The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

original sin as clearly as St. Augustine amid the Pelagian controversy.
"Yet the principle of these questions is one and the same. The
argument is valid for all or for none. Either it is of no use to show that
Christians, before the Council of Nice, did uniformly believe in the divinity
of our Lord, as the Church has since, or it is a confirmation of the faith, that
they did receive unhesitatingly in their literal sense our blessed Lord's
words:' This is My body.'
"This argument, from the consent of those who had handed down the
truth before them, was employed as soon as there were authorities which
could be alleged. So rooted was the persuasion that certain truth must have
been known to those who received the faith from the first, that even
heretics resorted to the argument, and garbled and misrepresented the
Fathers before them, in order to bring them to some seeming agreement
with themselves. The argument was used by minds in other respects of a
different mould. Theodoret and St. Leo appended to works on
controversial points of faith citations from the Fathers before them. St.
Augustine vindicated against Pelagius, and St. Athanasius against Arius,
authorities which they had misrepresented. Even the Fathers, assembled
from the whole world in general councils, have, in proof of their decisions,
wherein all were agreed, alleged the authorities of yet older Fathers, who
were known in previous ages to have handed down the Apostolic truth.
"Yes, along the whole course of time, throughout the whole circuit of
the Christian world, from east to west, from north to south, there floated up
to Christ our Lord one harmony of praise. Unbroken as yet lived on the
miracle of the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit from on high swept
over the discordant strings of human tongues and thoughts, of hearts and
creeds, and blended all their varying notes into one holy unison of truth.
From Syria and Palestine and Armenia, from Asia Minor and Greece,
from Thrace and Italy, from Gaul and Spain, from Africa Proper and
Egypt and Arabia, and the Isles of the Sea, wherever any Apostle had
taught, wherever any martyr had sealed with his blood the testimony