Theological Dissertation on the Theologoumena of Macarius Magnes

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is clearly evident to anyone who considers these things more deeply: since one thing must be considered an accommodation to the popular and commonly received form of speaking, but quite another to the prejudices and errors of the unlearned common people, whether they consist of things natural, or historical, or moral, or theological. 16) Let therefore the injury brought upon Macarius MAGNES by TVRRIANVS be absent here 17), and let praise rather be earned by the accuracy of the once very famous Theologian of the Rostochians, JUSTUS CHRISTOPHORUS SCHOMERUS, who in his College of the Newest Controversies, Chapter II, on Sacred Scripture §. VIII, p. 25, indeed concedes that Scripture sometimes uses phrases that name a thing according to appearance, but immediately adds: "However, it always uses words and phrases that are true as to the sense which they have from the received usage of men, nor does it ever approve the errors of the common people about any matter, nor does it sprinkle the proposed things with its own name."

§. IV. On the manner of interpreting H. Scripture, against the same Porphyry.

Having now proposed some exegetical specimen of Macarius Magnes, in which he attempted with not unsuccessful effort to remove the dissension of the Evangelists objected to by Porphyry from the divine book of Holy Scripture; we observe in a few words that PORPHYRY, a most implacable enemy of the Christian discipline, when he could not overturn the sacred letters themselves, also occasionally condemned the manner

16) Worthy of comparison here is the blessed IO. IAC. RAMBACH'S Diss. on H. Scripture accommodated to the erroneous concepts of the common people, which appeared at Halle in 1727: where in Section I (Historical), the principal authors who established such an accommodation are listed, among whom this example of TVRRIANVS therefore seems to be referred not inappropriately to the class of natural and historical things.
17) MACARIVS MAGNES asserts the opposite in Fragment II from his books Apocritica, when he says: "The naming of a name does not confirm what is said, but the nature of the thing itself confirms the truth of the speech."