Section 246
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 215 much earnestness, and pointed to the strokes of the lashes he had received, he was at last scarcely admitted to communion." To this, we will also add other extracts from the same writer respect ing this sect : " The sacred Scriptures," says he, " have heen boldly perverted by them; the rule of the ancient faith they have set aside, Christ they have renounced, not inquiring what the holy Scriptures declared, but zealously labouring what form of reasoning may be devised to establish their impiety. And should any one present a passage of divine truth, they examined first whether a connected or disjoined form of syllogism* can be formed from it. But they abandon the holy Scriptures for the study of gcometry,f as being of the earth they talk of the earth, and know not him that cometh from above. Euclid, therefore, is industriously measuredj by them. Aristotle and Theophrastus, are also admired, and as to Galen, he is even perhaps worshipped by some. But as to these men who abuse the acts of the unbe lievers, to their own heretical views, and who adulterate the simplicity of that faith contained in the holy Scriptures, by the wily arts of impious men; where is the necessity of asserting that they are not right in the faith ? For this purpose they fear lessly lay their hands upon the holy Scriptures, saying that they have corrected them. And that I do not say this against them Logicians call the syllogisms here spoken of, hypothetical and disjunctive. In the former, the premises are supposed ; in the latter, they are separated by a dis junctive conjunction, whence their names, •j-The author whose words are here quoted, plays upon the word geometry, in its original. The word literally means earth or land-measuring. The science appears to owe its origin to the necessity of frequently measuring the lands in Egypt, after the inundations of the Nile; and when reduced to its more abstract principles, it still continued to bear its original name. The author here quoted seems to reprove, in these men, an absorbing devotedness to a science, the study of which is doubtless a powerful auxiliary in disciplining the human mind, inde pendently of its practical utility. It was considered so important a preparatory discipline among the ancients, that the words ouj^s y£W/«Tpi,Tos