Remove not the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set.
Read Chapter 22
Acacius of Beroea
AD 437
and John of Antioch: We reject all the doctrines introduced recently either through letters or through pamphlets as confusing the common people, since we are content with the ancient legislation of the fathers and obey the one who said, “Remove not the ancient landmarks which your fathers set up.”
We do not permit the faith or the symbol of the faith defined by our holy fathers assembled in their day in Nicea to be shaken by anyone, and we do not trust ourselves or others to change a word of what was laid down there, or to depart from a single syllable of it. For we remember the one who said, “Do not alter the everlasting boundaries which your fathers set.”
The one who moves the boundaries of piety demonstrates either superstition or impiety. And the one who moves the boundaries of courage changes it into either audacity or cowardice. In the same manner, this applies to other virtues as well as to dogmas and other matters of faith. This especially pertains to the doctrine of the holy Trinity. Thus, whoever rejects the divinity of the Holy Spirit rejects baptism; and whoever names some others as gods introduces a whole pantheon of gods. .
Set. The pagans made a god of Terminus, to prevent disputes. (Ovid, Fast. ii.)
If it be unlawful to disturb land-marks, how much more so is it to give way to novelty in religion? (Deuteronomy xix. 14.) (Calmet)
Solomon is addressing those who follow the true faith. Else the conduct of infidel ancestors should not deter any from embracing the truth. (Haydock)
He has revealed to us what it was expedient for us to know, whereas that which we were unable to bear he has withheld. With these things let us be content, and in them let us abide, and let us not step over the ancient bounds or pass beyond the divine tradition.
I cannot help wondering about such madness in certain people, the dreadful impiety of their blinded minds, their insatiable lust for error that they are not content with the traditional rule of faith as once and for all received from antiquity but are driven to seek another novelty daily. They are possessed by a permanent desire to change religion, to add something and to take something away—as though the dogma were not divine so that it has to be revealed only once. But they take it for a merely human institution, which cannot be perfected except by constant emendations, rather, by constant corrections. Yet, the divine prophecies say, “Pass not beyond the ancient bounds which your fathers have set,” and “Judge not against a judge,” and “he that breaks a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.”
