Now see whether our penetrating weapon is stronger: double, to be sure, but fortified with good steel and well furnished with its throwing thong; taken from the quiver of right reasoning and sharpened on the Lydian touchstone, which the more prudent critics have always applied in settling controversies of this kind.
There is nothing in the whole work which indicates that it is falsely ascribed to blessed Areopagite. Rather, everything suggests the contrary. Judgment about the author of a book depends on style, subject matter, method, and the testimonies of others. The testimonies will be brought forward in the following chapters; the other matters must be weighed in this one.
If you look at the style, nothing is more sublime than it; nothing breathes antiquity, the apostolic age, and the force of sacred philosophy equally. Nor do the adversaries deny this. The method is simple, and of the kind those earlier ecclesiastical writers used, blending mystical theory with practice and concealing more art than it displays. If you weigh the dignity of the matter, and the sublimity, profundity, and most hidden mysteries of the theological treatment, you will find it to be revealed, heavenly doctrine, equal to its grand words and most worthy of a disciple of Paul.
For Luther, Whitaker, and Scaliger, in criticizing it, understood it no more than I understand Lappish or Ethiopic letters. They are like frantic men, who think and pronounce that others are mad and they alone are wise. With the best right Michael Syncellus the Martyr calls our author, as he runs through the individual books of Dionysius, “among theologians the most divinely wise, among teachers the most illuminated, among hierarchs the most holy,” and other things of this kind. I would wish that the most eloquent encomium of Syncellus were read; it alone ought to suffice for blunting the insolence and pride of the innovators.
Next, the author of the book himself most openly manifests both who he is and his own age, and professes himself a disciple of blessed Paul and of Hierotheus in On the Divine Names, chapters 2 and 3, pages 271, 275, and 279. He writes that he was present at the funeral of blessed Mary the Virgin in the same book, chapter 3, page 281 and following. Likewise, in the letter to Polycarp, page 442, he writes that when Christ was suffering, he observed with Apollophanes the sophist that admirable eclipse of the sun, which Phlegon, Eusebius, Maximus, Syncellus, and others also mention.
He relates, in the letter to Demophilus, page 462, that he was received with hospitality by Carpus in Crete; Carpus is mentioned by the Apostle in 2 Timothy 4:13. He teaches that Timothy was his fellow disciple under his master Paul, in On the Divine Names, chapter 2, at the end, page 275. At Timothy’s request he composed the work On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and the other On the Divine Names, chapter 2 of On the Divine Names, page 404.
He writes letters to blessed John the Evangelist, predicting to him liberation from exile and mutual sight, letter 10, page 482; to Titus, Timothy’s fellow disciple and his own, letter 9, page 466, to whom blessed Paul also wrote; likewise to Polycarp, Bishop of the Smyrnaeans, whose age is clear, because Dionysius mentions that Apollophanes the sophist in letter 7, page 437. Blessed Ignatius also mentions Polycarp, and blessed Irenaeus teaches that he was a disciple of blessed John.
He writes four letters to Gaius the Therapeut, page 431. Luke names this Gaius in Acts 19:29, and Saint John sent the third canonical letter to him; perhaps Paul also mentions him in Romans 16:23. He also uses only the testimonies of illustrious men of that age, such as Saint Paul the Apostle and Hierotheus, whom some think to have been a Spaniard, in the cited places; and blessed Bartholomew the Apostle in Mystical Theology, chapter 1, page 421; and Justus Joseph in On the Divine Names, chapter 11, page 398, of whom mention is made in Acts 1:23; and Saint Ignatius the Martyr, as was said before; and Clement the philosopher.
Whether this Clement was Actius Clemens, to whom Pliny the Younger writes, as Baronius thinks, or Clement the Roman Pope, as Pachymeres wishes in the paraphrase, it is agreed from his letter to James, the brother of the Lord, that he was very devoted to philosophy. There is nothing that compels us to flee to Clement of Alexandria. Thus he cites some Clement older than the author of the Stromata, in On the Divine Names, chapter 5, page 354.
But also in chapter 3 of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, page 140, he indicates that still in his own time the faithful in the Church were accustomed, with one person beginning the chant, all to follow, without the alternation of choirs. Blessed Ignatius first introduced that alternation at Antioch, and under Emperor Constantius that custom was derived into all the Churches, as Gilbert Genebrard noted from Basil the Great and Socrates the historian, volume 2 of the Chronography, first century. There are also not a few other things of this kind pointing in the same direction, but these will suffice for a lover of truth.
What does the refuter say to these things? O mouth of the man! With a great gape he boasts that all these things are fictitious and false speaking. Presumption favors us, and transfers the burden of proof to him who, by rash contention, tries to weaken such clear testimonies by suspicions alone.
Cardinal Baronius pronounced most gravely and most truly: “It is unworthy and impious to suspect that so sublime and excellent a theologian, with a mind divinely illuminated, traversing the pivots of heaven, investigating the choirs of angels, approaching the throne of divinity and searching into its secrets, should himself, I say, like a stage-player on the stage, play under an assumed mask, should have wished deceitfully to pretend himself another than he was, to counterfeit other persons, and to compose many false things which he wanted to be received by all as true and certain, and that with great loss to his own glory. For that immortal glory which he had gained for himself from his plainly divine writings, he would have seemed vainly to squander by hiding his own name and putting on another’s. If we say, as befits a wise man, that he despised glory, certainly it was not the part of a wise man to lie much, especially of one who, treating heavenly and divine things, ought to abhor even the lightest opinion of falsehood from afar.”
Thus far Baronius, bringing forward and gathering into one so many evident and pregnant reasons that whoever still persists obstinate is most worthy of the compliments of Joseph Scaliger. I shall ascribe them so that he may be refreshed by his own, since he is accustomed to be nauseated by those of others: “He prophesies wildly, he is mad with madness, the author of so paradoxical and apish a drama. See what seeming-wisdom does, what zealous conceit does, what contempt of others does. What is this, unless delusion or derangement?” Scaliger, you brought forward all these things truly and aptly, but against your own trifle. I proceed to the testimonies of the Fathers, by which you are convicted just as openly.