Chapter 28.—33. This is what we look upon with horror in your party; this is what the sentence of God condemns, crying out with the utmost truth and the utmost clearness, "Cursed is every one that trusteth in man."2382
This is what is most openly forbidden by holy
humility and apostolic
love, as
Paul declares, "Let no man
glory in men."
2383
This is the reason that the attack of empty calumnies and of the bitterest invectives grows even fiercer against us, that when human
authority is as it were
overthrown, there may remain no ground of
hope for those to whom we
administer the word and sacrament of
God in accordance with the dispensation entrusted unto us. We make answer to them: How long do you
rest your support on man? The venerable society of the Catholic
Church makes answer to
them: "Truly my
soul waiteth upon
God: from Him cometh my
salvation. He only is my
God and my
helper; I shall not be moved."
2384
For what other reason have they had for removing from the
house of
God, except that they pretended that they could not
endure those
vessels made to
dishonor, from which the
house shall not be free until the day of
judgment? whereas all the time they rather appear, by their
deeds and by the records of the time, to have themselves been
vessels of this
kind, while they threw the imputation in the teeth of others; of which said
vessels made unto
dishonor, in order that no one
should on their account remove in confusion of
mind from the great
house, which alone
belongs to the great
Father of our
family, the
servant of
God, one who was good and
faithful, or was capable of receiving
faith in
baptism, as I have shown above, expressly says, "Truly my
soul waiteth upon
God" (on
God, you see, and not on man): "from Him cometh my
salvation" (not from man). But Petilianus would refuse to ascribe to
God the cleansing and purifying of a man, even when the stain upon the
conscience of him who gives, but not in holiness, is hidden from view, and any one receives his faith unwittingly from one that is faithless. "I tell you this," he says, "as shortly as I can: you were bound both to examine your baptizer, and to be examined by him."
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