A treatise of the sibyls so highly celebrated, as well by the antient heathens, as the holy fathers of the church : giving an accompt of the names, and number of the sibyls, of their qualities, the form and matter of their verses : as also of the books now extant under their names, and the errours crept into Christian religion, from the impostures contained therein, particularly, concerning the state of the just, and unjust after death / written originally by David Blondel ; Englished by J.D.

CHAP. XXII. The Sentiment of St. Ambrose brought to the Test.

ACcording to this Pattern was drawn the Antient Gothick Liturgie, containing these words; Quiescentium animas in sinu Abrahae collo∣care dignetur, & in partem primae Resurrectionis admittat, per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, &c. That the Lord would vouchsafe to dispose the Souls of those, that rest, into the Bosom of Abraham, and admit them to a participation of the first Resurrection, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It might seem (and there want not Great men, who have thought so) that St. Ambrose was of the same Sentiment; when, closing up his Funeral Oration upon the Death of Valentinian the Second, he writ in the year 392. Te quaeso, &c. I beseech thee, Sovereign God, that, by an hastened Resurrection, thou wouldest awake, and raise up these most dear young men (Gratian, and Valentinian) so as that thou recompense by an advanced Re∣surrection the course of this life, which they have terminated, before it was come to its perfection: as if by the hastened, or advanced Resurrection, which he desired, he had meant the first Resurrection, which the Millenaries ima∣gined to themselves; and had begged it, as well for Gratian, who was born on the eighteenth of April, 359. and had been murthered twenty four years, four Moneths, and seven days after, that is to say, on the twenty fifth day of August, 383. as for Valentinian, whose birth, happening on the eighteenth of January 370. had not preceeded his death (falling on Whitsun-Eve, May the fifteenth, 392) but twenty two years, three Moneths, and twenty seven days: upon which account he called them both Young men, and bemoaned them, that the course of their Life had been cut off before its maturity, and just perfection.

But neither the Expression of Resurrectio matura, &c. Hastened Resur∣rection,

upon which this Imagination was grounded, does necessarily imply any thing, whence such a Conceit might be induced, nor can the Explication, which St. Ambrose made of his Faith, nine years before, per∣mit it. For in his Treatise concerning the Faith of the Resurrection (writ im∣mediately upon the Death of his Brother Satyrus, which happened on the seventeenth of September 383.) supposing that the sound of many Trumpets shall awake the dead at the Last day, he hath this Discourse, absolutely incompatible with the Opinion of the Millenaries; Adverte, juxta Typum Legis, ordinem Gratiae, &c. Consider, according to the Type of the Law, the order of Grace. When the first Trumpet shall have sounded, it ga∣thers together those towards the East, as the Principal, and Elect. When the se∣cond, those, who are nearest in point of Merit, such, as, being scituated towards Libanus, have forsaken the vanities of the Nations. When the third, those, who tossed, as it were, in the Sea, by the Wind of this World, have been over∣whelmed with the Waves of the present Time. When the fourth, those, who could not sufficiently soften the hardness of their understandings, by the Precept of the spiritual Word; and are, for that reason, called Those towards the North; for a 1.1 Boreas (according to Salomon) is an hard Wind. Although there∣fore b 1.2 all shall be raised again in a moment, and the twinkling of an Eye, yet are all raised according to the order of their Merits, and thereupon those shall be raised first; who, by an early Advancement of Devotion, and a certain dawn∣ing of Faith, have entertained the Raies of the eternal Sun rising upon them, as I may justly instance (according to the Tenour of the Old Testament) in the Patriarchs, or (according to the Gospel) in the Apostles. But the second are those, who, quitting the Custom of the Nations, are passed from the sacrile∣gious Errour, to the Discipline of the Church, and for that reason those first are of the Fathers; those next, from among the Gentiles.

This Discourse of St. Ambrose is an allusion to the Ordinance contained in the tenth of Numbers, concerning the c 1.3 Assembling of the people of Israel; and he applies, to the Resurrection of the Dead, what is said d 1.4 of the calling of those, who possessed the Quarter towards the East.

Secondly, Of those who were Quartered towards the e 1.5 South, and, as it was in his Translation, towards Libs: which he mistaking, con∣founded with Libanus; making, for want of reflection, a Mountain of a Wind; and changing the South-Quarter, whence Libs blows, into that of the North, on which side Libanus is, in respect of the Desart.

Thirdly, Of those, who were disposed towards the Sea.

Fourthly, Of those, who were towards the Quarter of the North, or of Boreas.

And, as he applied the calling together of these several Quarters to the last Resurrection; so he acknowledged, withall, it should be general; and that all should rise, not onely the same day, but in the same moment. Which Assertion of his was grounded on the express Declaration of Saint Paul in his first Epistle to the f 1.6 Corinthians, and absolutely destroyed the Hypothesis of the Millenaries; who believed there would be two Resurrecti∣ons, one preceding the other by above a thousand years: but he supposed, that in that moment of the general Resurrection, there would be several di∣visions, and a certain precedence of order among those Divisions, ac∣cording to the dispositions of each of them.

Next he pretended, that the first Class of those, that were raised, should be that of the Patriarchs, and Apostles; who had never been in∣fected with the Sacrilegious Errour of the Gentiles, but were come, by an early advancement, and as it were at a start, into the light: and in that he also opposed the Errour of the Millenaries; who imagined, that the Pa∣triarchs were risen with our Saviour; that the Apostles, and others of the most Eminent among the Saints should rise, when (according to their Opinion) he should come to establish a Kingdom of a thousand years ••t Jeru∣salem; and the rest of the Dead (after the determination of the thousand years) at the last Day.

When therefore he desires, for Gratian, and Valentinian, that God would grant them an early Resurrection, as a recompense for their short Life, his meaning was not to require, that they should rise before the Last Day, but in the same moment with others; but, as to order, in the most worthy, and first in excellence, viz. that of the Patriarchs, and Apostles; and that, because those Princes were descended of a Christian Father; be∣cause they had from their Mother's Breasts been imbued with Piety, and had never (no more then the Patriarchs, and Apostles) been defiled with the Superstition of the Heathen, out of which most of the Christians of their time had been delivered.

Notes

• a 1.1

  Eccles. xliii. 20. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• b 1.2

  1 Cor. xv. 52.
• c 1.3

  Verse 2.
• d 1.4

  Verse 5.
• e 1.5

  Verse 6.
• f 1.6

  1 Cor. xv. 52.