Gregory Thaumaturgus

“ How could the active intellect of an Origen have failed to make great mistakes in such an immensity of labours and such a variety of works? (3) If, in our own day, we indulge speculative minds in large liberties so long as they never make shipwreck of the faith, how much more should we deem them excusable who were unable to consult libraries of well-digested thought, and to employ, as we do, the accumulated wealth of fifty generations of believers, whenever we are called to the solemn responsibility of impressing our convictions upon others? ”

“ Neale, in his valuable work, [1] does full justice to Dionysius, whose life is twinned with Gregory’s; but he seems to me most unaccountably to slight the truly great and commanding genius of Gregory. I take opportunity, then, to direct attention to Neale’s candid, and, on the whole, favourable view of Origen; but it grieves me whenever I see in critics a manifest inability to put themselves back into the times of which they write, as I think is the case, not infrequently, even with Dr. ”