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Heretics.—Ezekiel. All the heathen, and also the Prophet, spoke evil of Israel. But the Israelites were so far from having the right to say to him, "You speak like the heathen," that he is most forcible upon this, that the heathen say the same as he.
The Jansenists are like the heretics in the reformation of morality; but you are like them in evil.[Pg 264]
You are ignorant of the prophecies, if you do not know that all this must happen; princes, prophets, Pope, and even the priests. And yet the Church is to abide. By the grace of God we have not come to that. Woe to these priests! But we hope that God will bestow His mercy upon us that we shall not be of them.
Saint Peter, ii: false prophets in the past, the image of future ones.
... So that if it is true, on the one hand, that some lax monks, and some corrupt casuists, who are not members of the hierarchy, are steeped in these corruptions, it is, on the other hand, certain that the true pastors of the Church, who are the true guardians of the Divine Word, have preserved it unchangeably against the efforts of those who have attempted to destroy it.
And thus true believers have no pretext to follow that laxity, which is only offered to them by the strange hands of these casuists, instead of the sound doctrine which is presented to them by the fatherly hands of their own pastors. And the ungodly and heretics have no ground for publishing these abuses as evidence of imperfection in the providence of God over His Church; since, the Church consisting properly in the body of the hierarchy, we are so far from being able to conclude from the present state of matters that God has abandoned her to corruption, that it has never been more apparent than at the present time that God visibly protects her from corruption.
For if some of these men, who, by an extraordinary vocation, have made profession of withdrawing from the world and adopting the monks' dress, in order to live in a more perfect state than ordinary Christians, have fallen into excesses which horrify ordinary Christians, and have become to us what the false prophets were among the Jews; this is a private and personal misfortune, which must indeed be deplored, but from which nothing can be inferred against the care which God takes of His Church; since all these things are so clearly foretold, and it has been so long since announced that these temptations would arise from people of this kind; so that when we are well instructed, we see in this rather evidence of the care of God than of His forgetfulness in regard to us.[Pg 265]
Tertullian: Nunquam Ecclesia reformabitur.
Heretics, who take advantage of the doctrine of the Jesuits, must be made to know that it is not that of the Church [the doctrine of the Church], and that our divisions do not separate us from the altar.
If in differing we condemned, you would be right. Uniformity without diversity is useless to others; diversity without uniformity is ruinous for us. The one is harmful outwardly; the other inwardly.
By showing the truth, we cause it to be believed; but by showing the injustice of ministers, we do not correct it. Our mind is assured by a proof of falsehood; our purse is not made secure by proof of injustice.
Those who love the Church lament to see the corruption of morals; but laws at least exist. But these corrupt the laws. The model is damaged.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
It is in vain that the Church has established these words, anathemas, heresies, etc. They are used against her.
The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, for the master tells him only the act and not the intention.[368] And this is why he often obeys slavishly, and defeats the intention. But Jesus Christ has told us the object. And you defeat that object.
They cannot have perpetuity, and they seek universality; and therefore they make the whole Church corrupt, that they may be saints.[Pg 266]
Against those who misuse passages of Scripture, and who pride themselves in finding one which seems to favour their error.—The chapter for Vespers, Passion Sunday, the prayer for the king.
Explanation of these words: "He that is not with me is against me."[369] And of these others: "He that is not against you is for you."[370] A person who says: "I am neither for nor against", we ought to reply to him ...
He who will give the meaning of Scripture, and does not take it from Scripture, is an enemy of Scripture. (Aug., De Doct. Christ.)
Humilibus dat gratiam; an ideo non dedit humilitatem?[371]
Sui eum non receperunt; quotquot autem non receperunt an non erant sui?[372]
"It must indeed be," says Feuillant, "that this is not so certain; for controversy indicates uncertainty, (Saint Athanasius, Saint Chrysostom, morals, unbelievers)."
The Jesuits have not made the truth uncertain, but they have made their own ungodliness certain.
Contradiction has always been permitted, in order to blind the wicked; for all that offends truth or love is evil. This is the true principle.
All religions and sects in the world have had natural reason for a guide. Christians alone have been constrained to take their rules from without themselves, and to acquaint themselves with those which Jesus Christ bequeathed to men of old to be handed down to true believers. This constraint wearies these good Fathers. They desire, like other people, to have liberty to follow their own imaginations. It is in vain that we cry to them, as the prophets said to the Jews of old: "Enter into the Church; acquaint yourselves with the precepts which the men of old left to her, and follow those paths." They have answered like the Jews: "We will not walk in them; but we will follow the thoughts of our hearts"; and they have said, "We will be as the other nations."[Pg 267][373]
They make a rule of exception.
Have the men of old given absolution before penance? Do this as exceptional. But of the exception you make a rule without exception, so that you do not even want the rule to be exceptional.
On confessions and absolutions without signs of regret.
God regards only the inward; the Church judges only by the outward. God absolves as soon as He sees penitence in the heart; the Church when she sees it in works. God will make a Church pure within, which confounds, by its inward and entirely spiritual holiness, the inward impiety of proud sages and Pharisees; and the Church will make an assembly of men whose external manners are so pure as to confound the manners of the heathen. If there are hypocrites among them, but so well disguised that she does not discover their venom, she tolerates them; for, though they are not accepted of God, whom they cannot deceive, they are of men, whom they do deceive. And thus she is not dishonoured by their conduct, which appears holy. But you want the Church to judge neither of the inward, because that belongs to God alone, nor of the outward, because God dwells only upon the inward; and thus, taking away from her all choice of men, you retain in the Church the most dissolute, and those who dishonour her so greatly, that the synagogues of the Jews and sects of philosophers would have banished them as unworthy, and have abhorred them as impious.
