Part III: Church Doctrines and Institutions

Cburcb Doctrines anb Jnetitutiona.

These two fundamental faults into which your ministers have led you, namely, the having abandoned the Church and the having violated all the true rules of the Christian religion, make you altogether inexcusable, gentlemen. For they are so gross that you cannot but know them, and so important that either of the two suffices to make you lose true Christianity: since neither faith without the Church nor the Church without faith can save you, any more than the eye without the head or the head without the eye could see the light. Whoever would separate you from union with the Church should be suspected by you, and whoever should so greatly infringe the holy rules of the faith ought to be avoided and disregarded, whatever his appearance might be, whatever he might allege. You should not have so lightly believed. Had you been prudent in your way of acting you would have seen that it was not the Word of God they brought forward but their own ideas veiled under

ds of Scripture, and you would have known well that so rich a dress was never made for covering so worthless a body as this heresy is.

For, by supposition, let us say that there was never Church, nor Council, nor pastor, nor doctor, since the Apostles, and that the Holy Scripture contains only those books which it pleases Calvin, Beza, and Martyr to acknowledge; that there is no infallible rule for understanding it rightly, but that it is at the mercy of the notions of everybody who likes to maintain that he is interpreting Scripture by Scripture, and by the analogy of the faith, — as one might say he would get to understand Aristotle by Aristotle and by the analogy of philosophy. Only let us acknowledge that this Scripture is divine. And I maintain before all equitable judges that if not all, at least those amongst you who had some knowledge and ability, are inexcusable, and cannot defend their choice of religion from lightness and rashness.

And here is what I come to. The ministers will only fight on Scripture; I am willing. They will only have such parts of Scripture as they chose; I ageee. And still I say that the belief of the Catholic Church beats them completely, since she has more passages in her favour than the contrary opinion has, and her passages are more clear, more simple, more pure, interpreted more reasonably, more conclusive, and more apt. This I believe to be so certain that every one may come to know and recognise it. But if we would show this in minute detail we should never finish; it will be quite enough, I think, to show it in some of the chief articles.

It is this then that I profess to do in this Third iNTROD.] Church Doctrines, <2fc. 347

Part, in which I shall attack your ministers on the Sacraments in general, and in particular on those of the Eucharist, Confession, and Marriage; on the honour and invocation of the saints; on the propriety of ceremonies in general; then in particular on the merit of good works, on justification, and on indulgences. In this I will employ nought but the pure and simple Word of God; with which alone I will make you see, by examples, your fault so clearly that you will be bound to repent of it. And meantime I beg of you, that if you see me engage, and at length overcome the enemy with Scripture alone, you will then represent to yourselves that great and honourable succession of martyrs, pastors, and doctors, who have testified by their teaching and at the price of their blood that this doctrine for which we now fight was the holy, the original, the Apostolic; which will be as it were a superfluity of victory; so that if we found ourselvas on an equality with our enemies by Scripture alone, the antiquity, the agreement, the holiness of our authors would still make us triumph. And in doing this I will ever adjust the sense and bearing of the Scriptures which I shall produce to the rules which I have established in the Second Part, although my chief design is only to give you a proof of the hollowness of your ministers, who do nothing but cry out Holy Scripture, Holy Scripture, yet all they effect is to contradict its clearest statements. In the assembly of the Princes which took place at Spires, in the year 1526, the Protestant ministers wore these letters on the right sleeve of their dress: V. D. M. I. M., by which they meant to declare Verhum Domini manet in ceternum [the Word of the Lord remaineth for ever].

Would you not say that they had a monopoly of Holy Scripture? They quote indeed morsels of it, and on every occasion, " in public and in private," says the great Lirinensis,* " in their discourses, in their books, in the streets, and at banquets.... Eead the works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and of those other pests: you will see a great heap of examples, and scarcely a page which is not painted and adorned with sentences out of the Old and the New Testament.... They act like those do who, wishing to get little children to take some bitter potion, rub and cover with honey the rim of the cup, in order that infant simplicity tasting the sweet first may not be frightened of the bitter." But he who sounds the depths of their doctrine will see clearly as the day that it is but a painted sham, like what the devil brought forward when he tempted Our Lord. For he quoted Scripture to his purpose. " What," says the same Lirinensis,t " will he not do with wretched man, when he dares to attack with words of Scripture the very Lord of majesty? Let us look closely at the doctrine of this passage.... For as then the head of one party spoke to the head of the other, so now members speak to members; namely, the members of the devil to the members of Jesus Christ, unbelievers to the faithful, the sacrilegious to the religious — in a word, heretics to Catholics." But as the head answered the head, so can we members answer the non-members. Our head repulsed their chief with passages of the Scripture, let us repulse them in like fashion, and by solid and plain consequences, deduced from Holy Scripture, let us show their falseness and deceitfulness in covering

• Comm. xx^v. + lb. xxxviL

ART. 1. 0. L] Church Doctrines, &c, 349 their fancies with the words of Scripture. This is what I intend to do here, but briefly, and I protest that I will produce most faithfully what seems to me to be most in their favour, and convict them from the Scripture itself. Thus will you come to see that though they and we use and fight with the Scripture, yet we have the reality and right usage of them, and they only have the vain and illusive appearance. So both Aaron and the magicians changed their rods into living serpents, but the rod of Aaron devoured the rods of the others.

AETICLE I. ^i ^ "^^^ f^:%

OF THE SACRAMENTS. \ ^- ^'^^*S}^^,