Chapter IV

UNITY OF THE CHURCH (continued). OF THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH IN DOCTRINE AND BELIEF. THE TRUE CHURCH MUST BE ONE IN ITS DOCTRINE. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS UNITED IN BELIEF, THE SO-CALLED REFORMED CHURCH IS NOT.

Is Jesus Christ divided? No, surely, for he is the God of peace, not of dissension, as S. Paul taught throughout the Church. It cannot then be that the true Church should be in dissension or division of belief and opinion, for God would no longer be its Author or Spouse, and, like a kingdom divided against itself, it would be brought to desolation. As soon as God takes a people to himself, as he has done the Church, he gives it unity of heart and of path: the Church is but one body, of which all the faithful are members, compacted and united together by all its joints; there is but one spirit animating this body: God is in his holy place: who maketh men of one manner to dwell in a house (Ps. Ixvii. 7); therefore the true Church of God must be united, fastened and joined together in one same doctrine and belief.

It is necessary, says S. Irenseus (iii. 3) that all the faithful should come together and unite themselves to the Roman Church [on account of] its superior ruling power. She is the mother of their sacerdotal dignity, says Julius I. (ad Euseb.) " She is the commencement of the unity of the priesthood, she is the bond of unity," says S. Cyprian (Ep. 55). Again: " We are not ignorant that there is but one God, one Christ and

Lord, whom we have confessed, one Holy Spirit, one pastoral office (episcopatus) in the Catholic Church " (xlvi. inter Ep.). The good Optatus also said to the Donatists (ii. 2, 3): " Thou canst not deny that thou knowest that in the city of Eome the chief chair has been first granted to S. Peter, in which sat the chief of the Apostles, S. Peter, whence he was called Cephas; the chair in which the unity- of the whole was preserved, in order that the other Apostles might not seek to put forward and maintain each his own, and that henceforward he might be a schismatic who would set up another chair against this one chair. Therefore in this one chair, which is the first of its prerogatives, was first seated S. Peter." These are almost the words of this ancient and holy doctor; and every Catholic of this age is of the same conviction. We hold the Eoman Church to be our refuge in all our difficulties; we all are her humble children, and receive our food from the milk of her breasts; we are all branches of this most fruitful stock, and draw no sap of doctrine save from this root. This is what clothes us all with the same livery of belief; for knowing that there is one chief and lieutenant general in the Church, what he decides and determines with the other prelates of the Church when he is seated in the chair of Peter to teach Christendom, serves as law and measure to our belief. Let there be error everywhere throughout the world, yet you will see the same faith in Catholics. And if there be any difference of opinion, either it will not be in things belonging to the faith, or else, as soon as ever a General Council or the Eoman See shall have determined it, you will see every one submit to their decision. Our understandings do not stray away from one another in their belief, but keep most closely united and linked together by the bond of the superior authority of the Church, to which each one gives in with all humility, steadying his faith thereon, as upon the pillar and ground of truth. Our Catholic Church has but one language and one same form of words throughout the whole earth.

On the contrary, gentlemen, your first ministers had no sooner got on their feet, they had no sooner begun to build a tower of doctrine and science which was visibly to reach the heavens, and to acquire them the great and magnificent reputation of reformers, than God, wishing to traverse this ambitious design, permitted amongst them such a diversity of language and belief, that they began to contradict one another so violently that all their undertaking became a miserable Babel and confusion. What contradictions has not Luther's reformation produced! I should never end if I would put them all on this paper. He who would see them should read that little book of Frederick Staphyl's de concordid discordi, and Sanders, Book 7 of his Visible Monarchy, and G-abriel de Preau, in the Lives of Heretics: I will only say what you cannot be ignorant of, and what I now see before my eyes.

You have not one same canon of the Scriptures: Luther will not have the Epistle of S. James, which you receive. Calvin holds it to be contrary to the Scripture that there is a head in the Church; the English hold the reverse: the French Huguenots hold that according to the Word of God priests are not less than bishops; the English have bishops who govern priests, and amongst them two archbishops,

ART. III. c. IV.] The Rule of Faith. i 'j'i)

one of whom is called 'primate, a name which Calvin so greatly detests: the Puritans in England hold as an article of faith that it is not lawful to preach, baptize, pray, in the Churches which were formerly Catholic, but they are not so squeamish in these parts. And note my saying that they make it an article of faith, for they suffer both prison and banishment rather than give it up. Is it not well known that at Geneva they consider it a superstition to keep any saint's day?■ — yet in Switzerland some are kept; and you keep one of Our Lady. The point is not that some keep them and others do not, for this would be no contradiction in religious belief, but that what you and some of the Swiss observe the others condemn as contrary to the purity of religion. Are you not aware that one of your greatest ministers teaches that the body of our Lord is as far from the Lord's Supper as heaven is from earth, and are you not likewise aware that this is held to be false by many others? Has not one of your ministers lately confessed the reality of Christ's body in the Supper, and do not the rest deny it? Can you deny me that as regards Justification you are as much divided against one another as you are against us: — witness that anonymous controversialist. In a word, each man has his own language, and out of as many Huguenots as I have spoken to I have never found two of the same belief.

But the worst is, you are not able to come to an agreement: — for where will you find a trusted arbitrator? You have no head upon earth to address yourselves to in your difficulties; you believe that the very Church can err herself and lead others into error: you would not put your soul into such unsafe hands; indeed, you hold her in small account. The Scripture cannot be your arbiter, for it is concerning the Scripture that you are in litigation, some of you being determined to have it understood in one way, some in another. Your discords and your disputes are interminable, unless you give in to the authority of the Church. Witness the Colloquies of Lune-bourg, of Malbron, of Montbeliard, and that of Berne recently. Witness Tilman Heshusius and Erastus, to whom I add Brenz and BuUinger. Take the great division there is amongst you about the number of the Sacraments. Now, and ordinarily amongst you, only two are taught; Calvin made three, adding to Baptism and the Supper, Order; Luther here puts Penance for the third, then says there is but one: in the end, the Protestants, at the Colloquy of Eatisbonne, at which Calvin assisted, as Beza testifies in his life, confessed that there were seven Sacraments. How is it you are divided about the article of the almightiness of God? — one party denying that a body can by the divine power be in two places, others denying absolute almightiness; others make no such denials. But if I would show you the great contradictions amongst those whom Beza acknowledges to be glorious reformers of the Church, namely, Jerome of Prague, John Hus, Wicliff, Luther, Bucer, CEcolampadius, Zuingle, Pomeranius and the rest, I should never come to an end: Luther can sufficiently inform you as to the good harmony there is amongst them, in the lamentation which he makes a^^ainst the Zuinsflians and Sacramentarians, whom he calls Absaloms and Judases, and fanatic spirits (in the year 1527).

His deceased Highness of most happy memory,

Emmanuel [of Savoy], related to the learned Anthony Possevin, that at the Colloquy of Worms when the Protestants were asked for their profession of faith, they all one after the other departed from the assembly, as being unable to agree together. That great prince, most worthy of trust, relates this as having been present there. All this division has its foundation in the contempt which you have for a visible head on earth, because, not being bound as to the interpretation of God's Word by any superior authority, each one takes the side which seems good to him. This is what the wise man says, that among the proud there are always contentions^ which is a true mark of heresy. Those who are divided into several parties cannot be called by the name of Church, because, as S. Chrysostom says, the name of Christ is a name of agreement and concord. But as for us, we all have the same canon of the Scriptures, one same head, one like rule for interpreting them; you have a diversity of canon, and in the understanding you have as many heads and rules as you are persons. We all sound the trumpet of one single Gideon, and have all one same spirit of faith in the Lord, and in his Vicar, the sword of the decisions of God and the Church, according to the words of the Apostles: It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us A This unity of language amongst us is a true sign that we are the army of the Lord, and you can but be acknowledged as Madianites, whose opinions are only cries and shouts: each in your own fashion you slash at one another, cutting one another's throats, and cutting your own throats by your dissensions, as God says by IsaiasJ: The * Prov xiii. la t Acts xv. 28. + Isa. xix.

Egyptians shall fight against the Egyptians... and the spirit of Egypt shall be broken. And S. Augustine says that as Donatus had tried to divide Christ, so he himself was by a daily separation of his party divided within himself.

This mark [of unity] alone ought to make you quit your pretended church, for he who is not with God is against God. God is not in your church, for he only inhabits a place of peace, and in your church there is neither peace nor concord.