Commonitory

Since Scripture says and admonishes, "Ask your fathers and they will tell you, your elders and they will declare to you", and again, "Incline your ear to the words of the wise", and again, "My son, do not forget these words, but let your heart keep my sayings", it seems to me, Peregrinus, the least of all the servants of God, that it will be of no small use, with the Lord's help, if I put in writing what I have faithfully received from the holy fathers; certainly very necessary for my own weakness, since I shall have at hand something by which the frailty of my memory can be made good by constant reading. To this task I am urged not only by the fruit of the work but also by consideration of the time and the suitability of the place. The time: because, since time snatches away all human things, we in turn ought to snatch from it something that profits for eternal life; especially since a certain fearful expectation of the approaching divine Judgment demands that our zeal for religion be increased, and the deceitfulness of new heretics calls for much care and attention. The place: because, avoiding the crowds and throngs of cities, we live in a rather remote small estate, and in it the secluded dwelling of a monastery, where, without great distraction, there can be done what is sung in the psalm: "Be still," it says, "and see that I am the Lord." The plan of our life also fits this; for after we had for some time been tossed by the various and sad whirlwinds of secular warfare, we at last, by Christ's inspiration, took shelter in the harbour of religion, always the safest for all; so that there, having laid aside the blasts of vanity and pride, and appeasing God by the sacrifice of Christian humility, we may escape not only the shipwrecks of the present life but also the fires of the world to come. But now, in the name of the Lord, I will take up the matter in hand, namely to write down what has been handed down by our forebears and entrusted to us, with the fidelity of a reporter rather than the presumption of an author; keeping, however, this rule in writing, that I will by no means touch on everything, but only on what is necessary, and that not in an ornate and exact style but in plain and ordinary language, so that most things may seem to be indicated rather than set out. Let those write elegantly and exactly who are led to this task either by confidence in their talent or by the duty of their office. For me it will be enough to have prepared a Commonitory, a reminder, for myself, to aid my recollection, or rather my forgetfulness; which, however, by going over what I have learned, I shall try, the Lord granting, to correct and complete little by little every day. I have said this beforehand so that if perhaps it slips from us and comes into the hands of holy men, they may not rashly find fault with anything in it which they see still needs polishing according to the promised correction.

So, often inquiring with great zeal and the closest attention of very many men eminent in holiness and learning how I might, by some sure and, as it were, general and regular way, distinguish the truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity, I have always received from almost all of them an answer of this kind: that if I, or anyone else, wished to detect the frauds of heretics as they arise, to avoid their snares, and to remain sound and whole in the sound faith, he ought, with the Lord's help, to fortify his faith in two ways: first, namely, by the authority of the divine law, and then by the tradition of the catholic church. Here perhaps someone may ask: "Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is sufficient for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join to it the authority of the church's understanding?" Because, namely, owing to its very depth, not everyone takes holy Scripture in one and the same sense; one interprets its words one way and another another, so that it seems almost as many opinions can be drawn from it as there are people. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another; Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius another; Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian another; Jovinian, Pelagius, Caelestius another; and lastly Nestorius another. And therefore it is very necessary, because of so many windings of such various error, that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed according to the rule of the church's catholic sense. Moreover, in the catholic church itself great care must be taken that we hold what has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and properly catholic, as the very force and meaning of the word declares, which embraces almost everything universally. But this will come about only if we follow universality, antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality in this way, if we confess that one faith to be true which the whole church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no way depart from those senses which it is plain that our holy forebears and fathers proclaimed; and consent likewise, if within antiquity itself we follow the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly almost all, the bishops and teachers alike.

What, then, will a catholic Christian do if some small part of the church has cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What indeed but prefer the soundness of the whole body to a diseased and corrupt member? What if some new contagion tries to infect not merely a small portion but the whole church alike? Then he will take care to cling to antiquity, which can no longer be led astray by any deceit of novelty. What if, within antiquity itself, the error of two or three men, or even of one city or some province, is found? Then he will take every care to prefer the decrees, if there are any, of a universal council of the universal church of old to the rashness or ignorance of a few. What if something arises where nothing of this kind is to be found? Then he will take pains to consult and question, compared with one another, the opinions of the forebears, of those only who, though in different times and places, yet remaining in the communion and faith of the one catholic church, were approved teachers; and whatever he finds that not one or two only but all alike, with one and the same consent, held, wrote, and taught openly, frequently, and persistently, let him understand that this too is to be believed by him without any doubt.

But to make what we say plainer, it must be illustrated with examples one by one, and set out a little more fully, so that the weight of the matters is not swept away by the speed of the speech through eagerness for excessive brevity. In the time of Donatus, from whom the Donatists are named, when a great part of Africa was rushing headlong into the madness of its error, and, forgetting its name, religion, and profession, preferred the sacrilegious rashness of one man to the church of Christ, then those throughout Africa who, detesting the profane schism, joined themselves to all the churches of the world, alone of all of them could be saved within the sanctuaries of the catholic faith; leaving to posterity an excellent pattern, namely, how thereafter, by good custom, the soundness of all should be preferred to the madness of one or of a few. Likewise when the poison of the Arians had infected not just some small portion but almost the whole world, so that, nearly all the bishops of the Latin tongue being deceived partly by force, partly by fraud, a kind of fog was poured over their minds as to what was best to follow in so great a confusion, then whoever proved a true lover and worshipper of Christ, preferring the ancient faith to the new faithlessness, was not stained by any plague of that contagion. By the danger of that time it was shown abundantly what calamity is brought in by the introduction of a new dogma. For thereby not only small things but the greatest were shaken. Not only relationships by marriage and by blood, friendships, households, but cities, peoples, provinces, nations, and at last the whole Roman Empire were shaken and moved from their foundations. For when that profane novelty of the Arians, like some Bellona or Fury, having first captured the emperor, had then subjugated all the heights of the palace with new laws, it never afterwards ceased to throw everything into confusion and disorder, private and public, sacred and profane, making no distinction of good and true, but striking whomever it pleased as from a higher place. Then wives were violated, widows despoiled, virgins profaned, monasteries demolished, clergy scattered, Levites scourged, bishops driven into exile, and workhouses, prisons, and mines filled with saints; the greatest part of whom, forbidden the cities, thrust out and banished, among deserts, caves, wild beasts, and rocks, were afflicted, worn down, and wasted by nakedness, hunger, and thirst. And did all this happen for any other reason than this: that human superstitions were brought in instead of heavenly doctrine, that well-founded antiquity was undermined by wicked novelty, that the institutions of those before us were violated, the decrees of the fathers rescinded, the definitions of our forebears torn up, and that the lust of profane and new curiosity would not keep itself within the most chaste bounds of hallowed and uncorrupted antiquity?

But perhaps we invent these things out of hatred of novelty and love of antiquity. Whoever thinks so, let him at least believe blessed Ambrose, who, in the second book to the emperor Gratian, himself deploring the bitterness of the time, says: "But now, almighty God, we have washed away enough by our exile and our blood: the slaughter of confessors, the exile of bishops, and the wickedness of so great an impiety. It has become clear enough that those who have violated the faith cannot be safe." Likewise in the third book of the same work: "Let us keep, then, the precepts of our forebears, and not violate the inherited seals with the daring of crude rashness. That sealed book of prophecy neither elders, nor powers, nor angels, nor archangels dared to open: to Christ alone was reserved the prerogative of explaining it. The book of the priesthood, sealed by confessors and already consecrated by the martyrdom of many, which of us would dare to unseal? Those who were forced to unseal it afterwards sealed it again, condemning the fraud; those who did not dare to violate it became confessors and martyrs. How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?" We proclaim it indeed, I say, venerable Ambrose! We proclaim it indeed, and praise it with wonder. For who is so mad that he would not long to follow, even if he cannot overtake, those whom no force drove from the defence of the faith of their forebears, not threats, not flatteries, not life, not death, not the palace, not guards, not the emperor, not the empire, not men, not demons? Those, I say, whom for their steadfastness in the religion of antiquity the Lord judged worthy of so great a gift that through them he restored the fallen churches, brought to life the spiritually dead peoples, replaced the cast-down crowns of the bishops, and wiped out, by a fountain of faithful tears poured from heaven upon the bishops, those wicked writings, or rather erasures, of the new impiety; and at last recalled almost the whole world, struck by the savage storm of a sudden heresy, from new faithlessness to the ancient faith, from the madness of novelty to the ancient soundness, from the blindness of novelty to the ancient light. But in this divine virtue of the confessors we must above all consider this: that then, within the antiquity of the church itself, they undertook the defence not of some part but of the whole. For it was not right that such and so great men should maintain with so great an effort the wandering and self-contradictory notions of one or two men, or contend for some rash conspiracy of a small province; but following the decrees and definitions of all the bishops of holy church, the heirs of apostolic and catholic truth, they preferred to betray themselves rather than the faith of ancient universality. Hence they deserved to attain such glory that they are rightly and deservedly held to be not only confessors but the leaders of confessors.

This, then, is the great and truly divine example of those blessed men, to be recalled with unwearied meditation by every true catholic; who, like the seven-branched candlestick shining with the sevenfold light of the Holy Spirit, showed to posterity a very clear pattern of how thereafter, in every vain babbling of error, the audacity of profane novelty is to be crushed by the authority of hallowed antiquity. Nor is this anything new. For this custom has always flourished in the church, that the more religious a person was, the more readily he opposed new inventions. Everything is full of such examples. But not to be lengthy, we will take one, and that above all from the apostolic see, so that all may see more clearly than light with what force, what zeal, what effort the blessed succession of the blessed apostles has always defended the integrity of the religion once received. Once, then, Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, of venerable memory, first of all mortals, against the divine canon, against the rule of the universal church, against the mind of all his fellow bishops, against the custom and institutions of the forebears, held that people should be rebaptized. This presumption brought in so much evil that it gave not only to all heretics a pattern of sacrilege but also to some catholics an occasion of error. So when all everywhere cried out against the novelty of the thing, and all the bishops everywhere resisted it, each according to his zeal, then Pope Stephen of blessed memory, bishop of the apostolic see, resisted, together indeed with his colleagues, but yet before the rest; thinking it fitting, I suppose, that he should surpass all the others in devotion to the faith as much as he excelled them in the authority of his see. Finally, in the letter that was then sent to Africa, he decreed in these words: "Let nothing be innovated, except what has been handed down." For the holy and prudent man understood that the principle of piety admits nothing else but that everything should be handed on to the sons with the same faith with which it had been received from the fathers; and that we ought not to lead religion where we wish, but rather follow where it leads; and that it is the mark of Christian modesty and seriousness not to hand on one's own things to posterity, but to keep what has been received from the forebears. What, then, was the outcome of the whole affair? What indeed but the usual and customary one? Antiquity was retained, novelty rejected. But perhaps that new invention lacked defenders then? On the contrary, there was such power of intellect, such rivers of eloquence, such a number of supporters, such plausibility, such oracles of the divine law, though understood in a plainly new and evil way, that it seems to me that whole conspiracy could in no way have been destroyed, had not the very profession of novelty, so taken up, defended, and praised, failed of itself as the sole cause of so great an effort. What, finally? What force had the African council itself, or its decree? By God's gift, none; but all of it was abolished, made obsolete, trampled underfoot, like dreams, like fables, like superfluous things. And, O wonderful reversal! The authors of that opinion are judged catholics, its followers heretics; the masters are acquitted, the disciples condemned; the writers of the books will be sons of the kingdom, while their defenders Gehenna will receive. For who is so mad as to doubt that that most blessed light of all the saints, bishops, and martyrs, Cyprian, together with his other colleagues, will reign with Christ for ever? Or who, on the other hand, is so sacrilegious as to deny that the Donatists and the other plagues who boast that they rebaptize on the authority of that council will burn with the devil for ever?

This judgment seems to me to have been promulgated by God above all because of the deceitfulness of those who, when they scheme to construct a heresy under another's name, usually seize upon the somewhat obscurely written works of some ancient man which, because of their very obscurity, seem to fit their own doctrine, so that whatever it is they put forward they may appear neither the first nor the only ones to hold it. Their wickedness I judge worthy of double hatred: both because they do not fear to give others the poison of heresy to drink, and also because with profane hand they fan the memory of some holy man as if it were ashes already sleeping, and spread abroad by reviving its opinion what ought to be buried in silence, following entirely in the footsteps of their founder Ham, who not only neglected to cover the nakedness of venerable Noah but even reported it to the others to be mocked. For this he incurred such offence against injured piety that even his descendants were bound by the curses of his sin; very far unlike those blessed brothers who would neither violate the nakedness of their revered father with their own eyes nor let it be exposed to the eyes of others, but, turning away, as it is written, covered him: that is, they neither approved nor betrayed the error of the holy man; and therefore they were endowed with a blessing on their descendants. But let us return to our subject. We must therefore dread with great fear the guilt of changing the faith and violating religion; from which not only the discipline of the church's constitution deters us but also the censure of apostolic authority. For everyone knows how gravely, how severely, how vehemently the blessed apostle Paul inveighs against certain people who with wonderful fickleness had been too quickly removed from him who had called them into the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is not another; who had heaped up for themselves teachers to suit their desires, turning away their hearing from the truth and turning to fables; having condemnation because they had cast off their first faith; whom those had deceived of whom the same apostle writes to the brothers at Rome: "Now I beg you, brothers, to watch those who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the teaching you have learned, and avoid them. For such people do not serve Christ the Lord but their own belly, and by smooth words and blessings deceive the hearts of the innocent." "Who enter into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." "Empty talkers and deceivers, who overturn whole households, teaching what they ought not, for the sake of shameful gain." "Men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith"; "proud, knowing nothing, but sick about questions and disputes about words; who are deprived of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness"; "and at the same time, being idle, they learn to go about from house to house; and not only idle, but also talkative and busybodies, saying what they ought not"; "who, rejecting a good conscience, have made shipwreck concerning the faith"; "whose profane and vain babblings advance much towards ungodliness, and their word spreads like a cancer." But it is well that it is also written of them: "But they will make no further progress; for their folly will be plain to all, as theirs also was."

So when certain such people, going round provinces and cities and carrying about their errors for sale, had come even to the Galatians, and when the Galatians, on hearing them, were seized with a kind of nausea for the truth and, vomiting up the manna of apostolic and catholic doctrine, were delighting in the filth of heretical novelty, the authority of the apostolic power showed itself so as to decree with the greatest severity: "But even if we," he says, "or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be anathema." Why does he say "even if we"? Why not rather "even if I"? That is: even if Peter, even if Andrew, even if John, even if, finally, the whole choir of apostles should preach to you other than what we preached, let him be anathema. A fearful strictness, not to have spared himself or his fellow apostles in order to maintain firm adherence to the original faith! That is not all: "Even if an angel from heaven," he says, "should preach to you other than what we preached, let him be anathema." It was not enough, for guarding the faith once handed down, to have mentioned the nature of the human condition, without including also the excellence of the angels. "Even if we," he says, "or an angel from heaven." Not that the holy angels of heaven can now sin; but this is what he means: even if what cannot happen were to happen, whoever should try to change the faith once handed down, let him be anathema. But perhaps he said this in passing, and poured it out from human impulse rather than decreeing it by divine reason. Far from it. For he goes on, and drives this home with the great effort of a repeated statement: "As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you other than what you received, let him be anathema." He did not say: "If anyone announces to you other than what you received, let him be blessed, praised, received"; but "let him be anathema", that is, separated, set apart, excluded, so that the dreadful contagion of one sheep may not contaminate the innocent flock of Christ by its poisonous mingling.

But perhaps these things were commanded only to the Galatians. Then those things too were enjoined only on the Galatians which are mentioned in what follows in the same letter, such as these: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become desirous of empty glory, provoking one another, envying one another", and the rest. But if that is absurd, and they were enjoined on all alike, it remains that, just as these moral commands, so also the precepts concerning faith bind all in the same way; and just as no one may provoke or envy another, so no one may accept anything other than what the catholic church everywhere preaches. Or perhaps it was then commanded that anyone who announced other than what had been announced should be anathematized, but now it is no longer commanded. Then that too which he says in the same place, "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfil the desire of the flesh", was commanded only then and is no longer commanded now. But if it is equally impious and pernicious to believe that, it necessarily follows that, just as these things are to be observed in all ages, so too those decrees about not changing the faith are binding in all ages. To announce to catholic Christians anything other than what they have received was never lawful, is nowhere lawful, and never will be lawful; and to anathematize those who announce anything other than what has once been received was always a duty, is everywhere a duty, and always will be a duty. Since this is so, is there anyone either so bold as to announce anything other than what has been announced in the church, or so fickle as to accept anything other than what he has received from the church? He cries out, and cries out again and again, to all, always, and everywhere, through his letters, he, the vessel of election, the teacher of the nations, the trumpet of the apostles, the herald of the world, the one who knew the secrets of heaven: that if anyone announces a new dogma, he is to be anathematized. And on the other side certain frogs, gnats, and dying flies, such as the Pelagians, cry back, and to catholics at that: "On our authority, under our leadership, by our exposition, condemn what you held, hold what you condemned, reject the ancient faith, the institutions of the fathers, the deposits of the forebears, and accept..." Accept what, pray? I shudder to say it; for they are so arrogant that it seems to me they cannot be asserted, nor even refuted, without some sacrilege.

But someone will say: why then does God so often allow certain eminent persons in the church to announce new things to catholics? A fair question, and worth treating more carefully and fully; yet it must be answered not from my own wit but from the authority of the divine law and the teaching of the church's magisterium. Let us hear holy Moses, then, and let him teach us why learned men, who because of the grace of knowledge are even called prophets by the Apostle, are sometimes permitted to put forward new dogmas, which the Old Testament is accustomed to call, in allegorical language, "strange gods", because heretics observe their own opinions just as the pagans their gods. Blessed Moses, then, writes in Deuteronomy: "If there rises in your midst a prophet," he says, "or one who says he has seen a dream", that is, a teacher placed in the church whom his disciples or hearers think teaches from some revelation. What next? "And he foretells a sign and a wonder, and what he said comes to pass." Some great teacher is indicated, of such knowledge that to his followers he seems able not only to know human things but also to foreknow what is above man; such as their disciples boast Valentinus, Donatus, Photinus, Apollinaris, and others of that kind to have been. What then? "And he says to you: Let us go and follow strange gods, whom you do not know, and let us serve them." What are strange gods but foreign errors which you did not know, that is, new and unheard-of? "And let us serve them", that is, believe them, follow them. What, finally? "You shall not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer." And why, I ask, is what God forbids to be heard not forbidden by God to be taught? "Because," he says, "the Lord your God is testing you, to make it plain whether or not you love him with all your heart and with all your soul." The reason is plain, clearer than light, why divine Providence sometimes allows certain teachers of the churches to preach new dogmas: "that the Lord your God may test you," he says. And it is indeed a great test when someone whom you think a prophet, a disciple of the prophets, a teacher and defender of the truth, whom you have embraced with the highest veneration and love, suddenly brings in harmful errors by stealth, which you can neither quickly detect, being led by the prejudice of his former teaching, nor easily think it right to condemn, being hindered by affection for your old teacher.

Here perhaps someone may demand that what is asserted in the words of holy Moses be shown by some examples from the church. A fair request, and not to be put off long. To begin with recent and well-known cases: what kind of test do we think it was lately, when that unhappy Nestorius, suddenly turned from a sheep into a wolf, began to tear the flock of Christ, while those very ones who were being bitten still for the most part believed him a sheep, and so lay the more open to his bites? For who would easily think that man in error whom he saw chosen by so great a judgment of the empire and attended by so much zeal of the bishops, who, celebrated with great love by the saints and the highest favour of the people, daily expounded the divine oracles in public and refuted all the harmful errors of Jews and pagans? How could he fail to convince anyone that he taught rightly, preached rightly, and thought rightly, who, to open a hearing for his one heresy, attacked the blasphemies of all heresies? But this was what Moses says: "The Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him or not." And to pass over Nestorius, in whom there was always more to wonder at than to profit from, more fame than proof, whom human rather than divine favour had for a while made great in popular opinion, let us rather recall those who, gifted with much attainment and much industry, proved no small test to catholics. Thus in Pannonia, in the memory of our fathers, Photinus is recorded to have tested the church of Sirmium. Having been taken into the episcopate with great favour from all, and having for some time administered it as a catholic, suddenly, like that evil prophet or dreamer whom Moses indicates, he began to persuade the people of God entrusted to him to follow strange gods, that is, foreign errors which they had not known before. But that is usual. What was ruinous was that for so great a wickedness he used no mean supports. For he was strong in power of intellect, outstanding in wealth of learning, and very powerful in eloquence, disputing and writing copiously and weightily in both languages, as the monuments of his books show, which he composed partly in Greek and partly in Latin. But happily the sheep of Christ entrusted to him, watchful and cautious for the catholic faith, quickly paid heed to the words of Moses who had warned them, and though they admired the eloquence of their prophet and shepherd, they did not fail to recognize the test. For him whom they had previously followed like the ram of the flock they then began to flee like a wolf. Not only by the example of Photinus but also by that of Apollinaris we learn the danger of this test within the church, and at the same time are warned to guard the faith more carefully. For he too caused great turmoil and great distress to his hearers, since the authority of the church drew them one way and the habit of their teacher drew them back the other; and wavering and tossed between the two, they could not work out which they should choose. But perhaps he was the kind of man who deserved to be easily despised. On the contrary, he was so great and of such a kind that he was all too readily believed in many things. For who was more outstanding than he in acuteness, training, and learning? How many heresies he crushed in many volumes, how many errors hostile to the faith he refuted, is shown by that most noble and very great work of no fewer than thirty books, in which he confounded the mad calumnies of Porphyry with a great mass of proofs. It would take long to recount all his works, by which he could surely have been equal to the greatest builders of the church, had he not, through that profane lust of heretical curiosity, invented something new by which he defiled all his labours as with an admixture of leprosy, and brought it about that his teaching was called not so much an edification of the church as a test.

Here perhaps I may be asked to set out the heresies of those I have mentioned above, namely Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Photinus. This does not belong to the matter we are now treating; for our purpose is not to pursue the errors of each, but to bring forward the examples of a few, by which may be shown clearly and plainly what Moses says: that if ever some teacher of the church, himself a prophet in interpreting the mysteries of the prophets, tries to bring something new into the church of God, divine Providence permits it for our testing. It will be useful, then, by way of digression, to set out briefly what the heretics mentioned above hold, that is, Photinus, Apollinaris, Nestorius. This, then, is the sect of Photinus. He says that God is single and solitary, and is to be confessed in the Jewish manner. He denies the fullness of the Trinity, and thinks there is no person of God the Word or of the Holy Spirit. Christ he asserts to be only a solitary man, to whom he ascribes a beginning from Mary; and he dogmatizes in every way that we ought to worship only the person of God the Father and Christ only as a man. So much for Photinus. Apollinaris boasts that he agrees, as it were, on the unity of the Trinity, and even this not with full soundness of faith; but on the Lord's incarnation he blasphemes by open profession. For he says that in the very flesh of our Saviour there was no human soul at all, or at least one that had no mind and reason. And he said that the Lord's flesh itself was not taken from the flesh of the holy Virgin Mary but came down from heaven into the Virgin; and, always wavering and doubtful, he preached it now as coeternal with God the Word, now as made from the divinity of the Word. For he would not have two substances in Christ, one divine, the other human, one from the Father, the other from the mother; but he thought that the very nature of the Word was divided, as if part of it remained in God and part had been turned into flesh; so that whereas the truth says that one Christ is of two substances, he, contrary to the truth, asserts that from the one divinity of Christ two substances were made. So much for Apollinaris. Nestorius, with a disease contrary to that of Apollinaris, while he pretends to distinguish two substances in Christ, suddenly introduces two persons, and by an unheard-of crime wants there to be two sons of God, two Christs, one God, the other man, one begotten of the Father, the other of the mother. And so he asserts that holy Mary is to be called not Theotokos but Christotokos, because, namely, there was born of her not that Christ who is God but that one who was man. If anyone thinks that in his writings he speaks of one Christ and preaches one person of Christ, let him not believe it rashly. For either he contrived this by the art of deceiving, so as more easily to persuade evil things through good, as the Apostle says, "Through what is good it worked death in me"; or, as we said, for the sake of fraud he boasts in certain places of his writings that he believes one Christ and one person of Christ; or at least he holds that after the Virgin had given birth the two persons came together into one Christ, yet in such a way that he contends that at the time of the conception or birth from the Virgin, and for some time afterwards, there were two Christs; so that Christ, born first as an ordinary and solitary man, not yet joined to God the Word in unity of person, the person of the assuming Word afterwards came down upon him; and though he now remains assumed in the glory of God, yet for some time there seems to have been no difference between him and other men.

These, then, are the things that Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Photinus bark like mad dogs against the catholic faith: Photinus by not confessing the Trinity; Apollinaris by saying that the nature of the Word is changeable, by not confessing two substances in Christ, and by denying either the whole soul of Christ or at least the mind and reason in his soul, and asserting that the Word of God took the place of the mind; Nestorius by asserting that there are always, or were for a time, two Christs. But the catholic church, thinking rightly both about God and about our Saviour, blasphemes neither in the mystery of the Trinity nor in the incarnation of Christ. For it worships both one Godhead in the fullness of the Trinity and the equality of the Trinity in one and the same majesty; and it confesses one Christ Jesus, not two, the same both God and man. It believes in him one person but two substances; two substances but one person: two substances because the Word of God is not changeable so as to be turned into flesh; one person lest, by professing two sons, it should seem to worship a quaternity, not a Trinity. But it is worth while to unfold this again and again, more distinctly and expressly. In God there is one substance but three persons; in Christ two substances but one person. In the Trinity there is another and another (alius), not another thing and another thing (aliud); in the Saviour another thing and another thing, not another and another. How in the Trinity another and another, not another thing and another thing? Because the person of the Father is one, of the Son another, of the Holy Spirit another; yet of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the nature is not one and another, but one and the same. How in the Saviour another thing and another thing, not another and another? Because the substance of the divinity is one, of the humanity another; yet the Godhead and the humanity are not one and another, but one and the same Christ, one and the same Son of God, and of one and the same Christ and Son of God there is one and the same person; just as in a man the flesh is one thing and the soul another, yet the man, soul and flesh, is one and the same. In Peter and Paul the soul is one thing, the flesh another; yet there are not two Peters, flesh and soul, nor is one Paul soul and another flesh; but there is one and the same Peter, one and the same Paul, subsisting of the twofold and different nature of soul and body. So then in one and the same Christ there are two substances, but one divine, the other human; one from God the Father, the other from the Virgin mother; one coeternal and equal with the Father, the other in time and less than the Father; one consubstantial with the Father, the other consubstantial with the mother; yet one and the same Christ in both substances. Not, then, one Christ God and another man; not one uncreated and another created; not one impassible and another passible; not one equal to the Father and another less than the Father; not one from the Father and another from the mother; but one and the same Christ, God and man, the same uncreated and created, the same unchangeable and impassible, the same changed and having suffered, the same both equal to and less than the Father, the same begotten of the Father before the ages, the same born of the mother in the age, perfect God, perfect man. In God the highest divinity, in man full humanity. Full humanity, I say, since it has both soul and flesh: but true flesh, ours, from his mother; and a soul endowed with intellect, possessed of mind and reason. There is, then, in Christ the Word, a soul, and flesh; but this whole is one Christ, one Son of God, and one our Saviour and Redeemer. One, however, not by some corruptible confusion of divinity and humanity, but by a complete and singular unity of person. For that union did not convert and change one into the other (which is the error proper to the Arians), but rather so joined both into one that, while the singleness of one and the same person always remains in Christ, the property of each nature also remains for ever; so that neither does God ever begin to be body, nor does the body ever cease to be body. This is also shown by the example of the human condition. For not only in the present but also in the future each human being will consist of soul and body, and yet neither will the body ever be turned into soul nor the soul into body; but since each human being will live without end, in each human being the difference of both substances will necessarily remain without end. So in Christ also each substance's own property is to be kept for ever, the unity of the person, however, being preserved.

But since we often name the person, and say that God became man through the person, we must greatly beware lest we seem to say that God the Word took on what is ours only by imitating actions, and did whatever belongs to human life as a man in appearance, not as a true man; as usually happens in theatres, where one man suddenly represents several persons, none of whom he is himself. For whenever an imitation of another's actions is taken up, the duties or deeds of others are performed in such a way that those who act are not themselves those whom they act. For (to use, for example, instances from the world and from the Manichees) when a tragic actor represents a priest or a king, he is not a priest or a king. For when the performance ends, the person he had assumed ends with it. Far from us be this impious and wicked mockery. Let that be the madness of the Manichees, who, preachers of phantasm, say that the Son of God, God, existed as the person of a man not in substance but feigned it by a kind of supposed acting and way of life. But the catholic faith says that the Word of God became man in such a way that he took what is ours not deceptively and in appearance but truly and really, and did not imitate human things as another's but rather performed them as his own; and what he acted, that he also was. Just as we ourselves, in that we speak, think, live, and subsist, do not imitate men but are men. For Peter and John, to name them above all, were men not by imitating but by subsisting. Nor did Paul pretend to be an apostle or feign to be Paul; but he was an apostle and subsisted as Paul. So too God the Word, by assuming and having flesh, by speaking, acting, and suffering through the flesh, yet without any corruption of his own nature, deigned to bring it about entirely that he did not imitate or feign a perfect man but showed one forth, so that he did not seem or was not supposed to be a true man, but was one and subsisted as one. Therefore, just as the soul, joined to the flesh yet not turned into flesh, does not imitate man but is man, and man not by pretence but by substance, so also God the Word, without any change of himself, by uniting himself to man, not by confusion, not by imitation, became man, but by subsisting. Let us, then, wholly cast away the whole understanding of 'person' that is taken up in feigned imitation, where one thing always is and another is pretended, where the one who acts is never the one whom he acts. Far be it that God the Word should be believed to have taken the person of man in this deceptive way; but rather in such a way that, his own substance remaining unchangeable, and taking into himself the nature of perfect man, he himself became flesh, himself man, himself the person of a man: not a pretended but a true one, not imitative but substantial, not one that would cease with the action but one that would remain absolutely in substance.

This unity of person in Christ, then, was joined and completed not at all after the Virgin's giving birth, but in the very womb of the Virgin. For we must take great care to confess Christ not only one but always one; since it is an intolerable blasphemy, even if you grant that he is now one, to contend that he was once not one but two: one, namely, after the time of his baptism, but two at the time of his birth. This immense sacrilege we can surely avoid only by confessing that the man was united to God, but by unity of person, not from the ascension, or the resurrection, or the baptism, but already in the mother, already in the womb, already, indeed, in the very virginal conception. Because of this unity of person, both what is proper to God is attributed to man and what is proper to the flesh is ascribed to God, indifferently and interchangeably. Hence it is that it is written by God both that the Son of Man came down from heaven, and that the Lord of glory was crucified on earth. Hence too, the Lord's flesh having been made, the Lord's flesh created, the Word of God himself is said to have been made, the Wisdom of God herself filled, knowledge created; just as in prophecy his hands and his feet are said to have been pierced. Through this unity of person, I say, it was also brought about, by the reason of a like mystery, that, since the flesh of the Word was born of an inviolate mother, God the Word himself is believed most catholicly, and denied most impiously, to have been born of the Virgin. Since this is so, far be it that anyone should try to defraud holy Mary of the privileges of divine grace and her special glory. For by a singular gift of our Lord and God, and her Son, she is most truly and most blessedly to be confessed Theotokos: but not Theotokos in the way that a certain impious heresy supposes, which asserts that she is to be called Mother of God by name only, because she bore that man who afterwards became God; as we say the mother of a presbyter or the mother of a bishop, not because she bore a presbyter or bishop, but because she bore a man who afterwards became a presbyter or bishop. Not so, I say, is holy Mary Theotokos; but rather because, as was said above, already in her sacred womb that most holy mystery was accomplished whereby, because of a certain singular and unique unity of person, just as the Word in the flesh is flesh, so the man in God is God.

But now let us repeat more briefly and concisely, to refresh the memory, what was said above briefly about the heresies mentioned and about the catholic faith, so that, repeated, they may be understood more fully, and, driven home, held more firmly. Anathema, then, to Photinus, who does not receive the fullness of the Trinity and preaches that Christ is merely a solitary man. Anathema to Apollinaris, who asserts in Christ the corruption of a changed divinity and takes away the property of a perfect humanity. Anathema to Nestorius, who denies that God was born of the Virgin, asserts two Christs, and, having thrown out faith in the Trinity, brings in a quaternity on us. But blessed is the catholic church, which worships one God in the fullness of the Trinity, and likewise the equality of the Trinity in one Godhead; so that neither does the singleness of substance confuse the property of the persons, nor does the distinction of the Trinity separate the unity of the Godhead. Blessed, I say, is the church, which believes that in Christ there are two true and perfect substances but one person of Christ, so that neither does the distinction of the natures divide the unity of the person, nor does the unity of the person confuse the difference of the substances. Blessed, I say, is the church, which, in order to confess that Christ always is and was one, confesses that the man was united to God not after the birth but already in the mother's very womb. Blessed, I say, is the church, which understands that God was made man not by change of nature but by way of person, and of a person not pretended and passing but substantial and permanent. Blessed, I say, is the church, which proclaims that this unity of person has such force that because of it, by a wonderful and ineffable mystery, it ascribes divine things to man and human things to God. For because of it, it does not deny that man, according to God, came down from heaven, and believes that God, according to man, was made, suffered, and was crucified on earth. Because of it, finally, it confesses man to be the Son of God and God to be the son of the Virgin. Blessed, then, and venerable, blessed and most holy, and altogether comparable to that heavenly praise of the angels, is the confession which glorifies the one Lord God with a threefold "Holy". For it proclaims the unity of Christ above all for this reason, so as not to go beyond the mystery of the Trinity. Let this have been said by way of digression; it is to be treated and explained more fully elsewhere, if it please God. Now let us return to our subject.

We were saying, then, above, that in the church of God the error of a teacher is a test of the people, and the greater test the more learned the one who errs. This we showed first by the authority of Scripture, then by examples from the church, namely by recalling those who, though for some time held to be of sound faith, at last either fell into another's sect or founded their own heresy. A great matter indeed, useful to learn and necessary to remember, which we ought to illustrate and press home again and again with a mass of examples, so that all true catholics may know that they ought to receive the teachers with the church, not abandon the faith of the church with the teachers. But I think that, though we could bring forward many in this kind of testing, there is hardly anyone who can be compared with the test of Origen. In him there were so many things so outstanding, so singular, so wonderful, that at first anyone would readily judge that faith was to be given to all his assertions. For if life makes authority, his was great industry, great chastity, patience, endurance. If family or learning, who was nobler than he, who was born first in a house made famous by martyrdom, and then, deprived for Christ not only of his father but also of all his means, advanced so far amid the straits of holy poverty that he was often, as they say, afflicted for confessing the Lord's name? Nor were these the only things in him which were all afterwards to become a test; but there was such power of mind, so deep, so keen, so elegant, that he far surpassed almost everyone; such magnificence of learning and of all erudition that there were few parts of divine, and perhaps none of human, philosophy that he did not master thoroughly; and when Greek learning yielded to him, he worked at Hebrew too. What shall I say of his eloquence? His speech was so pleasant, so milky, so sweet, that it seems to me not so much words as a kind of honey flowed from his mouth. What things hard to persuade did he not make clear by the force of his argument? What things hard to do did he not make seem very easy? But perhaps he wove his assertions only out of chains of arguments? On the contrary, there was never any teacher who used more examples from the divine law. But, I suppose, he wrote little? No mortal wrote more, so that it seems to me that all his works could not only not be read through, but could not even be found. And so that he should lack nothing for the tools of knowledge, he had an abundance of years as well. But perhaps he was not fortunate in his disciples? Who was ever more fortunate? From his bosom came countless teachers, countless bishops, confessors and martyrs. And who could describe how great was the admiration for him among all, how great the glory, how great the favour? Who, a little more religious than others, did not hasten to him from the farthest parts of the world? What Christian did not revere him almost as a prophet, what philosopher as a master? How much he was revered not only by private persons but by the imperial power itself the histories declare, which say that he was summoned by the mother of the emperor Alexander, because of his heavenly wisdom, by the grace of which he, and with love of which she, was aflame. His letters also bear witness, which, with the authority of a Christian teacher, he wrote to the emperor Philip, the first of the Roman emperors to be a Christian. If anyone does not accept the Christian testimony from us about his incredible knowledge, let him at least receive the pagan acknowledgment from the testimony of the philosophers. For the impious Porphyry says that, stirred by his fame, he went to Alexandria when almost a boy and saw him there already an old man, but plainly such and so great a man as had built a citadel of all knowledge. The day would fail me sooner than I could touch on even the smallest part of the outstanding things in that man; all of which, however, belonged not only to the glory of religion but also to the greatness of the test. For how many would readily give up a man of such genius, such learning, such grace, and would not rather adopt that saying, that they would rather err with Origen than think truly with others? What more? It came to this, that the test of so great a person, so great a teacher, so great a prophet, not a human test but, as the outcome showed, an all too dangerous one, led very many away from the integrity of the faith. So this Origen, so great and such a man, while he abused the grace of God too insolently, indulged his own genius too much, and trusted himself enough, while he thought little of the ancient simplicity of the Christian religion, presumed that he was wiser than all, and, despising the church's traditions and the teachings of the ancients, interpreted certain chapters of the Scriptures in a new way, deserved that of him too it should be said to the church of God: "If a prophet rises in your midst", and a little later: "You shall not hear," he says, "the words of that prophet", and again: "Because," he says, "the Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him or not." Truly not only a test but a great test, for the church devoted to him and hanging on him in admiration of his genius, knowledge, eloquence, life, and grace, suspecting nothing of him, fearing nothing, to be led suddenly, gently and gradually, from the old religion into a new profanity. But someone will say that Origen's books have been corrupted. I do not resist; indeed I would prefer it. For this has been both handed down and written by some, not catholics only but heretics too. But what we must now notice is this: that even if not he himself, yet the books published under his name are a great test; which, teeming with many wounds of blasphemy, are read and loved not as another's but as his own; so that even if Origen's mind was not in the conceiving of the error, yet Origen's authority seems to prevail in persuading men to the error.

The case of Tertullian is the same. For as Origen among the Greeks, so he among the Latins must easily be judged the foremost of all of ours. For who was more learned than this man, who more practised in things divine and human? He embraced, with a wonderful capacity of mind, all philosophy and all the sects of philosophers, the founders and defenders of the sects and all their teachings, and every variety of histories and studies. And did he not excel in a mind so weighty and vehement that he set himself almost nothing to overthrow which he did not either break through by acuteness or crush by weight? Who could recount the praises of his speech, which is knit together with such a compelling force of reasoning that those whom it could not persuade it drives to agreement; whose words are almost as many sentences, whose meanings so many victories? The Marcions, Apelleses, Praxeases, Hermogeneses, Jews, pagans, Gnostics and the rest know this, whose blasphemies he overthrew with the many great masses of his volumes as with thunderbolts. And yet he too, after all this, this Tertullian, I say, holding too little to catholic dogma, that is, to the universal and ancient faith, and much more eloquent than fortunate, afterwards changed his opinion and did at last what blessed Hilary the confessor writes of him in a certain place: "By his later error," he says, "he took away authority from his approved writings." And he too was a great test in the church. But I do not wish to say more about him. I will mention only this: that, by asserting, against the precept of Moses, that the new furies of Montanus rising up in the church and those mad dreams of a new dogma of mad women were true prophecies, he deserved that it should be said of him too and of his writings: "If a prophet rises in your midst", and soon after: "You shall not hear the words of that prophet." Why? "Because," he says, "the Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him or not."

From these many great masses of examples from the church, then, and others of the kind, we ought to observe clearly, and to understand more clearly than light according to the laws of Deuteronomy, that if ever some teacher of the church strays from the faith, divine Providence permits it for our testing, whether we love God or not with all our heart and with all our soul.

Since this is so, he is the true and genuine catholic who loves the truth of God, the church, the body of Christ; who puts nothing before the divine religion and the catholic faith, not the authority of any man, not love, not genius, not eloquence, not philosophy; but, despising all these, and fixed, stable, and abiding in the faith, resolves that he must hold and believe only what he knows the catholic church has held universally from antiquity; but whatever new and unheard-of thing he perceives to be brought in afterwards by someone apart from all or against all the saints, he understands to belong not to religion but rather to testing; being taught above all by the words of the blessed apostle Paul. For this is what he writes in the first letter to the Corinthians: "There must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you"; as if he said: the authors of heresies are not at once rooted out by God for this reason, that those who are approved may be made manifest, that is, that it may appear how firm, faithful, and fixed a lover of the catholic faith each one is. And indeed, whenever any novelty bubbles up, at once the weight of the grain and the lightness of the chaff are seen; then what was held on the threshing floor by no weight is shaken off it without great effort. For some fly off at once altogether; others, only shaken loose, both fear to perish and are ashamed to return, wounded, half dead and half alive, since they have drunk such a quantity of poison as neither kills nor is digested, neither forces them to die nor lets them live. O pitiable condition! With what surges of cares, with what whirlwinds are they tossed! Now they are carried off by their error, driven wherever the wind has pushed; now, coming back to themselves, they are dashed back like opposing waves; now with rash presumption they approve even what seems uncertain; now with irrational fear they dread even what is certain; uncertain which way to go, which way to return, what to seek, what to flee, what to hold, what to let go. This affliction of a doubtful and badly wavering heart is the medicine of divine mercy towards them, if they are wise. For they are shaken, beaten, and almost killed by various storms of thoughts outside the safest harbour of the catholic faith for this reason: that they may lower the sails of a proud mind, stretched high, which they had wrongly spread to the winds of novelty, and may bring themselves back into, and keep themselves within, the most faithful anchorage of their gentle and good mother; and may first vomit up those bitter and turbulent waves of errors, so that they may thereafter drink the streams of living and springing water. Let them unlearn well what they had learned not well; and of the whole dogma of the church let them grasp what can be grasped by understanding, and believe what cannot.

Since this is so, turning these things over and over in my mind, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the great madness of certain people, the great impiety of a blinded mind, the great lust, finally, for error, that they are not content with the rule of belief once handed down and received from antiquity, but seek new things and newer every day, and are always eager to add something to religion, to change it, to take something away; as if it were not a heavenly doctrine which it is enough to have been revealed once, but an earthly institution which could not be perfected except by constant correction, or rather fault-finding; when the divine oracles cry out: "Do not remove the landmarks which your fathers set"; and "Do not judge over a judge"; and "Whoever breaks through a hedge, a serpent will bite him"; and that saying of the Apostle by which all the wicked novelties of all heresies have often been cut down, and must always be cut down, as by a spiritual sword: "O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some, professing, have fallen away concerning the faith." And after this are some found with such hardness of a brazen brow, such an anvil of impudence, such adamant of obstinacy, that they do not give way under such masses of heavenly oracles, do not tire under such weights, are not shattered by such hammers, are not, finally, crushed by such thunderbolts? "Avoid," he says, "profane novelties of words." He did not say antiquities; he did not say ancient things; rather he showed plainly what follows from the contrary. For if novelty is to be avoided, antiquity is to be held; and if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred. "And oppositions," he says, "of knowledge falsely so called." Truly a false name in the doctrines of heretics, where ignorance is painted with the name of knowledge, fog with that of clear sky, darkness with that of light. "Which some," he says, "professing, have fallen away concerning the faith." Professing what did they fall away, but some new and unknown doctrine? For you may hear some of them say: "Come, you foolish and wretched people who are commonly called catholics, and learn the true faith, which no one understands but us, which lay hidden for many ages but has lately been revealed and shown; but learn it by stealth and in secret, for it will delight you." And again: "When you have learned it, teach it secretly, so that the world may not hear and the church may not know; for it is granted to few to grasp the secret of so great a mystery." Are not these the words of that harlot who in the Proverbs of Solomon calls to herself those passing by, who are going straight on their way? "Whoever of you is most foolish," she says, "let him turn aside to me." And she exhorts those lacking sense, saying: "Take hidden bread gladly, and drink sweet stolen water." What then? "But he does not know," it says, "that the earth-born perish with her." Who are these earth-born? Let the Apostle explain: "Those who," he says, "have fallen away concerning the faith."

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.

After all this we added also the judgment of blessed Cyril, which is contained in the church acts themselves. For when the letter of holy Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, had been read, who sought and prayed for nothing else than that novelty should be overthrown and antiquity defended, Bishop Cyril spoke thus and gave his decision; and it does not seem out of place to insert it here too. For he says at the end of the acts: "And this letter of the venerable and most religious Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, which has been read, shall be inserted in the record of the acts; its meaning is plain. For he wishes the doctrines of the ancient faith to be confirmed, and new things, superfluously invented and impiously published, to be reproved and condemned." All the bishops cried out: "These are the voices of all, this we all say, this is the wish of all." What, then, were the voices of all, or the wishes of all, but that what had been handed down of old should be held, and what had been lately invented should be rejected? After this we admired and proclaimed how great the humility and holiness of that council was: that so many bishops, most of them metropolitans, of such erudition and learning that almost all could dispute about doctrines, to whom their very gathering together might seem for that reason to give confidence to dare and to establish something of their own, yet innovated nothing, presumed nothing, arrogated nothing at all to themselves, but took every care not to hand down to posterity anything that they had not themselves received from the fathers; and not only arranged the present matter well, but also gave an example to those who would come after, that they too should honour the doctrines of hallowed antiquity and condemn the inventions of profane novelty. We also inveighed against the wicked presumption of Nestorius, in that he boasted that he was the first and only one to understand holy Scripture, and that all those had been ignorant who before him, endowed with the office of teaching, had treated the divine words: that is, all the bishops, all the confessors and martyrs, of whom some had explained the law of God and others had agreed with and believed those who explained it; and finally that he asserted that the whole church was even now in error and had always erred, since, as it seemed to him, it had followed and was following ignorant and erring teachers.

Although all this would be abundantly and more than enough to overwhelm and extinguish every profane novelty, yet, so that nothing should seem lacking to such fullness, at the end we added the twofold authority of the apostolic see: that of holy Pope Sixtus, namely, who now adorns the Roman church with honour, and that of his predecessor, Pope Celestine of blessed memory, which we have judged it necessary to insert here too. Holy Pope Sixtus, then, says in the letter which he sent to the bishop of Antioch about the case of Nestorius: "Therefore, since, as the Apostle says, the faith is one, which has evidently prevailed, let us believe what is to be said and say what is to be held." What, then, are these things to be believed and said? He goes on: "Let nothing more be allowed to novelty, since it is not fitting that anything be added to antiquity. Let the clear faith and belief of the forebears not be troubled by any mixture of mud." Altogether apostolic: he adorned the belief of the forebears with the light of clearness, and described the profane novelties as a mixture of mud. Holy Pope Celestine, too, in like manner and with the same judgment. For he says in the letter which he sent to the bishops of Gaul, reproving their connivance in that, abandoning the ancient faith by their silence, they allowed profane novelties to rise up: "Rightly the matter concerns us, if by silence we foster error. Therefore let such people be rebuked; let them not be free to speak as they please." Here someone may perhaps doubt who they are whom he forbids to be free to speak as they please, the preachers of antiquity or the inventors of novelty. Let him say it himself; let him himself remove the readers' doubt. For he goes on: "Let novelty cease," he says, "if this is so" (that is, if it is so, as certain people accuse your cities and provinces before me, that by harmful dissimulation you make them consent to certain novelties), "let novelty cease, then," he says, "if this is so, to attack antiquity." This, then, was the blessed judgment of blessed Celestine: not that antiquity should cease to overwhelm novelty, but rather that novelty should cease to attack antiquity.

Whoever opposes these apostolic and catholic decrees must first of all insult the memory of holy Celestine, who decreed that novelty should cease to attack antiquity; then deride the definitions of holy Xystus, who ruled that nothing more should be allowed to novelty, since it is not fitting that anything be added to antiquity; and also despise the statutes of blessed Cyril, who praised with great commendation the zeal of the venerable Capreolus in wishing the ancient doctrines of the faith to be confirmed and new inventions condemned; and trample on the synod of Ephesus too, that is, the judgments of the holy bishops of almost the whole East, who were pleased by God to decree nothing else to be believed by posterity than what the sacred antiquity of the holy fathers, agreeing with itself in Christ, had held; who also, shouting and acclaiming, testified with one voice that these were the voices of all, that this all wished, this all judged; so that, just as almost all the heretics before Nestorius, despising antiquity and asserting novelty, had been condemned, so Nestorius himself too, the author of novelty and assailant of antiquity, might be condemned. If anyone is displeased with their most holy consent, inspired by the gift of heavenly grace, what else follows but that he asserts that the profanity of Nestorius was not justly condemned? Finally, he must also despise as so much refuse the whole church of Christ and its teachers, the apostles and prophets, and especially the blessed apostle Paul: the church, because it has never departed from the religion of honouring and cultivating the faith once handed down to it; Paul, because he wrote: "O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words", and again: "If anyone announces to you other than what you have received, let him be anathema." But if neither the apostolic definitions nor the church's decrees are to be violated, by which, according to the most holy consent of universality and antiquity, all heretics, and lastly Pelagius, Caelestius, and Nestorius, have always been rightly and deservedly condemned, then it is surely necessary for all catholics hereafter, who are eager to prove themselves legitimate sons of mother church, to cling to the holy faith of the holy fathers, to be glued to it, to die in it, and to detest, shudder at, attack, and pursue the profane novelties of profane men. These are, more or less, the things which, set out more fully in the two Commonitories, have now been compressed somewhat more briefly by the law of recapitulation; so that my memory, to aid which I have composed this, may both be restored by the constancy of reminding and not be overwhelmed by the tedium of length.