Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 124 pages of information about Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name.

Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 124 pages of information about Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name.
the Jews, nor private judgment, like the Sectaries, but that Spirit wherewith Christ animates the whole Church.  The Church, the guardian of this treasure, not its mistress (as heretics falsely make out), vindicated publicly in former times by very ancient Councils this entire treasure, which the Council of Trent has taken up and embraced.  Augustine also in a special discussion on one small portion of Scripture cannot bring himself to think that any man’s rash murmuring should be permitted to thrust out of the Canon the book of Wisdom, which even in his time had obtained a sure place as a well-authenticated and Canonical book in the reckoning of the Church, the judgment of ages, the testimony of ancients, and the sense of the faithful.  What would he say now if he were alive on earth, and saw men like Luther and Calvin manufacturing Bibles, filing down Old and New Testament with a neat pretty little file of their own, setting aside, not the book of wisdom alone, but with it very many others from the list of Canonical Books?  Thus whatever does not come out from their shop, by a mad decree, is liable to be, spat upon by all as a rude and barbarous composition.  They who have stooped to this dire and execrable way of saving themselves surely are beaten, overthrown, and flung rolling in the dust, for all their fine praises that are in the mouths of their admirers, for all their traffic in priesthoods, for all their bawling in pulpits, for all their sentencing of Catholics to chains, rack and gallows.  Seated in their armchairs as censors, as though any one had elected them to that office, they seize their pens and mark passages as spurious even in God’s own Holy Writ, putting their pens through whatever they cannot stomach.  Can any fairly educated man be afraid of battalions of such enemies?  If in the midst of your learned body they had recourse to such trickster’s arts, calling like wizards upon their familiar spirit, you would shout at them,—­you would stamp your feet at them.  For instance I would ask them what right they have to rend and mutilate the body of the Bible.  They would answer that they do not cut out true Scriptures, but prune away supposititious accretions.  By authority of what judge?  By the Holy Ghost.  This is the answer prescribed by Calvin (Instit. lib. I, c. 7), for escaping this judgment of the Church whereby spirits of prophesy are examined.  Why then do some of you tear out one piece of Scripture, and others another, whereas you all boast of being led by the same Spirit?  The Spirit of the Calvinists receives six Epistles which do not please the Lutheran Spirit, both all the while in full confidence reposing on the Holy Ghost.  The Anabaptists call the book of Job a fable, intermixed with tragedy and comedy.  How do they know?  The Spirit has taught them.  Whereas the Song of Solomon is admired by Catholics as a paradise of the soul, a hidden manna, and rich delight in Christ, Castalio, a lewd rogue, has reckoned
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Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.