Chapter XIII

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH {continued) THE TRUE CHURCH MUST BE PERPETUAL. OURS IS PERPETUAL, THE PRETENDED IS NOT.

Although the Church might be ancient, yet it would not be universal in time if it had failed at any period. The heresy of the Nicolaites is ancient but not universal, for it only lasted a very little while. And as a whirlwind which seems ready to displace the sea then suddenly is lost in itself, or as a mushroom, which is born of some noxious vapour in a night, appears and in a day is gone, — so every heresy, ancient as it may be, has at last disappeared, but the Church endures perpetually.t

• Adv. Hermog., c. i.

f Here occurs a passage on the perpetuity of the Church, which has already appeared, in somewhat fuller form, in Part I. chaps, ix., x. The reader is referred to these chapters and to the Preface. fTr.]

ART. III. c. XIII.] The Rule of Faith, 209

I will say to you, as I have said above: show me a decade of years since Our Lord ascended into heaven in which decade our Church has not existed. The reason why you find yourselves unable to say when our Church began is that it has always existed. And if you would care to make yourselves honestly clear about this, Sanders in his Visible Monarchy, and Gilbert Genebrard in his Chronology would furnish you light enough, and particularly the learned Csesar Baronius in his Annals. But if you are not willing all at once to abandon the books of your masters, and have not your eyes blinded with too excessive a passion, you will, if you look closely into the Centuries of Magdebourg, see everywhere nothing but the actions of Catholics; for, says very well a learned man of our age, if they had not collected these there they would have left one thousand five hundred years without history. I will say something on this point afterwards.

Now, as to your Church, — let us suppose its lie to be truth, that it was in the time of the Apostles; it will not on that account be the Catholic Church, for the Catholic Church must be universal in time: she must then always continue. But, tell me, where was your Church a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago? Point it out you cannot, for it did not exist: therefore it is not the true Church. It existed, some one will perhaps say to me, but unknown. Goodness of God! who cannot say the same? — Adamite, Anabaptist, everybody will take up this argument. I have already shown that the Church militant is not invisible; I have shown that she is universal in time; I will show you that she cannot be unknown.

m.

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