Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Harmony of the Church and the Scriptures. Heretics Have Tampered with the Scriptures, and Mutilated, and Altered Them. Catholics Never Change the Scriptures, Which Always Testify for Them.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXXVIII.—Harmony of the Church and the Scriptures. Heretics Have
Tampered with the Scriptures, and Mutilated, and Altered Them.
Catholics Never Change the Scriptures, Which Always Testify for
Them.
Where diversity of doctrine is found,
there, then, must the corruption both of the Scriptures and the
expositions thereof be regarded as existing. On those whose purpose it
was to teach differently, lay the necessity of differently arranging
the instruments of doctrine.2250
| 2250 By the instrumenta
doctrinæ he here means the writings of the New Testament. | They could not
possibly have effected their diversity of teaching in any other way
than by having a difference in the means whereby they taught. As in
their case, corruption in doctrine could not possibly have succeeded
without a corruption also of its instruments, so to ourselves also
integrity of doctrine could not have accrued, without integrity in
those means by which doctrine is managed. Now, what is there in our
Scriptures which is contrary to us?2251
| 2251 [Our author insists on
the precise agreement of Catholic Tradition with Holy Scripture. See
valuable remarks on Schleiermacher, in Kaye, pp. 279–284.] | What of our
own have we introduced, that we should have to take it away again, or
else add to it, or alter it, in order to restore to its natural
soundness anything which is contrary to it, and contained in the
Scriptures?2252
| 2252 We add the original of
this sentence, which is obscured by its terseness: “Quid de
proprio intulimus, ut aliquid contrarium ei et in Scripturis
deprehensum detractione vel adjectione vel transmutatione
remediaremus?” | What we are
ourselves, that also the Scriptures are (and have been) from the
beginning.2253
| 2253 That is, teaching the
same faith and conversation (De la Cerda). | Of
them we have our being,
before there was any other way, before they were interpolated by you.
Now, inasmuch as all interpolation must be believed to be a later
process, for the express reason that it proceeds from rivalry which is
never in any case previous to nor home-born2254
with that which it emulates, it is as incredible to every man of sense
that we should seem to have introduced any corrupt text into the
Scriptures, existing, as we have been, from the very first, and being
the first, as it is that they have not in fact introduced it who are
both later in date and opposed (to the Scriptures). One man perverts
the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition.
For although Valentinus seems to use the entire volume,2255
| 2255 Integro
instrumento. | he has none the less laid violent hands on
the truth only with a more cunning mind and skill2256
than Marcion. Marcion expressly and openly
used the knife, not the pen, since he made such an excision of the
Scriptures as suited his own subject-matter.2257
| 2257 That is, cutting out
whatever did not fall in with it (Dodgson). |
Valentinus, however, abstained from such excision, because he did not
invent Scriptures to square with his own subject-matter, but adapted
his matter to the Scriptures; and yet he took away more, and added
more, by removing the proper meaning of every particular word, and
adding fantastic arrangements of things which have no real
existence.2258
| 2258 Non comparentium
rerum. [Note, he says above “of them, the
Scriptures, we, Catholics, have our being.”
Præscription does not undervalue Scripture as the food and
life of the Church, but supplies a short and decisive method with
innovaters.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
