SCRIPTISQUE EIDEM SUPPOSITIS. original: AND THE WRITINGS SUPPOSEDLY ATTRIBUTED TO HIM.

for from the agreement of writers in certain words and thoughts, concluding the pre-existence of one before the other is not valid. For it can and ought to happen sometimes to writers of the same age, or even of a far later age, that, when occupied with the same matter, especially sacred and historical, they propose the subject with the same thoughts, unless they wish to be unfair to Revealed Truth, which relies upon certain oracles and the same divine thoughts; and they narrate with the same words at times, unless they wish to violate Historical Truth, which is wrapped in certain, and the same, circumstances. We respond (2) with Dallæus, by denying the Minor: for a Petitio Principii begging the question is committed; for in the question, and still under judgment, the dispute is: which of the two borrowed thoughts and words from the other? So that I may think I can conclude with greater right and firmness by inverting the argument:

Whoever borrowed not only thoughts, but, when speaking of the same matter, the very words themselves from Gregory of Nazianzus; he must be later in age than Gregory of Nazianzus; his writings must have come to the notice of the Church only after the IV century.

But that Dionysius, whose writings are circulated under the name of the Areopagite, is a supposititious one, etc. Therefore.

For it is more probable that this impostor, since he did not blush to lie about the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, considered it much less of a religious duty to plunder the Fathers older than himself, and thus to procure a certain appearance of antiquity for his supposititious writings; than that Gregory, a certain author, and one no less conspicuous in dignity than in his distinguished merits for the Primitive Church, should have derived certain things by plagiarism into his own writings from this obscure and entirely doubtful Dionysius.