備忘錄 第 1 章 第 3/6 段

which, teeming with many wounds of blasphemies, are read and loved not as another's, but as if his own; so that even if, in conceiving the error, it was not the mind of Origen, yet for persuading to the error the authority of Origen seems to avail. But of Tertullian also the same account holds. For just as the former, among the Greeks, so this one, among the Latins, is easily to be judged the foremost of all our writers. For what was more learned than this man, what more exercised in things divine and human? For he embraced, with a certain wondrous capacity of mind, all philosophy and all the sects of the philosophers, the authors and defenders of the sects, and all their disciplines, all the variety of histories and studies.

And as for his genius, did he not excel with one so weighty and so vehement that he set before himself almost nothing for overthrowing which he did not either break in upon by sharpness or crush by weight? Furthermore, who could fully recount the praises of his discourse, which is knit together by such, I know not what, necessity of reasonings, that it drives to consent with itself even those whom it could not persuade; whose words are almost as many as its sentences, whose perceptions are as many as its victories? This the Marcionites, the followers of Apelles, the Praxeans, the Hermogenians, the Jews, the Gentiles, the Gnostics, and the rest, know; whose blasphemies he overthrew with the many and great masses of his volumes, as though with certain thunderbolts.

And yet this man too, after all these things—this Tertullian, I say—held too little fast to the catholic dogma, that is, to the universal and ancient faith, and being far more fluent than fortunate, with his opinion thereafter changed, did at the last what blessed Hilary, the confessor, writes of him in a certain place: 'By his following error,' he says, 'he detracted authority from his commendable writings.' And he too was a great temptation in the Church. But of this I do not wish to say more. This only will I mention: that, rising up against the precept of Moses in the Church, by asserting the new ravings of Montanus and those insane dreams of a novel dogma dreamed by insane women to be true prophecies, he deserved that of him too and of his writings it should be said:

'If a prophet rise up in the midst of thee.' And presently: 'Thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet.' Why? 'Because,' it says, 'the Lord your God tests you, whether you love him or not.' By these therefore, so many and so great masses of ecclesiastical examples, and others of this kind, we ought evidently to perceive, and, according to the laws of Deuteronomy, to understand more clearly than the light, that if at any time some ecclesiastical teacher has strayed from the faith, divine Providence suffers this to come about for our testing, whether we love God or not with our whole heart and with our whole soul.

Since these things are so, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the body of Christ, who sets nothing before the divine Religion, before 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, he resolves that whatever he shall have known the Catholic Church universally to have held from antiquity, that alone is to be held and believed by himself;

but whatever he shall have perceived to be afterward introduced anew and unheard-of by some one man, apart from all or against all the saints, he understands that to pertain not to Religion but rather to temptation—being especially instructed by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul: for this is what he writes in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: 'There must,' he says, 'be also heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you'; as if he should say: For this reason the authors of heresies are not at once divinely rooted out, that they who are approved may be made manifest—that is, that each one may appear how tenacious and faithful and fixed a lover of the catholic faith he is. And in very truth, when any novelty bubbles up, at once is discerned the weightiness of the wheat and the lightness of the chaff;

then without great effort that is shaken off from the threshing-floor which was held within the floor by no weight. For some forthwith fly clean away; but others, only shaken loose, both dread to perish and blush to return, wounded, half-dead, and half-alive; inasmuch as they have drunk so great a quantity of poison as neither kills nor is digested, as neither compels to die nor permits to live—alas, pitiable condition! By what surgings of cares, by what whirlwinds are they tossed about? For now, whithersoever the wind has driven them, they are swept away by a runaway error; now, returned upon themselves, like contrary waves, they are dashed back; now by rash presumption they approve even the things that seem uncertain; now by irrational fear they take fright even at the things that are certain;

uncertain which way to go, which way to return, what to seek, what to flee, what to hold, what to let go. Yet this affliction of a doubting and ill-poised heart is, if they be wise, the medicine of the divine mercy toward them. For on this very account they are, outside the safest harbour of the catholic faith, shaken, beaten, and almost done to death by diverse storms of thoughts, that they may lay down the sails of an exalted mind raised aloft, which they had ill-spread to the winds of novelties, and may draw themselves back and keep themselves within the most trusty anchorage of their placid and good Mother, and may first vomit up those bitter and turbulent waves of errors, that they may afterward be able to drink the streams of living and leaping water. Let them unlearn well what they had learned ill;

and out of the whole dogma of the Church let them grasp what can be grasped by understanding, and what cannot, let them believe. Since these things are so, turning over and pondering the same things with myself again and again, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the so great madness of certain men, the so great impiety of a blinded mind, the so great lust, finally, of erring, that they are not content with the rule of believing once delivered and received from antiquity, but seek things new and ever new from day to day, and ever long to add something to Religion, to change, to take away; as though it were not a heavenly dogma which it suffices to have been once revealed, but an earthly institution, which cannot be otherwise perfected except by constant emendation, nay rather by reprehension—while the divine oracles cry out:

'Remove not the landmarks which thy fathers have set'; and: 'Judge not against him who judges'; and: 'He who breaks through a hedge, a serpent shall bite him'; and that apostolic word, by which all the wicked novelties of all heresies have often been, and are ever to be, lopped off as with a kind of spiritual sword: 'O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding the profane novelties of words and the oppositions of falsely-named knowledge, which some, professing, have erred concerning the faith.'

And after these things, are there found some of so great hardness of inveterate brow, of so great an anvil of shamelessness, of so great an adamant of obstinacy, who do not succumb to such masses of heavenly utterances, who do not give way before such weights, who are not shattered by such hammers, who are not, in short, crushed by such thunderbolts? 'Avoid,' he says, 'the profane novelties of words': he did not say antiquities, he did not say what is old; nay rather, he plainly showed what should follow from the contrary. For if novelty is to be avoided, antiquity is to be held; and if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred. 'And the oppositions,' he says, 'of falsely-named knowledge.' Truly a false name among the doctrines of the heretics;

so that ignorance may be disguised under the name of knowledge, and fog under that of serenity, and darkness under the appellation of light. 'Which some,' he says, 'professing, have erred concerning the faith.' Professing what, did they err, except some new and unknown doctrine? For you may hear certain of them say: 'Come, O foolish and wretched ones, who are commonly called Catholics, and learn the true faith, which no one understands except us, which lay hidden for many ages before, but has lately been revealed and shown forth; but learn it stealthily and in secret: for it will delight you.' And again: 'When you have learned it, teach it covertly; lest the world hear, lest the Church know: for to few has it been granted 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 along the way who direct their journey? 'Whoever among you is most foolish,' she says, 'let him turn aside to me.' And to those lacking in sense she gives this exhortation, saying: 'Gladly partake of hidden bread, and drink stolen water in secret.' What then? 'But he,' she says, 'does not know that the earthborn perish at her house.' Who are these earthborn? Let the Apostle explain: 'Those,' he says, 'who concerning the faith have fallen away.' XXII. But it is worth our while to treat the whole of this chapter of the Apostle more carefully. 'O Timothy,' he says, 'guard the deposit, avoiding the profane novelties of words.' Oh! That exclamation is at once an expression of foreknowledge and of charity.

For he foresaw the errors that were to come, which he likewise lamented in advance. Who is the Timothy of today, if not either the whole Church generally, or particularly the entire body of prelates, who ought themselves to possess the full knowledge of divine worship, or to instil it into others? What is 'guard the deposit'? 'Guard it,' he says, against thieves, against enemies, lest, while men sleep, they oversow tares upon that good wheat-seed which the Son of Man had sown in his field. 'Guard,' he says, 'the deposit.' What is the deposit? That is, what has been entrusted to you, not what has been invented by you; what you have received, not what you have devised; a matter not of cleverness but of teaching, not of private usurpation but of public tradition;

a matter brought to you, not put forth by you: in which you ought to be not the author but the keeper; not the founder but the follower; not the leader but the follower. 'Guard,' he says, 'the deposit'; preserve the talent of the catholic faith inviolate and undefiled. What has been entrusted to you, let it remain in your keeping; let it be handed on by you. You received gold, give back gold: do not substitute for me one thing in place of another; I will not have you put down, in place of gold, either lead impudently or brass fraudulently; I want no mere appearance of gold, but plainly its very nature.

O Timothy, O priest, O expositor, O teacher, if the divine gift has made you fit—by talent, by practice, by learning—be a Bezalel of the spiritual tabernacle, carve out the precious gems of divine doctrine, fit them faithfully, adorn them wisely, add to them splendour, grace, and beauty. Let that be understood more clearly through your exposition which before was believed more obscurely. Through you let posterity rejoice in understanding what antiquity venerated without understanding. Yet teach the same things you have learned, so that, though you speak in a new way, you do not speak new things. XXIII. But perhaps someone will say: Shall there then be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ? Let there be progress indeed, and the greatest.

For who is there so envious of men, so hateful to God, as to attempt to forbid it? But yet in such a way that it be truly a progress of the faith, not an alteration. For it belongs to progress that each thing be enlarged within itself; but to alteration, that something be turned from one thing into another. Therefore it is fitting that the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom both of individuals and of all, both of one man and of the whole Church, should grow and advance greatly and vehemently, with the advancing stages of ages and centuries—but only within its own kind, that is, within the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same meaning. Let the religion of souls imitate the principle of bodies:

which, though with the passing of years they unfold and develop their dimensions, yet remain the same as they were. There is a great difference between the bloom of childhood and the maturity of old age; yet those very persons become old men who had been youths; so that although the state and condition of one and the same man is changed, there is nonetheless one and the same nature, one and the same person. The small limbs of infants and the large limbs of young men are yet the very same. As many as are the members of little ones, so many are those of grown men; and whatever there is that is produced in the season of more mature age, was already present in the principle of the seed; so that nothing new is afterward brought forth in old men which did not already lie hidden before in children.

Hence there is no doubt that this is the lawful and right rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth: if the passing of years always unfolds in the grown those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had pre-formed in the little ones. But if the human form should afterward be turned into some shape not of its own kind, or if certainly something be added to or taken from the number of members, it is necessary that the whole body 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, namely, that it be consolidated by years, expanded by time, exalted by age, yet remain uncorrupted and undefiled, and be full and perfect in all the measures of its parts and in all, as it were, its proper members and senses, admitting no further alteration, suffering no loss of its properties, no variation in its definition. For example: our forefathers of old sowed in this ecclesiastical field the seeds of the wheat of the faith; it is exceedingly unjust and unfitting that we, their posterity, should reap, in place of the genuine truth of the wheat, the counterfeit error of the tares.

Rather, this is the right and consistent course, that—the first things and the last not disagreeing with one another—we reap, from the growth of the wheaten cultivation, the fruit also of the wheaten doctrine; so that, when something from those first beginnings of the seeds is unfolded with the passage of time, it may now flourish and be cultivated, yet nothing be changed in the character of the germ: let appearance, form, and distinction be added, yet let the same nature of each kind remain. For far be it that those rosy plantings of catholic sense be turned into thistles and thorns. Far be it, I say, that in this spiritual paradise darnel and aconite should suddenly spring up from the slips of cinnamon and balsam.

Whatever, therefore, has been sown in this husbandry of the Church of God by the faith of the fathers, this same thing it is fitting be cultivated and watched over by the diligence of the sons; this same thing should flourish and ripen; this same thing should advance and be perfected. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, with the passage of time, be cared for, refined, and polished; but it is wrong that they should be changed, wrong that they should be truncated or mutilated. Let them, indeed, receive clarity, light, and distinctness; but it is necessary that they retain their fulness, integrity, and proper character. For if once this license of impious fraud be admitted, I shudder to say how great a danger of the religion being uprooted and abolished would follow.

For if any one part of catholic doctrine be repudiated, then another also, and likewise another, and so one after another, will, as if by custom now and by right, be repudiated. And further, when the parts have been rejected one by one, what else in the end will follow but that the whole likewise be rejected? But on the contrary, if novelties begin to be mingled with the old, foreign things with what is domestic, and profane things with what is sacred, this practice must needs creep over the whole, so that thereafter nothing in the Church will be left untouched, nothing undefiled, nothing whole, nothing unstained; but there will thereafter be a brothel of impious and base errors where before was the sanctuary of chaste and incorrupt truth.

But may the divine mercy turn away this abomination from the minds of his own people, and may this rather be the madness of the impious. The Church of Christ, however, the careful and watchful keeper of the doctrines deposited with her, never changes anything in them, never diminishes anything, never adds anything; she does not cut away what is necessary, nor append what is superfluous; she does not lose what is her own, nor usurp what belongs to others; but with all diligence she pursues this one aim: that, by treating the old things faithfully and wisely, if there be any that were anciently shaped and begun, she may polish and refine them; if there be any already expressed and developed, she may consolidate and strengthen them; if there be any already confirmed and defined, she may guard them;

in short, what else has she ever striven for by the decrees of councils, but that what before was believed in simplicity, this same thing should afterward be believed more carefully; what before was preached more languidly, this same thing should afterward be preached more urgently; what before was cultivated more securely, this same thing should afterward be cultivated more anxiously?

This, I say, and nothing else besides, the catholic Church, stirred up by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her councils: namely, that what before she had received from the elders by tradition alone, she should afterward consign also to posterity by the handwriting of Scripture, comprehending a great sum of matters in a few letters, and, for the most part, for the sake of clarity of understanding, marking not a new sense of the faith but a new appellation by a proper term. XXIV. But let us return to the Apostle. 'O Timothy,' he says, 'guard the deposit, avoiding the 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 by their breath. What is it to 'avoid'?

Not even to take food with such a one. What is 'avoid'? 'If anyone,' he says, 'comes to you and does not bring this doctrine.' What doctrine, if not the catholic and universal, the one and the same that remains through the several successions of ages by the uncorrupted tradition of truth, and that shall remain unto the ages without end? What then? 'Do not,' he says, 'receive him into your house, nor say to him, Hail. For he who says to him, Hail, partakes of his malignant works.' 'The profane,' he says, 'novelties of words.' What is 'profane'? Those things which have nothing sacred, nothing religious, utterly foreign to the inmost recesses of the Church, which is the temple of God. 'The profane,' he says, 'novelties 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 be received, the faith of the blessed fathers must necessarily be violated, either wholly or certainly in great part; it must necessarily be declared that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, all the chaste, the continent, the virgins, all the clergy, the levites and the priests, so many thousands of confessors, so many armies of martyrs, so great a renown and multitude of cities and peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, nations, kingdoms, races—in short, almost the whole world by now, incorporated into Christ the Head through the catholic faith—have, through so long a course of ages, been ignorant, erred, blasphemed, and not known what to believe.

'The profane,' he says, 'novelties of words avoid'; to receive and follow which has never been the way of Catholics, but always indeed of heretics. And in truth, what heresy ever boiled up except under a certain name, in a certain place, at a certain time? Who ever instituted heresies except one who had first separated himself from the consensus of the universality and antiquity of the catholic Church? That this is so, examples demonstrate more clearly than light. For who, before that profane Pelagius, ever presumed so great a power of free will as to suppose that the grace of God is not necessary to assist it through individual acts in good works? Who, before his monstrous disciple Coelestius, 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, dared to confound the Trinity of the unity? Who, before the most cruel Novatian, called God cruel, on the ground that he would rather the death of the dying than that he should turn back and live? Who, before Simon Magus—smitten by apostolic severity, and from whom that old whirlpool of foulnesses flowed down by a continuous and hidden succession even unto the most recent Priscillian—dared to call the Creator God the author of evils, that is, of our crimes, impieties, and outrages?

For indeed he asserts that such a God creates with his own hands the very nature of men, which, by a certain motion of its own and by the impulse of a certain necessary will, can do nothing else, will nothing else, but to sin; for, driven and inflamed by the furies of all vices, it is hurried with insatiable desire into all the abysses of foulness. Innumerable are such things, which for the sake of brevity we pass over: by all of which, however, it is sufficiently evident and clear that this is, as it were, customary and lawful among almost all heresies—always to delight in profane novelties, to loathe the decrees of antiquity, and through the oppositions of falsely-named knowledge to make shipwreck of the faith.

On the contrary, this is truly proper to Catholics: to keep the deposits committed by the holy fathers and entrusted to them, to condemn profane novelties, and—as the Apostle said and again foretold—if anyone announces anything besides what has been received, let him be anathema. XXV. Here perhaps someone may ask whether heretics also use the testimonies of divine Scripture. They use them indeed, and vehemently so. For you may see them flying through each and every volume of the holy law: through the books of Moses, through the books of Kings; through the Psalms, through the Apostles, through the Gospels, through the Prophets.

For whether among their own or among strangers, whether privately or publicly, whether in discourses or in books, whether at banquets or in the streets, they almost never bring forward anything of their own which they do not also try to overshadow with the words of Scripture. Read the little works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and of the rest of those plagues; you will discern an infinite heap of examples, scarcely any page omitted which is not painted and coloured with sentences of the New or Old Testament. But they are all the more to be guarded against and dreaded, the more secretly they lurk beneath the shades of the divine law. For they know that their stenches will scarcely please anyone quickly, if they are exhaled bare and unadorned;

and therefore they sprinkle them with the heavenly word as with a kind of aromatic, so that he who would easily despise human error might not easily despise divine oracles. Thus they do what those are wont to do who, about to temper certain bitter draughts for little children, first smear the rims with honey, that the unwary age, when it has tasted the sweetness beforehand, may not dread the bitterness. This too is the care of those who pre-colour evil herbs and noxious juices with the names of medicines, so that scarcely anyone, when he has read the remedy written above, may suspect the poison. Hence at last the Saviour also cried out: 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves.'

What is the clothing of sheep, if not the utterances of the Prophets and Apostles, which they themselves, with a certain ovine sincerity, wove like fleeces for that immaculate Lamb who takes away the sin of the world? Who are the ravening wolves, if not the fierce and rabid notions of heretics, who always infest the sheepfolds of the Church and tear apart the flock of Christ wherever they can? But that they may steal more deceitfully upon the unwary sheep, while the ferocity of the wolves remains, they lay aside the wolfish appearance, and wrap themselves in the sentences of the divine law as in certain fleeces, so that when anyone has felt beforehand the softness of the wool, he may by no means dread the points of the teeth. But what says the Saviour? 'By their fruits you shall know them':

that is, when they have begun not merely to bring forth those divine words, but also to expound them, and not only to boast of them, but also to interpret them, then that bitterness, then that harshness, then that rabidness will be perceived, then the new venom will be exhaled, then the profane novelties will be laid open; then first you may see the hedge being broken, then the boundaries of the fathers being removed, then the catholic faith being cut down, then ecclesiastical doctrine being torn apart. Such were those whom the Apostle Paul strikes in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, saying: 'For such,' he says, 'false apostles are deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.' What is 'transforming themselves into apostles of Christ'? The apostles brought forth examples of the divine law;

they too brought them forth. The apostles brought forth the authorities of the psalms; they too brought them forth. The apostles brought forth the sentences of the prophets; they too nonetheless brought them forth. But when they had begun to interpret unlike that which they had alike brought forth, then the simple were distinguished from the crafty, then the unpainted from the painted, then the upright from the perverse, then at last the true apostles from the false apostles. 'And no wonder,' he says. 'For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It is therefore no great thing if his ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness.'

Therefore, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, as often as either false apostles, or false prophets, or false teachers bring forth sentences of the divine law, by misinterpreting which they try to establish their own errors, there is no doubt that they are following the cunning devices of their author, which he would assuredly never have contrived had he not known that there is no easier way to deceive than that, where the fraudulence of a wicked error is being smuggled in, there the authority of divine words is held forth. XXVI. But someone will say: Whence is it proved that the Devil is wont to use examples of the sacred law? Let him read the Gospels, in which it is written:

'Then the Devil took him'—that is, the Lord the Saviour—'and set him upon the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him: If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down. For it is written that he has given his angels charge concerning you, to keep you in all your ways; in their hands they shall bear you up, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone.' What will he do here to wretched men, who assailed the very Lord of majesty with the testimonies of the Scriptures? 'If you are the Son of God,' he says, 'cast yourself down.' Why? 'For it is written,' he says.