De locis theologicis

BY WHAT ARGUMENTS THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH IS ATTACKED

The third part has been completed, which I wish theologians to know very well. In this fourth book we must now explain and defend the authority of the Church. Ecclesiastical writers have discussed it so extensively that on this single subject they have even published large volumes. What their purpose was is not relevant at present. What pertains to the present work and occasion is to discuss the authority of the Church in judging matters of faith, and to teach briefly whether firm arguments can be drawn from the common understanding of the faithful to establish theological doctrines. Montanus, as Eusebius and Apollinaris testify, was the first to urge his disciples to show no reverence to the Church spread throughout the world. Nestorius then claimed that the whole Church had erred by following ignorant and mistaken teachers, as Vincent of Lérins reported. The Iconoclasts later asserted that the Church had long been deeply and shamefully mistaken in worshipping images, as the seventh Synod stated in its sixth session. Augustine wrote that the Donatists and Rogatists also despised the authority of the Catholic Church—not in words, but in fact—in many places, and especially in letters 48 to Vincent, 50 to Boniface, and 161 to Honoratus. Not to mention everyone, Luther finally followed Wycliffe and said, among other things, that the Church erred by giving communion to the laity under one species, contrary to Christ's law. He even asserted at one point—if Cochlaeus reports correctly—that the Church had erred from the very beginning, since, contrary to Paul, it had held that law and works are necessary for salvation. In short, it is common to all heretics that as soon as they see themselves pressed by the Church's authority, they either despise it or transfer the Church's name and reality to themselves and deny that it exists where it truly does. Heretics try to persuade us of both claims with many arguments, although the two come down to one and the same thing. Their first argument is as follows. Aaron the high priest himself, as well as others among the people, both leaders and common folk, worshipped a cast calf and offered peace offerings and burnt offerings to it. Therefore Christ's Church can likewise worship carved objects and images. If it does so, as it does, it has undoubtedly erred most shamefully in faith and religion. Again, the Church fell away from the worship of the one true God in the times of Isaiah and Jeremiah; what, then, prevents it from erring now in worshipping the one and true God? It is the same Church, and no difference between the old and the new people can be found in this matter. They think the premise of this argument is proved by the clearest testimonies of those same prophets. “The ox,” says the former, “knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger; but Israel has not known me.… From the sole of the foot to the top of the head there is no soundness in it.” The latter says, “The house of Israel was confounded, they and their kings, princes and priests ¹

and prophets saying to the wood, “You are my father,” and to the stone, “You gave birth to me.” A little later: “Why do you contend with me in judgment? You have all deserted me,” says the Lord. Again: “Go through the streets of Jerusalem and see whether you can find a man who acts justly and seeks faithfulness, and I will be gracious to him. I said, ‘Perhaps they are poor and foolish, ignorant of the way of the Lord, the judgment of their God.’ I will go, then, to the leaders, for they know the way of the Lord.” And behold, these have broken the yoke even more.… Therefore the whole Church was in error at that time. Further, the Church ought not need to be pointed out with a finger; indeed, it cannot exist in obscurity without any visible form. Yet you would wait in vain for its judgment if you were entirely unaware of what it is. They argue for this because among the Jewish people the Church was often so disfigured that no appearance of it remained. What form do we think was prominent when Elijah lamented that he alone had been left? What form remained when that people, scattered among the Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, served foreign nations and gods in a foreign land, without priesthood, temple, or scepter? Therefore, even after Christ's coming, the Church may lie hidden in a disfigured state and be so overwhelmed by wars, seditions, and heresies that it shines forth nowhere. Indeed, in his own time Hilary believed the Church to be hidden rather than saw it; so thoroughly had the Arian faction thrown everything into confusion. “You have been seized,” he says, “by a love of walls; you wrongly venerate the Church of God in roofs and buildings; you wrongly invoke the name of peace beneath them. Is there any doubt that Antichrist will sit in them? Mountains, woods, lakes, prisons, and chasms are safer for me, for in these places the prophets either remained or prophesied while submerged.” With these words he modestly and respectfully indicates that Christ's Church must be sought not among bishops, priests, temples, or crowds of people, but among the devout, who sometimes wander like the prophets in fields and desert places, or are hidden in woods, in caves, and in the hollows of the earth. What is more, during the long schism under different pontiffs, no visible appearance of the Church was evident. If the faithful of that age had sought a manifest Church and believed in none other than one visible to human eyes, they would certainly have found none. Was there then no Church because it was hidden? Although the Church has shone clearly and brightly until now, how do we know whether it will always thereafter retain its true and genuine form? If in past ages the Lord punished the crimes of his people by allowing them to be mocked by the most absurd lies and shrouded in the deepest darkness, why should we not fear that Christ's Church may even now be hidden and enveloped in blind night and thick gloom, so that none of its true appearance shines forth? It is as though the Lord no longer judges, and cannot punish the world today by the same kind of penalty with which he once avenged the ingratitude of the ancient people: striking shepherds and sheep with stupor and blindness, and removing the outward knowledge of his Church from human sight. At this point the heretics, as though the matter were settled, insult us and mock us in strange ways for boasting in the words, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” “Samaria was transferred,” they say; and when Jerusalem clung to outward appearances and boasted of the temple, ceremonies, priesthood, sacraments, and Scriptures, it too was transferred. What happened to the Eastern Church can therefore happen to the Western Church as well, so that its form vanishes like smoke or at least is entirely hidden. And who has proved that our sins are

lighter than theirs, or that God will not punish us just as he punished them? Especially since the Apostle prophesies plainly that there will be a falling away in the Church, which certainly cannot come while the Church's true form and appearance remain. What will it be like at that time of which the Lord says, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on earth?” What, I ask, will it be like when the sacrifice and offering cease? And what will it be like when, as John writes, the smoke from the abyss darkens the sun and the air? Nothing else can be understood from this except that in our age the Church will be so obscured that it can be found only in darkness. Why do we defend the Church's outward appearance and splendor, when all the glory of the king's daughter is within? If the Church is unseen and hidden, then whatever argument is drawn from its authority will also be unexplored and uncertain. Further, the Church is constituted from the number of the predestined alone, and only God knows the number of the elect who are to be placed in heavenly blessedness; therefore the Church is entirely concealed from us and unknown. This first proposition, in which the whole difficulty lies, is supported above all by Augustine's testimony. He expressly asserts that the enclosed garden, sealed fountain, well of living water, and paradise with the fruit of its trees consist only of the predestined, who are hidden within. No believer doubts that all these are properly attributed to Christ's Church. Nor can anyone doubt—although Augustine might not explain it in precisely this way—that the enclosed garden and sealed fountain signify no others than those of whom it is written: “God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: The Lord knows those who are his.” Augustine also proves the same point from Peter's saying that the ark was a type of the Church, in which eight souls were saved through water. Therefore only those who are saved should be thought to be inside the ark. For Christ is the head of no other Church than the one whose savior he is, and which he presents to himself in glory, as the Apostle teaches ad Ephesios. Those, then, who will be neither saved nor glorified are not parts of the Church of which Christ is the head. Further, the Church is made up of God's children, since the Church is the mother not of others, but of those whose father is God. It is clear that those are truly God's children who will receive their father's inheritance. “If children,” he says, “then heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” Christ's fold, likewise, is made up only of Christ's sheep; and his sheep are those of whom he says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I give them eternal life, and they shall not perish forever.” Finally, the Evangelist John speaks of some who seemed to have gone out from the Church, although they had never truly been in it. “They went out from us,” he says, “but they were not of us. Why? For if they had been of us,” he says, “they would certainly have remained with us.” Therefore, none belong to the Church except those who remain in the grace they have received. Since it was an obvious passage, Augustine understands it of the predestined in lib. de corret. et grat. cap. 9. et de bono persev. cap. 8., following Jerome in dialogo adversum Luciferianos. Further, Christ's true Church must be perfect and spotless. “You are wholly beautiful, and there is no spot in you.” And again, “One is my dove, my perfect one.” The Apostle himself also describes it as having neither spot nor wrinkle. Isaiah says, “The uncircumcised and unclean shall no longer pass through you.” And as for the Church's being spotless,

to consider it so, when all its members have some impurity, is empty and fanciful. No Church of this kind, then, exists at the present time. It seems to have existed only at the time when John truly wrote: “Everyone who sins has not known him. And everyone born of God does not sin; nor can he sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.” If all who share in the Church's fellowship must be without sin and blemish, then either there are none at all or they are hidden from us and unknown. The Apostle seems to affirm this when, distinguishing the Church of Christ from the Synagogue, he describes it not as tangible and touchable, but as spiritual and untouchable, consisting, indeed, only of the perfect and predestined. “You have not come,” he says, “to a tangible mountain and blazing fire, but to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and the spirits of the just made perfect.” Add that the faithful are bound to believe not in just any Church, but in the holy Church. In a holy assembly, only holy people are understood. “The Church of the righteous,” he says, “is the children of wisdom.” If you point to some group of people of whom even one is unjust, you would falsely call them just. Just as if one man out of ten were sitting while the others ran, it would be false to say that all ten were running. There is also another very powerful reason: if the wicked are members of the Church, they will also be members of Christ. Yet they are without doubt members of the devil. They would therefore be citizens at once of Jerusalem and Babylon, and members of both Christ and the devil. What could be more absurd to say or imagine? Unless, perhaps, light has fellowship with darkness, or Christ agreement with Belial. Certainly the members of one body cannot be opposed to one another; but good is opposed to evil, life to death, and the just man to the sinner, as the Wise Man says. Therefore the just and the sinner are not members of the ecclesial body. Aristotle too, a most authoritative teacher on this subject, whom St. Thomas also agrees with, teaches that dead limbs are members no more than painted or sculpted ones. Since the sinner is dead, then, he is not truly and properly a member and part of the Church, but only so by equivocation and figure. Further, “we, though many, are one bread and one body,” as the Apostle taught in priore ad Corinthios epistola. As Cyprian argues pointedly to Magnus, bread is formed by the union of many grains. Sinners, therefore, who are chaff, do not enter into the composition of the bread, nor into that of the Church's body. Augustine clearly attests this, and in so many places that there can be no doubt that this was his firm and abiding judgment. Libro enim contra Petilianum secundo, he says: “The wicked are not to be considered members of Christ's body, which is the Church, even if they share bodily in its sacraments.” Likewise, libro contra Cresconium secundo: “One who seems to be within but is outside because of a perverse mind has already been judged by Christ himself.” Later he says: “Those condemned by Christ on account of an evil and defiled conscience are no longer members of Christ's body, which is the Church, even if the Church does not know it, since Christ cannot have condemned members. Accordingly, they too baptize outside the Church. Let it be far from us to count all these monstrosities among the members of that one dove.” Without doubt he is speaking of sinful believers, as is clear from what precedes and follows. Libro de unitate ecclesiae as well, he affirms that the wicked are not counted in the Church.

libro quarto de baptismo contra Donatistas et libro sexto, Augustine plainly affirms that those who act against Christ's commands do not belong to that Church which Christ cleanses by the washing of water, and of which it is written, “My dove is one.” In book 7 he says that the wicked do not belong to the structure of the house that is the Church, but are in it no otherwise than chaff is in the grain. In that same book he also reports that Cyprian, in epistola ad Magnum, was not only an author of this view but a confirmer of it. He confirms it with the prophetic testimony, “He makes those who are of one mind dwell in a house.” Those, then, who are neither one soul nor one heart in the Lord do not dwell at all in the Church, which is God's house. Jerome too says: “The Church of Christ has neither spot nor wrinkle. Therefore one who is a sinner and stained by some defilement cannot be called part of the Church of Christ. But a sinner can run to the physician, have his wounds healed, and become part of the Church, which is the body of Christ.” If the Church to whose authority we defer must be holy, and therefore consist only of the devout and just, then it will never establish certainty in theology until there is reliable proof that it is holy. But it cannot do this, since God alone knows the hearts of human beings. They also ask us why we are mad about identifying the Church, when Christ marked it out with an unmistakable sign: “I am that good shepherd, and I know my sheep and mine know me; my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Whoever does not hear Christ's voice does not belong to Christ's fold and therefore is not even a part of Christ's Church. Moreover, if both the good and the wicked made up the Church, then by the same reasoning by which it is called holy on account of a few just people, it would much more properly be called an unjust Church on account of its many wicked people. Accordingly, one and the same assembly would be both Christ's Church and Satan's synagogue. Only the good, then, make up Christ's Church. For this reason it is unseen by human beings, and even less known than to provide a testimony that establishes faith as certain and proved. Furthermore, there are two Churches, the Greek and the Latin, and, they say, it is not clear enough which one should be believed. It is usually answered that the Greeks are schismatics, and that the Church has therefore perished among them. On what basis? Because by separating from the Roman Pontiff they lost the privilege of the name “Church.” What then? Do not those who fall away from Christ, the true head of the Church, lose it even more? Before Christ's birth there was one Church of all the former peoples, yet it did not have one shepherd or ruler. The name and truth of the Church, then, do not depend on one pontiff. The Greek Church will therefore be a Church, even if it does not obey the bishop of Rome. Even after that bishop's death, one Church nevertheless remains, itself the pillar and foundation of truth. The truth and unity of the Church do not therefore arise from this. But if it has one Lord, one faith in Christ, and one baptism; if it acknowledges one Son, worships one Spirit, and accepts one God and Father of all, it will be one Church of Christ. For the Apostle defines Christ's one Church by these things. There is therefore no reason why the Greeks, among whom all these things are found and among whom there are also many good men, should not constitute Christ's Church. The Latin Church arrogantly claims for itself the name of the Catholic Church in judging matters of faith. Accordingly, unless it agrees with the Greek Church, it lacks the authority of the universal Church, and we are not bound to revere its judgment as if it were truly Catholic.

Further, the Catholic Church is called Catholic because it is spread among all nations and throughout the whole world, as Augustine showed lib. 2 contra Petilianos. This alone binds and obliges us by its judgment, since Sacred Scripture commends this Church, and no other, to us, as Augustine shows in many places. Therefore the Church that exists now, if indeed it exists at all, does not have certain authority, since it has ceased to be Catholic, that is, universal. Further, no argument at all can be drawn from the view of the universal Church. How can we seek the sense of all the faithful in a question of faith? It is therefore futile to try to draw an argument from the Catholic Church. Perhaps someone will say: the pastors represent the Church and are, indeed, the Church itself; therefore it is enough to seek their view, since the Church's view is altogether the same. But there was a Church in Jerusalem in the time of Isaiah, and he says this of its pastors: “All its watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant. They are dumb dogs, unable to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams. The shepherds themselves have no understanding. They have all turned to their own way, from the highest to the lowest.” The Church also continued for a time in Jeremiah's day; let us hear what he says about its pastors: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’? Truly the lying stylus of the scribes has worked falsehood. The wise are confounded, terrified, and captured; for they have rejected the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them.… From the least to the greatest, all pursue greed; from prophet to priest, they all practice deceit.” Why, by this reasoning, would they not count as the Church the four hundred prophets who all lied to Ahab? Yet the true Church of God—that is, all the devout people among them—stood on Micaiah's side. Certainly, if the matter is as they claim, the prophets and priests would have put forward the appearance of the Church when, in opposition to Jeremiah, they all confidently boasted that the law could not perish from the priest, counsel from the wise, or the word from the prophet. Yet one Jeremiah is sent against them all by the Lord to declare that the law would perish from the priest, counsel from the wise, and the word from the prophet. If priests and pastors constitute God's Church, whose testimony must be revered, it follows that they were alien to God's Church and fought against it. In Israel, Elijah, Micaiah, and those like them; in Judah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of their kind—not only were they alienated by the priests, pastors, and prophets of their age, but they were cursed and execrated by them. If it is absurd and impious—and, I would say, even foolish—to think this, then let it stand that the priests and pastors were not God's Church, but an impious conspiracy against God, an assembly of the worst people, from whose agreement one had to break away. Since pastors today may also be like those of old, they certainly do not represent Christ's Church, and doctrines of faith are not proved by their judgment. If God's Church consists of pastors and bishops, then where in the world does it reside, since the Council of Basel deposed Pope Eugene and put Amadeus in his place? As far as outward rites are concerned, the Council was legitimate and was called not by one pontiff alone but by two. There Eugene was condemned for schism, rebellion, and obstinacy, together with the whole company of cardinals and bishops who opposed the Council. From the ranks of those schismatics, rebels, and obstinate men came every Pope, cardinal, bishop, abbot, and priest who followed.

To which side, then, will the name of the Church be assigned? Shall we deny that the general Synod was a Church, though it was consecrated under the presidency of the legate of the Roman See? Or shall we acknowledge Eugene as a schismatic, with the whole company from whom all succeeding bishops received consecration? Either pastors gathered even in a general Council do not represent God's Church, or all of them have been ordained by heretics and schismatics. The Lutherans chiefly abuse these arguments. As for Calvin's further claim that the Church has two marks—the sincere preaching of the word and the proper administration of the sacraments—and that in the Catholic assembly a doctrine fabricated from lies reigns in place of the ministry of the word, that the foulest sacrilege has taken the place of the Lord's Supper, that public gatherings in temples are schools of idolatry and impiety, and that therefore the true and genuine Church of Christ is not among us but rather a deadly and sacrilegious conspiracy of Satan: since this accusation is made rashly, shamefully, and maliciously, it need not be addressed here.