage to the prevailiug faith in miracles, especially in their discourses on the festivals of the martyrs, and in soberer moments, and in the calm exposition of the Scriptures, maintaining that mira- cles, at least in the Biblical sense, had long since ceased." ita dicam, ingenuitas necessaria est. Aliud est quaerere, aliud definire. In altero pugnandum, in altero docendum est." He then appeals to the Greek and Roman classics, the ancient fathers in their polemical writings, and even St. Paul in his arguments from the Old Testament. Of interest in this comiection is his controver- sy with Augustine on the conduct of Paul toward Peter, Gal. ii. 11, which Jerome would attribute to mere policy or accommodation. Even Chrysostom utters loose principles on the duty of veracity (De sacerdot. i. 5), and his pupil Cassian still more, appealing to the example of Rahab (Coll. xvii. 8, 17, etc.). Comp. Gieseler, i_ ii. p. 307 (§ 102, note 17). The corrupt principle that "the end sanctifies the means," is much older than Jesuitism, which is commonly made responsible for it. Christianity had at that time not yet wholly overcome the spirit of falsehood in ancient heathenism. • Dialog, i. 18. * This argument is prominently employed by James Craigie Robertson (moderate Anglican): History of the Christian Church to Gregory the Great, Lond. 1854, p. 334. " On the subject of miracles," says he, " there is a remarkable inconsistency in the statements of writers belonging to the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries. St. Chrysostom speaks of it as a notorious and long-settled fact that miracles had ceased (v. Newman, in Fleury, vol. i. p. xxxix). Yet at that very time, St. Martin, St. Ambrose, and the monks of Egypt and the East are said to have been in full thaumaturgical activity ; and Sozomen (viii. 5) tells a story of a change of the eucharistic bread into a stone as having happened at Constantinople, while Chry- sostom himself was bishop. So again, St. Augustine says that miracles such as § 89. PKOCESSIONS AND