Commonitory 22–30

But it is worth while to treat that whole passage of the Apostle more carefully. "O Timothy," he says, "guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words." "O!" This exclamation is one both of foreknowledge and of love. For he foresaw the errors to come, over which he was already grieving. Who is Timothy today, if not either, in general, the whole church, or, in particular, the whole body of those set over it, who ought both to have themselves the complete knowledge of divine worship and to pour it into others? What is "guard the deposit"? Guard it, he says, because of thieves, because of enemies, lest while men sleep they sow tares over that good seed of wheat which the Son of Man had sown in his field. "Guard," he says, "the deposit." What is the deposit? That which has been entrusted to you, not what was found by you; what you have received, not what you have thought out; a thing not of wit but of teaching, not of private usurpation but of public tradition; a thing brought to you, not put forth by you; in which you must be not an author but a guardian, not a founder but a follower, not leading but following. "Guard," he says, "the deposit"; keep the talent of the catholic faith inviolate and unimpaired. What has been entrusted to you, let that remain with you, let that be handed on by you. You have received gold; give back gold. I do not want you to substitute one thing for another for me; I do not want you shamelessly to put lead, or fraudulently brass, in place of gold; I do not want the appearance of gold, but its very nature. O Timothy, O priest, O expounder, O teacher, if the divine gift has made you fit by talent, training, and learning, be the Bezalel of the spiritual tabernacle: engrave the precious gems of divine doctrine, fit them together faithfully, adorn them wisely, add brilliance, grace, beauty. Let what was believed before more obscurely be understood more clearly through your exposition. Let posterity rejoice to understand through you what antiquity before venerated without understanding. Yet teach the same things that you have learned, so that when you speak in a new way you do not say new things.

But perhaps someone will say: Will there, then, be no progress of religion in the church of Christ? Let there be, certainly, and the greatest. For who is so envious of men, so hateful to God, as to try to forbid it? But in such a way that it is truly progress of the faith, not change. For progress means that each thing is enlarged within itself; change, that something is turned from one thing into another. The understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, then, of each and of all, of one man as of the whole church, must grow and advance much and greatly through the stages of ages and centuries; but only in its own kind, that is, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same meaning. Let the religion of souls imitate the pattern of bodies, which, though in the course of years they unfold and develop their proportions, yet remain the same as they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of old age; yet those who become old are the same who were young, so that, though the state and condition of one and the same man changes, there is nevertheless one and the same nature, one and the same person. The small limbs of infants and the large ones of young men are yet the same. As many joints as little children have, so many have men; and if there are any that are produced at a more mature age, they were already present in the principle of the seed, so that nothing new is afterwards brought forth in old men which was not already hidden beforehand in boys. Hence there is no doubt that this is the legitimate and right rule of progress, the established and most beautiful order of growth: if the advance of age always unfolds in the grown man those parts and forms which the Creator's wisdom had formed beforehand in the little ones. But if the human form were afterwards turned into some shape not of its own kind, or if anything were added to the number of its limbs or taken away, the whole body must either perish, or become monstrous, or at least be weakened. So too the doctrine of the Christian religion ought to follow these laws of progress: to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, raised by age, yet to remain uncorrupted and unimpaired, and to be full and perfect in all the measures of its parts and, as it were, in all its own limbs and senses; so that it admits no change besides, suffers no loss of its proper character, no variation of its definition. For example: our forebears long ago sowed the seeds of the wheat of faith in this field of the church. It would be very unjust and unfitting for us, their descendants, to gather instead of the genuine truth of the grain the counterfeit error of the tares. Rather it is right and consistent that, the first and the last not disagreeing with each other, from the increase of the wheat that was planted we should reap the harvest of the wheat of doctrine too; so that when, in the course of time, something is developed from those first seeds and is now rejoiced in and cultivated, nothing yet of the proper character of the seed is changed: appearance, form, and distinction may be added, but the nature of each kind remains the same. Far be it that those rose gardens of catholic meaning should be turned into thistles and thorns. Far be it, I say, that in this spiritual paradise darnel and wolfsbane should suddenly spring up from the shoots of cinnamon and balsam. Whatever, therefore, has been sown by the faith of the fathers in this farm of the church of God, this same ought to be cultivated and watched over by the industry of the sons; this same should flourish and ripen, this same should advance and be perfected. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should in the course of time be cared for, filed, and polished; but it is wrong that they should be changed, wrong that they should be truncated or mutilated. They may receive evidence, light, and distinction; but they must keep their fullness, integrity, and proper character. For if once this licence of impious fraud is admitted, I shudder to say how great a danger of destroying and abolishing religion follows. For once any part of catholic doctrine is given up, another and then another, and after that another and another, will be given up as if by custom and as lawful. And then, the parts being repudiated one by one, what else will follow in the end but that the whole is repudiated alike? But on the other hand, if new things begin to be mixed with old, foreign with domestic, profane with sacred, this custom must creep through everything, so that afterwards nothing in the church is left untouched, nothing unimpaired, nothing whole, nothing unspotted; and where there was before a sanctuary of chaste and uncorrupted truth, there will be afterwards a brothel of impious and shameful errors. But may divine love turn this wickedness away from the minds of its own, and let this rather be the madness of the impious. The church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited with it, never changes anything in them, diminishes nothing, adds nothing; does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose what is its own, does not usurp what is another's; but with all industry strives for this one thing: that, treating the old faithfully and wisely, if there are things formed and begun of old, it may finish and polish them; if things already expressed and set out, it may consolidate and strengthen them; if things already confirmed and defined, it may guard them. What else, finally, has it ever striven for by the decrees of councils, but that what was before believed simply should afterwards be believed more carefully; what was before preached more slowly should afterwards be preached more insistently; what was before cultivated more securely should afterwards be cultivated more anxiously? This, I say, and nothing more, the catholic church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has always accomplished by the decrees of its councils: that what it had before received from the forebears by tradition alone, it then consigned to posterity also by written document, comprehending a great sum of things in a few words, and often, for the sake of clearer understanding, marking a sense of the faith that is not new by the precision of a new term.

But let us return to the Apostle. "O Timothy," he says, "guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words." "Avoid" them, he says, as a viper, as a scorpion, as a basilisk, lest they strike you not only by touch but even by sight and breath. What is "avoid"? "Not even to eat with such a one." What is "avoid"? "If anyone comes to you," he says, "and does not bring this teaching." What teaching, but the catholic and universal, one and the same through the successions of ages, remaining by the uncorrupted tradition of the truth and to remain for ever without end? What then? "Do not receive him into your house," he says, "and do not greet him. For whoever greets him shares in his evil works." "Profane novelties," he says, "of words." What is "profane"? Those which have nothing sacred, nothing religious, wholly foreign to the inner sanctuary of the church, which is the temple of God. "Profane novelties," he says, "of words": of words, that is, novelties of doctrines, of things, of opinions, which are contrary to what is old and ancient; which, if they are received, the faith of the blessed fathers must be violated either wholly or at least in great part; it must be pronounced that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, all the chaste, the continent, the virgins, all the clergy, deacons and bishops, so many thousands of confessors, such armies of martyrs, such a throng and multitude of cities and peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, tribes, kingdoms, nations, finally almost the whole world, incorporated through the catholic faith into Christ the head, through so long a course of ages were ignorant, erred, blasphemed, did not know what to believe. "Avoid," he says, "profane novelties of words": to receive and follow them was never the way of catholics, but always of heretics. And indeed, what heresy ever bubbled up except under a definite name, in a definite place, at a definite time? Who ever founded heresies except one who first separated himself from the consent of the catholic church's universality and antiquity? That this is so, examples show more clearly than light. For who before that profane Pelagius ever presumed such power of free will as to think God's grace not necessary to help it in good things in each single act? Who before his monstrous disciple Caelestius denied that the whole human race is bound by the guilt of Adam's transgression? Who before the sacrilegious Arius dared to divide the unity of the Trinity, who before the wicked Sabellius to confuse the Trinity of the unity? Who before the most cruel Novatian called God cruel, as preferring the death of the dying man to his turning back and living? Who before Simon the magician, struck by the apostolic severity (from whom that ancient whirlpool of vileness has flowed by a continuous and hidden succession down to the latest, Priscillian), dared to say that God the Creator is the author of evils, that is, of our crimes, impieties, and shameful deeds? For he asserts that God with his own hands creates such a human nature as, by a kind of motion of its own and the impulse of a necessary will, can do nothing else and will nothing else but sin, because, driven and inflamed by the furies of all the vices, it is carried by insatiable desire into every abyss of vileness. There are countless such things, which we pass over for the sake of brevity; yet by all of them it is shown clearly and plainly enough that among almost all heresies this is, as it were, customary and lawful: that they always rejoice in profane novelties, disdain the decrees of antiquity, and through oppositions of knowledge falsely so called make shipwreck of the faith. On the contrary, this is truly proper to catholics: to keep what the holy fathers deposited and committed, to condemn profane novelties, and, as the Apostle said and said again beforehand, "If anyone announces other than what has been received, let him be anathema."

Here perhaps someone may ask whether heretics also use the testimonies of divine Scripture. Indeed they do, and vehemently. For you may see them flying through every single volume of the holy law, through Moses, through the books of Kings, through the Psalms, through the Apostles, through the Gospels, through the Prophets. Whether among their own or among others, in private or in public, in sermons or in books, at banquets or in the streets, they hardly ever put forward anything of their own which they do not try to cover with the words of Scripture too. Read the little works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and of the other plagues: you will see an endless heap of examples, hardly a page omitted that is not painted and coloured with sentences of the New or Old Testament. But they are the more to be guarded against and feared the more secretly they lurk under the shade of the divine law. For they know that their stenches would please hardly anyone quickly if they were breathed out bare and simple; and so they sprinkle them with the spice, as it were, of the heavenly word, so that one who would easily despise human error may not easily scorn divine oracles. So they do what those usually do who, about to mix some bitter draughts for little children, first smear the rims with honey, so that the unwary age, tasting the sweetness first, may not dread the bitterness. This too is the care of those who give harmful herbs and noxious juices the colouring of medicines' names, so that hardly anyone, reading "remedy" written above, suspects poison. Hence it was that the Saviour cried out: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves." What is the sheep's clothing but the sayings of the prophets and apostles, which they, with a sheeplike sincerity, wove like fleeces for that spotless Lamb who takes away the sin of the world? Who are the ravening wolves but the fierce and rabid minds of heretics, who always infest the folds of the church and tear the flock of Christ wherever they can? But in order to creep more deceptively upon unwary sheep, while keeping the ferocity of wolves, they lay aside the wolfish appearance and wrap themselves in the sentences of the divine law as in fleeces, so that anyone who first feels the softness of the wool may not fear the sharpness of the teeth. But what does the Saviour say? "By their fruits you will know them": that is, when they begin not only to quote those divine words but also to expound them, not only to toss them about but to interpret them, then that bitterness, then that harshness, then that rage will be understood; then the new poison will be breathed out, then the profane novelties will be laid open; then for the first time you may see the hedge broken, the landmarks of the fathers moved, the catholic faith cut down, the doctrine of the church torn to pieces. Such were those whom the apostle Paul strikes in the second letter to the Corinthians, saying: "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ." What is "disguising themselves as apostles of Christ"? The apostles brought forward examples from the divine law; so did they. The apostles brought forward the authority of the Psalms; so did they. The apostles brought forward sentences of the prophets; and they none the less brought them forward. But when they began to interpret in a different way the things they had brought forward in the same way, then the simple were distinguished from the deceitful, the unpainted from the painted, the upright from the perverse, and finally the true apostles from the false apostles. "And no wonder," he says, "for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light. It is no great thing, then, if his ministers disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness." So, according to the teaching of the apostle Paul, whenever false apostles or false prophets or false teachers bring forward sentences of the divine law, by misinterpreting which they try to build up their errors, there is no doubt that they follow the cunning devices of their author; which he would surely never have contrived unless he knew that there is no easier way at all to deceive than to hold out the authority of the divine words where the fraud of wicked error is being brought in.

But someone will say: How is it proved that the devil is accustomed to use examples from the sacred law? Let him read the Gospels, where it is written: "Then the devil took him", that is, the Lord and Saviour, "and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written that he has commanded his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; in their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone." What will he do to poor wretched men, who assailed the very Lord of majesty with the testimonies of the Scriptures? "If you are the Son of God," he says, "throw yourself down." Why? "For it is written," he says. The teaching of this passage must be greatly heeded and retained by us, so that, by so great an example of Gospel authority, when we see any bringing forward apostolic or prophetic words against the catholic faith, we may not doubt at all that the devil is speaking through them. For as then the head spoke to the head, so now also members speak to members: the members of the devil, namely, to the members of Christ, the faithless to the faithful, the sacrilegious to the religious, finally heretics to catholics. But what, after all, do they say? "If you are the Son of God," he says, "throw yourself down"; that is, if you wish to be a son of God and to receive the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom, throw yourself down, that is, cast yourself down from the doctrine and tradition of this lofty church, which is also held to be the temple of God. And if anyone asks one of the heretics who is persuading him of such things, "How do you prove, how do you teach, that I ought to abandon the universal and ancient faith of the catholic church?", at once he says: "For it is written." And immediately he gets ready a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the Apostles, from the Prophets, which, interpreted in a new and evil way, cast the unhappy soul from the catholic citadel into the abyss of heresy. And by the promises that follow, heretics are wonderfully accustomed to deceive unwary men. For they dare to promise and to teach that in their church, that is, in the little conventicle of their communion, there is a great and special and indeed personal grace of God, so that without any labour, without any effort, without any industry, even if they neither ask, nor seek, nor knock, all who belong to their number are so dispensed by God that, borne up by the hands of angels, that is, preserved by angelic protection, they can never strike their foot against a stone, that is, never be made to stumble.

But someone will say: if the devil and his disciples, some of whom are false apostles, others false prophets and false teachers, and all of them wholly heretics, use the divine words, sentences, and promises, what will catholic men and sons of mother church do? How will they distinguish truth from falsehood in the holy Scriptures? They will take great care to do what, as we wrote at the beginning of this Commonitory, holy and learned men handed down to us: to interpret the divine canon according to the traditions of the universal church and the rules of catholic doctrine; and in this catholic and apostolic church they must follow universality, antiquity, and consent. And if ever a part rebels against the whole, novelty against antiquity, the dissent of one or a few in error against the consent of all, or at least of far more, catholics, let them prefer the soundness of the whole to the corruption of the part; and within that same universality, let them prefer the religion of antiquity to the profanity of novelty; and likewise within antiquity itself, to the rashness of one or of very few let them prefer first of all the general decrees, if there are any, of a universal council; and then, if that is lacking, let them follow what comes next, the agreeing opinions of many great teachers. If we observe these things faithfully, soberly, and carefully, with the Lord's help, we shall detect without great difficulty all the harmful errors of heretics as they arise.

Here I see that it follows that I should show by examples how the profane novelties of heretics are detected and condemned by bringing forward and comparing the agreeing opinions of the ancient teachers. This ancient consent of the holy fathers, however, is to be sought and followed by us with great zeal not in all the little questions of the divine law, but only, or at least chiefly, in the rule of faith. Nor are all heresies always to be attacked in this way, but only new and recent ones, namely when they first arise, before they are able to falsify the rules of the ancient faith, being hindered by the shortness of the time itself, and before, as the poison spreads more widely, they try to corrupt the volumes of the forebears. But heresies that have spread and grown old are by no means to be attacked in this way, because through a long course of time they have had a long opportunity of stealing the truth. And therefore all those more ancient profanities, whether of schisms or of heresies, we ought to refute only, if need be, by the authority of the Scriptures alone, or else to avoid them as already refuted and condemned of old by universal councils of catholic bishops. So when the rottenness of any evil error first begins to break out, and, to defend itself, to steal certain words of the sacred law and expound them falsely and fraudulently, at once the opinions of the forebears must be gathered for interpreting the canon, so that whatever new and therefore profane thing arises may be both exposed without any ambiguity and condemned without any reconsideration. But only the opinions of those fathers are to be compared who, living, teaching, and persevering holily, wisely, and constantly in the catholic faith and communion, were found worthy either to die faithfully in Christ or to be killed happily for Christ. They are to be believed on this condition: that whatever all of them, or most, have confirmed in one and the same sense, clearly, frequently, persistently, as if by a council of teachers agreeing among themselves, in receiving, holding, and handing it on, that is to be held as undoubted, certain, and settled. But whatever any one, however holy and learned, however much a confessor and martyr, has held apart from all or even against all, let that be set apart among his own hidden and private little opinions, separate from the authority of the common, public, and general opinion; lest, to the greatest peril of eternal salvation, following the sacrilegious custom of heretics and schismatics, we abandon the ancient truth of universal doctrine and follow the new error of one man. And lest anyone should perhaps think that the holy and catholic consent of these blessed fathers may be rashly despised, the Apostle says in the first letter to the Corinthians: "And God has placed some in the church, first apostles" (of whom he himself was one), "second prophets" (such as we read of Agabus in the Acts of the Apostles), "third teachers", who are now called expounders, whom this same Apostle sometimes also calls prophets, because through them the mysteries of the prophets are opened to the peoples. Whoever, then, despises these, appointed by God in the church through times and places, when they agree on some one point in Christ in the sense of catholic doctrine, despises not man but God. That no one may depart from their truthful unity the same Apostle adjures very earnestly, saying: "Now I beseech you, brothers, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be perfected in the same mind and in the same judgment." And if anyone has withdrawn from the fellowship of their judgment, he will hear that saying of the same Apostle: "God is not a God of dissension but of peace" (that is, not of him who has fallen away from the unity of agreement but of those who have remained in the peace of agreement), "as," he says, "I teach in all the churches of the saints", that is, of catholics, which are holy because they persist in the fellowship of faith. And lest anyone, passing over the rest, should claim that he alone should be heard, he alone believed, a little later he says: "Did the word of God go out from you, or did it come to you alone?" And lest this be taken as said in passing, he added: "If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that what I write to you are the Lord's commands." What commands, if not that if anyone is a prophet or spiritual, that is, a teacher of spiritual things, he should be with the greatest zeal a cultivator of equality and unity, so that he neither prefers his own opinions to those of others nor departs from the mind of all? "Whoever is ignorant of this," he says, "will be ignored": that is, whoever either does not learn what he does not know or despises what he knows will be ignored, that is, will be held unworthy to be regarded by God among those united by faith and made equal by humility; and I do not know whether anything more bitter than this evil can be thought of. Yet we see that, according to the apostolic threat, this has befallen that Pelagian Julian, who either neglected to incorporate himself into the mind of his colleagues or presumed to excorporate himself from it. But now it is time to bring forward the promised example, where and how the opinions of the holy fathers were gathered together, so that according to them, by the decree and authority of a council, the rule of the church's faith might be fixed. That this may be done more conveniently, let this be the end of this Commonitory, so that we may take what follows from another beginning.

Since this is so, it is now time to recapitulate, at the end of this second, what has been said in these two Commonitories. We said above that it has always been, and is today, the custom of catholics to prove the true faith in these two ways: first by the authority of the divine canon, then by the tradition of the catholic church; not because the canon alone is not sufficient in itself for everything, but because most people, interpreting the divine words at their own discretion, conceive various opinions and errors, and therefore it is necessary that the understanding of heavenly Scripture be directed by the one rule of the church's sense, at least especially in those questions on which the foundations of the whole of catholic doctrine rest. We said likewise that within the church itself, again, the consent both of universality and of antiquity must be looked to, so that we may neither be broken off from the integrity of unity into a part of schism, nor be thrown headlong from the religion of antiquity into the novelties of heresies. We said likewise that within the antiquity of the church itself two things are to be observed very earnestly and carefully, to which all who do not wish to be heretics ought to cling closely: first, whether anything had been decreed of old by all the bishops of the catholic church by the authority of a universal council; next, if some new question arose where that was not to be found, one must have recourse to the opinions of the holy fathers, of those only who, each in his own time and place, remaining in the unity of communion and faith, had been approved teachers; and whatever they were found to have held with one mind and consent, that was to be judged without any scruple the true and catholic teaching of the church. And lest we should seem to put this forward from our own presumption rather than by the church's authority, we brought forward the example of the holy council which was held about three years ago in Asia, at Ephesus, in the consulship of the most illustrious Bassus and Antiochus. There, when the rules of faith were being discussed, lest some profane novelty should creep in there like the faithlessness of Ariminum, it seemed to all the bishops who had assembled there, nearly two hundred in number, most catholic, most faithful, and best to do this: that the opinions of the holy fathers should be brought into the midst, of whom it was certain that some had been martyrs, some confessors, and all catholic bishops, and had remained so; so that, duly and solemnly, by their consent and decree, the religion of ancient doctrine might be confirmed and the blasphemy of profane novelty condemned. When this had been done, that impious Nestorius was rightly and deservedly judged contrary to catholic antiquity, and blessed Cyril in agreement with most holy antiquity. And so that nothing should be lacking to the trustworthiness of the facts, we set out both the names and the number (though we had forgotten the order) of those fathers according to whose harmonious and agreeing opinion there both the sayings of the sacred law were expounded and the rule of divine doctrine was established. It is not at all superfluous to list them here too, to confirm the memory.

These, then, are the men whose writings were read in that council, either as judges or as witnesses. Holy Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a most excellent teacher and most blessed martyr. Holy Athanasius, bishop of the same city, a most faithful teacher and most eminent confessor. Holy Theophilus, likewise bishop of the same city, a man very famous for faith, life, and knowledge, whom the venerable Cyril succeeded, who now adorns the church of Alexandria. And lest this should perhaps be thought the teaching of one city and province, those lights of Cappadocia were also brought in: holy Gregory, bishop and confessor, of Nazianzus; holy Basil, bishop and confessor of Caesarea in Cappadocia; and likewise the other holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, most worthy of his brother Basil by the merit of faith, life, integrity, and wisdom. And so that it might be proved that not only Greece or the East but also the western and Latin world had always thought so, certain letters to certain people of holy Felix the martyr and holy Julius, bishops of the city of Rome, were also read there. And so that not only the head of the world but also its sides might bear witness to that judgment, there was brought in from the south the most blessed Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr, and from the north holy Ambrose, bishop of Milan. These, then, are all those who were brought forward at Ephesus, in the sacred number of the Decalogue, as teachers, counsellors, witnesses, and judges; whose teaching that blessed synod held, whose counsel it followed, whose testimony it believed, whose judgment it obeyed, and so pronounced on the rules of faith without haste, presumption, or favour. A much larger number of the forebears could have been brought in, but it was not necessary; for the time of the business ought not to be taken up with a multitude of witnesses, and no one doubted that those ten had held nothing other than all their other colleagues.