Published with the kind permission of TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS Part I MISSION CHAPTER IX. THAT THE CHURCH CANNOT PERISH. I SHALL be more brief here, because what I shall say in the following chapter forms a strong proof for this belief in the immortality of the Church and its perpetuity. It is said then, to escape the yoke of the holy submission which is owing to the Church, that it perished eighty odd years ago; that it is dead and buried, and the holy light of the true faith extinguished. All this is open blasphemy against the Passion of our Lord, against His Providence, against His goodness, against His truth. Do we not know the word of our Lord Himself: And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself (John xii. 32)? Was He not lifted up on the Cross? did He not suffer?----and how then having drawn to Himself the Church, should He let it escape so utterly from Him? How should He let go this prize which had cost Him so dear? Had the prince of the world, the devil, been driven out with the stick of the Cross for a time of three or four hundred years, to return and reign a thousand years? Would you make so absolutely vain the might of the Cross? Is your faithfulness in judgment of such a sort that you would thus iniquitously divide our Lord, and henceforward place a certain comparison between the Divine goodness and diabolical malice? No, no: When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things which he possesseth are in peace, but if a stronger than he come upon him, and overcome him, he will take away all his armour and will distribute his spoils (Luke xi. 22, 23). Are you ignorant that Our Lord has purchased the Church with His Own Blood?----and who can take it from Him? Think you that He is weaker than His adversary? Ah! I pray you, speak honourably of this captain. And who then shall snatch His Church out of His hands? Perhaps you will say He is one Who can keep it, but Who will not. It is then His Providence, His goodness, His truth that you attack. The goodness of God has given gifts to men as He ascends to Heaven . . . Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, doctors----for the perfection of the Saints in the work of the ministry, unto the edification of the body of Christ (Eph. iv. 12). Was the perfection of the Saints already accomplished eleven or twelve hundred years ago? Had the edification of the Mystical Body of our Lord, that is, the Church, been completed? Either cease to call yourselves edifiers or answer no:----and if it has not been completed, as in fact it has not, even yet, why wrong you thus the goodness of God, saying that He has taken back and carried away from men what He had given them? It is one of the qualities of the goodness of God that, as S. Paul says (Rom. xi. 29) His gifts are without repentance: that is to say, He does not give in order to take away. His Divine Providence, as soon as it had created man, the heavens, the earth, and the things that are in Heaven and on earth, preserved them and perpetually preserves them, in such a way that the species (generation) of each tiniest bird is not yet extinct. What then shall we say of the Church? All this world cost Him at the dearest but a simple word: He spoke and all were made (Ps. cxlviii. 5); and He preserves it with a perpetual and infallible Providence. How, I ask you, should He have abandoned the Church, which cost Him all His Blood, so many toils and travails? He has drawn Israel out of Egypt, out of the desert, out of the Red Sea, out of so many calamities and captivities;----and we are to believe that He has let Christianity be engulfed in infidelity! He has had such care of His Agar, and He will despise Sara! He has so highly favoured the servant who was to be driven out of the house, and he will hold the legitimate wife in no esteem! He shall so greatly have honoured the shadow, and will abandon the substance! Oh! how utterly vain and good for nothing would be the promises on promises which He has made of the perpetuity of this Church. It is of the Church that the Psalmist sings: God hath founded it for ever (xlvii 9); In His days shall justice spring up, and abundance of peace, till the moon be taken away for ever (lxxi. 7). What peace, what justice, except in the Church? His throne (He is speaking in the person of the eternal Father, of the Church, which is the throne of the Messiah, David's Son) shall be as the sun before Me, and as the moon perfect for ever, and a faithful witness in Heaven (lxxxviii. 38). And: I will make His seed to endure for evermore; and His throne as the days of Heaven (30);----that is, as long as Heaven shall endure. Daniel (ii. 44) calls it: A kingdom which shall not be destroyed for ever. The Angel says to Our Lady that of His kingdom there shall be no end (Luke i. 33), and he is speaking of the Church, as we prove elsewhere. Did not Isaias prophesy thus of Our Lord (liii. 10): If He shall lay down His life for sin, He shall see a long-lived seed, that is, of long duration: and elsewhere (lxi. 8): I will make a perpetual covenant with them; and: all that see them (He speaks of the visible Church) shall know them? Now, I ask you, who has given Luther and Calvin a commission to revoke so many holy and solemn promises of perpetuity which Our Lord has made to His Church? Is it not Our Lord Who, speaking of His Church, says that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it? How shall this promise be verified if the Church has been abolished a thousand years or more? How shall we understand that sweet adieu our Lord made to His Apostles: Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matt. ult.), if we say that the Church can perish? Or do we really wish to violate the sound rule of Gamaliel, who speaking of the rising Church used this argument: If this design or work be of men, it will fall to nothing; but if it be of God, you are not able to destroy it (Acts v. 38, 39)? Is not the Church the work of God?----and how then shall we say that it has come to nothing?   If this fair tree of the Church had been planted by man's hand I would easily acknowledge that it could be rooted up, but having been planted by so good a hand as is that of our Lord, I could not offer better counsel to those who hear people crying at every turn that the Church had perished than what our Lord said: Let these blind people alone, for every plant which God hath not planted shall be rooted up (Matt. xv. 13, 14). S. Paul says that all shall be made alive; but each one in his own order: the first-fruits Christ, then they that are of Christ, . . . afterwards the end (1 Cor. xv. 22, 23, 24). Between Christ and those that are of Christ, that is, the Church, there is no interval, for ascending up to Heaven He has left them on earth; between the Church and the end there is no interval, since it was to last unto the end. How! was not our Lord to reign in the midst of His enemies, until He had put under His feet and subjected all who were opposed to Him (Ps. cix. 2)?----and how shall these authorities be fulfilled, if the Church, the kingdom of our Lord, has been ruined and destroyed? How should He reign without a kingdom, and how should He reign among His enemies unless He reigned in this world below? But, I pray you, if this Spouse had died, who first drew life from the side of her Bridegroom asleep on the Cross, if, I say, she had died, who would have raised her from the dead? Do we not know that the resurrection of the dead is not a less miracle than creation, and much greater than continuation or preservation? Do we not know that the re-formation of man is a much deeper mystery than the formation? In the formation God spake, and man was made, He breathed into him the living soul, and had no sooner breathed it into him than this man began himself to breathe: but in His re-formation God employed thirty-three years, sweated Blood and water, yea, He died over this re-formation. Whoever then is rash enough to say that this Church is dead, calls in question the goodness, the diligence and the wisdom of this great Reformer. And he who thinks himself to be the reformer or resuscitator thereof, attributes to himself the honour due to Jesus Christ alone, and makes himself greater than the Apostles. The Apostles have not brought the Church back to life, but have preserved its life by their ministry, after our Lord had instituted it. He then who says that having found the Church dead he has raised it to life----does he not in your opinion deserve to be seated on the throne of audacity? Our Lord had cast the fire of His charity upon the earth, the Apostles blowing on it by their preaching had increased it and spread it throughout the world: you say it has been extinguished by the waters of ignorance and iniquity;----who shall enkindle it again? [In Ps. ci, S. 2.] Blowing is of no use: what is to be done then? Perhaps we must strike again with nails and lance on Jesus Christ the holy living stone, to bring forth a new fire:----or shall it be enough to have Calvin or Luther in the world to relight it? This would indeed be to be third Eliases, for neither Elias nor S. John Baptist did ever as much. This would be leaving all the Apostles far far behind, who did indeed carry this fire throughout the world, but did not enkindle it. "O impudent cry!" says S. Augustine against the Donatists, [S. 79 in Cant.] "the Church is not, because you are not in it!" "No, no," says S. Bernard, [S. 79 in Cant.]  "the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock (Matt. vii. 25), and the rock was Christ (1 Cor. x. 4)." And to say the Church has failed----what else is it but to say that all our predecessors are damned. Yes, truly; for outside the true Church there is no salvation, out of this Ark everyone is lost. Oh what a return we make to those good Fathers who have suffered so much to preserve to us the inheritance of the Gospel: and now so arrogant are their children that they scorn them, and hold them as silly fools and madmen. I will conclude this proof with S. Augustine, [De Unit. Eccl. xvii.] and say to your ministers: "What do you bring us new? Shall it be necessary to sow again the good seed, whereas from the time of its sowing it is to grow till the harvest? If you say that what the Apostles sowed has everywhere perished, we answer to you: read this to us from the Holy Scriptures: this you shall never do without having first shown us that this is false which is written, saying, that the seed which was sown in the beginning should grow till the time of the harvest. The good seed is the children of the kingdom, the cockle is the wicked, the harvest is the end of the world (Matt. xiii.). Say not then that the good seed is destroyed or choked, for it grows even to the consummation of the world." HOME----------CATHOLIC CLASSICS www.catholictradition.org/Classics/controversy1-9.htm