8. Of the Second Kind of Evil Men

THE second kind are faithless or dishonest persons who hold and pursue some error against the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed, or against the Seven*Sacraments of the Church or who differ in some respect from the Catholic Church, or hold an opinion contrary to it, or maintain it publicly or privately: if they determine to persist thus tenaciously, and so die in it, even though endowed with all the moral virtues, and engaged in all acts of pity and compassion, and are esteemed for as great a clearness of intellect as any mortal who has ever lived, nevertheless they are to be plunged into the flames of hell.

Moreover there are four things which are wont to lead men into heresy or straying from the faith. The first thing is self-will and obstinacy, when one desires to follow the

34- SECOND KIND OF EVIL MEN advice or instruction of no one. ^The second is complacency in himself for his. own natural knowledge, skill and cleverness^ or else in any one singular external mode of living beyond other men. The third is credulity, by which a man yields his faith too readily to any impression 'or passing thought, with out first weighing diligently and exactly whether it agrees with the Holy Catholic Church, -or dissents from it. The fourth is spiritual pride, in which a man entrusts more to his own judgment than to the Holy Church. These things indeed drive a man headlong into error or heresy, infected with which he is straightway unworthy of the grace of God. But if they wish to be con^ verted from these things they must renounce their own will, their own knowledge and intellect, and submit and bow before the knowledge and the instruction of the Catholic Church, and to pass and end their external and internal life without pride or uplifting to the honour of God ; and they must believe internally without pretence that which the Holy Catholic Church believes. Moreover each one according to his own state must outwardly cherish and exercise both the precepts and decrees of the Church which the Holy Church cherishes and ex ercises — thus only will they be able to obtain grace and afterwards happiness. The Ethnics, although they in a way cherish and follow after natural justice, none the less are damned, because through almost all the regions of the world the name of Jesus Christ has been published abroad, and His deeds, discourses, and the prophesied freedom of human nature has been announced and propagated. And in the same way tooj the Jews even though in these times they may be living according to the precepts of God, the manner of life of the primitive fathers and their custom and instruction, none the less also are to be punished with the sentence of damnation, and that a more grievous one than the Ethnics, because they despise the prophecies of the law which was handed down by them, which speak of the Advent and the Passion of Christ : they despise too, of true and certain malice the visitation, the doctrine, the deeds or works of Christ : whence I doubt not?

that the Jews are in worse case than the Ethnics, as those who are enriched and endowed with the greater benefits of God, yet nevertheless desire not to recognise them.