Chapter XI. Of the Universality or Catholicity of the Church: Third Mark

That great Father, Vincent of Lerins, in his most useful Memorial, says that he must before all things have a great care to believe " that which has been believed by all [always and everywhere] "...* such as the jugglers and tinkers; for the rest of the world call us Catholic; and if we add Eonian, it is only to inform people of the See of that Bishop who is general and visible Pastor of the Church. And already in the time of S. Ambrose to be Eoman in communion was the same thino- as to be Catholic.

But as for your church, it is called everywhere Huguenot, Calvinist, Heretical, Pretended, Protestant, New, or Sacramentarian. Your church was not before these names, and these names were not before your church, because they are proper to it. Nobody calls you Catholics, you scarcely dare to do so yourselves. I am well aware that amongst you your churches call themselves Eeformed, but just as much right to that name have the Lutherans, and the Ubiquitarians, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, and other offshoots of Luther, and they will never yield it to you. The name of religion is common to the Church of the Jews and of the Christians, in the Old Law and in the New; the name of Catholic is proper to the Church of Our Lord;

• There is an lixatxiB in the MS, here. In the earlier part of the broken sentence the saint has apparently been saying that Catholics are called Romans by the lower orders. [Tr,]

the name of Eeformed is a blasphemy against Our Lord, who has so perfectly formed and sanctified his Church iu his blood, that it must never take other form than of his all lovely Spouse, of pillar and ground of truth. One may reform the nations in particular, but not the Church or religion. She was rightly formed, change of formation is called heresy or irreligion. The tint of Our Saviour's blood is too fair and too bright to require new colours.

Your church, then, calling itself Eeformed, gives up its part in the form which the Saviour had established. But I cannot refrain from telling you what Beza, Luther, and Peter Martyr think on this. Peter Martyr calls you Lutherans, and says you are brothers to them; you are then Lutherans; Luther calls you " fanatics " and Sacramentarians; Beza calls the Lutherans Consubstantiators and Chymists, and yet he puts them in the number of Eeformed churches. See then the new names which the reformers acknowledge for one another. Your church, therefore, not having even the name of Catholic, you cannot with a good conscience say the Apostles' Creed; if you do, you judge yourselves, who, confessing the Church Catholic and universal, obstinately keep to your own, which most certainly is not such. If S. Augustine were living now, he would remain in our Church, which from immemorial time is in possession of the name of Catholic.

AET. III. 0. XII,] The Rule of Faith, 205