ect all St. Paul's Epistles? Despair.
For while those Letters kept their credit, the custom of
circumcision, which these men had reintroduced, was set aside as
an anachronism. What induced that crime-laden apostate Luther to
call the Epistle of James contentious, turgid, arid, a thing of
straw, and unworthy of the Apostolic spirit? Despair. For by this
writing the wretched man's argument of righteousness consisting
in faith alone was stabbed through and rent assunder. What
induced Luther's whelps to expunge off-hand from the genuine
canon of Scripture, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, Maccabees, and, for
hatred of these, several other books involved in the same false
charge? Despair. For by these Oracles they are most manifestly
confuted whenever they argue about the patronage of Angels, about
free will, about the faithful departed, about the intercession of
Saints. Is it possible? So much perversity, so much audacity?
After trampling underfoot Church, Councils, Episcopal Sees,
Fathers, Martyrs, Potentates, Peoples, Laws, Universities,
Histories, all vestiges of Antiquity and Sanctity, and declaring
that they would settle their disputes by the written word of God
alone, to think that they should have emasculated that same Word,
which alone was left, by cutting out of the whole body so many
excellent and goodly parts! Seven whole books, to ignore lesser
diminutions, have the Calvinists cut out of the Old Testament.
The Lutherans take away the Epistle of James besides, and, in
their dislike of that, five other Epistles, about which there had
been controversy of old in certain places and times. To the
number of these the latest authorities at Geneva add the book of
Esther and about three chapters of Daniel, which their
fellow-disciples, the Anabaptists, had some time before condemned
and derided. How much greater was the modesty of Augustine (_De
doct. Christ. lib._ 2, _c._ 8.), who, in making his catalogue of
the Sacred Books, did not take for his rule the Hebrew Alphabet,
like the Jews, nor private judgment, like the Sectaries, but that
Spirit wherewith Christ animates the whole Church. The Church,
the guardian of this treasure, not its mistress (as heretics
falsely make out), vindicated publicly in former times by very
ancient Councils this entire treasure, which the Council of Trent
has taken up and embraced. Augustine also in a special discussion
on one small portion of Scripture cannot bring himself to think
that any man's