Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

are suborned. (b) And, with a few words interposed: The same subject matters are bandied about among Philosophers and Heretics. In the book On the Soul, he calls the Philosophers the Patriarchs of Heretics. (c) These are the words of Lactantius: It is necessary that all sects of philosophy be estranged from the truth. (d) If we wish to recall the history of learning to mind, we shall find that during this time, above all other sects, the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy flourished most. Whence Tertullian says in the book On the Soul that Plato has become the caterer for all Heretics. Other fathers also, most skilled in Platonic philosophy, affirm that the clear springs of Christian doctrine were muddied by the inventions of this sect. See Colberg, (e) who for this reason cannot bring himself to agree with Thomas Hobbes, when he says in the Leviathan (f) that Aristotelian philosophy especially was held in the highest honor at the time of the early Church.

(b) In the book On Prescription against Heretics, ch. 7.
(c) p. m. 262 (d) Divine Institutes, book 7, ch. 2.
(e) in the place cited. (f) ch. 46.