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| That the Catholic Faith May Be Confirmed Even by the Dissensions of the Heretics.
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Chapter 51.—That the Catholic
Faith May Be Confirmed Even by the Dissensions of the
Heretics.
But the devil, seeing the temples
of the demons deserted, and the human race running to the name of
the liberating Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian
name to resist the Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept in
the city of God indifferently without any correction, just as the
city of confusion indifferently held the philosophers who were of
diverse and adverse opinions. Those, therefore, in the Church of
Christ who savor anything morbid and depraved, and, on being
corrected that they may savor what is wholesome and right,
contumaciously resist, and will not amend their pestiferous and
deadly dogmas, but persist in defending them, become heretics, and,
going without, are to be reckoned as enemies who serve for her
discipline. For even thus they profit by their wickedness those
true catholic members of Christ, since God makes a good use even of
the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love
Him.1245
For all
the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves
them, exercise her patience if they receive the power to afflict
her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they
exercise her wisdom: but at the same time, if these enemies are
loved, they exercise her benevolence, or even her beneficence,
whether she deals with them by persuasive doctrine or by terrible
discipline. And thus the devil, the prince of the impious city,
when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that
sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For
without doubt the divine providence procures for her both
consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by
adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be
corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other, as
we recognize in the Psalms that voice which arises from no other
cause, “According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart, Thy
consolations have delighted my soul.”1246
Hence also is that saying of the
apostle, “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.”1247
For it is not to be thought that
what the same teacher says can at any time fail, “Whoever will
live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution.”1248
Because
even when those who are without do not rage, and thus there seems
to be, and really is, tranquillity, which brings very much
consolation, especially to the weak, yet there are not wanting,
yea, there are many within who by their abandoned manners torment
the hearts of those who live piously, since by them the Christian
and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to
those who will live piously in Christ, the more do they grieve that
through the wicked, who have a place within, it comes to be less
loved than pious minds desire. The heretics themselves also,
since they are thought to have the Christian name and sacraments,
Scriptures, and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the
pious, both because many who wish to be Christians are compelled by
their dissensions to hesitate, and many evil-speakers also find in
them matter for blaspheming the Christian name, because they too
are at any rate called Christians. By these and similar
depraved manners and errors of men, those who will live piously in
Christ suffer persecution, even when no one molests or vexes their
body; for they suffer this persecution, not in their bodies, but in
their hearts. Whence is that word, “According to the multitude
of my griefs in my heart;” for he does not say, in my body.
Yet, on the other hand, none of them can perish, because the
immutable divine promises are thought of. And because the apostle
says, “The Lord knoweth them that are His;1249
for whom He did foreknow, He also
predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of His Son,”1250
none of
them can perish; therefore it follows in that psalm, “Thy
consolations have delighted my soul.”1251
But that grief which arises in
the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad
or false Christians, is profitable to the sufferers, because it
proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to
perish or to hinder the salvation of others. Finally, great
consolations grow out of their chastisement, which imbue the souls
of the pious with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they
were troubled concerning their own perdition. Thus in this world,
in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence
of Christ and His apostles, but even from that of Abel, whom first
his wicked brother slew because he was righteous,1252
and
thenceforth even to the end of this world, the Church has gone
forward on pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the
consolations of God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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