Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXV. Heretics appeal to Scripture that they may more easily succeed in deceiving.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXV.
Heretics appeal to Scripture that they may more easily
succeed in deceiving.
[64.] Here, possibly,
some one may ask, Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed,
and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single
book of Holy Scripture,—through the books of Moses, the books of
Kings, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels, the Prophets. Whether
among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in
speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets,
hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do
not endeavour to shelter under words of Scripture. Read the works of
Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and the
rest of those pests, and you will see an infinite heap of instances,
hardly a single page, which does not bristle with plausible quotations
from the New Testament or the Old.
[65.] But the more secretly they conceal themselves
under shelter of the Divine Law, so much the more are they to be feared
and guarded against. For they know that the evil stench of their
doctrine will hardly find acceptance with any one if it be exhaled pure
and simple. They sprinkle it over, therefore, with the perfume of
heavenly language, in order that one who would be ready to despise
human error, may hesitate to condemn divine words. They do, in fact,
what nurses do when they would prepare some bitter draught for
children; they smear the edge of the cup all round with honey, that the
unsuspecting child, having first tasted the sweet, may have no fear of
the bitter. So too do these act, who disguise poisonous herbs and
noxious juices under the names of medicines, so that no one almost,
when he reads the label, suspects the poison.
[66.] It was for this reason that the Saviour
cried, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”506
What is meant by “sheep’s
clothing”? What but the words which prophets and apostles with
the guilelessness of sheep wove beforehand as fleeces, for that
immaculate Lamb which taketh away the sin of the world? What are the
ravening wolves? What but the savage and rabid glosses of heretics, who
continually infest the Church’s folds, and tear in pieces the
flock of Christ wherever they are able? But that they may with more
successful guile steal upon the unsuspecting sheep, retaining the
ferocity of the wolf, they put off his appearance, and wrap themselves,
so to say, in the language of the Divine Law, as in a fleece, so that
one, having felt the softness of wool, may have no dread of the
wolf’s fangs. But what saith the Saviour? “By their fruits
ye shall know them;” that is, when they have begun not only to
quote those divine words, but also to expound them, not as yet only to
make a boast of them as on their side, but also to interpret them, then
will that bitterness, that acerbity, that rage, be understood; then
will the ill-savour of that novel
poison be perceived, then will those profane
novelties be disclosed, then may you see first the hedge broken
through, then the landmarks of the Fathers removed, then the Catholic
faith assailed, then the doctrine of the Church torn in pieces.
[67.] Such were they whom the Apostle Paul rebukes
in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says, “For of
this sort are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming
themselves into apostles of Christ.”507
The
apostles brought forward instances from Holy Scripture; these men did
the same. The apostles cited the authority of the Psalms; these men did
so likewise. The apostles brought forward passages from the prophets;
these men still did the same. But when they began to interpret in
different senses the passages which both had agreed in appealing to,
then were discerned the guileless from the crafty, the genuine from the
counterfeit, the straight from the crooked, then, in one word, the true
apostles from the false apostles. “And no wonder,” he says,
“for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It
is no marvel then if his servants are transformed as the servants of
righteousness.” Therefore, according to the authority of the
Apostle Paul, as often as either false apostles or false teachers cite
passages from the Divine Law, by means of which, misinterpreted, they
seek to prop up their own errors, there is no doubt that they are
following the cunning devices of their father, which assuredly he would
never have devised, but that he knew that where he could fraudulently
and by stealth introduce error, there is no easier way of effecting his
impious purpose than by pretending the authority of Holy
Scripture.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
