Published with the kind permission of TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS Part I MISSION CHAPTER XII. THE CHURCH CANNOT ERR. ONCE when Absalom wished to form a faction and division against his good father David, he sat in the way near the gate, and said to each person that went by: There is no man appointed by the king to hear thee . . . O that they would make me Judge over the land, that all that have business might come to me, that I might do them justice. [2 Kings xv.] Thus did he seduce the loyalty of the Israelites. O how many Absaloms have there been in our age, who, to seduce and distort the people of Our Lord from obedience to the Church and her pastors, and to lead away Christian lealty into rebellion and revolt, have cried up and down the ways of Germany and of France: there is no one appointed by God to hear doubts concerning the faith and to answer them; the Church itself, the rulers of the Church, have no power to determine what we are to hold----as to the faith and what we are not; we must seek other judges than the prelates, the Church can err in its decrees and rules. But what more hurtful and audacious proposition could they make to Christianity than that? If then the Church can err, O Calvin, O Luther, to whom shall I have recourse in my difficulties? To the Scripture, say they. But what shall I, poor man, do, for it is precisely about the Scripture that my difficulty lies. I am not in doubt whether I must believe the Scripture or not; for who knows not that it is the Word of Truth? What keeps me in anxiety is the understanding of this Scripture, is the conclusions to be drawn from it, which are innumerable and diverse and opposite on the same subject; and everybody takes his view, one this, another that, though out of all there is but one which is sound:----Ah! who will give me to know the good among so many bad? who will tell me the real verity through so many specious and masked vanities. Everybody would embark on the ship of the Holy Spirit; there is but one, and only that one shall reach the port, all the rest are on their way to shipwreck. Ah! what danger am I in of erring! All shout out their claims with equal assurance and thus deceive the greater part, for all boast that theirs is the ship. Whoever says that our Master has not left us guides in so dangerous and difficult away, says that he wishes us to perish. Whoever says that he has put us aboard at the mercy of wind and tide, without giving us a skillful pilot able to use properly his compass and chart, says that the Saviour is wanting in foresight. Whoever says that this good Father has sent us into this school of the Church, knowing that error was taught there, says that he intended to foster our vice and our ignorance. Who has ever heard of an academy in which everybody taught, and nobody was a scholar?----such would be the Christian commonwealth if the Church can err. For if the Church herself err, who shall not err? and if each one in it err, or can err, to whom shall I betake myself for instruction?----to Calvin? but why to him rather than to Luther, or Brentius, or Pacimontanus? Truly, if I must take my chance of being damned for error, I will be so for my own not for another's, and will let these wits of mine scatter freely about, and maybe they will find the truth as quickly as anybody else. We should not know then whither to turn in our difficulties if the Church erred. But he who shall consider how perfectly authentic is the testimony which God has given of the Church, will see that to say the Church errs is to say no less than that God errs, or else that He is willing and desirous for us to err; which would be a great blasphemy. For is it not Our Lord who says: If thy brother shall offend thee . . . tell the Church, and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican (Matt. xviii.) Do you see how Our Lord sends us to the Church in our differences, whatever they may be? How much more in more serious offences and differences! Certainly if by the order of fraternal correction I am obliged to go to the Church to effect the amendment of some evil person who has offended me, how much more shall I be obliged to denounce him who calls the whole Church Babylon, adulterous, idolatrous, perjured? And so much the more because with this evil-mindedness of his he can seduce and infect a whole province;----the vice of heresy being so contagious that it spreadeth like a cancer (2 Tim. ii. 17) for a time. When, therefore, I see some one who says that all our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have fallen into idolatry, have corrupted the Gospel, and committed all the iniquities which follow upon the fall of religion, I will address myself to the Church, whose judgment every one must submit to. But if she can err then it is no longer I, or man, who will keep error in the world: it will be our God Himself Who will authorise it and give it credit, since He commands us to go to this tribunal to hear and receive justice. Either He does not know what is done there, or He wishes to deceive us, or true justice is really done there; and the judgments are irrevocable. The Church has condemned Berengarius; if anyone would further discuss this matter, I hold him as a heathen and a publican, in order to obey my Saviour, Who leaves me no choice herein, but gives me this order: Let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican. It is the same as S. Paul teaches when he calls the Church the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim. iii. 15). Is not this to say that truth is solidly upheld in the Church? Elsewhere truth is only maintained at intervals, it falls often, but in the Church it is without vicissitude, unmovable, unshaken, in a word steadfast and perpetual. To answer that S. Paul's meaning is that Scripture has been put under the guardianship of the Church, and no more, is to weaken the proposed similitude too much. For to uphold the truth is a very different thing from guarding the Scripture. The Jews guard a part of the Scriptures, and so do many heretics; but they are not on that account a column and ground of truth. The bark of the letter is neither truth nor falsehood, but according to the sense that we give it is it true or false. The truth consists in the sense, which is, as it were, the marrow. And therefore if the Church were guardian of the truth, the sense of the Scripture would have been entrusted to her care, and it would be necessary to seek it with her, and not in the brain of Luther or Calvin or any private person. Therefore she cannot err, ever having the sense of the Scriptures. And in fact to place with this sacred depository the letter without the sense, would be to place therein the purse without the gold, the shell without the kernel, the scabbard without the sword, the box without the ointment, the leaves without the fruit, the shadow without the body. But tell me, if the Church has the care of the Scriptures, why did Luther take them and carry them away from her? And why do you not receive at her hands the Machabees, Ecclesiasticus, and the rest, as much as the Epistle to the Hebrews? For she protests that she has just as jealous a care of those as of these. In short, the words of S. Paul cannot suffer this sense that you would give them: he speaks of the visible Church,----for where would he direct his Timothy to behave himself? He calls it the house of Our Saviour; therefore it is well founded, well ordered, well sheltered against all storms and tempest of error. It is the pillar and ground of truth; truth then is in it, it abides there, it dwells there; who seeks it elsewhere loses it. It is so thoroughly safe and firm that all the gates of hell, that is, all the forces of the enemy, cannot make themselves masters of it. And would not the place be taken by the enemy if error entered it, with regard to the things which are for the honour and service of the Master? Our Lord is the head of the Church,----are you not ashamed to say that the body of so holy a head is adulterous, profane, corrupt? And say not that he is head of an invisible Church, for, since there is only a visible Church (as I have shown above) our Lord is the head of that; as S. Paul says: And He hath made Him head over all the Church (Eph. i 22); not over one Church out of two, as you imagine, but over the whole Church. Where two or three are gathered together in the name of the Lord, he is in the midst of them (Matt. xviii. 20). Ah! who shall say that the assembly of the universal Church of all time has been abandoned to the mercy of error and impiety? I conclude then that when we see that the universal Church has been and is in the belief of some article,----whether we see it expressly in the Scripture, whether it is drawn therefrom by some deduction, or again by tradition,----we must in no way judge, nor dispute, nor doubt concerning it, but show obedience and homage to this heavenly Queen, as Christ commands, and regulate our faith by this standard: And if it would have been impious in the Apostles to contest with their Master, so will it be in him who contests with the Church. For if the Father has said of the Son: Hear ye Him, the Son has said of the Church: If anyone will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican. HOME----------CATHOLIC CLASSICS www.catholictradition.org/Classics/controversy1-12.htm