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| Heretics Work to Pull Down and to Destroy, Not to Edify and Elevate. Heretics Do Not Adhere Even to Their Own Traditions, But Harbour Dissent Even from Their Own Founders. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XLII.—Heretics Work to Pull Down and to Destroy, Not to Edify and
Elevate. Heretics Do Not Adhere Even to Their Own Traditions, But
Harbour Dissent Even from Their Own Founders.
But what shall I say concerning the ministry of the
word, since they make it their business not to convert the heathen, but
to subvert our people? This is rather the glory which they catch
at, to compass the fall of those who stand, not the raising of those
who are down. Accordingly, since the very work which they purpose to
themselves comes not from the building up of their own society, but
from the demolition of the truth, they undermine our edifices, that
they may erect their own. Only deprive them of the law of Moses, and the
prophets, and the divinity of the Creator, and they have not another
objection to talk about. The consequence is, that they more easily
accomplish the ruin of standing houses than the erection of fallen
ruins. It is only when they have such objects in view that they show
themselves humble and bland and respectful. Otherwise they know no
respect even for their own leaders. Hence it is [supposed] that
schisms seldom happen among heretics, because, even when they exist,
they are not obvious.2289 Their very unity,
however,2290
2290 Enim. [e.g. The Trent
system of Unity, alas! is of this sort.] | is schism. I am
greatly in error if they do not amongst themselves swerve even from
their own regulations, forasmuch as every man, just as it suits his own
temper, modifies the traditions he has received after the same fashion
as the man who handed them down did, when he moulded them according to
his own will. The progress of the matter is an acknowledgment at
once of its character and of the manner of its birth. That was
allowable to the Valentinians which had been allowed to Valentinus;
that was also fair for the Marcionites which had been done by
Marcion—even to innovate on the faith, as was agreeable to their
own pleasure. In short, all heresies, when thoroughly looked into, are
detected harbouring dissent in many particulars even from their own
founders. The majority of them have not even churches.2291
2291 Hence the
saying, “Wasps make combs, so Marcionites make churches”
(see our Anti-Marcion, p. 187); describing the strangeness and
uselessness of the societies, not (as Gibbon said) their number
(Dodgson). | Motherless, houseless, creedless, outcasts,
they wander about in their own essential worthlessness.2292
2292 Sua in vilitate.
Another reading, pronounced corrupt by Oehler, has “quasi sibi
latæ vagantur,” q.d. “All for themselves,
as it were, they wander” etc. (Dodgson). | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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