Therefore, to guard against Catholics imbibing depraved and impure doctrines to the ruin and destruction of the Christian faith, that economy was necessary — namely, that writings of that sort should be utterly taken away and handed over to be consumed by the flames. For that reason he charges St. Turribius, the most vigilant pastor of the Church of Astorga, not only to forbid the reading of copies of such writings — those seed-plots of many falsehoods — but to remove them utterly and to burn them with fire. "Therefore care must be taken" (says Leo the Great himself) "and by priestly diligence it must be especially provided, that the false codices be kept in no use of reading.
But the apocryphal writings, which under the names of the apostles hold a seed-plot of many falsehoods, are not only to be forbidden, but even utterly to be taken away and consumed by fire." That this decree of St. Leo is fair and just, who does not see? Yet this Beausobre most impudently denies, together with his fellow non-Catholics who over-affect the study of philosophy and of ancient matters; he says therefore that for the present he is unwilling first either to reprehend or to praise this custom, confirmed by so many laws; he adds secondly that certain books are indeed found worthy of the fire. Of which sort are those that corrupt morals, or utterly overturn the foundations both of religion and of human society.
But another kind of books, not so pernicious, it would be enough to hide from the people, and not to suppress them altogether, since there are not lacking many prudent men who could draw usefulness from them. If therefore the Manichaean books (Beausobre concludes) are such as they are described, I would dare to affirm that they were committed to the fire most unjustly, since the Catholic faith would have obtained greater benefits by preserving those writings, which were stuffed with ridiculous and obscene fables. Thus reasons Beausobre, adducing certain fabulous sayings of the Manichaeans which we have noted from the earlier Acts of Archelaus. Yet let him be ashamed to have written these things. What? Do the books of the Manichaeans not overthrow all the mysteries of our Catholic faith?
For what doctrines of our religion did they not assail, and what indeed did they not attempt to overthrow? Let one run through the Apostles' Creed, and say whether they left a single article of our faith untouched. But let us pass over these things. For it is well known and widely published among all: that the Manichaeans deny the existence of the one God, reject the true incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ the Lord, profane the Eucharist and the other sacraments, and prate with sacrilegious fictions about the coming of the Holy Spirit. What more? Did the Manichaeans not affirm that the divinely inspired Scriptures were derived from an evil author; or, if they accepted the New Testament, declare that it must not be preserved whole and perfect,
but wounded and corrupted it with interpolations, additions, and other false accretions? In a word, there is nothing in the Catholic religion which the Manichaeans have not attempted to weaken and utterly to overthrow. If therefore, on Beausobre's own authority, those books ought to be judged worthy of the fire which overturn the foundations of religion and of human society, then the manner of acting of the Roman pontiffs cannot be censured and reprehended, since the Manichaean books accomplished both.
For besides the crimes committed against religion, they also dissolved marriages and wedlock, abhorred them, and exercised themselves in the nefarious vices of lust from which nature itself recoils. Ought such things, contained in their books under the name of the writings of the apostles, to have been permitted by the sacred ministers? Away with the sacrilege! 5. Finally, when I ran through these and other arguments of Beausobre's kind, I easily fell into the suspicion that the author held no religion at all, or professed one merely outwardly.
For if he had had inwardly any appearance of piety, he would also have called to mind for himself what veneration, and how great, those writings could procure for themselves which are falsely circulated under the name of forefathers already holding great authority and fame. For nothing more effective could be found than these books for dissolving religions. Quintus Petillius said to Lucius Petillius — namely, when in his field there were found two chests, in one of which were found, under the name of Numa Pompilius, Pythagorean books. There was a common opinion by which it was believed that Numa had been a hearer of Pythagoras.
But since books of this sort, written in Latin and Greek — of which the first seven were on pontifical law, while the last seven were on the discipline of wisdom such as could belong to that age — they had no design of preserving them for the study of those faculties; but, having read the summaries of their contents, when they had observed that most of them were ordered toward the dissolution of religion, he himself said to Lucius Petillius that he would cast those books into the fire. Nor let Beausobre suppose that these books were cast into the fire by private authority, but the matter was first referred to the praetor, who judged that those books ought not to be read or kept, and then to the Senate, which decreed that the books should be burned in the assembly-place at the first opportunity;
at length the books were burned in the assembly-place in a fire made by the victimarii, in the sight of the people. It is quite unknown to me whether anyone has thus far existed who has accused or reprehended the praetor Lucius Petillius, or the Senate of the Roman people, as unjust, because books of this sort — most of which had only the force of dissolving religions — were handed over to the fire. This one thing is established to me: that in the public assembly of the Roman people, by the common counsel of all the orders, with the whole people applauding, as the laws of the assemblies required, the aforesaid books were burned by the victimarii, who were public ministers. But I ask Beausobre: were there then among the Romans any who devoted themselves to pontifical law or to philosophy?
That there necessarily were such, he must confess. Yet it has been recorded that no man of any order whatsoever came forward to complain of the loss of such books. For they were persuaded that religion is not to be weakened by new and foreign rites. For, on Cicero's authority, the worship of the gods is best, and likewise most chaste, most holy, and most full of piety, provided that we always venerate them with a pure, whole, and uncorrupted mind and voice. But to what end will the mind and voice preserve the purity and integrity of the institutions pertaining to sacred matters, if they begin to wander, and to take delight in at least some superstitious and most insolent things?
On all these matters, taken thus far from the histories of the ancient heathen, it was fitting that our discourse should dwell a little more fully, lest we should seem to pass over — without a just rebuke — the supreme extravagance of Beausobre in censuring the ancient customs of the Catholic Church, and in exercising his malignant pen against the deeds of the Roman pontiffs. Especially since even the non-Catholic men of this our age, seeing their books proscribed by apostolic authority and burned with fire by public ministers in the sight of the people, babble and complain of an economy as though it were unjust and injurious — an economy nonetheless most holily and religiously employed for guarding the purity and integrity of the Catholic faith.