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On the Unity of the Church
3.
But, beloved brethren, not only must we beware of what is open and manifest, but also of what deceives by the craft of subtle fraud. And what can be more crafty, or what more subtle, than for this enemy, detected and cast down by the advent of Christ, after light has come to the nations, and saving rays have shone for the preservation of men, that the deaf might receive the hearing of spiritual grace, the blind might open their eyes to God, the weak might grow strong again with eternal health, the lame might run to the church, the dumb might pray with clear voices and prayers--seeing his idols forsaken, and his lanes and his temples deserted by the numerous concourse of believers--to devise a new fraud, and under the very title of the Christian name to deceive the incautious? He has invented heresies and schisms, whereby he might subvert the faith, might corrupt the truth, might divide the unity. 1 Those whom he cannot keep in the darkness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives by the error of a new way. He snatches men from the Church itself; and while they seem to themselves to have already approached to the light, and to have escaped the night of the world, he pours over them again, in their unconsciousness, new darkness; so that, although they do not stand firm with the Gospel of Christ, and with the observation and law of Christ, they still call themselves Christians, and, walking in darkness, they think that they have the light, while the adversary is flattering and deceiving, who, according to the apostle's word, transforms himself into an angel of light, and equips his ministers as if they were the ministers of righteousness, who maintain night instead of day, death for salvation, despair under the offer of hope, perfidy under the pretext of faith, antichrist under the name of Christ; so that, while they feign things like the truth, they make void the truth by their subtlety. This happens, beloved brethren, so long as we do not return to the source of truth, as we do not seek the head nor keep the teaching of the heavenly Master.
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[Here note that our author's entire ignorance of any Centre of Unity, of any one See as the test of communion; in short, of any one bishop as having more of Peter's authority than others,--is a sufficient disproof of the existence of any such things. Otherwise, how could they have been overlooked in a treatise devoted to the subject of unity, its nature and its criteria? The effort to foist into the text something of the kind, by corruption, demonstrates how entirely unsatisfactory to the Middle-Age theorists and dogmatists is the unadulterated work, which they could not let alone.] ↩
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De l'unité de l'église
III.
Evitez donc tous les pièges, mes frères bien-aimés, non-seulement ceux qui se montrent aux yeux; mais encore ceux, qui cachent dans les ténèbres leur astuce et leur malice. Quoi de plus astucieux, quoi de plus subtil que notre ennemi? Jésus, en s’incarnant, triomphe de ses artifices et de sa puissance; alors, en effet, la lumière se montre aux nations pour les sauver; les sourds entendent la voix de la grâce; les aveugles ouvrent les yeux pour voir le Dieu véritable; les infirmes reviennent pour toujours à la santé; les boiteux courent à l’Eglise; les muets, sentant leur langue se délier, font entendre l’accent de la prière, Mais l’ennemi ne s’avoue pas vaincu. Voyant les idoles abandonnées et ses temples désertés par la foule devenue croyante, il imagine un nouveau piège afin de tromper les impudents par l’apparence même du nom chrétien. Il invente les hérésies et les schismes pour troubler la foi, corrompre la vérité, scinder l’unité. Il séduit ceux qu’il ne peut retenir dans la voie des anciennes erreurs, et il les trompe en leur montrant de nouveaux chemins. Il ravit les fidèles à l’Eglise, et tout en leur persuadant qu’ils évitent la nuit du siècle et qu’ils approchent de la lumière, il les plonge, sans qu’ils s’en aperçoivent, dans de nouvelles ténèbres. Ainsi, déserteurs du l’Évangile et de la loi de Jésus-Christ, ils s’obstinent à se dire chrétiens; ils marchent dans les ténèbres, et ils croient jouir de la lumière. L’ennemi les flatte, il les trompe, cet ennemi qui, selon l’apôtre, se transfigure en ange de lumière, qui transforme ses ministres eux-mêmes en prédicateurs de la vérité, donnant la nuit au lieu du jour, la mort au lieu du salut, le désespoir à la place de l’espérance, la perfidie. sous le voile de la foi, l’antéchrist sous le nom adorable du Christ. C’est ainsi qu’au moyen d’une vraisemblance menteuse, ils privent les âmes de la vérité. (111) .
3° Cela arrive, mes frères bien aimés, parce qu’on ne remonte pas à l’origine de la vérité; parce qu’on ne cherche pas le principe, parce qu’on ne conserve pas la doctrine du maître céleste.