The Catholic Controversy by Saint Francis de Sales

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CHAPTER IV.
FIRST VIOLATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES MADE BY THE REFORMERS: BY CUTTING OFF SOME OF ITS PARTS

Such are the sacred and canonical books which the Church has unanimously received and acknowledged during twelve hundred years. And by what authority have these new reformers dared to wipe out at one stroke so many noble parts of the Bible? They have erased a part of Esther, and Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Machabees. Who has told them that these books are not legitimate, and not to be received? Why do they thus dismember the sacred body of the Scriptures?

Here are the principal reasons, as far as I have been able to gather from the old preface to the books which they pretend to be apocryphal, printed at Neufchastel, in the translation of Peter Robert, otherwise Olivetanus, a relation and friend of Calvin, and again from the newer preface placed to the same books by the professors and pretended pastors of the Churhc of Geneva, 1588.

* 1. They are not found either in Hebrew or Chaldaic, in which languages they (except perhaps the Book of Wisdom) were originally written: therefore it would be very difficult to restore them.
* 2. They are not received as legitimate by the Jews.
* 3. Nor by the whole Church.
* 4. S. Jerome says they are not considered proper for corroborating the authority of Ecclesiastical doctrines.
* 5. Canon Law condemns them;
* 6. as does also the Gloss, which says they are read, but not generally, as if to say that they are not approved generally everywhere.
* 7. They have been corrupted and falsified, as Eusebius says (Hist. Eccl. Iv. 22.);
* 8. notably the Machabees,
* 9. and particularly the Second of Machabees, which S. Jerome says he did not find in Hebrew. Such are the reasons of Olivetanus.
* 10. “There are in them many false things,” says the new preface.

Let us now see what these fine researches are worth.

1. And as to the first, are you unwilling to receive these books because they are not in Hebrew or Chaldaic? Receive Tobias then, for S. Jerome attests that he translates it from Chaldaic into Latin, in the Epistle which you yourselves quote, (Ep. Ad Chrom. et Heliod.) which makes me think oyu are hardly in good faith. And why not Judith, which was also written in Chaldaic, as the same S. Jerome says in the prologue? And if S. Jerome says he was not able to find the Second of Machabees in the Hebrew,- what has that to do with the first? This then receive as it deserves; we will treat of the second afterwards. I say the same to you about Ecclesiasticus, which S. Jerome had and found in Hebrew, as he says in his preface on the books of Solomon. Since, then, you reject these books written in Hebrew or Chaldaic equally with the others which are not written in one of these languages, you will have to find another pretext than that which you have alleged for striking out thee books from the canon. When you say that you reject them because they are not written in Hebrew or Chaldaic, this is not your real reason; for you would not reject on this ground Tobias, Judith, the first of Machabees, Ecclesiasticus, which are written either in Hebrew or Chaldaic. But let us now speak in defence of the other books, which are written in a language other than that which you would have. Where do you find that the rule for rightly receiving the Holy Scriptures is that they should be written in these languages rather thanin Greek or Latin? You say that nothing must be received in matter of religion but what is written; and you bring forward in your grand preface the saying of jurisconsults: “We blush to speak without a law.” Do you not consider that the controversy about the validity or invalidity of the Scriptures is one of the most important in the sphere of religion? Well then, either remain confounded, or else produce the Holy Scripture for the negative which you maintain. The Holy Spirit certainly declares Himself as well in Greek as in Chaldaic. There would be, you say, great difficulty in restoring them, since we do not possess them in their original language, and it is this which troubles you. But, for God’s sake, tell me who told you that they were lost, corrupted or altered, so as to need restoration? You take for granted, perhaps, that those who have translated them from the originals have translated badly, and you would have the original to compare them and judge them. Make your meaning clear then, and say that thery are therefore apocryphal because you cannot yourselves be the translators of them from the original, and cannot trust the judgment of the translator. So there is to be nothing certain except what you have had the control of. Show me this rule of certitude in the Scripture. Further, are you fully assured that you have the Hebrew texts of the books of the first rank, as pure and exact as they were in the time of the Apostles and of the Seventy? Beware of errors. You certainly do not aways follow then, and you could not, with good conscience. Show me this again in the Holy Scripture. Here, therefore, is your fisrt reason most wanting in reason.

2. As to your saying that these books which you call apocryphal are not received by the Jews, you say nothing new or important. S. Augustine loudly exclaims: “It is the Catholic Church which holds the Books of Machabees as canonical, not the Jews.” (De. Civ. Dei. Xviii. 36.) Show me from Scripture that the Christian Church has not as much power to give authority to the sacred books os the Mosaic may have had. There is not in this either Scripture or reason to show for it.

3. Yes, but the whole of the Church does not receive them, you say. Of what Church are you speaking? Unquestionably the Catholic, which is the true Church, receives them, as S. Augustine has just now borne witness to you, and he repeats it, citing the Council of Carthage. The Council in Trullo the 6th General, that of Florence, and a hundred ancient authors are thereto. I name S. Jerome, who witnesses for the book of Judith that it was received in the first Council [of Nice]. Perhaps you would say that of old time some Catholics doubted of their authority. This is clear from the division which I have made above. But does their doubt then make it impossible for their successors to come to a conclusion? Are we to say that if once cannot decide at the very first glance one must always remain waverign, uncertain, and irresolute? Was ther enot for some time an uncertainty about the Apocalypse and Esther? You would not dare to deny it: my witnesses for Esther are too sound, S. Athanasius (In Synopsi) and S. Gregory Nazainzen (In carm. de lib. sac.) : for the Apocalypse, the Council of Laodicea: and yet you receive them. Either receive them all, since they are in equal position, or receive none, on the same ground. But in God’s name what humour takes you that you here bring forward the Church, whose authority you hold to be a hundred times more uncertain than these books themselves, and which you say to have been erring, inconstant,- yea apocryphal, if apocryphal means hidden? You only prize it to despise it, and to make it appear inconstant, now recognizing, now rejecting these books.

But there is a great difference between doubting whether a thing is to be accepted and rejectign it. Doubt does nto hinder a subsequent resolution, indeed it is its preliminary stage. To reject presupposes a decision. Inconstancy does not consist in changing a doubt into resolution, but in changing from resolution to doubt. It is not instability to become settled after wavering, but to waver after being settled. The Church then, having for a time left these books in doubt, at length has received them with authentic decision, and you wish that from this resolution she should return into doubt. It belongs to heresy and not to the Church thus to advance from bad to worse. But of this elsewhere.

4. As for S. Jerome whom you allege, this is not to the purpose, since in his time the Church had not yet come to the resolution which she has come to since, as to the placing of these books on the canon, except that of Judith.

5. And the canon Sancta Romana, which is of Gelasius I.- I think you have taken it by guess, for it is entirely agaisnt you; because, while censuring the apocryphal books, it does not name one of these which we receive, but on the contrary witnesses that Tobias and the Macchabees were publicly received in the Church.

6. And the poor Gloss does not deserve to be thus glossed, since it clearly says that these books are read, though not perhaps generally. This “perhaps” guards it from stating what is false, and you have forgotten it. And if it reckons the books in question as apocryphal, this is because it considered that apocryphal meant the having no certain author, and thereofre it includes as apocryphal the Book of Judges: and their statements are not so authentic that they must pass as decisive judgment; after all it is but a Gloss.

7. And these falsifications which you allege are not in any way sufficient to abolish the authority of these books, because they have been justified and have been purified from all corruption before the Church received them. Truly, all the books of Holy Scripture have been corrupted by the ancient enemies of the Church, but by the providence of God they have remained free and pure in the Church’s hands, as a sacred deposit; and they have never been able to spoil so many copies as that there should not remain enough to restore the others.

8.But you woould have the Machabees, at any rate, fall from our hands, when you say that they have been corrupted; but since you only advance a simple assertion I will return your pass by a simple negation.

9. S. Jerome, you say, could not find the Second in Hebrew; and although it is true that it is only as it were a letter which Israel sent to their Jewish brethen who were then out of Judea, and although it is written in the best known and most general language of those times, does it thence follow that it is not worthy to be received? The Egyptians used the Greek language much more than the Hebrew, as Ptolemy clearly showed when he procured the version of the Seventy. This is why this Second book of Machabees, which was like an epistle or commentary sent for the consolation of the Jews who were in Egypt, was written in Greek rather than in Hebrew.

10. It remains for the new preachers to point out those falsehoods of which they accuse these books; which they will in truth never do. But I see them coming, bringing forward the intercession of Saints, prayer for the dead, free-will, the honouring of relics, and similar points, which are expressly confirmed in the Books of Machabees, in Ecclesiasticus, and in other books which they pretend to be apocryphal. For God’s sake take care that your judgment does not deceive you. Why, I pray you, do you call false, things which the whole of antiquity has held as articles of faith? Why do you not rather censure your fancies which will not embrace the doctrine of these books, than censure these books which have been received for so long a time because they do not jump with your humour? Because you will not believe what the books teach, you condemn it; why do you not rather condemn your presumption which is incredulous to their teaching?

Here now, I think, are all your reasons scattered to the winds, and you can bring no more. But we may well say: if it be thus lawful indifferently to reject or make doubtful the authority of those Scriptures, about which there was formerly a doubt, though the Church has now decided, it will be necessary to reject or to doubt of a great part of the Old and the New Testament. It is then no little gain to the enemy of Christianity, to have at one stroke scratched out of the Holy Scripture so many noble parts. Let us proceed.  

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CHAPTER V.
SECOND VIOLATION OF THE SCRIPTURES: BY THE RULE WHICH THESE REFORMERS BRING FORWARD TO DISTINGUISH THE SACRED BOOKS FROM THE OTHERS. AND OF SOME SMALLER PARTS THEY CUT OFF FROM THEM ACCORDING TO THIS RULE:

The crafty merchant keeps out the worst articles of his stock to offer first to buyers, to try if he can get rid of them and sell them to some simpleton. The reasons which these reformers have advanced in the preceding chapter are but tricks, as we have seen, which are used only as it were for amusement, to try whether some simple and weak brain will be content with them; and, in reality, when one comes to the grapple, they confess that not the authority of the Church, nor of S. Jerome, nor of the Gloss, nor of the Hebrew, is cause sufficient to receive or reject any Scripture. The following is their protestation of faith presented to the King of France by the French pretended reformers. After having placed on the list, in the third article, the books they are willing to receive, they write thus in the fourth article: “We know these books to be canonical and a most safe rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church, as by the testimony and interior persuasion of the Holy Spirit, which gives us to discern them from the other ecclesiasticla books.” Quitting then the field of the reasons preceding, and making for cover, they throw them selves into the interior, secret, and invisible persuasion which they consider to be produced in them by the Holy Spirit.

Now in truth it is judicious in them not to chose to rely in this point on the common accord and consent of the Church; for this common accord has placed on the canon Ecclesiasticus and the Machabees, as much as and as early as the Apocalypse, and yet they choose to receive this and to reject those. Judith, made authoritative by the grand and irreproachable Council of Nice, is blotted out by these reformers. They have reason then to confess that in the reception of canonical books, they do not accept the accord and consent of the Church, which was never greater or more solemn than in that first Council.

But, for God’s sake notice the trick. “We know,” say they, “these books to be canonical, not so much by the common consent and accord of the Church” To hear them speak, would you not say that at least to some extent they let themselves be guided by the Church? Their speech is not sincere: it seems as if they did not altogethe refuse credit to the common accord of Christians, but only did not receive it as on the same level with their interior persuasion:- in all reality however, they hold it in no account at all: they are thus cautious in their language in order not to appear altogether arogant and unreasonable. For, I ask you, if they deferred as little as you please to ecclesiastical authority, why would they receive the Apocalypse rather than Judith or the Machabees? S. Augustine and S. Jerome are faithful witnesses to us that these have been unanimously received by the whole Catholic Church; and the Councils of Carthage, in Trullo, Florence, assure us thereof. Why then do they say that they do receive these sacred books not so much by the ocmmon accord of the Church or by interior persuasion, since the common accord of the Church has neither value nor place in the matter? It is their custom when they would bring forward some strange opinion not to speak clearly and frankly, in order to give the reader a better impression.

And now let us look at the rule they have for distinguishing the canonical books from the other elccleaiastical ones. “The testimony,” they say, “and interior persuasion of the Holy Spirit.” Good heavens! What obscurity, what dense fog, what shades of night! Are we not now fully enlightened in so important and grave a difference! The question is how one can tell these canonical books; we wish to have some rule to distinguish them; - and they offer us something that passes in the interior of the soul, which no one sees, nobody knows save the soul itself and its Creator!

(1) Show me clearly that when you tell me that such and such an inspiration exists; in your conscience you are not telling a lie. You say that you feel this persuasion within you. But why am I bound to believe you? Is your word so powerful that I am forced under its authority to believe that you think and feel what you say. I am willing to hold you as good people enough, but when there is question of the foundations of my faith, as of receiving or rejecting the Ecclesiastical Scriptures, I find neither your ideas nor your words steady enough to serve me as a base.

(2.) Show me clearly that these inspirations and persuasions that you pretend to have are of the Holy Spirit. Who knows not that the spirit of darkness very often appears in clothing of light ?

(3.) Does this spirit grant his persuasions indifferently to everyone. Or only to some particular persons? If to every one, how does it happen that so many millions of Catholics have never perceived them, nor so many women, working-people, and others among yourselves ?If it is to some in particular, show them me, I beg, you,-and why to these rather than to others ? What mark will you give me to know them and to pick them out from the crowd of the rest of men ? Must I believe in the first who shall say: here you are? This would be to put ourselves too much at a venture and at the mercy of deceivers. Show me then some infallible rule to recognise these inspired ones, these persuaded ones, or else permit me to credit none of them.

(4.) But, in conscience, do you think that the interior persuasion is a sufficient means to distinguish the Holy Scriptures, and put the nations out of doubt? How comes it then that Luther throws off the Epistle of S. James, which Calvin receives? Try to harmonise, I pray you, this spirit and his persuasions, who persuades the one to reject what he persuades the other to receive. You will say, perhaps, that Luther is mistaken. He will say as much of you. Which is to be believed? Luther ridicules Ecclesiastes, he considers Job a fable. Will you oppose him your persuasion? He will oppose you his. So this spirit, divided against himself, will leave you no other conclusion except to grow thoroughly obstinate, each in his own opinion.

(5.) Then what reason is there that the Holy Spirit should give inspirations as to what every one must believe to nobodies, to Luther, to Calvin, they having abandoned without any such inspiration the Councils and the entire Church. We do not deny, to speak clearly, but that the knowledge of the true sacred books is a gift of the Holy Spirit, but we say that the Holy Spirit gives it to private individuals through the medium of the Church. Indeed if God had a thousand times revealed a thing to a private person we should not be obliged to believe it unless he stamped it so clearly that we could no longer call its validity in question. But we see nothing of this among your reformers. In a word, it is to the Church General that the Holy Spirit immediately addresses his inspirations and persuasions, then, by the preaching of the Church, he communicates them to private persons. It is the Spouse in whom the milk is produced, then the children suck it from her breasts. But you would have it, on the contrary, that God inspires private persons, and by these means the Church, that the children receive the milk and the mother is nourished at their breasts; an absurdity.

Now if the Scripture is not violated and its majesty offended by the setting up of these interior and private inspirations, it never was nor will be violated. For by this means the door is open to every one to receive or reject of the Scriptures what shall seem good to him. Why shall one allow Calvin to cut off Wisdom or the Machabees, and not Luther to remove the Epistle of S. James or the Apocalypse, or Castalio the Canticle of Canticles, or the Anabaptists the Gospel of S. Mark, or another person Genesis and Exodus? If all protest that they have interior revelation why shall we believe one rather than another, so that this rule supposed to be sacred on account of the Holy Spirit, will be violated by the audacity of every deceiver.

Recognise, I pray you, the stratagem. They have taken away all authority from Tradition, the Church, the Councils, what more remains? The Scripture. The enemy is crafty: if he would take all away at one stroke he would cause alarm. He starts a certain and infallible method of getting rid of it bit by bit, and very gradually: that is, this idea of interior inspiration, by which everybody can receive or reject what seems good to him. And in fact consider a little how the process works itself out. Calvin removes and erases from the canon Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Machabees; Luther takes away the Epistle of S. James, of S. Jude, the Second of S. Peter, the Second and Third of S. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews; he ridicules Ecclesiastes, and holds Job a fable. In Daniel, Calvin has erased the Canticle of the Three Children, the history of Susanna and that of the dragon of Bel; also a great part of Esther. In Exodus, at Geneva and elsewhere among these reformers, they have cut out the twenty-second verse of the second chapter, which is of such weight that neither the Seventy nor the other translators would ever have written it if it had not been in the original. Beza casts a doubt over the history of the adulteress in the Gospel of S. John (S. Augustine warns us that already the enemies of Christianity had erased it from their books; but not from all,as S. Jerome says). In the mysterious words of the Eucharist, do they not try to overthrow the authority of those words: Which shall be shed for you, because the Greek text [* see footnote] clearly shows that what was in the chalice was not wine, but the blood of Our Saviour? As if one were to say in French: Ceci est la coupe du nouveau Testament en mon sang, laquelle sera respandiie pour vous. For in this way of speaking that which is in the cup must be the true blood, not the wine; since the wine has not been shed for us but the blood, and the cup cannot be poured out except by reason of what it contains. What is the knife with which one has made so many amputations? This tenet of private inspiration. What is it that makes you reformers so bold to cut away one this piece, another that, and the other something else? The pretext of these interior persuasions of the Spirit, which makes them supreme each in his own idea, in judging as to the validity or invalidity of the Scriptures. On the contrary, gentlemen, S. Augustine protests For my part, I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereto." (Conta Ep. Fund. V) And elsewhere: "We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Catholic Church determines." (Sermo de Temp. cxci) The Holy Spirit can give his inspirations as he likes, but as to the establishment of the public and general belief of the faithful, he only directs us to the Church. It is hers to propose which are the true Scriptures and which are not.

* Note “to” in the Dative, agreeing with aimati but “to” in the Nominative, agreeing with poterion. The Saint represents this in French by the change of gender. It is not clearly expressed in the Latin, and our English translation would seem to favour the wrong meaning. Shall be poured out is more correct, but still ambiguous. [Tr.]  

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CHAPTER VI.
ANSWER TO AN OBJECTION

BUT here is the difficulty.If these books were not from the beginning of undoubted authority in the Church, who can give them this authority? In truth the Church cannot give truth or certitude to the Scripture, or make a book canonical if it were not so, but the Church can make a book known as canonical, and make us certain of its certitude, and is fully able to declare that a book is canonical which is not held as such by every one, and thus to give it credit in Christendom; not changing the substance of the book which of itself was canonical, but changing the persuasion of Christians, making it quite assured where previously it had not been so.

But how can the Church herself define that a book is canonical? For she is no longer guided by new revelations but by the old Apostolic ones, of which she has infallibility of interpretation. And if the Ancients have not had the revelation of the authority of a book, how then can she know it? She considers the testimony of antiquity, the conformity which this book has with the others which are received, and the general relish which the Christian people find in it. For as we can know what is a proper and wholesome food for animals when we see them fond of it and feed on it with advantage, so, when the Church sees that the Christian people heartily relishes a book as canonical and gains good from it, she may know that it is a fit and wholesome meat for Christian souls; and as when we would know whether one wine is of the same vintage as another we compare them, observing whether the colour, the smell and the taste are alike in the two, so when the Church has properly decided that a book has a taste, colour and smell and holiness of style, doctrine and mysteries- like to the other canonical books, and besides has the testimony of many good and irreproachable witnesses of antiquity, she can declare the book to be true brother of the other canonical ones. And we must not doubt that the Holy Spirit assists the Church in this judgment: for your ministers themselves confess that God has given the Holy Scriptures into her charge, and say that it is on this account S. Paul calls her the pillar and ground of the truth.(1 Tim. 3:15) And how would she guard them if she could not know and separate them from the mixture of other books? And how important is it for the Church that she should be able to know in proper time and season which Scriptures is holy and which not: for if she received such and such Scripture as holy and it was not, she would lead us into superstition; and if she refused the honour and belief which befit God's Word to a holy Scripture, it would be an impiety. If ever then Our Lord defends his Church against the gates of hell if the Holy Spirit assisted her so closely that she could say: It hath seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us, (Acts 15:28 ) -we must firmly believe that he inspires her on occasion of such great consequences as these; for it would indeed be to abandon her at her need if he left her at this juncture, on which depends not only an article or two of our faith, but the substance of our religion. When, therefore, the Church has declared that a book is canonical, we must never doubt but that it is so. We [are] here in the same position. For Calvin and the very bibles of Geneva, and the Lutherans, receive several books as holy, sacred, and canonical which have not been acknowledged by all the Ancients as such, and about which there has been a doubt. If there has been a doubt formerly, what reason can they have to make them assured and certain nowadays, except that which S. Augustine had [as we said above]: "I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me ; " and " We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Holy Catholic Church determines." Truly we should be very ill assured if we were to rest our faith on these particular interior inspirations, of which we only know that they exist or ever did exist, by the testimony of some private persons. And granted that they are or have been, we do not know whether they are from the false or of the true spirit ; and supposing they are of the true spirit, we do not know whether they who relate them, relate them faithfully or not, since they have no mark of infallibility whatever. We should deserve to be wrecked if we were to cast ourselves out of the ship of the public judgment of the Church, to sail in the miserable skiff of these new discordant private inspirations. Our faith would not be Catholic, but private.

But before I quit this subject, I pray you, reformers tell me whence you have taken the canon of the Scriptures which you follow? You have not taken it fron the Jews, for the books of the Gospels would not be there, nor from the Council of Laodicea, for the Apocalypse would not be in it; or from the Councils of Carthage or of Florence, for Ecclesiasticus and the Machabees would be there. Whence, then, have you taken it? In good sooth, like canon was never spoken of before your time. The Church never saw canon of the Scriptures in which there was not either more or less than in yours. What likelihood is there that the Holy Spirit has hidden himself from all antiquity, and that after 1500 years he has disclosed to certain private persons the list of the true Scriptures? For our part we follow exactly the list of the Council of Laodicea with the addition made at the Councils of Cart age and Florence. Never will a man of judgment leave these Councils to follow the persuasions of private individuals. Here, then, is the fountain and source of all the violations which have been made of this holy rule; namely, when people have taken up the fancy of not receiving it save by the measure and rule of the inspirations which each one believes and thinks he feels.  

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CHAPTER VII.
HOW GREATLY THE REFORMERS HAVE VIOLATED THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCRIPTURES

Now, how can an honest soul refrain from giving the rein to the ardour of a holy zeal, and from entering into a Christian anger, without sin, considering with what presumption those who do nothing but cry, Scripture, Scripture, have despised, degraded, and profaned this divine Testament of the eternal Father, as they have falsified this sacred contract of so glorious an alliance! 0 ministers of Calvinism, how do you dare to cut away so many noble parts of the sacred body of the Bibles? You take away Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the Machabees: why do you thus dismember the Holy Scripture? Who has told you that they are not sacred? There was some doubt about them in the ancient Church; but was there not doubt in the ancient Church about Esther, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of S. James and S. Jude, the Second of S. Peter, the two last of S. John, and especially of the Apocalypse? Why do you not also erase these as you have done those? Acknowledge honestly that what you have done in this has only been in order to contradict the Church. You were angry at seeing in the Machabees the intercession of Saints and prayers for the departed: Ecclesasticus stung you in that it bore witness to free-will and the honour of relics. Rather than do violence to your notions, adjusting them to the Scriptures you have violated the Scriptures to accommodate them to your notions: you have cut off the holy Word to avoid cutting off your fancies: how will you ever cleanse yourselves from this sacrilege ? Have you degraded the Machabees, Ecclesiasticus, Tobias, and the rest, because some of the Ancients have doubted of their authority ? Why then do you receive the other books, about which there has been as much doubt as about these ? What can you oppose to them except that their doctrine is hard for you to accept ? Open your heart to faith, and you will easily receive that which your unbelief shuts out from you. Because you do not will to believe what they teach, you condemn them : rather condemn your presumption, and receive the Scripture. I would chiefly lay stress on the authority of those books which exercise you the most. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. v. 5, &c.), Cyprian (Ep. lxv.), Ambrose (de fide iv.), Augustine (Ep. ad Oros. contra Prise.), and the rest of the Fathers consider Ecclesiasticus canonical. S. Cyprian (Serm. de op et Deem.), S. Ambrose (lib. de Tobid, i.), S. Basil (de avar.), honour Tobias as Holy Scripture. S. Cyprian again (de exhort. mar.), S. Gregory Nazianzen (orat. de Mach.), S. Ambrose (de Tacob et vit beat. x. xi.), believed the same of the Machabees. S. Augustine protests that: "it is the Catholic Church which holds the Books of Machabees as canonical, not the Jews. "What will you say to this ? that the Jews had them not in their catalogues ? S. Augustine acknowledges it; but are you Jews, or Christians? If you would be called Christians, be satisfied that the Christian Church receives them.

Is the light of the Holy Spirit extinguished with the synagogue? Had not our Lord and the Apostles as much power as the synagogue? Although the Church has not taken authority for her books from the mouth of the Scribes and Pharisees, will it not suffice that she has taken it from the testimony of the Apostles ? Now we must not think that the ancient Church and these most ancient doctors would have had the boldness to rank these books as canonical, if they had not had some direction by the tradition of the Apostles and their disciples who could know in what rank the Master himself held them; unless, to excuse our imaginations, we are to accuse of profanation, and of sacrilege, such holy and grave doctors as these, and the whole ancient Church. I say the ancient Church, because the Council of Carthage, Gelasius in the decree de libris canonicas, Innocent I in the epistle to Exuperius, and S. Augustine, lived before S. Gregory, before whose time Calvin confesses that the Church was still in its purity, and yet these bear witness that all the books which we held to be canonical when Luther appeared were already so in their time. If you would destrov the credit of those holy books. why which there has been so much doubt, and that of the Epistle to the Hebrews? But I return to you, gentlemen of Thonon, who have hitherto given ear to such men; I beseech you, let us say in conscience, is there any likelihood that Calvin knows better what grounds they had who anciently doubted of these books, and what grounds they who doubted not, than the Bishops and Councils of these days? And still, all things well considered, antiquity received them; what do we allege to the contrary ? Oh! if it were lawful for men, in order to raise their opinions on horseback, to use the Scripture as stirrups, to lengthen and shorten them, each one to his own size, where, I beg you, should we be? Do you not perceive the stratagem? All authority is taken away from Tradition, the Church, the Councils, the Pastors: what further remains?The Scripture. The enemy is crafty. If he would tear it all away at once he would cause an alarm; he takes away a great part of it in the very beginning, then first one piece, then the other, at last he will have you stripped entirely, without Scripture and without Word of God.

Calvin takes away seven books of the Scripture: (In prologis Bib. Et horum lib.) Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Machabees; Luther has removed the Epistle of S. James, that of S. Jude, the second of S. Peter, the 2nd and 3rd of S. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews; he ridicules Ecclesiastes, he holds Job as a fable. Reconcile, I pray you this false spirit, who takes away from Luther's brain what he puts back in that of Calvin. Does this seem to you a trifling discord between these two evangelists? You will say you do not hold Luther's intelligence in great account; his party think no better of that of Calvin. But see the progress of your fine church, how she ever pushes on further. Calvin had removed seven books, she has further thrown out the 8th, that of Esther ; [note: later reformers accepted Esther as canonoical] in Daniel she cuts off the canticle of the Three Children (c. iii.), the history of Susanna (c. xiii.), and that of the dragon slain by Daniel (xiv). In the Gospel of S. John is there not doubt among you of the history of the woman taken in adultery? S. Augustine had indeed said formerly that the enemies of the faith had erased it from their books, but not from all, as S. Jerome says. Do they not wish to take away these words of S. Luke (xxii. z0), which shall be shed for you, because the Greek text clearly shows that what was in the chalice was not wine but the true blood of our Lord ? As if one were to say in French: Cecy est la coupe du Nouveau Testament, en mon sang, laquelle sera respandue pour vous: this is the chalice, the New Testament in my blood, which (chalice) shall be shed for you? For in this way of speaking one sees clearly that what is in the cup must be the blood, not wine, since the wine has not been shed for us, but the blood. In the Epistle of S. John have they not taken away these noble words: every spirit. who dissolveth Jesus is not of God (iv. 3)? What say you, gentlemen ? If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves!  

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CHAPTER VIII.
HOW THE MAJESTY OF THE SCRIPTURES HAS BEEN VIOLATED IN THE INTERPRETATIONS AND VERSIONS OF THE HERETICS

SHALL I say further this word? Your fine church has not contented itself with cutting off from the Scripture entire books, chapters, sentences and words, but what it has not dared to cut off altogether it has corrupted and violated by its translations. In order that the sectaries of this age may altogether pervert this first and most holy rule of our faith, they have not been satisfied with shortening it or with getting rid of so many beautiful parts, but they have turned and turned it about, each one as he chose, and instead of adjusting their ideas by this rule they have adopted it to the square of their own greater or less sufficiency. The Church had universally received (more than a thousand years ago) the Latin version which the Catholic Church proposes; S. Jerome, that most learned man, was the author, or corrector of it; when, our age, behold arise a thick mist created by the spirit of giddiness,(Isa. xix. 14) which has so led astray these refurbishers of old opinions formerly current, that everybody has wanted to drag, one to this side, one to that, and always according to the inclination of his own judgment, this holy and sacred Scripture of God. Herein who sees not the profanation of this sacred vase of the holy letter, in which was preserved the precious balm of the Evangelical doctrine? For would it not have been a profanation of the Ark of the Covenant to maintain that everybody might seize it, carry it home, take it all to pieces, and then give it what form he liked provided that it had some semblance of an ark? And what but this is it to maintain that one may take the Scriptures and turn and adjust them according to one's own sense? And in just the same way, as soon as we are assured that the ordinary edition of the church is so out of shape that it must be built up again new, and that a private man is to set his hand to it and begin the process, the door is open to presumption. For if Luther dares to do it, why not Erasmus? And if Erasmus, why not Calvin or Melancthon, why not Henricus Mercerus, Sebastian Castalio, Beza, and the rest of the world, provided that they know some verses of Pindar and four or five words of Hebrew, and have close by some good Thesaurus of the one or other language? And how can so many translations be made by brains so different, without the complete overthrow of the sincerity of the Scripture? What say you? that the ordinary version is corrupt? We allow that transcribers and printers have let certain ambiguities of very slight importance slip in (if, however, anything in the Scripture can be called of slight importance). The Council of Trent commanded that these should be taken out, and that for the future care should be taken to print as correctly as possible. For the rest, there is nothing in it which is not most conformable to the meaning of the Holy Spirit who is its author, as has been shown by so many learned men of our Church, (Genebrard in prcef. Psalt.; Titelman, Toletus, in apol. Bellarminus et a1ii.) opposing the presumption of these new reformers of religion, that it would be losing time to try to speak more of it; besides that it would be folly in me to wish to speak of the correctness of translations, who never well knew how to read with the points in one of the languages necessary for this knowledge, and am hardly more learned in the other. But how have you improved matters? Everybody has held to his own views, everybody has despised his neighbour's; they have turned it about as they liked, but no one speaks of his comrade's version. What is this but to overthrow the majesty of the Scripture, and to bring it into contempt with the people, who think that this diversity of editions comes rather from the uncertainty of the Scriptures than from the variety of the translators, a variety which alone ought to put us in assurance concerning the ancient translation, which, as the Council says, the Church has so long, so constantly, and so unanimously approved.

An example or two will suffice. In the Acts (ii. 27.), where there is: Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell (animam in inferno), they make it: Thou shalt not leave my corpse in the tomb (Cadaver in sepulchro). Whoever saw such versions ? Instead of soul (and it is Our Lord who is spoken of) to say carrion, and instead of hell to say sepulchre! Peter Martyr (in def. de Euch. p. 3a, p. 392) cites I Cor. x. 3, and they all eat the same spiritual food as we (nobiscum) he inserts this nobiscum to prove his point. I have seen in several bibles in this country a very subtle falsehood, in the mysterious words of the institution of the most Holy Sacrament: instead of hoc est corpus meum, cecy est mon corps: they had put: c’est cy mon corps. (Here is my body, instead of this is my body). Who does not perceive the deceit?

You see something then of the violence and profanation your ministers do and offer to the Scriptures what think you of their ways? What will become of us if everybody takes leave, as soon as he knows two words of Greek, and the letters in Hebrew, thus to turn everything topsy turvy ? I have therefore shown you what I promised, that this first rule of our faith has been and still is most sadly violated in your pretended church; and that you may know it to be a property of heresy thus to dismember the Scriptures, I will close this part of my subject with what Tertullian says, (de Proescr. xvii) speaking of the sects of his time. “This heresy “ [of the Gnostics] says he "does not receive some of the Scriptures ; and if it receives -some it does not receive them whole...and what receives in a certain sense whole it still perverts, devising various interpretations."  

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CHAPTER IX.
OF THE PROFANATIONS CONTAINED IN THE VERSIONS MADE INTO THE VULGAR TONGUE.

BUT if the case be thus with the Latin versions, how great are the contempt and profanation shown in the French, German, Polish, and other languages ! And yet here is one of the most successful artifices adopted by the enemy of Christianity and of unity in our age, to attract the people. He knew the curiosity of men, and how much one esteems one's own judgment; and therefore he has induced his sectaries to translate the Holy Scriptures, every one into the tongue of the province where he finds himself placed, and to maintain this unheard-of opinion, that every one is capable of understanding the Scriptures, that all should read them, and that the public offices should be celebrated and sung in the vulgar tongue of each district.

But who sees not the artifice ? There is nothing in the world which, passing through many hands, does not change and lose it first lustre: wine which has been often poured out and poured back loses its freshness and strength, wax when handled changes its colour, coins lose their stamp. Be sure also that Holy Scripture, passing through so many translators, in so many versions and re-versions, cannot but be altered. And if in the Latin versions there is such a variety of opinion among these turners of Scripture, how much more in their vernacular and mother-tongue editions, which not every one is able to check or to criticise ? It gives a very great license to translators to know that they will only be tested by those of their own province. Every district has not such clear seeing eyes as France and Germany. " Are we sure," says a learned profane writer,(Montaigne. Essaies I. 56) "that in the Basque province and in Brittany there are persons of sufficient judgment to give authority to this translation made into their tongue; the universal Church has no more arduous decision to give; "it is Satan's plan for corrupting the integrity of this holy Testament. He well knows the result of disturbing and poisoning the source; it is at once to spoil all that comes after.

But let us be frank. Do we not know that the Apostles spoke all tongues ? How is it then that their gospels and their epistles are only in Hebrew, as S -Jerome witnesses (Prol. in Matt.) of the Gospel of S. Matthew; in Latin, as some think concerning that of S. Mark; * (* In Pontificali Damasi. The Saint mentions the opinion, be he himself held the now universal sentiment of Doctors that S. Mark wrote in Greek.[Tr.]) and in Greek, as is held concerning the other Gospels? which were the three languages chosen at Our Lord's very cross for the preaching of the Crucified. Did they not carry the Gospel throughout the world ? and in the world were there no other languages but these three ? Truly there were and yet they did not judge it expedient to vary their writings in so many languages. Who then shall despise the custom of our Church, which has for its warrant the imitation of the Apostles?

[ Of this we have a notable trace and evidence in the Gospel : for the day Our Lord entered into Jerusalem, the crowds kept crying out Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he that comet& in the name of the Lord: hosanna in the highest (Matt. xxi. 9.) And this word, hosanna, has been left in its integrity in the Greek text of S. Mark and S. John, to signify that it was the very word of the people. Now hosanna, or hosaanna (for one is the same as the other in this language, the learned tell us) is a Hebrew, not a Syriac word, taken, with the rest of that praise which was given to Our Lord, from the 117th Psalm. These people then were accustomed to recite the Psalms in Hebrew; yet the Hebrew was no longer their vulgar tongue , as one may see by several words said in the Gospel by Our Lord, which were Syriac and which the Evangelists have retained : as Abba, Haceldama, Golgotha, Pascha, and others.Learned men tell us that these were not Hebrew but Syraic, though they may be called Hebrew as being of the vernacular tongue of the Hebrews after the captivity of Babylon.]

Now for this, besides the great weight it should have to put down all our curious questionings, there is a reason which I hold to be most sound it is that these other languages are not fixed, they change between town and town; in accents, in phrases, and in words, they are altered, and vary from season to season and from age to age. Take up the Memoires of the Sire de Joinville, or of Philip de Comines, and you will see that time has entirely altered their language; and yet these historians must have been among the most polished of their age, both having been brought up at Court. If then we were to have (particularly for the public services) bibles each in our own tongue, every fifty years it would be necessary to have a revolution, and in every case with adding to, or taking away from, or altering, much of the holy exactness of the Scripture, which could not be done without a great loss. In short, it is more than reasonable that so holy a rule as is the holy Word of God should be kept in fixed languages, since it could not be maintained in this perfect integrity within b*****d and unstable languages.

But I inform you that the holy Council of Trent does not reject translations in the vulgar tongue printed by the authority of the Ordinaries; only it commands (Reg. iv. Indicis.) that we should not begin to read them without leave of superiors. This is a very reasonable precaution against putting this sharp and two-edged sword ( Heb. iv. 12) into the hands of one who might kill himself therewith. But of this we will speak by and by.

The Church, then, does not approve that everybody who can read, without further assurance of his capacity than that which he persuades himself of in his own presumption, should handle this sacred memorial, nor truly is it right that she should so approve.

I remember to have read in an Essay of the Sieur de Montaigne's (see above), "It is certainly wrong that there should be seen tossing about in everybody's hands, in parlour and in kitchen, the holy book of the sacred mysteries of our belief. . . . It is not casually or hurriedly that we are to prosecute so serious and venerable a study; it should be a reflective and steady act, to which should always be added that preface of our office: sursum corda, and for which the body itself should be brought into a behaviour which may betoken a particular attention and reverence . . . and I moreover believe that liberty for everybody to translate it, and by this means to dissipate words so religious and important into all sorts of languages, has much more danger than profit."

The Council also commands (Sess. ii) that the public services of the Church shall not be celebrated in the vulgar tongue, but in a fixed language, each one according to the ancient formularies approved by the Church. This decree takes its reasons from what I have already said; for if it is not expedient thus to translate, at every turn, province by province, the venerable text of the Scripture, the greatest part, and we may say all, that is in the offices being taken from the Holy Scripture, it is also not becoming to give these in French. Indeed, is there not a greater danger in reciting the Holy Scripture in the vulgar tongue at public services, on this account that not only the old but little children, not only the wise but the foolish, not only men but women, in short both he who knows and he who knows not how to read, may all take occasion of erring, each one as he likes? Read the passages of David where he seems to murmur against God concerning the prosperity of the wicked; you will see the unwise people justify themselves by this in their impatience. Read where he seems to demand vengeance against his enemies, and the spirit of vengeance will cloak itself under this. Let them see those heavenly and entirely divine loves in the Canticle of Canticles; from not knowing how to spiritualize them these will only profit them unto evil. And that word of Osee (i.2): Vade et fac tibi filios fornicationes, and those acts of the ancient Patriarchs, would they not give license to fools ? But pray give us some little reason why we should have the Scrip tures and Divine Services in the vulgar tongue. To learn doctrine thereby? But surely the doctrine cannot be therein found unless we open the bark of the letter, in which is contained the intelligence: I will show this directly in its place. What is useful for this purpose is not the reciting of the service but preaching, in which the Word of God is not only pronounced but expounded by the pastor. And who is he, however well furnished at all points (tant houppe soft il et ferre), who can understand without study the prophecies of Ezechiel, and others, and the Psalms? What, then, will the people do with them when they hear them except profane them and cast a doubt on them.

At any rate we who are Catholics must in no wise bring down our sacred offices into vernacular languages; but rather, as our Church is universal in time and in place, it ought also to celebrate public offices in a language which is universal in time and in place, as is Latin in the West, Greek in the East; otherwise our priests could not say Mass nor others understand them outside their own countries. The unity and the great extension of our brethren require that we should say our public prayers in a language which shall be common to all peoples. In this way our prayers are universal, by means of the number of persons who in each province can understand Latin, and it seems to me, in conscience, that this reason alone should suffice; for if we consider rightly, our prayers are heard no less in Latin than in French. Let us divide the body of a commonwealth into three parts, according to the ancient French division, or, according to the new, into four; there are four sets of persons: the clergy, the nobility, they of the long robe, and the people or third estate. The three first understand Latin or should understand it, if they do not rather make it their own language; there remains the lowest rank, of which, again, a part understand; and truly as for the rest, if one do not speak the jargon of their country, it is only with great difficulty that they could understand the simple narrative of the Scripture. That most excellent theologian, Robert Bellarmine, relates, having heard it from a most trustworthy source, that a good dame in England having heard a minister read the twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus (though they only hold it to be an ancient book, not a canonical one), because it there speaks the wickedness of women, rose up, saying: What !-is this the Word of God? of the devil rather. He quotes from Theodoret an excellent and true word of S. Basil the Great. The chief of the Emperor's kitchen wishing to play the sage, began to bring forward certain passages of the Scripture: "It is yours [said the Saint] to mind your dishes, not to cook divine dogmata" as if he had said : Occupy yourself with tasting your sauces, not with devouring the divine Word.  

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CHAPTER X.
OF THE PROFANATION OF THE SCRIPTURES THROUGH THE FACILITY THEY PRETEND THERE IS IN UNDERSTANDING SCRIPTURE.

THE imagination must have great power over Huguenot understandings, since it persuades them so absolutely of this grand absurdity, that the Scriptures are easy to everybody, and that everybody can understand them. It is true that to bring forth vulgar translations with honour it was necessary to speak in this manner; but tell me the truth, do you think that the case really runs so? Do you find them so easy, do you understand them so well? If you think you do, I admire your credulity, which goes not only beyond experience, but is contrary to what you see and feel. If it is true that the Scripture is so easy to understand, what is the use of so many commentaries made by your ministers, what is the object of so many harmonies, what is the good of so many schools of Theology ? here is need of no more, say you, than the doctrine of the pure word of God in the Church. But where is this word of God? In the Scripture? And Scripture-is it some secret thing ? No-you say not to the faithful. Why, then, these interpreters and these preachers? If you are faithful, you will understand the Scriptures as well as they do; send them off to unbelievers, and simply keep some deacons to give you the morsel of bread and pour out the wine of your supper. If you can feed yourselves in the field of the Scripture, what do you want , with pastors? Some young innocent, some mere child who is able to read, will do just as well. But whence comes this continual and irreconcilable discord which there is among you, brethren in Luther, over these words, This is my body, and on Justification ? Certainly S. Peter is not of your thinking, who assures us in his 2nd Epistle (iii.16) that in the letters of S. Paul there are certain points hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scripture to their own Perdition. The eunuch who was treasurer-general, of Ethiopia was certainly faithful.(Acts viii) since he came to adore in the Temple of Jerusalem; he was reading Isaias ; he quite understood the words, since he asked of what prophet that which he had read was to be understood ; yet still he had not the understanding nor the spirit of them, as he himself confessed: How can I, unless some one shows me? Not only does he not understand, but he confesses that he has not the power unless he is taught. And we shall see some washerwoman boast of understanding the Scripture as well as S. Bernard did! Do you not know the spirit of discord ? It is necessary to convince oneself that the Scripture is easy in order that everybody may drab it about, some one way, some another, that each one may be a master in it, and that it may serve everybody's opinions and fancies. Certainly David held it to be far from easy when he said (Ps. Cxviii. 73) Give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments If they have left you the Epistle of S. Jerome to Paulinus in the preface of your bibles, read it, for it treats this point expressly. S. Augustine speaks of it in a thousand places, but particularly in his Confessions. In the 119th Epistle he confesses that there is much more in the Scripture of which he is ignorant than there is of what he knows. Origen and S. Jerome, the former in his preface on the Canticles, the latter in his on Ezechiel say that it was not permitted to the Jews before the age of thirty to read the three first chapters of Genesis, the commencement and the end of Ezechiel, or the Canticle of Canticles, on account of the depth of the difficulties therein, in which few persons can swim without being submerged. And now, everybody talks of them, everybody criticises them, everybody knows all about them.

And how great the profanation of the Scriptures is in this way nobody could sufficiently believe who had not seen it. As for me, I will say what I know, and I lie not. I have seen a person in good society who, when one objected to an expression of hers the sentence of Our Lord (Luke vi: 29) To him that striketh thee on the one cheek offer also the other,-immediately explained it in this sense: that as to encourage a child who studies well we lay our hand lightly with little pats upon his cheek to excite him to do better, so Our Lord meant to say be so grateful to one who may find you doing right and who may caress you for it that he may take occasion another time to treat you still better and to caress or fondle you on both sides. Is not that a fine meaning and a precious ? But the reason was even better,-that to understand this text otherwise would be against nature, and that while we must interpret Scripture by Scripture, we find in Scripture that Our Lord did not do so when the servant struck him: this is the fruit of your translated theology. An honest man, and one who in my opinion would not lie, has related to me that he heard a minister of this country, treating of the Nativity of Our Lord, assert that he was not born in a crib, and expound the text (which is express on the other side) figuratively, saying: Our Lord also says that he is the vine, yet for all that he is not one; in the same way, although it is said that he is born in a crib, yet born there he is not, but in some honourable place which in comparison with his greatness might be called a crib. The character of this interpretation leads me still more to believe the man who told me, for being simple and unable to read he could hardly have made it up. It is a most curious thing to see how this pretended enlightenment causes the Holy Scripture to be profaned. Is it not doing what God says in Ezechiel (xxxiv. 18 ): Was it not enough for you to feed upon good pastures; but you must also tread down with your feet the residue of the pastures?  

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CHAPTER XI.
ON THE PROFANATION OF THE SCRIPTURES IN THE VERSIFIED PSALMS USED BY THE PRETENDED REFORMERS BUT

amongst all profanations it seems to me that this comes out above the rest, that in the temples publicly, and everywhere, in the fields, in the shops, they sing the rhymes of Marot as Psalms of David. The mere incompetence of the author, who was utterly ignorant; his licentiousness, which he testifies by his writings; his most profane life, which had nothing whatever of the Christian about it, caused him to be refused the communion of the Church. And yet his name and his psalms are, as it were, sacred in your churches; they are recited among you as if they were David's, -whereas who sees not how the sacred word is violated? The measure and restrictions of verse make it impossible that the sacred meaning of the Scripture words should be followed; he mixes in his own to make sense, and it becomes necessary for this ignorant rhymester to choose one sense in places where there might be several. What! is it not an extreme violation and profanation to have left to such an empty-headed witling a judgment of such great consequence, and then in the public prayers to follow as closely this buffoon's selection as one ever did formerly the interpretation of the Seventy, who were so particularly assisted by the Holy Spirit ? How many words and how many sentences has he secreted therein which were never in the Scriptures?

This is a very different thing from ill-pronouncing Scibboleth.(Judges xii. 6) At the same time it is well known that there is nothing which has so delighted busybodies, and above all women, as this authorisation to sing in the church and at the meetings. Certainly we forbid no one to sing devoutly, modestly, and becomingly ; but it seems more proper that Ecclesiastics and their deputies should sing as a general rule, as was done in the Dedication of Solomon's Temple. O how delightful to get one's voice heard in the church! But do they not betray you in the songs they make you utter ? I have not leisure or convenience for going into the matter further. When you shout these verses of the 8th Psalm :-Thou hast made him such that no more remains to him except to be God; but as to all else thou hast, &c.--how delighted you are to be able to chant and sing these French rhymes Marottes. It would be much better to keep to the Latin than to blaspheme in French. Accept this warning. When you sing this verse, whom do you suppose you speak of? You speak of Our Lord, unless, to excuse the audacity of Marot and of your church, you also erase the Epistle to the Hebrews from the holy Bible: for S. Paul clearly there (ii. 6, 7, 8 ) expounds this verse of Our Lord. And if you speak of Our Lord, why do you say he is such that no more now remains for him except to be God? Questionless if anything now remains to him to be God he will never be it. What say you, poor people ?-that it "remains" for Jesus Christ to be God? See how those men make you swallow the poisoned morsel of Arianism, in singing these sorry rhymes. I am no longer astonished that Calvin confessed to Valentine Gentilis, that the Name of God by excellence belongs only to the Father. Behold the splendid eversions of the Scripture with which you are well pleased; behold the blasphemies which your Church sings in a body, and which she makes you repeat so often.

And as to this fashion of having the Psalms sung indifferently in all places and during all occupations, who sees not that it is a contempt of religion ? Is it not to offend His Divine Majesty to say to him words as excellent as those of the Psalms, without any reverence or attention? To say prayers after the manner of common talking, is this not a mocking of him to whom we speak ? When we see at Geneva or elsewhere a shop-boy laughing during the singing of the Psalms, and breaking the thread of a most beautiful prayer, to say: What will you buy, sir ? do we not clearly see that he is making an accessary of the principal, and that it is only for pastime that he was singing this divine song, which he at the same time believes to be of the Holy Spirit ? Is it not good to hear cooks singing the penitential Psalms of David, and asking at each verse for the bacon, the capon, the partridge! "That voice," says De Montaigne, "is too divine to have no other use than to exercise the lungs and please the ears." I allow that all places are good to pray in privately, and the same holds good of every occupation which is not sin, provided that we pray in spirit, because God sees the interior wherein lies the chief and substantial part of prayer. But I consider that he who prays in public ought to make exterior demonstration of the reverence which the very words he is uttering demand: otherwise he scandalises his neighbour, who is not bound to think there is religion in the interior when he sees the contempt in the exterior. I hold, then, that both in singing as divine Psalms what is very often an imagination of Marot's, and in singing them irreverently and without respect, they very often sin in that reformed church of yours against that word: God is a spirit, and those who adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth. (John iv. 23) For besides that in these Psalms you very often attribute to the Holy Ghost the conceptions of Marot contrary to the truth, the mouth also cries in streets and kitchens: O Lord! O Lord! when the heart and the spirit are not there but in traffic and gain, as Isaias says (xxix. 13): You draw near God with your mouth, and with your lips glorify him, but you heart is far from him, and you have feared him according to the commandments and doctrines of men. It is quite true that this impropriety of praying without devotion occurs very often among Catholics, but it is not with the advertence of the Church: and I am not now blaming particular members of your party, but your body in general, which by its versions and liberties bring into profane use what should be treated with the greatest reverence. In chapter 14. Of the 1st of Corinthians, the Let women keep silence in the churches seems to be understood of hymns (cantiques) as much as of the rest: our nuns are in oratorio non in ecclesia.  

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CHAPTER XII.

ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS; AND CONCLUSION OF THIS FIRST ARTICLE

Now follows what you allege in your defence. S. Paul seems (Cor. xiv.) to want to have the service performed in a language intelligible to the Corinthians; you will see that at the same time he does not wish the service to be diversified with all sorts of languages, but only that the exhortations and hymns which were uttered by means of the gift of tongues should be interpreted, in order that the Church where any one might be should know what was said: And therefore he that speaketh by a tongue, let him pray that he may interpret. He intends, then, that the praises which were made at Corinth should be made in Greek: for as they were made not now as ordinary services, but as the extraordinary hymns of those who had this gift, for the gladdening of the people, it was reasonable that they should be made in intelligible language, or be at once interpreted. This he seems to show when he says lower down: If, therefore, the whole church come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in unlearned persons or infidels, will they not say that you are mad? And further on: If any spealy with a tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and in course, and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him hold his peace in the church, and speak to himself and to God. Who sees not that he is not speaking of the solemn offices in the Church, which were only performed by the pastor, but of the hymns which were made through the gift of tongues, which he wished to be understood ? for in truth if they were not, it distracted the assembly, and was of no benefit. Several ancient Fathers speak of these hymns, and amongst others Tertullian, who, treating of the holiness of the agapes or love feasts of the ancients, says: "After the washing of hands and the lamps,-each one is pressed to sing publicly to God as he is able, out of the Holy Scriptures or his own heart." (Apol. xxxix.)

This people glorify me with their lips, but their heart, &c. (Isaiah xxix. 13)This is meant of those who, singing and praying in any language whatever, speak of God mechanically, without reverence and devotion; not of those who speak a language unknown to them but known to the Church, and who, moreover, have their heart rapt unto God.

In the Acts of the Apostles they praised God in all tongues. So they should do; but in universal and Catholic offices there is need of a universal and Catholic language. Except for this, every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is at the right hand of God the Father (Phil. ii:11)

In Deuteronomy (ch. 30), it is said that the commandments of God are not secret or sealed up; and does not the Psalmist say: The commandment of the Lord is lightsome: thy word is a lamp to my feet ?(Ps. xviii. cxviii) That is all very true, but it means when preached and explained, and properly understood. How shall they believe without a preacher! "(Romans x. 14). And all that the great Prophet David has said is not to be understood of everybody.

But you object to me: in any case, ought I not to seek the meat of my soul and of my salvation? Poor man, who denies it ? But if everybody goes to pasture like the old ewes, what is the need of shepherds ? Seek the pastures, but with your pastor. Should we not laugh at the sick man who would find his health in Hippocrates without the help of the doctor, or at him who would seek out his rights in Justinian without betaking himself to the judge? Seek, one would say to him, your health by means of doctors; seek your right and gain it, but by the hands of the magistrate. "What man of moderately sound mind does not understand that the exposition of the Scriptures is to be sought from those who are doctors in them ? " says S. Augustine (De Moribus Eccl.) But if no one can find his salvation except the one who can read the Scriptures, what will become of so many poor ignorant people ? Surely they find and seek their salvation quite satisfactorily when they learn from the mouth of the pastor the substance of what they must believe, hope for, love, do, and ask of God. Believe that also according to the spirit that is true which the Wise Man says: Better is the poor man walking in his simplicity than the rich in crooked ways (Prov. xxviii. 6); and elsewhere: The simplicity of the just shall guide them (xi. 3) and : He that walketh sincerely walketh conficdently ( x. 9), where I do not mean to say that we must not take the trouble to understand, but only that we must not expect to find our salvation and our pasturage of ourselves, without the guidance of those whom God has appointed unto this end, according to the same Wise Man: Lean not upon thy prudence, and be not wise in thy own conceit (iii. K, 7). Which they do not practice who think that of their own wisdom they know all sorts of mysteries; not observing the order which God has established; who has made amongst us some doctors and pastors, -not all, and not each one for himself. Indeed, S. Augustine found that S. Anthony, an unlearned man, failed not to know the way of Paradise; and he with all his doctrine was very far therefrom, at that time amid the errors of the Manichaeans. (Confessions, viii. 8 ).

But I have some testimonies of antiquity, and some signal examples, which I would leave you at the end of this article as its conclusion.

S. Augustine ( De Verbis Domini. Serm. viii.) "Your charity was to be admonished that confession (confessionem) is not always the voice of a sinner; for as soon as this word of the Lector sounded, there followed the sound of your striking your breast; that is, as soon as you heard that the Lord said: I confess to thee, Father, immediately the word I confess sounded, you struck your breasts; now to strike the breast, what is it but to signify what lies in the breast, and with a visible stroke to chastise an unseen sin ? Why did you do this but because you heard I confess to thee, Father ? You heard I confess, but you did not take notice who was confessing. Now therefore take notice." Do you see how the people heard the public reading of the Gospel, and did not understand it, except this word: I confess to thee, Father; which they understood by custom, because it was said just at the beginning of the Mass as we say it now. It was, no doubt, because the reading was in Latin, which was not their vulgar tongue.

But he who would see the esteem in which Catholics hold the holy Scripture, and the respect they bear it, should regard the great Cardinal Borromeo, who never studied in the Holy Scriptures save on his knees, it seeming to him that he heard God speaking in them, and that such reverence was due to so divine a hearing. Never was a people better instructed, considering the malice of the age, than the people of Milan under the Cardinal Borromeo; but the instruction of the people does not come by force of hurrying over the holy Bible, or often reading the mere letter of this divine Scripture, nor by singing snatches of the Psalms as the fancy takes one; but by using them, by reading, hearing, singing, praying to God, with a lively apprehension of the majesty of God to whom we speak, whose Word we read, evermore with that Preface of the ancient Church: sursum corda.

That great servant of God, S. Francis, of whose glorious and most holy memory the Feast was celebrated yesterday (*written probably October 5, 1595) throughout the whole world, showed us a beautiful example of the attention and reverence with which we ought to pray to God. This is what the holy and fervent Doctor of the Church, S. Bonoventure, tells of it. (In Vita Fr. "The holy man was accustomed to recite the Canonical Hours not less reverently than devoutly; for although he was labouring under an infirmity of the eyes, the stomach, the spleen, and the liver, he would not lean against wall or other support while he was singing, but recited the hours always standing and bare headed, not with wandering eyes, nor with any shortening of verse or word; if sometimes he were on a journey he then made a fixed arreangment of time, not omitting this reverent and holy custom on account of pouring rain; for he used to say: If the body eats quitetly its food which, with itself, is to be food of worms, how great should the peace and tranquillity with which the soul should take the food of life?”  

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On the Mission of the Church


CHAPTER I.
The lack of mission in the ministers of the new pretended church leaves both them and their followers without excuse.

FIRST, then, your ministers had not the conditions required for the position which they sought to maintain, and the enterprise which they undertook. Wherefore they are inexcusable; and you yourselves also, who knew and still know or ought to know, this defect in them, have done very wrong in receiving them under such colours. The office they claimed was that of ambassadors of Jesus Christ Our Lord; the affair they undertook was to declare a formal divorce between Our Lord and the ancient Church His Spouse; to arrange and conclude by words of present consent, as lawful procurators, a second and new marriage with this young madam, of better grace, said they, and more seemly than the other. For in effect, to stand up as preacher of God’s Word and pastor of souls, - what is it but to call oneself ambassador and legate of Our Lord, according to that of the Apostle (2 Cor. v. 20): We are therefore ambassadors for Christ? And to say that the whole of Christendom has failed, that the whole Church has erred, and all truth disappeared,-what is this but - to say that Our Lord has abandoned his Church, has broken the sacred tie of marriage he had contracted with her? And to put forward a new Church, - is it not to attempt to thrust upon this sacred and holy Husband a second wife? This is what the ministers of the pretended church have undertaken; this is what they boast of having done; this has been the aim of their discourses, their designs, their writings. But what an injustice have you not committed in believing them? How did you come to take their word so simply? How did you so lightly give them credit?

To be legates and ambassadors they should have been sent, they should have had letters of credit from him whom they boasted of being sent by. The affairs were of the greatest importance, for there was question of disturbing the whole Church. The persons who undertook them were extraordinaries, of mean quality, and private persons; while the ordinary pastors were men of mark, and of most ancient and acknowledged reputation, who contradicted them and protested that these extraordinaries had no charge nor commandment of the Master. Tell me, what business had you to hear them and believe them without having any assurance of their commission and of the approval of Our Lord, whose legates they called themselves? In a word, you have no justification for having quitted that ancient Church in which you were baptized, on the faith of preachers who had no legitimate mission from the Master.

Now you cannot be ignorant that they neither had, nor have, in any way at all, this mission. For if Our Lord had sent them, it would have been either mediately or immediately. We say mission is given mediately when we are sent by one who has from God the power of sending, according to the order which He has appointed in His Church; and such was the mission of S. Dennis into France by Clement and of Timothy by S. Paul. Immediate mission is when God Himself commands and gives a charge, without the interposition of the ordinary authority which He has placed in the prelates and pastors of the Church: as S. Peter and the Apostles were sent, receiving from Our Lord’s own mouth this commandment: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark xvi. 15); and as Moses received his mission to Pharaoh and to the people of Israel. But neither in the one nor in the other way have your ministers any mission. How then have they undertaken to preach? How shall they preach, says the Apostle, unless they be sent?(Rom. x. 15)  

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CHAPTER II.
That the pretended reformers had no mediate mission either from the people or from the Bishops.

AND first, as to the ordinary and mediate mission, they .have none whatever. For what they can put forward is either that they are sent by the people and secular princes, or else that they are sent by the imposition of the hands of the bishops who made them priests, a dignity to which at last they must have recourse, although they despise it altogether and everywhere.

Now, if they say that the secular magistrates and people have sent them, they will have two proofs to give which they never can give, the one that the seculars have done it, the other that they could do it, for we deny both the fact and the right (factum et jus faciendi).

And that they could not do it the reason is absolute. For (1.) they will never find that the people and secular magistrates had the Power to establish and Institute bishops in the Church. They will indeed perhaps find that the people have given testimony and assisted at ordinations; yea, perhaps, that the choice has been given to them, like that of the deacons, as Luke tells us (Acts vi.), which the whole body of the faithful made; but they will never show that the people or secular princes have authority to give mission or to appoint pastors. How then do they allege a mission by people or princes, which has no foundation in the Scripture?

(2.) On the contrary, we bring forward the express practice of the whole Church, which from all time has been to ordain the Pastors by the imposition of the hands of the other Pastors and bishops. Thus was Timothy ordained and the seven deacons themselves, though proposed by the Christian people, were ordained by the imposition of the Apostles’ hands. Thus have the Apostles appointed in their Constitutions; and the great Council of Nice (which methinks one will not despise) and that of Carthage- the second, and then immediately the third, and the fourth, at which St. Augustine assisted. If then they have been sent by the laity, they are not sent in Apostolic fashion, nor legitimately, and their mission is null.

(3.) In fact, the laity have no mission, and how then shall they give it? How shall they communicate the authority which they have not? And therefore S. Paul, speaking of the priesthood and pastoral order, says: Neither doth any man take the honour to himself but he that is called by God, as Aaron was (Heb. v. 4). Now Aaron was consecrated and ordained by the hands of Moses, who was a priest himself, according to the holy word of David (Ps. xcviii. 7), Moses and Aaron among his priests and Samuel among those who call upon his name; and, as is indicated in Exodus (xxviii. 1) in this word, take unto thee also Aaron thy brother, with his sons…that they may minister to me in the priest’s office; with which agree a great army of our Ancients. Whoever then would assert his mission must not assert it as being from the people nor from secular princes. For Aaron was not called in that way, and we cannot be called otherwise than he was.

(4.) Finally, that which is less is blessed by the better, as S. Paul says (Heb. vii. 7). The people then cannot send the pastors; for the pastors are greater than the people, and mission is not given without blessing (John xiii. 16). For after this magnificent mission the people remain sheep, and the shepherd remains shepherd. (5.) I do not insist here, as I will prove it hereafter, that the Church is monarchical, and that therefore the right of sending belongs to the chief pastor, not to the people. I omit the disorder which would arise if the people sent; for they Gould not send to one another, one people having no authority over the other; and what free play would this give to all sorts of heresies and fancies? It is necessary then that the sheep should receive the shepherd from elsewbere, and should not give him to themselves.(Acts xv. 24) The people therefore were not able to give legitimate mission or commission to these new ambassadors. But I say further that even if they could they did not. For this people was of the true Church or not: if it was of the true Church why did Luther take it therefrom? Would it really have called him in order to be taken out of its place and of the Church? And if it were not of the true Church, how could it have the right of mission and of vocation? -outside the true Church there cannot be such authority. If they say this people was not Catholic, what was it then? it was not Lutheran ; for we all know that when Luther began to preach in Germany there were no Lutherans, and it was he who was their origin. Since then such a people did not belong to the true Church, how could it give mission for true preaching? They have then no vocation from that source, unless they have recourse to the invisible mission received from the principalities and powers of the world of this darkness, and the spiritual wickednesss against which good Catholics have always waged war. Many therefore of our age, seeing the road cut off on that side, have betaken themselves to the other, and say that the first masters and reformers – Luther, Bucer, Oecolampadius- were sent by the bishops who made them priests; then they sent their followers, and so they would go on to blend their rights with those of the Apostles.

In good sooth it is to speak frankly and plainly indeed, thus to confess that mission can only have passed to their ministers from the Apostles by the succession of our bishops and the imposition of their hands. Of course the case is really so: one cannot give this mission so high a fall that from the Apostles it should leap into the hands of the preachers of nowadays without having touched any of our ancients and foregoers: it would have required a very long speaking-tube in the mouth of the first founders of the Church to call Luther and the rest without being overheard by any of those who were between: or else, as Calvin says on another occasion, not much to the point, these must have had very long ears. It must have been kept sound indeed, if these were to find it. We agree then that mission was possessed by our bishops, and particularly by their head, the Roman Bishop. But we formally deny that your ministers have had any communication of it, to preach what they have preached. Because (1.) they preach things contrary to the Church in which they have been ordained priests; therefore either they err or the Church which has sent them errs; - and consequently either their church is false or the one from which they have taken mission.

If it be that from which they have taken mission, their mission is false, for from a false Church there cannot spring a true mission. Whichever way it be, they had no mission to preach what they preached, because, if the Church in which they have been ordained were true, they are heretics for having left it, and for having preached against its belief, and if it were not true it could not give them mission.

(2.) Besides, though they had had mission in the Roman Church, they had none to leave it, and withdraw her children from her obedience. Truly the commissioner must not exceed the limits of his commission, or his act is null. (3.) Luther, Oecolampadius, and Calvin were not bishops: how then could they communicate any mission to their successors on the part of the Roman Church. which protests always and everywhere that it is only the bishops who can send, and that this belongs in no way to simple priests? In which even S. Jerome has placed the difference between the simple priest and the bishop, in the Epistle to Evagrius, and S. Augustine (De Haer. 53) and Epiphanius (Haeres. 75) reckon Aerius with heretics because he held the contrary.  

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CHAPTER III.
The pretended reformers had no immediate or extraordinary mission from God.

THESE reasons are so strong that the most solid of your party have taken ground elsewhere than in the ordinary mission, and have said that they were sent extraordinarily by God because the ordinary mission had been ruined and abolished, with the true Church itself, under the tyranny of Antichrist. This is their most safe refuge, which, since it is common to all sorts of heretics, is worth attacking in good earnest and overthrowing completely. Let us then place our argument in order, to see if we can force this their last barricade.

First, I say then that no one should allege an extraordinary mission unless he prove it by miracles: for, I pray you, where should we be if this pretext of extraordinary mission was to be accepted without proof? Would it not be a cloak for all sorts of reveries? Arius, Marcion, Montanus, Messalius- could they not be received into this dignity of reformers, by swearing the same oath?

Never was any one extraordinarily sent unless he brought this letter of credit from the divine Majesty. Moses was sent immediately by God to govern the people of Israel. He wished to know his name who sent him; when he had learnt the admirable name of God, he asked for signs and patents of his commission: God so far found this request good that he gave him the grace of three sorts of prodigies and marvels, which were, so to speak, three attestations in three different languages, of the charge which he gave him, in order that any one who did not understand one might understand another. lf then they allege extraordinary mission, let them show us some extraordinary works, otherwise we are not obliged to believe them. In truth Moses clearly shows the necessity of this proof for him who would speak extraordinarily: for having to beg from God the gift of eloquence, he only asks it after having the power of miracles ; showing that it is more necessary to have authority to speak than to have readiness in speaking.

The mission of S. John Baptist, though it was not altogether extraordinary, -was it not authenticated by his conception, his nativity, and even by that miraculous life of his, to which our Lord gave such excellent testimony? But as to the Apostles,- who does not know the miracles they did and the great number of them? Their handkerchiefs, their shadow, served for the prompt healing of the sick and driving away of the devils; by the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done amongst the people (Acts xiv. 5) and that this was in confirmation of their preaching S. Mark declares quite explicitly in the last words of his Gospel, and S. Paul to the Hebrews (ii. 4) How then shall those who in our age would allege an extraordinary mission excuse and relieve themselves of this proof of their mission? What privilege have they greater than an Apostolic, a Mosaic? What shall I say more. If our sovereign Master, consubstantial with the Father, having a mission so authentic that it comprises the communication of the same essence, if he himself, I say, who is the living source of all Ecclesiastical mission, has not chosen to dispense himself from this proof of miracles, what reason is these that these new ministers should be believed an their mere word? Our Lord very often alleges his mission to give credit to his words: As my Father hath sent me I also send you (John xx. 21); My doctrine is not mine, but of him that sent me (ibid. vii. 16); You both know me, and you know whence I am; and I am not come of myself (ibid. 28 ). But also, to give authority to his mission, he brings forward his miracles, and attests that if he had not done among the Jews works which no other man had done, they would not have sinned in not believing him. And elsewhere he says to them: Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Otherwise believe for the works themselves. (ibid. xiv. 11, 12). He then who would be so rash as to boast of extraordinary mission without immediately producing miracles, deserves to be taken for an impostor. Now it is a fact that neither the first nor the last ministers have worked a single miracle: therefore they have no extraordinary mission. Let us proceed.

I say, in the second place, that never must an extraordinary mission be received when disowned by the ordinary authority which is the Church of Our Lord. For (1.) we are obliged to obey our ordinary pastors under pain of being heathens and publicans (Matt. xviii. 17): - how then can we place ourselves under other discipline than theirs? Extraordinaries would come in vain, since we should be obliged to refuse to listen to them, in the case that they were, as I have said, disowned by the ordinaries. (II.) God is not the author of dissention, but of union and peace (I Cor. xiv. 33), principally amongst his disciples and Church ministers; as Our Lord clearly shows in the holy prayer he made to his Father in the last days of His mortal life. (John xvii.)

How then should he authorise two sorts of pastors, the one extraordinary, the other ordinary? As to the ordinary- it certainly is authorised, and as to the extraordinary we are supposing it to be; there would then be two different churches, which is contrary to the Most pure word of Our Lord, who has but one sole spouse, one sole dove, one sole perfect one (Cant. vi.) And how could that be a united flock which should be led by two shepherds, unknown to each other, into different pastures, with different calls and folds, and each of them expecting to have the whole. Thus would it be with the Church under a variety of pastors ordinary and extraordinary, dragged hither and thither into various sects. Or is Our Lord divided (I Cor. i. 13) either in himself or in his body, which is the Church?-no, in good truth. On the contrary, there is but one Lord, who has composed his mystic body with a goodly variety of members, a body compacted and fitly joined together by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part (Eph. iv. 16).

Therefore to try to make in the Church this division of ordinary and extraordinary members is to ruin and destroy it. We must then return to what we said, that an extraordinary vocation is never legitimate where it is disapproved of by the ordinary.

(3.) And in effect where will you ever show me a legitimate extraordinary vocation which has not been received by the ordinary authority. S. Paul was extraordinarily called -but was he not approved and authorised by the ordinary once and again? (Acts ix. 13). And the Mission received from the ordinary authority is called a mission by the Holy Spirit (ibid. xiii. 4.). The Mission of S John Baptist cannot properly be called extraordinary because he taught nothing contrary to the Mosaic Church, and because he was of the priestly race. All the same, his doctrine being unusual was approved by the ordinary teaching Office of the Jewish Church in the high embassy which was sent to him by the priests and Levites (John i. 19), the tenor of which implies the great esteem and reputation in which he was with them; and the very Pharisees who were seated an the chair of Moses,- did they not come to communicate in his baptism quite openly and unhesitatingly? This truly was to receive his mission in good earnest. Did not Our Lord, who was the Master, will to be received by Simeon, who was a priest, as appears from his blessing Our Lady and Joseph; by Zachary the priest; and by S. John? And for his passion, which was the principal fulfilment of his Mission,-did he not will to have the prophetic testimony of him who was High Priest at that time.

And this is what S. Paul teaches when he will have no man to take the pastoral honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was (Heb v. 4) "For the vocation of Aaron was Made by the ordinary, Moses, so that it was not God who placed his holy word in the mouth of Aaron immediately, but Moses, whom God commanded to do it: Speak to him, and put my words in his mouth; and I will be in thy mouth, and in his mouth (Ex. iv. 15). And if we consider the words of S. Paul, we shall further learn that the vocation of pastors and Church rulers must be made visibly; and so with Our Lord and Master; who, being sovereign pontiff, and pastor of all the ages, did not glorify himself, that is, did not take to himself the honour of his holy priesthood, as S. Paul had previously said, but he who said to him Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; and, Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. I beg you to ponder this expression - Jesus Christ is a high priest according to the order of Melchisedech . Was he inducted and thrust into this honour by himself? No, he was called thereto. Who called him? His eternal Father. And how? Immediately and at the same time mediately: immediately at his Baptism and his Transfiguration, by this voice: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him; mediately by the Prophets, and above all by David in the places which S. Paul cites to this effect from the Psalms: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee: Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech. And everywhere the vocation is externally perceptible: the word in the cloud was heard, and in David hear and read; but S. Paul in proving the vocation of Our Lord quotes only the passage from David, in which he says Our Lord had been glorified by his Father; thus contenting himself with bringing forward the testimony which was perceptible, and given by means of the ordinary Scriptures and the received Prophets.

I say, thirdly, that the authority of the extraordinary mission never destroys the ordinary, and is never given to overthrow it. Witness all the Prophets, who never set up altar against altar, never overthrew the priesthood of Aaron, never abolished the constitutions of the Synagogue. Witness Our Lord, who declares that every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation, and a house upon a house shall fall (Luke xi. 17). Witness the respect which he paid to the chair of Moses, the doctrine of which he would have to be observed. And indeed if the extraordinary ought to abolish the ordinary, how should we know when, and how, and to whom, to give our obedience. No, no; the ordinary is immortal for such time as the Church is here below in the world. The pastors and teachers whom he has once given to the Church are to have a perpetual succession for the perfection of the saints . . . till we all meet in the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ. That we may not now be children, tossed to and fro, an d carried about with every wind -i doctrine, in the wickedness of men and in their craftiness (Eph. iv. 1) Such is the strong argument which S. Paul uses to prove that if the ordinary pastors and doctors had not perpetual succession, and were liable to have their authority abrogated by the extraordinary, we should also have but an irregular faith and discipline, interrupted at every step; we should be liable to be seduced by men, who on every occasion would boast of having an extraordinary vocation. Thus like the Gentiles we should walk (as he infers afterwards) in the vanity of our mind (ibid. 17), each one persuading himself that he felt the movement of the Holy Ghost; of which our age furnishes so many examples that this is one of the strongest proofs that can be brought forward in this connection. For if the extraordinary may talge away the ordinary ministration, to which shall we give the guardianship of it - to Calvin or to Luther, to Luther or to Paciomontanus, to Paciomontanus or to Brandratus, to Brandratus or to Brentius, to Brentius or to the Queen of England? - for each will draw to his or her side this pretext of extraordinary mission.

But the word of Our Lord frees us from all these difficulties, who has built his Church an so good a foundation and in such wise proportions that the Bates of hell shall never prevail against it. And if they have never prevailed not shall prevail, then the extraordinary vocation is not necessary to abolish it, for God hateth nothing of those things which he has made (Wis. xi. 25). How then did they abolish the ordinary Church, to make an extraordinary one, since it is he, who has built the ordinary one, and cemented it with his own blood?  

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CHAPTER IV.
An answer to the two objections which are made by the supporters of the theory of immediate mission.

I HAVE not been able hitherto to find but two objections amongst your masters to this reasoning which I have just made, one of which is taken from the example of Our Lord and the Apostles, the other from the example of the Prophets.

And as to the first - tell me, I pray, do you think it right to place in comparison the vocation of those new ministers and that of Our Lord? Had not Our Lord been prophesied as the Messias- had not his time been determined by Daniel? - did he do a single action which had not been described almost exactly in the books of the Prophets, and prefigured in the Patriarchs? He changed the Mosaic law from good into better; but had not this change been predicted? He consequently changed the Aaronic priesthood into that of Melchisedech, far better: is not all this according to the ancient testimonies? Your ministers have not been prophesied as preachers of the word of God, nor the time of their coming, nor a single one of their actions. They have made a revolution in the Church much greater and holder than Our Lord made in the synagogue; for they have taken all away, only putting back certain shadows: but testimonies to this effect have they none. At any rate they should not elude their obligation of bringing forward miracles in support of such a change, whatever pretext you may draw from the Scriptures, since out Lord dispensed not himself from this, as I have shown above. But whence will they Show me that the Church was ever to receive another form, or a like reformation to the one which our Lord made?

And as to the Prophets, I see many persons under a delusion. It is supposed that all the vocations of the Prophets were extraordinary and immediate. A false idea: for there were colleges and congregations of the Prophets approved by the Synagogue, as may be gathered from many passages of the Scriptures. There were such in Ramatha, in Bethel, in Jericho where Eliseus dwelt, on Mount Ephraim, in Samaria; Eliseus himself was anointed by Heli; the vocation of Samuel was recognised and approved by the High Priest; and with Samuel the Lord began to appear again in Silo, as says the Scripture (I Kings iii. 21); whence the Jews regard Samuel as the founder of the congregations of Prophets.

It is supposed that all those who prophesied exercised the office of preaching; which is not true, as appears from what occurred with the officers of Saul and with Saul himself (Ibid. xix.): in such sort that the vocation of the Prophets has no bearing on that of heretics or schismatics. For (i.) it was either ordinary, as we have shown above, or else approved by the remainder of the Synagogue, as is easy to see in their being immediately recognised, and in their being highly esteemed everywhere amongst the Jews, who called them "men of God:" and he who will attentively examine the history of that ancient Synagogue will see that the office of priests was as common among them as that of preachers amongst us.

(2.) Never can be pointed out Prophet who wished to overthrow the ordinary power; on the contrary, all followed it, and spoke nothing contrary to the doctrine of those who sat upon the chair of Moses and of Aaron; indeed, some of them were of the priestly race, as Jeremias son of Helcias, and Ezechiel son of Buzi. They have always spoken with honour of the priests and the sacerdotal succession, though they have reprehended their lives. Isaias when about to write in a great book which was shown him, took Urias the priest, though the things were yet to come, and Zacharias the prophet as witnesses, (Isa. viii. I, 2),as if he were taking the testimony of all the Priests and Prophets. And does not Malachy bear witness (ii. 7) that the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the Angel of the Lord of hosts?-so far were they from ever having withdrawn the Jews from the communion of the Ordinary.

(3). How many miracles did the Prophets work in confirmation of the prophetic vocation? I should never end if I were to enter upon the computation of there: but at such times as they did a thing which had an appearance of extraordinary power, immediately miracles followed. Witness Elias, who, setting up an altar on Mount Carmel according to the instinct which the Holy Spirit had given him, and offering sacrifice, showed by miracle that he did it to the honour of God and of the Jewish religion.

(4.) And finally, it would well become your ministers to usurp the power of the Prophets-they who have never had either their gift or their light! It should rather be for us to do so for us, who could bring forward an infinity of Prophets an our side. For instance, S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, an the authority of S. Basil; S. Anthony, an the testimony of Athanasius; the Abbot John, an the testimony of S. Augustine; S. Benedict, S. Bernard, S. Francis, and a thousand others. If, then, there is question between us of the prophetic authority, this is an our side, be it ordinary or be it extraordinary, since we have the reality; not with your ministers, who have never given the shadow of a proof of its possession; unless they would call a prophecy Zwingle's vision in the book called Subsidium de Eucharistia, and the book entitled Querela Lutherii, or the prediction he made in the twenty-fifth year of this century that if he preached two years more there would remain no Pope, nor priests, nor monks, nor belfries, nor mass. Truly there is but one defect in this prophecy-just want of truth. For he preached nigh twenty-two years longer, and yet there are still found priests and belfries, and in the chair of Peter sits a lawful Pope.

Your first ministers then, gentlemen, are of the prophets whom God forbade to be heard, in Jeremias (xxiii.): Hearken not to the words of the Prophets that prophesy to you and deceive you, they speak a vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord. …I did not send prophets yet they ran; I have not spoken to them yet they prophesied. . . . I have heard what the prophets said, that prophecy lies in my name, and say, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. Does it not seem to you that it is Zwingle and Luther, with their prophecies and visions? that it is Carlstadt, with his revelation which he pretended to have had about the Lord's Supper, and which gave occasion to Luther, to write his book Contra scelestos prophetas. At any rate they certainly possess this property of not having been sent; it is they who use their tongues, and say, The Lord saith it. For they can never prove any right to the office which they usurp; they can never produce any legitimate vocation. And how then shall they preach? One cannot enrol oneself under any captain without the approval of one's prince: how then were you so ready to engage yourselves under the command of these first ministers, without the permission of your ordinary pastors, and so far as to leave the state in which you were born and bred, which is the Catholic Church? They are guilty of having made this disturbance by their own authority, and you of having followed them, in which you are inexcusable. The good little Samuel, humble, gentle, and holy, having been called thrice by God, thought all the time that it was Heli who was calling him, and only at the fourth time addressed himself to God as to the one calling him.

It has seemed to your ministers that God has thrice called them, (i.) by peoples and magistrates; (2.) by our bishops; (3.) by his extraordinary voice. No, no! Let them not bring this forward, that Samuel was called thrice by God, and in his humility thought it was a call by man, until, instructed by Heli, he knew that it was the divine voice. Your ministers, gentlemen, allege three vocations of God, by secular magistrates, by the bishops, and by his extraordinary voice. They think that it is God who has called them in those three ways: but you do not find that when they are instructed by the Church they acknowledge that theirs is a vocation of man, and that their ears have tingled to the old Adam; by no means do they submit the question to him who, as Heli did, now presides in the Church.

Such then is the first reason which makes your ministers and you also inexcusable, though unequally so, before God and men in having left the Church. On the contrary, gentlemen, the Church, who contradicted and opposed your first ministers, and still opposes those of the present day, is so clearly marked an all sides that no one, blind as he may be, can pretend that his is a case of ignorance of the duty which all good Christians owe her, or that she is not the true, sole, inseparable, and dearest Spouse of the heavenly King, which makes the separation from her all the more inexcusable. For to leave the Church and disregard her commands is evermore to become a heathen and a publican, let it be at the persuasion of an angel or a seraph. But, at the persuasion of men who were sinners on the largest scale against other private persons, who were without authority, without approval, without any quality required in preachers or prophets save the were knowledge of certain sciences, to break all the ties of the most religious obligation of obedience which is in the world, namely, that which is owing to the Church as Spouse of our Lord! -this is a fault which cannot be covered save by a great repentance and penitence - to which invite you on the part of the living God.  

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CHAPTER V.
That the invisible church from which the innovators pretend to derive their mission is a figment, and that the true Church of Christ is visible.

OUR adversaries, clearly perceiving that by this touchstone their doctrine would be recognised as of base gold, try by all means to turn us from that invincible proof which we find in the marks of the true Church. And therefore they would maintain that the Church is invisible and unperceivable. I consider that this is the extreme of absurdity, and that immediately beyond this abide frenzy and madness. I speak of the militant Church of which the Scripture has left us testimony, not of that which men put forward. Now, in all the Scripture it will never be found that the Church is taken for an invisible assembly. Here are our reasons.

(1.) Our Lord and Master sends us to the Church in our difficulties and variances (Matt. xviii. 16, 17). S. Paul teaches how we ought to behave in it (I Tim. iii. 15); he called together the ancients of the Church militant (Acts xx. 17); he shows them that they are placed by the Holy Ghost(ibid. 28 ); he is sent by the Church, with S. Barnabas (Ibid. xiii., 1, 3). He is received by the Church (ibid. xv. 4); he confirmed the Churches (ibid. 41); he ordained for them priest sin every Church (ibid. xiv. 22); he assembled the Church (ibid. 26); he saluted the Church at Caesarea (ibid. xviii. 22); he persecuted the Church (Gal. i. 13). How can all this be understood of an invisible Church? Where should one seek it to lay complaints before it, to converse in it, to rule it? When it sent S. Paul, and received him, when he confirmed it, ordained priests in it, assembled it, saluted it, presecuted it- was this n figure or in faith only, and in spirit? I am sure that everybody must see that these were visible and perceptible acts on both sides. And when he wrote to it, did he address himself to some invisible chimera?

(2.) What will be said about the Prophets, who represent the Church to us as not only visible, but quite distinct, illustrious, manifest, magnificent? They depict it as a queen in golden borders clothed round about with varieties (Ps. xliv. 14, 15); as a mountain (Isa. ii. 2); as a sun (Ps. lxxxviii.); as a full moon; as the rainbow, a faithful and certain witnessof the favour of God towards men, who are all of the posterity of Noe[Noah]: such is the signification of this Psalm in our version: Et thronus ejus sicut sol in conspectu meo, et sicut luna perfecta in aeternum et testis in coelo fidelis.

(3.) The Scripture everywhere testifies that she can be seen and known, yea, that she is known. Solomon, in the Canticle of Canticles (vi.), speaking of the Church, does he not say that And thus introducing the daughters, full of admiration he makes them say: Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? Is this not to declare her visible? And when he makes them call upon her thus: Return, return, O Sulamitess; return, return, that we may behold thee; and makes her answer: What shalt thou see in the Sulamitess but the companies of camps? - is not this again to declare her visible? If one regard those admirable Canticles and pastoral representations of the loves of the celestial Bridegroom with the Church, one will see that she is throughout most visible and prominent. Isaias speaks of her thus (xxxv. 8 ): This shall be unto you a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein; - must she not be displayed and easy to see, since even the simplest shall be able to guide themselves by her without fail?

(4.) The pastors and doctors of the Church are visible, therefore the Church is visible. For, I ask you, are not the pastors of the Church a part of the Church, and must not pastor and sheep know each other, must not the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice and follow him, must not the good shepherd go seek his sheep that is lost, and recognise his enclosure and fold? This would indeed be a fine sort of shepherd, who could not know or see his flock. I know not whether I am to prove that the pastors of the Church are visible; things as evident are denied. S. Peter was a pastor, I suppose, since Our Lord said to him >I>Feed My sheep; so were the Apostles, and they were seen. I suppose that those to whom S. Paul said Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath placed you, to rule the Church of God; I suppose, may I, that they saw him; and when like good children they fell upon the neck of this good shepherd, hiding his face with their tears, I presume that he touched, and felt, and saw them; and what makes me still more sure of it is that they were chiefly grieved at his departure for the word which he hd said that they would see his face no more. And then, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Luther, Calvin, Beza and Musculus are visible; and as to the two last many of you have seen them, and yet they are called pastors by their disciples. The pastors then are seen, and consequently the sheep also.

(5.) Is it the property of the Church to carry on the true preaching of the Word of God, the true administration of the Sacraments, - and is not all this visible? How then would you have their subject invisible?

(6.) Do we not know that the twelve patriarchs, the children of the good Jacob, were the living spring of the Church of Israel? And when their father had assembled them to bless them, they were seen and saw one another. Why do I delay on this? All sacred history testifies that the ancient synagogue was visible, and why not the Catholic Church?

(7.) As the patriarchs, fathers of the synagogue of Israel, of whom was Christ according to the flesh (Rom. ix. 5), formed the visible Church, so the Apostles with their disciples, children of the synagogue according to the flesh and spirit, gave beginning to the Catholic Church visibly, as the Psalmist says (xliv. 17): Instead of thy father, sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.

For twelve patriarchs are born to these twelve Apostles , says Arnobius (Arnobii (Junioris)Comm. in Ps. xliv.). Those Apostles being gathered together in Jerusalem with the little company of the disciples and the most glorious Mother of the Saviour formed the true Church, - and of what kind? Visible without doubt, yea so visible that the Holy Spirit came to water those holy plants and seed-plots of Christianity.

(8.) How did the ancient Jews begin their course as the people of God? By circumcision, a visible sign; - and we by baptism, a visible sign. By whom were those of old governed? By the priests of the race of Aaron, visible men; we by the bishops, visible men. By whom were the ancients taught? By the prophets and doctors, visibly; - we by our pastors and preachers, visibly. What religious and sacred food had the ancients to eat? The paschal lamb, the manna, it is all visible; - we have the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, a visible sign though of an invisible thing. By whom was the synagogue persecuted? By the Egyptians, Babylonians, Madianites, Philistines, all visible nations: - the Church by the Pagans, Turks, Moors, Saracens, heretics:- all is visible. Goodness of God! – and we are still to ask whether the Church is visible! But what is the Church? An assembly of men who have flesh and bones; - and are we to say that it is but a spirit or phantom, which seems to be visible and is only so by illusion? No, no; Why are you troubles, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See her hands; behold her ministers, officers and governors: see her feet; look at her preachers how they carry her east and west, north and south. All are flesh and bones. Feel her; come as humble children to throw yourselves into the bosom of this sweet mother. Consider her throughout her whole body, entirely beautiful as she is, and you will see that she is visible; for a spiritual and invisible thing hath not flesh and bones, as you See her to have (Luke ult.).  

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CHAPTER VI.
Answer to the objections made against the visibility of the Church.

SUCH are our reasons, sound under every test. But they have some counter-reasons, which, as they fancy, they draw from the Scriptures, but which are very easy of refutation to any one who will consider what follows.

(1.) Our Lord had in his humanity two parts, body and soul; so the Church his spouse has two parts, the one interior, which is as her soul, invisible-Faith, Hope, Charity, Grace, - the other exterior, as her body, and visible - the Confession of Faith, Praises and Canticles, Preaching, Sacraments, Sacrifices. Yea, all that is done in the Church has its exterior and interior. Prayer is interior and exterior; Faith fills the heart with assurance and the mouth with confession; Preaching is made exteriorly by men, but the secret light of the Heavenly Father is required in it, for we must always hear him and learn from him before coming to the Son; and as to the Sacraments, the sign is exterior but the grace is interior, as every one knows. Thus then we have the interior of the Church and the exterior. Its greatest beauty is within, the outside is not so excellent, as says the Spouse in the Canticles (iv.): Thy eyes are doves’ eyes besides what is hid within…Honey and milk are under thy tongue, that is, in thy heart; - behold the interior. And the smell of thy garments as the odour of frankincense;- behold the exterior service. And the Psalmist (xliv.): All the glory of the King’s daughter is within:- there is the interior. Clothed round in golden borders with varieties; - there is the exterior.

(2.) We must consider that as well the interior as the exterior of the Church may be called spiritual, but differently. For the interior is spiritual purely and of its own nature; the exterior of its own nature is corporeal, but because it has a reference and tendency to the spiritual, the interior, we call it spiritual, as S. Paul calls those who made the flesh subject to the spirit, although they were corporeal; and although each person be particular, of his own nature, still when he serves the public he is called a public man. Now, if one say that the Evangelical law was given on the hearts interiorly, not on tablets of stone exteriorly, as Jeremias says (xxxi. 33), the answer is: that in the interior of the Church and in its heart is all the chief of its glory, but this fails not to shine out over the exterior, by which it is known and recognized. So when it is said in the Gospel (John iv. 23) that the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorer shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth, - we are taught that the interior is the chief thing, and that the exterior is vain if it do not tend and flow towards the interior to spiritualise itself therein. In the same way, when S. Peter calls the Church a spiritual house (! Pet. ii. 5), it is because all that proceeds from the Church tends to the spiritual life, and because its greatest glory is interior; or again because it is not a house made with lime and sand, but a mystical house of living stones, to which charity serves as cement.

The holy Word says (Luke xvii. 20), The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: but the kingdom of God is the church, therefore the Church is no visible; Answer: the kingdom of God in this place is Our Lord with His grace, or, if you will, the company of Our Lord while He was in this world; whence it continues: for behold the kingdom of God is within you; and this kingdom did not come with the surroundings and glory of a worldly magnificence, as the Jews expected; besides, as we have said, the fairest jewel of this King’s daughter is hidden within, and cannot be seen. As to what S. Paul says to the Hebrews (xii. 18 ), that we are not come to the mountain that might be handled , like Mount Sina, but to the heavenly Jerusalem- he s not proposing to show that the Church is invisible: for S. Paul shows in this place that the Church is more magnificent and richly endowed than the Synagogue, and that she is not a natural mountain like that of Sina, but a mystical; from which it does not follow that it is in any way invisible. Indeed, it may reasonably be said that he is actually speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the triumphant Church; wherefore he adds the company of angels, as if to say that in the Old Law God was seen on the mountain after a terrible manner, and that the New leads us to see Him in His glory there in Paradise above.

Finally, here is the argument which everybody loudly asserts to be the strongest, - I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: if I believe in it, I do not see it, therefore it is invisible. Is there anything feebler in the world than this phantom of a reason? Did the Apostles not believe that Our Lord was risen again, and did they not see him? Because thou hast seen me, He says himself to S. Thomas (John xx. 27): thou hast believed; and to make him believing He says to him, See my hands, and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side, and be not faithless but believing. See how sight hinders not faith but produces it. Now Thomas saw one thing and believed another; he saw the body and he believed the spirit and the divinity; for it was not his seeing which led him to say, My Lord and my God! - but his faith. So do we believe one Baptism for the remission of sins; we see the Baptism, but not the remission of sins. Similarly, we see the Church, but not its interior sanctity; we see its eyes as of a dove, but we believe what is hidden within: we see its richly broidered garments, in beautiful variety, with golden borders, but the brightest splendour of its glory is within, which we believe. In this royal Spouse there is wherewith to feed the interior and the exterior eye, faith and sense, and all for the greater glory of her Spouse.