Clemens Alexandrinus, a most weighty authority, reports that there were once some in the Church who rejected the authority of philosophers from the Christian school. He also says they adopted this conviction because the Lord said in Ioannes, cap. 9, that all who came before him were thieves and robbers and that the sheep did not listen to them. They say they were called thieves because they were deceitful sophists. Aristoteles himself called sophistry a kind of art of stealing. And Iustinus, after teaching that philosophers were like robbers and reproving them as deceivers, was killed through the plots of the philosopher Crescens, as Eusebius writes in libri quarti ecclesiasticae historiae, cap. 16. Philosophers should therefore not be listened to, especially since they have always opposed our teaching. For, as Ruffinus reports in libri primi ecclesiasticae historiae, cap. 2, men clever in debate and therefore opposed to the simplicity of faith supported Arius. Epiphanius also reproaches the Arians on this account in libri secundi adversus haereses, cap. 69: they were new Aristotelians and had taken poison from this philosopher and hurled it at themselves,
putting aside the Lord’s gentleness and clothing themselves in Aristoteles. Thus they were no longer worthy to possess the gift of the Spirit. And Hieronymus, in Adversum Luciferianos, says the Arian heresy borrowed streams of arguments from the source of Aristoteles. Finally, Paulus says that philosophers, while claiming to be wise, became fools and were handed over to a debased mind. Their authority, then, should have no weight among us. This and similar arguments supported that ancient error. Luther, however, tried to revive it after it had long been buried, without offering any argument; he then condemned both the other scholastics and especially D. Thomas, as if he had been the destroyer of pious teaching under the reign of Aristoteles. This is how he speaks against Latomus. Evidently, following Domitianus’ example, he thinks philosophers should be driven not only from the city but from the whole world. We, however, will teach briefly and without dispute what the Catholic faith and sound reason hold.