Chapter VII

SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH {continued). THE CATHOLIC CHUECH IS ACCOMPANIED WITH MIRACLES, THE PRETENDED IS NOT.

Here now I desire that you show yourselves reasonable, free from quibbling and from obstinacy. It is found on informations duly and authentically taken that about the commencement of this century S. Francis of Paula was renowned for undoubted miracles, such as are the raising of the dead to life. We find the same as to S. Diego of Alcala. These are not uncertain rumours, but proved, signed informations, taken in regular process of law.

Would you dare to deny the apparition of the cross granted to the valiant captain Albukerque, and to all those in his fleet, which so many historians describe,"^ and so many persons had part in?

• See Raynald, ad an. 15 13. [Tr.]

ART. III. c. VII.] The Ride of Faith. 1 8 1

The devout Gaspar Berzee, in the Indies, healed the sick by simply praying to God for them in the Mass, and so suddenly that other than God's hand could not have done it.

The Blessed Francis Xavier has healed the paralysed, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, and raised a dead man to life; his body has had power to remain entire though buried with lime, as those have testified who saw it entire fifteen years after his death; and these two died within the last forty-five years.

In Meliapor has been found a cross cut on a stone, which is considered to have been buried by the Christians in the time of S. Thomas. A wonderful but true thing! — almost every year, about the feast of this glorious Apostle, that cross sweats a quantity of blood, or liquid like blood, and changes colour, becoming white, pale, then black, and sometimes blue, brilliant and then of softer hue, and at last it returns to its natural colour: this many people have seen, and the Bishop of Cochin sent a public attestation of it to the holy Council of Trent. Miracles, therefore, are worked in the Indies, where the faith is not yet established, a whole world of which I leave on one side, in order to observe due brevity.

The good Father Louis of Granada, in his Introduction on the Creed, narrates many recent and unquestionable miracles. Amongst others he brings forward the cures which the Catholic kings of France have worked in our age, even in incurable cases of king's evil, by saying no more than these words: May God heal you; — and the king touches the person, no other disposition being required than Confession and Communion on that day.

I have read the history of the miraculous cure of James, son of Claude Andrew, of Belmont, in the bailiwick of Baulme in Burgundy. He had been helpless during eight years; after making his devotions in the Church of S. Claude, on the very day of the feast, 8th June 1588, he found himself immediately cured. Do you not call that a miracle? I am speaking of things in the neighbourhood; I have read the public act, I have spoken to the notary who took it and sent it, rightly and duly signed — Vion. Witnesses were not wanting, for there were people in crowds. But why do I stay to bring forward the miracles of our age? S. Malachy, S. Bernard, and S. Francis — were they not of our Church? You cannot deny it. Those who have written their lives are most holy and learned men, for S. Bernard himself has written that of S. Malachy, and S. Bonaventure that of S. Francis, men who lacked neither knowledge nor conscientiousness, and still many miracles are related therein. But, above all, the wonders which take place now, at our gates, in the sight of our princes and of our whole Savoy, near Mondovi, ought to close the door against all obstinacy.

Now, what will you say to this? Will you say that Antichrist will do miracles? S. Paul testifies that they will be false, "^^^ and the greatest S. Johu mentions is that he will make fire descend from heaven; Satan can work miracles, indeed has done so, no doubt, but God will leave a prompt remedy with his Church; for, to those false miracles, the servants of God, Elias and Enoch, as the Apocalypse and interpreters witness, will oppose other miracles of very different make. For not only will they employ fire to punish

• 1 Thess. ii, 9.

AiiT. III. u. VII.] The Rtile of Faith. 1 8 o their enemies miraculously, but will have power to shut the heaveus so that there may be no rain, to change and convert the waters into blood, and to strike the earth with what chastisements they like for three days and a half: after their death they shall rise again and ascend to heaven; the earth shall tremble at their ascension. Then, therefore, by the opposition of the true miracles, the illusions of Antichrist will be discovered; and as Moses at last made the magicians of Pharaoh confess: The finger of God is here, so Elias and Enoch will effect that their enemies shall give glory to the God of heaven: Elias will do at that time some of those holy prophet's deeds of his, which he did of old to put down the impiety of the Baalites and other professors of false religions.

I wish then to say: ( i ) that the miracles of Antichrist are not such as those we bringj forward for the Church; and therefore it does not follow that if those are not marks of the Church these likewise are not so. The former will be proved false and be overcome by greater and more solid ones, the latter are solid, and no one can oppose to them more certain ones: (2) the wonders of Antichrist will be simply an illusion of three years and a half; but the miracles of the Church are so properly hers, that since her foundation she has always shone in miracles. The miracles of Antichrist will be unnatural, and will not endure; but in the Church they are grafted as it were naturally on her supernatural nature, and therefore they ever accompany her, to verify these words: These signs shall follow them that believe.

You will be ready to say that the Donatists worked miracles, according to S. Augustine: but they were only certain visions and revelations of which they themselves boasted, without any public testimony. Certainly the Church cannot be proved true by these private revelations; on the contrary, these visions themselves cannot be proved or held as true save by the testimony of the Church, says the same S. Augustine. And if Vespasian healed a blind and a lame man, the doctors themselves, according to Tacitus, decided that it was a blindness and an infirmity which were not incurable: it is no marvel then if the devil was able to heal them. A Jew having been baptized went and presented himself to Paulus, a Novatian bishop, to be rebaptized, says Socrates; * the water of the font immediately disappeared. This wonder was not to confirm the truth of Novatianism, but of holy Baptism, which it was not right to repeat. In the same manner were some wonders done amongst the Pagans, says S. Augustine, not in proof of Paganism, but of innocence, virginity, fidelity, which, wherever they are, are loved and valued by God who is the author thereof. Further, these wonders are done but rarely, and from them no conclusion can be drawn: the clouds sometimes give forth light, but it is only the sun which has for its mark and property the giving of light. Let us then conclude this subject: the Church has always been accompanied by miracles, solid and certain as those of her Spouse; therefore she is the true Church: for, to use the argument of the good Nicodemus (John iii. 2) in like case, I will say: No society can do these miracles which this does, so glorious and so continual, unless God was with it. And what did our Lord say to the disciples of S.

• vii. 17.

ART. III. c. VII. J The Rule of Faith. 185

John (Matt. xi. 5): 8ay, the hlind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, to show that he was the Messias. Hearing that in the Church are done such grand miracles, we must conclude that the Lord is indeed in this place (Gen. xxviii. 16). But as regards your pretended Church, I can say nothing more to it than: If it can believe, all things are possible to him that believes (Mark ix. 22): if it were the true Church it would be followed by miracles. You acknowledge to me that it is not your province to work miracles, nor to drive out devils; once it turned out ill with one of your great masters who wanted to try it, — so says Bolsec. " Those raised up the living from the dead," says Tertullian,^ " these make dead men out of the living." A rumour is current that one of yours has once cured a demoniac; it is however not stated when or how the person was cured, nor what witnesses there were. It is easy for apprentices to a trade to make a mistake in their first trial. Certain reports are often started amongst you to keep the simple people going, but having no author they must be without authority. Besides this, in driving out the devil we must not so much regard what is done as we must consider the manner and the form in which it is done; if it is by the rightful prayers, and invocations of the name of Jesus Christ. Again, one swallow does not make the summer; it is the perpetual and ordinary succession of miracles which is the mark of the true Church, not something accidental. But it would be fighting with a shadow and with air to refute this rumour, which is so timid and so feeble that nobody ventures to say from which side it came.

• De Prflesc. xxx.

The total answer that I have got from you in this extreme necessity is that people do you a wrong when they ask miracles from you. And so they do, I agree with you; it would be turning you into ridicule, like asking a blacksmith to make an emerald or a diamond. Nor do I ask any from you: only I request you to confess frankly that you have not made your apprenticeship with the Apostles, Disciples, Martyrs and Confessors, who have been masters of the craft.

But when you say you have no need of miracles, because you do not want to establish a new faith, tell me then again whether S. Augustine, S. Jerome, S. Gregory, S. Ambrose and the rest preached a new doctrine. And why then were there done miracles so great and so numerous as theirs? Certainly the Gospel was better received in the world than it is at present; there were then pastors more excellent; many martyrs and miracles had gone before; but the Church was still not wanting in that gift of miracles, for the greater glory of most holy religion. Or if miracles were to cease in the Church, it would have been in the time of Constantine the Great, after the Empire had become Christian, the persecutions had ceased and Christianity been quite secured; but so far were they from ceasing then that they were multiplied on all sides.

Moreover, the doctrine which you preach has never. been proclaimed, either in general or in detail; your heretical predecessors have preached it, with each of whom you agree on some points, and with all on none, as I will make clear afterwards. Where was your church eighty years ago? It has only just begun, and you call it old. Ah! you say, we have made no new Church, we have rubbed up and

ART. m. 0. VII.] The Rtile of Faith. 187 cleaned the old money, which, having long lain in decayed buildings, had become discoloured, and encrusted with dirt and mould. Say that no more, I beg you, that you have the metal and the mould. Are not the faith, the Sacraments, necessary ingredients in the composition of the Church? — and you have changed everything both in the one and the other. You are then false coiners, if you do not show the power which you claim to put these stamps on the King's coin. But let us not delay on this. Have you purified this Church, have you cleaned this money? Show us then the characters which it had when you say that it fell on the ground and began to get rusty. It fell, you say, in the time of S. Gregory, or a little after. You may say what you like, but at that time it had the character of miracles; — show it to us now? For if you do not show us most unmistakably the inscription of the King on your money, we will show it you on ours; ours will pass as royal and good, yours, as being light and clipped, will be sent back to the melting-pot. If you would represent to us the Church as it was in the time of S. Augustine, show it to us not only speaking well but doing well, in miracles and holy operations, as it was then. If you would say that then it was nearer than it is now, I answer that so notable an interruption as that which you pretend of nine hundred or a thousand years, makes this money so strange that unless we see on it, in large letters, the ordinary characters, the inscription and the image, we will never receive it. No, uo: the ancient Church was powerful in all seasons, in adversity and prosperity, in work and in word, like her Spouse; yours has nought but talk, whether in prosperity or in adversity. At least let it now show some vestiges of the ancient mark: otherwise it will never be received as the true Church, nor as daughter of that ancient mother. If it would boast further, it must have silence imposed upon it with these holy words: * If you are the children of Abraham, do the works of Ahraham. The true Church of believers is to be ever accompanied by miracles; there is no Church of our age which can show them save ours; therefore ours alone is the true Church.