DE DIONYSIO AREOPAGITA original: ON DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

and following; James Ussher, Special Dissertation on the Writings Supposedly Attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, appended to his Dogmatic History of Scripture and Vernacular Languages, London 1690, 4to, p. 280 and following; Gisbert Voetius, Select Disputations, Part I, p. 894; Joannes Hoornbeek, Miscellanies, Book I, p. 80. From the PONTIFICAL side, after Lorenzo Valla and Thomas Cajetan on Acts XVII, Joannes Morinus, On Sacred Ordinations, Part II, Chapter I, and following; John Pearson, Vindication of Ignatius, Part I, chapter 10; and those who deserve to be praised in our own age: Gerardus du Bois, Ecclesiastical History of Paris, Book VI, chapter 6; Daniel Papebroch, Response to the Exhibition of Errors of Sebastian of Saint Paul, Part I, article V, and Part II, p. 3; Ellies du Pin, New Library of Ecclesiastical Authors, p. 51, and countless others.

VIII.

We proceed rather to Arnold, because the nature of our project requires it. Although he once, as he himself confesses, stood on the side of the Deniers; yet, after he turned his mind to writing and began to play the part of an ordinary advocate for a very bad cause in his worst work, worthy of eternal darkness, the History of Churches and Heretics, he did not hesitate to lend his own support also to the Affirmative Opinion. But there is no reason for anyone to think that he is perhaps equipped with new and more solid arguments than the other defenders of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius have been hitherto: for he merely reheats the cabbage so often served by others a classical proverb meaning to serve up the same old things, as will be clearly evident from an examination of the Foundation upon which he relies in Part I, Book I, chapter 2, sections 9 and 10 of that same work.

IX.

All the strength of his patronage, with which he wishes to be available to the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, consists in this, that he attempts