Chapter 9: The Gospel's Power Over Gentilism

The power and efficacy of the gospel in overthrowing Gentilism — All of Bellarmine's marks of the true church agree with Gentilism — An examination of the prejudices which they instill into the minds of men — Satan's last effort on behalf of his worship.

I. Whoever has considered attentively the dominion of ancient Gentilism over the human race, what roots it struck through the long succession of ages throughout the whole world, and what fruits it bore —

— and its utter devastation — will have weighed somewhat more attentively, he will perhaps find the feeling of his own mind not far removed from the questions with which, in the Orator, Velleius the Epicurean assails the Platonic account of the origin of all things. "What machinery," he says, "what tools? what levers? what workmen were employed in so great a work?" (All of which things, however, as Maffeo and Ribadeneira relate, God the Father showed to Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits.) The mind, I say, cannot but be struck with the thought of what and of what kind that force or hidden power was which God employed to remove so great a mass, which had grown from time immemorial "like a tree in the hidden age." For so great a work to be accomplished, and the ancient and universal foundations of corrupt superstition to be overthrown, the finger of God was plainly required. And that this may appear more clearly, I will show briefly what pretexts the human race had for retaining its universal and most ancient superstition, and upon what prejudices and reasonings it relied in opposing itself to divine truth. For prejudices give strength and force to error, from which, by means of vain reasonings, arise pretexts by which men fortify the approaches of their minds against the light of opposing truth. Men who now please God in their worship are called the church. For that assembly, that community of men, which strives to please God in celebrating the worship which He Himself instituted, is the true church, and always has been. It is the opinion of many learned men that that assembly or community can be distinguished from all others who would falsely arrogate that name to themselves by certain marks. The most learned Bellarminus has shown at length that the chief of these marks, numbering fifteen, possess a certain incredible power for winning credence for that assembly to which they properly belong. Those who, on the evidence of those marks, think they have found the true church will sooner leave this life than allow themselves to be cast out of its communion. But in very truth all those marks of Bellarmine, most of them at least, and those by far the most excellent, are better suited to adorn Gentilism with the title of true religion than to point out that divine truth and its profession which we learned with the Son of God Himself as teacher, or its professors. But if the by far greatest part of those who are called Christians, as they boast of themselves, is persuaded that it still ought to confide in those marks to such a degree as to reject the most certain testimonies of divine truth and to trust in those marks alone in the matter of religion and to commit souls to be directed toward truth, how much more firmly ought pagan men to have clung to that profession of divine worship which was fortified by those marks, when all other evidences of heavenly truth were entirely unknown to them. Now the first mark of the true church according to Bellarmine is the name itself — "catholic"; namely, that which is called catholic is the true church. This mark, since it is nearly worthless, the learned man doubtless sent forward first, as a lightly armed soldier to be sacrificed. We know where and when the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians; but the origin of this name, "catholic," is as uncertain as the sources of the Nile. It does not appear in Holy Scripture. Irenaeus, reciting the Symbol of Faith, makes no mention of it, lib. i. cap. ii; nor does Tertullian, de Praescript. Adver. Haeret.; and, as Justin rightly observes, a name is judged neither good nor bad apart from the deeds of those who bear it, Apol. 1. The Roman church indeed is called catholic by itself; but the holy men of old did not call it so. For Ignatius, the church was "which presides in the place of the region of the Romans" — if indeed that epistle is Ignatius's. For Clement, it was "the church sojourning at Rome." And the Pope is called, at the first council, Bishop of Rome, can. vi. How he himself and the Roman church were regarded at that time is sufficiently taught by the Council of Chalcedon. To very many Christians dispersed throughout the whole world over many centuries, it is Pontifical, Papist, apostate, idolatrous, Roman. Since the name is therefore the work of men of uncertain standing, let us set aside the dispute and look at the thing itself. From the time when the name "catholic church" was devised by some, it began wonderfully to please all the worshippers of true religion (since there was no lack of those who would most absurdly confine the church of Christ within the limits of this or that portion or faction of Christians) — and not entirely without reason; since by that word they wished to express nothing but what our Savior Himself had foretold would come to pass, namely, that the gospel was to be preached throughout the whole inhabited world (Matthew 24:14), or throughout the whole world (Matthew 26:13), or into all the world (Mark 14:9), and not to the Jews only. And the fame of that celebrated word, once it became current, grew daily in renown and praise. But when the Roman Pope had ascended by evil arts to that pinnacle of secular power, so that it was easy for him to attract flatterers with the hope of gain, he attempted to draw this name to himself and his faction from their flattery (availing himself also of the negligence and lowliness of others), meanwhile repaying them in turn with no ungenerous hand for things which no sober person would believe had ever truly been in his power. So it was practiced of old, as Horace, lib. ii. Epist. ii, 99–101: "I depart — Alcaeus by his vote: who is he by mine? Who but Callimachus? If he seems to claim more, he becomes Mimnermus, and grows by the coveted name." By the same right the Mohammedans are Mussulmans; and Simon, of old, was "the great power of God"; and Diana was a great deity. Even now, wherever one looks on earth, those who are the majority adorn themselves with honorable titles. For nomenclature belongs to the larger faction, or to the party that holds power. Let us therefore consider, even if the pagans themselves did not arrogate to themselves alone those names which at that time were reckoned most honorable among men, while the worshippers of the true God were everywhere marked with opprobrious names — they at least gloried constantly and contended sharply that they alone had cultivated faith and true religion, that all the rest were superstitious, ignorant of the ancient gods, and, as I may say, heretics and schismatics;

— they sharply contended. We know that until the coming of our Lord, the worship of the true God flourished among the Jews alone. As to what opinion others held of them, the most weighty authority is Cornelius Tacitus, Hist. lib. v. cap. iv: "Moses," he says, "in order to secure this people to himself for the future, introduced new rites contrary to those of all other mortals. All things are profane there which are sacred among us; again, what is permitted among them is impure to us" — that is, they are heretics and schismatics, because the lawgiver taught them to observe rites abhorrent to the universal practice of mankind. Plutarch says nearly the same. And there is scarcely a historian who has not recorded for posterity that they worshipped the head of an ass in the temple. "They consecrated in the inner sanctuary," says Tacitus, "the image of that animal" (that is, by the author's own account, an ass) "by whose guidance they had dispelled their wandering and thirst." Hist. lib. v. cap. ii. iv. And the historian Democritus in Suidas: "They worshipped a golden head of an ass." That Posidonius and Apollonius Molo had related the same, Josephus shows in the second book against Apion, who raved with the same madness. I pass over the other monstrous lies, a comparison of which, however, with what the Pontificians — the so-called Catholics — fabricated against the Albigenses, Waldenses, and other faithful servants of Christ, would not be inapt. With one voice they all said that that nation was subject to superstitions, opposed to true religion, and at variance with the common opinion of mortals regarding the worship of God. VI. At length Christians arose; they too for some time were confounded with the Jews. Nor did the Gentiles for a long time distinguish between the two peoples. "The Jews, at the instigation of Chrestus, continually causing tumults, Claudius expelled from Rome," says Suetonius. And Arrian, Epict. lib. ii. cap. ix: "Do you not see how each one is called a Jew? And when we see someone wavering between the two, we are accustomed to say, he is not a Jew but plays the part of one; but when he takes on the disposition"

— of the one who has been baptized and has chosen, then he truly is and is called a Jew" — "Do you not see how each one is called a Jew? But if we have seen someone wavering, we are accustomed to say that he is not a Jew but plays the hypocrite. But when he has adopted the disposition of the baptized, that is, of the one who professes that sect, then he truly is and is called a Jew." This passage certain people adduce in vain to prove that the Jews were accustomed to make use of the rite of baptism, when the philosopher is most plainly speaking of Christians. Even in (Revelation 3:9), by "Jews" the Holy Spirit Himself understands none other than Christians. Now concerning these, the same Tacitus expounds the judgment of the world, Annal. lib. xv. cap. xliv.: "Nero inflicted the most exquisite punishments upon those whom the common people, hated for their crimes, called Christians. The originator of that name was Christ, who had been put to death in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Though checked for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again." And Arnobius teaches that all things in morals and sacred rites were alleged against Christians as contrary to the human race. As for the name of the religion and the worship of the gods, they were so secure as to judge that the very name "Christian" contained enough ground for inflicting the ultimate punishment, or heretic-killing,

— they judged it to contain. Hence Tertullian and others were compelled to compose an Apology for the very name itself. "Vile wretches," "Followers of Apelles," "Jews," "Christians," "Heretics" — among those Catholics they were names of crime. Therefore both idolatrous peoples began their march at an equal pace. If there is any force or efficacy, then, in honorific names for indicating truth and confirming the mind in the opinion they adorn, as the Cardinal judges, those who practiced Gentilism made the greatest use of it. VII. The second place with Bellarmine is occupied by antiquity — not that absolute antiquity which traces its origin to God alone, in which, if the controversy were to halt, these marks of Bellarmine would plainly be done for; but that uncertain and merely probable antiquity which must be drawn out from histories and other monuments of past events, and judged from them. Upon this same argument, or prejudice, the whole of Gentilism formerly rested. For when Jesus Christ Himself first went forth to expound heavenly truth from the bosom of the Father, the Pharisees assailed Him with that very question: "What new teaching is this?" (Mark 1:27). VIII. In like manner, when the apostle Paul was preaching the same truth at Athens, the philosophers assailed him. "May we know," they said, "what this new teaching is that you are speaking?" (Acts 17:19). And in that whole contest which existed between the gospel and the superstition of the Gentiles, there was scarcely anything which stirred the minds of unbelievers more violently to rage against the truth than that the Christian religion was new, that it was without antiquity, that it sought to abolish the ancient rites and the traditional worship of God. How great a measure of prejudice that persuasion instilled into their minds can easily be inferred from the Pontificians themselves, hardened by the pleasures, or rather the profits, of their errors. But that the antiquity which the Romanists claim is doubtful in all respects and in most cases openly false, very many have shown. It was moreover evident that, setting aside those monuments of events alone which they thought fit to despise (because they belong to Jews, heretics, and schismatics), there was absolutely no memory of things or religions in existence since man was born that preceded the origin of their worship; so that no one doubted that the religion they professed was eternal, or rather, if things themselves have a beginning, at least coeval with eternity. Therefore nothing was more loudly proclaimed than this: that it was everywhere, always, and by all. Hence Symmachus, Epist. ad Theodosium: "If long age," he says, "winds authority for religions, the faith maintained through so many centuries must be preserved, and we must follow our forebears who followed their own forebears with good fortune. Let us now think of Rome as standing before us and addressing you with her own words: Most excellent princes, fathers of the fatherland, respect my years, to which a pious rite has brought me, that I may use the ceremonies of my ancestors." And Caecilius in Minucius Felix: "How much more venerable and better is it to receive the discipline of truth from the elders, to cultivate the religions handed down, to fear the gods with whom you were imbued from your parents beforehand and to know them more intimately and to worship them; and not to pass judgment on the divine powers, but to yield to former authorities." From where Augustine aptly observes: "This is the devilish custom, that through the conduit of antiquity

— deceit should be commended." Indeed, the American Indians themselves, as the Jesuit Xavier testifies, lib. iv. epist. i, were accustomed to glory in the antiquity of their religion against the novelty of the gospel. My purpose now is not to show that Bellarmine fights against evangelical truth with the weapons of the Gentiles; but I am showing that it was the prior task to overcome and abolish Gentilism, even though its professors were fortified with those same arguments which that most learned man judged to have so great a power for retaining the minds of men in the opinions they had once adopted.

IX. Edmund Campianus no doubt thought he had done something splendid when, to the arguments by which he attempted to persuade the ignorant of the Pontifical religion, he added as a colophon: "Witnesses are the academies, witnesses are the tablets of the laws, witnesses are the vernacular customs of men, witnesses are the election and inauguration of Emperors, witnesses are the rites and unction of kings, witnesses are the orders of knights and their very cloaks, witnesses are the windows, witnesses are the coins, witnesses are the urban harbors and civic buildings, witnesses are the fruits and life of our forefathers, witnesses are all things and their records — that no religion in the world has ever been seated in its deepest roots except ours." Though these things are indeed very weighty, they clearly demonstrate that that religion has spread far and wide over no small span of time and has taken hold of the minds of very many and shaped their customs. But how much more pompously, and with what greater appearance of argument, all these things could be said of Gentilism at the time when it was at war with evangelical truth, no one is ignorant. For the superstition of the pagans had not merely overrun a single Europe, or only certain more celebrated parts of it, as did that of the Pontificians, but had from the most ancient ages occupied the whole world — beyond all historical credibility and human memory — in such a way that nothing whatever existed throughout the whole globe of the earth that did not bear witness to its dominion. Well known are the arguments which Clement, Justin, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, and others opposed to this pretense of antiquity. If, therefore, that uncertain antiquity which can be investigated from the monuments of events and deeds among men is a presumption of truth, then no mortal, in any age, in any cause, could have produced it with greater evidence and multitude of testimonies than the patrons of Gentilism. Doubtless very many were no more persuaded that they were human beings or that they were living than that from the beginning of things, the religious worship of their nations and peoples had flourished — or, if all things have a beginning, that it was coeval with eternity, as eternity itself. Therefore nothing was more loudly proclaimed by them than this: everywhere, always, and by all. Hence Radbod, king of the Frisians, when he was about to be baptized and had dipped in one foot, asked "where the greater part of his ancestors was — in hell or in paradise?" When he was told that more were in hell, he immediately drew back and said, "It is better to follow the majority than the minority."

X. Next, in the third place the Cardinal sets down long and uninterrupted duration. If he understands this of past times, this mark does not truly differ from the one that preceded it, except in this distinction: that here the duration is said to be uninterrupted, long, or extended from ancient times. But if he is speaking of future times, this mark is nothing more than the conjecture of a learned man — although I for my part would indeed believe that the Roman church will endure until He comes who will destroy her with the breath of His mouth. But the pagans also pledged perennial duration to their worship by vows and confirmed it by predictions. The poet, about to demonstrate that he had won for himself an eternal name, says —

"I shall continue to grow, fresh with the praise of posterity, as long as the pontiff climbs the Capitol with the silent virgin." (Horace, Odes 3.30.7)

Whether he wishes to proceed historically, he is in no way to be compared with the Gentiles. The origins of idolatrous superstition are to this day entirely unknown. Yet it is not doubted that at least two thousand years elapsed from its rise until the gospel was preached throughout the world, and its profession was never once interrupted. This is a well-known matter and requires no proof. Now so deeply had this prejudice — arising from its antiquity and long duration — taken root in the souls of those who observed that religious worship, that it ought not to surprise us if they could scarcely in any way be torn away from an opinion so pernicious and so fortified by it. XI. In the fourth place the cardinal enumerates the multitude and variety of believers, so as to assign this mark to his church. Without doubt all sectaries everywhere would greatly profit thereby, since it runs directly counter to that mark of the true church which Christ Himself declared — provided the flock of Christ is the true church. But since he wishes it to be a mark of the papacy, let it be noted. One who maintained that multitude is not a mark of the true church — if this controversy must be settled by the word of God — and who contended that the Roman faction ought to be called neither absolutely nor comparatively great or numerous, would in my judgment have an easy case at hand. But this is not our present concern. Most of the papists are wise and learned men, and most highly practiced in practical affairs. They have known thoroughly what things are fitted and suited to allure the minds of mortals into adopting some position in religion, or to persuade them to cling to it stubbornly and tenaciously. How great, therefore, the force of multitude is in this cause has been well perceived by them. Indeed it is now long since all their hope in the cause seems to reside in nothing else but that they are many; and accordingly, abandoning all other arguments, they have long since resolved to decide the business of religion by the sword wherever in the world they may be. Meanwhile we know that this mark most properly belongs to Gentilism. They were the many, the all, the whole world. The disciples of the mathematicians affirm that the highest mountains are no obstacle to the earth's being called a perfect sphere. Still less does the very small flock of the worshipers of the true God prevent the whole world from being said to lie in the evil of Gentilism.

For nearly all of humankind had with singular accord agreed upon polytheism. And, good God! what men, and what emperors, kings, generals, philosophers, wise men, good, just, temperate, brave men, most devoted to their country, most zealous for equity and goodness beyond anything that can be imagined — was it then to be expected that they should allow themselves to be torn away and separated from the religion of these men, that is, of absolutely all men and especially the best? What more contrary to all reason can be said or thought, than that they, bewitched by the persuasion of a few men, should renounce the conviction of the whole world maintained through so many ages? See, reader, this corner of the world in which, by God's gracious ordering, we live: how few are there who do not regard it as the height of madness to depart from the most widely received opinion of the majority, especially when that departure is attended by some of those evils which fell in crowds upon the first preachers of the gospel. And yet we all profess that we ought to be obedient not to the multitude, not to antiquity, but to the single word of Christ. The Catholicism of the papists will never equal, still less surpass, the breadth of Gentilism. XII. Next in Bellarmine comes the succession of bishops in the Roman church; the same argument holds among the Mohammedans with regard to the caliphate. Ancient Rome likewise had its own supreme pontiffs, whose title, name, place, office, and spirit that Bellarmine's bishop has invaded, seized, and now possesses (Revelation 13:11–13). The succession of those pontiffs from the earliest consuls to Tiberius Caesar, under whose reign the name of Christ first became known, was recorded in the public registers. Their people believed that their supreme authority had been divinely constituted. So the orator, in his speech for his own house, ch. 1, 12, says: "Although many things have been divinely devised and established by our ancestors, O pontiffs, nothing is more illustrious than that they willed that you should preside over both the worship of the immortal gods and the highest affairs of the republic." In which opinion all the Romans continue to this day. He immediately adds remarks which still fill both pages in the disputes of the papists concerning the church: "For what is so arrogant as to attempt to teach the college of pontiffs concerning religion, divine matters, and sacred ceremonies? Or so foolish as for someone to tell you what he has found in your own books? Or so curious as to wish to inquire into those matters concerning which our ancestors willed that you alone should be consulted and should know?" And none of these pontiffs was a woman, a magician, a murderer, an adulterer, or a sacrilegious person, as far as we know from the records of those times. But to hold an opinion in religious matters different from theirs was reckoned as nothing less than extreme madness.

XIII. Indeed those supreme pontiffs were of such great authority that it was scarcely more permissible for anyone to dissent from their judgment in religion than it is now to dissent from the pope himself. For the historian describes their authority in such terms that you can scarcely tell whether he is speaking of ancient or of new Rome. The pontiffs, he says — established by Numa, of course — "have the greatest authority among the Romans… They are lords of the most important affairs, and they judge all sacred disputes, both among private persons and among magistrates and ministers of the gods" (which distribution of members into various classes is still customary in the Roman church), "and they are lawgivers for all matters pertaining to sacred rites and customs, and they judge…"

"…all matters pertaining to both divine and human law. They set over all sacrifices and acts of worship those whom they judge fit, and they oversee all the priests, their assistants and ministers, who serve at the sacred rites, and they take care that these commit no offense against the sacred laws. For private persons also who are ignorant of matters pertaining to the gods or piety or holiness, they become expounders and prophets, and they do not permit anyone who has complied with their injunctions to be fined without an inquiry, whether the matter involves loss of life or of property, nor are they required to render an account to the senate or the people. When any one of them ends his life, another is appointed in his place, chosen not by the people but by the pontiffs themselves." Dionys. Halicarnas. Antiquit. Rom. lib. ii. Whether Dionysius, if he were living now in Rome (as he once did), could have given a more accurate description of papal authority, may justly be doubted. "The pontiffs," he says, "are endowed with supreme authority and hold dominion in the most important affairs. For they judge all sacred disputes between private persons, magistrates, and ministers of sacred rites." (In the exercise of this part of their authority, the Roman pontiff has thrown every Christian kingdom into turmoil, and has even brought some to ruin and overthrow.) "But they also enact laws concerning sacred matters that have not yet been written down, nor received by usage, if they seem worthy to be sanctioned by laws and customs" (that is, they alone were judges of unwritten traditions, so that whatever they wished, and whenever they wished, they decreed to be observed by laws and canons; which is the most strongly fortified citadel of the present pontifical power). "They also inquire into all magistrates to whom sacrifices and the worship of the gods are entrusted, and into all priests, and keep the ministers of sacred rites in their duty, lest they offend in anything against the sacred laws." (They alone, of course, are the lord, the source and origin of all clerical order and ecclesiastical authority.) "To private persons also they show and interpret the worship of the gods or of the divine spirits." (For those private persons, it is sufficient if with implicit faith they reverently observe and embrace what they themselves prescribe in the worship of the saints.) "And if they observe anyone despising their prescriptions, they punish him according to the magnitude of the offense" (but that these penalties were capital we do not read, except in the case of the Vestal Virgins. Yet there is scarcely a region in all Europe which the secondary order of Roman pontiffs has not stained with fatal slaughters, blood, flame, and deaths of various kinds on account of neglected prescriptions). "They themselves are immune from judgment and penalty, and are not required to render an account either to the senate or to the people" (that is, the pontiff judges all and is judged by none. And the word "unaccountable" indeed sounds sweet to pontifical ears. But whether they will or not, they will at last render an account to the Judge of all). "If" —

"— if any one of them departs this life, another is customarily appointed in the place of the deceased, not by the votes of the people but by whoever seems most suitable to the college." Just as is still done at Rome. Let the reader therefore learn from this whose successor, and whose vicar, the Roman pontiff truly is.

XIV. Next he proposes, in the same place, agreement in doctrine with the ancient church. But since he excludes the apostles and their writings from that ancient church, he means nothing other than that the true church is the one which teaches concerning sacred matters just as the predecessors of its members taught. Yet this was the most strongly fortified bulwark of all Gentilism. Nothing was judged more foolish, nothing more worthy of reproach, than to reject traditions handed down from the fathers. That was the superstition that kept the old images of the gods in place. Socrates was condemned to death for no other reason than that he held that the gods which the city had believed from ancient times to be gods were not gods. Against Christians especially, as deserters of the religion of their native land, the fiercest persecution raged. How greatly the idolaters pressed this argument against the professors of the gospel business, Origen, Justin, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, and all without exception who undertook the defense of truth against their sophisms, are witnesses. Thus they too were not immune from this prejudice against the gospel. XV. The seventh Bellarminian mark is the union of members among themselves and with the head, the Roman bishop. One is ashamed of such insolent boasting; for that union which prevails among the Romans is the greatest disgrace of the Christian name; and unless the argument that makes for self-interest were the most powerful among the majority, it would long since have been nearly nothing. Remove the most savage tyranny, burnings alive, ignorance, greed, worldly pride, and love of the present world, and that union will immediately appear too feeble to endure. What kind of union it is, the wars, robberies, murders, slaughters, devastations of cities, and depopulations of fields which are daily committed and carried out among the members of that church — the Roman pontiff protesting in vain — testify. Were they not stupid, blind, or the most shameless of mortals, and likewise the most ignorant of evangelical truth, they would long since have been ashamed of this most disgraceful boasting. I myself would prefer the church divided into a thousand pieces to one united in the papal manner. The world knows the divisions, dissensions, schisms, political, ecclesiastical, in soul, in opinion, in writings, which prevail in that conspiracy of men which wishes to be called the church; and in that one matter only, for various political, secular, and Satanic reasons, all men bewitched by worldly affairs seem to agree: namely, to oppose strenuously the truth of the gospel and the liberty obtained for Christians by Christ Himself. Yet I would not assert that there is no unity at all among the papists, since the Spirit had predicted concerning the pope that "he would cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to bear a mark on their right hand" (Revelation 13:16). Among the Gentiles very many things were otherwise. That strong armed man kept his whole household — the whole world — in peace and union. There was a certain diversity in worship, not unlike that which is seen among the religious orders, where one prefers this saint and another prefers a different one. As to the sum of the matter, the ancient idolaters maintained close peace among themselves under their head Satan and his vicar the supreme Roman pontiff, especially after the world had yielded to the city. That one should introduce foreign religions, or that other gods than those he himself worshiped should be adored and preached — Maecenas persuaded Augustus in Dio's account of this, as we have shown elsewhere at length — and the law of the Twelve Tables also forbade the introduction of foreign gods. For Romans to adopt religious customs foreign to that city was deemed wicked and unlawful, as is argued against the doctrine of Paul in (Acts 16:21). Egypt alone was virtually the birthplace of heresies. In the suppression of truth there was no dissension. "The pagans," says Augustine in his Sermon on Fasting, "worshiping many diverse gods, yes, quarreling and burning with mutual hostile hatred, yet maintain among themselves a certain unity, in that they go equally to their temples, and when the gods themselves are angry, they themselves are in harmony." And elated by this opinion of their harmony, they were accustomed to reproach Christians with their dissensions; as the same Augustine witnesses, lib. de Ovibus, cap. xv.; and Clement in Stromat. lib. vii. XVI. Let us proceed with the cardinal. In the eighth and ninth places he mentions the holiness of doctrine, together with its efficacy, and the holiness of its authors. Without any doubt the most holy doctrine is the most true. For the gospel itself is the truth according to godliness, as the apostle testifies in the letter to Titus (Titus 1:1). And it is likewise most efficacious; since "the word of God is living and effectual" (Hebrews 4:12); "yes, it is the power of God for salvation to those who believe" (Romans 1:16). By it "all who are born of God" are regenerated (1 Peter 1:23). And its author is holy, since He was none other than the most holy Son of God (Hebrews 1:1, 2; John 1:18). But what holiness is, and what is true or false, we cannot know unless taught by that word. Now, holiness that can be seen can be feigned; holiness that cannot be feigned cannot be seen. The holiness of the Roman church, however, is attested by the very many men of all orders within it — nearly all of them: the clergy especially; attested by the lives, conduct, and deaths of the popes, detestable even to the heathen; by the arrogance, pride, greed, ignorance, sloth, cruelty, and rapacity of the bishops; by the cunning, frauds, impurity, hypocrisy, and unspeakable sins of the so-called religious orders; by the idolatry of all; and especially by the frauds, impostures, lies, treacheries, shameful lusts, perjuries, and the skill in extenuating the sins of men of every order that marks the Jesuits. And the holiness of that church has now at length progressed so far that, on account of it, among the American Indians — where they most of all should have cultivated it to the honor of Christ and the gospel — the very name "Christian" has been rendered plainly odious and abominable, so that whatever is at length decreed concerning them, they stubbornly and obstinately refuse to have anything in common with Christians or their religion. That matters have been brought to this pass is complained of by Luis of Granada, "that among barbarous nations the Christian name is so execrable that whenever monks are sent to them, in order that they may not be hated with the same loathing, it is necessary to say that these men are not Christians but fathers who have come to care for their salvation; for the Spaniards have treated them with such cruelty that the most holy name of Christian has come to be regarded not as a name of piety and religion, but of cruelty and brutality." The most holy Lord Jesus will, at the appointed time, exact the penalties for this holiness. The fathers of the Society also acted in a holy fashion when, in their preaching of the gospel among the Chinese, they studiously concealed the fact that Jesus Christ was crucified, and persuaded them to place their faith in another Jesus, I know not which; which was at last forbidden at Rome. It is remarkable, moreover, that Bellarmine dared to touch on this point, since he knew perfectly well that it would be the easiest thing in the world to compile, from approved histories and the writings of his own church's authors and daily examples, huge volumes full of the execrable crimes, lusts, and impieties of the chief fathers of that church. But this is not our present task. If that most learned man is speaking of holiness that falls under human observation, all confess that it must be measured according to some rule, either divinely given or received in some manner. But such was the doctrine of certain philosophers among the heathen that many Christians even now are not ashamed to call it most holy. That its efficacy in changing human conduct is proved by very many examples; and how great the holiness of life was among the heathen according to the precepts of philosophy is well known. It seems that nearly nothing was lacking in some of them, with the sole exception of faith and the knowledge of the true God in Christ, which alone is eternal life.

XVII. Next he recounts the miracles which, he maintains, happen in his church and nowhere else. And some pontifical writers conduct themselves nowhere more magnificently than when they come to miracles. Here one may see the great Valerianus at his finest, in his recounting of the miracles of the Capuchin brothers; let the reader consult him — should the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine not suffice — and also the observations of that most learned man Johannes Comenius on Valerianus's account of those miracles. If anyone delights in illusions, trifles, fabrications, lies, vanities, useless things, portents, diabolical things, ridiculous and blasphemous things, let him go to the legends, the writers of saints' lives, the archives of monasteries, the canonizations of papal saints, and even the compilers of ecclesiastical annals after the fourth century, and they will supply him to his fill with whatever of that sort can be scraped together or invented anywhere. I have judged it necessary to repeat here just one out of a thousand, by which the rest may be judged; and it is handed down from memory in the book of the Conformities. When Francis, says the author, "was on a certain occasion preaching, and an ass in the crowd was making a disturbance, Francis said to it: Brother ass, be quiet until I finish the sermon. At once the ass, obedient to the command, settled itself with a composed posture at Francis's feet." It would be remarkable if a single ass remained in the whole world that would not at once yield itself to the power of that church in which this entire capacity for performing miracles holds its place.

XVIII. Meanwhile, although all know that true miracles, wrought by the immediate power of God to confirm heavenly truth — such as those of our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles — had great force and efficacy in stirring up the minds of men to hear and believe the truth itself; yet it is most certain that diabolical portents and wonders whose causes cannot be investigated, and fabrications sold and believed as true miracles, are most powerful for ensnaring the common people in superstitious credulity, and for persuading them with stubborn reverence to embrace dogmas which appear to be confirmed by those miracles. Now miracles of this kind were most frequent among the Gentiles. There is scarcely one among the more reputable Greek or Latin historians who has not handed down many of them in writing. Well known are the accounts which Porphyry wrote concerning Pythagoras, and Philostratus concerning Apollonius — to such a degree that Hierocles impiously contended that that magician of Tyana was to be compared with Christ Himself in the brilliance of his miracles; whose wicked audacity Eusebius refutes in a separate work. But this is nothing to the papists, for whom it is customary to swear that this or that friar has performed more miracles than Christ Himself and all the apostles. The wonders of this kind that Diodorus, Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Cicero, Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, Caesar, Pausanias, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus record here and there are innumerable. Some of them were collected by Valerius Maximus, lib. i. cap. vi.; but I do not wish to dwell on particular instances or to compare them with the miracles of the papists. It will suffice to have mentioned the most celebrated story of the deliverance of the Delphic temple from the sacrilege of the Gauls. Pausanias, among others, recounts it in the Phocica. All know that Satan had set up his throne among men, chiefly at Delphi, for several centuries. Nowhere on earth did he peddle himself more shamelessly as the god of this world. When the Gauls, bursting into Greece under the leadership of Brennus, set about plundering the temple of Apollo that had been built there — enriched with the votive offerings of nearly all nations and peoples — and when Brennus, having passed Thermopylae, marched directly on Delphi, the townspeople, struck with fear, fled to the oracle; the god at once commanded them to be of good courage and fear nothing: "he promised that he himself would defend his own" — and immediately everything was full of prodigies. "Prodigies sudden and most evident of all we have ever heard of appeared divinely against the barbarians." "For the earth, as much of it as the Gallic army had violently occupied, trembled with a great shaking for nearly the whole day." Then "continual thunders and lightning bolts occurred, and they struck down and stunned the Gauls…"

— directing them also to those who proclaimed the things announced to them — "The thunders and lightnings not only terrified the Gauls, but, dulling their senses, struck them with bewilderment, so that they could not hear the signals given by their commanders." And in addition, heroic apparitions were seen rising up against them — Hyperochous, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus — "They saw, moreover, the forms of heroes rising against them: Hyperochous, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus," and others besides. While the barbarians were thus pressed throughout the day by alarms and slaughters, the calamities that fell upon them in the night were felt to be yet more grievous — "In the night a most bitter frost with snow afflicted them severely. Moreover, great rocks and the cliffs of the mountain, torn spontaneously from Parnassus, fell upon the barbarians as if at a fixed signal. They were crushed not singly or in pairs, but thirty and more at a time, as each happened to be encamped together or sleeping side by side; and confusion and panic arose from the crashing of the crags." Terrified, broken, and scattered in this manner, they were all utterly destroyed to the last man. Thus it pleased God to avenge the wicked impiety of the human race and its defection from the knowledge and worship of Him. For because it did not seem good to them to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over into the power of the prince of darkness, and permitted him, to the end of greater hardening, in the defense of the stronghold of demon-worship, to produce so many and so great prodigious miracles. He foretold that He would deal in the same manner with the followers of Antichrist, and so He did. For because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved, "God sent upon them the working of error, that they should believe a lie, and delivered them over to be deluded by him whose coming is by the effective working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders;" as the apostle teaches us (2 Thessalonians 11:9, 11). Yet there is this difference between the degrees of either working: that the papal Antichrist has never anywhere yet perpetrated so many miracles and prodigies as Satan produced in defense of ethnic idolatry. For although myriads of such portents and prodigies are not worth a straw against even a single testimony of Holy Scripture, yet if such things as occurred at Delphi had ever and anywhere taken place in defense of pontifical rites, of whatever kind they were, one can easily conjecture how greedily the papists would seize upon them for their own cause, and with what arrogant boasting they would display themselves everywhere. It was precisely on account of this prejudice in favor of miracles, then, that they refused to be easily torn away from the darkness of their errors. For what indeed? Were they to abandon powerful, gracious, present gods — whom they possessed such brilliant proofs had at heart both themselves and their worship, whose divine power, authority, supreme might, and benefits had been made manifest through so many wonderful prodigies — at the preaching of a new religion, previously unheard of in the world, to which a few obscure, superstitious, worthless men had applied themselves? This seemed to them sufficiently alien from all wisdom, constancy, faith, and virtue. Should it be deemed right to receive an unknown God, a crucified Deliverer, a Jewish religion, abandoning the gods of their fathers, after they had employed them in war and in peace through a countless series of years? It would be better to die than to take upon themselves this supreme crime and disgrace. But that the gospel overcame these mountains of prejudices is well known.

XIX. Prophetic light is the twelfth mark of Bellarmine; not that light, to be sure, which was inherent in the divinely inspired writers of the Old and New Testaments; not that of Jesus Christ and His apostles, upon which all Christian faith rests; but a certain gift of predicting future things, which the cardinal contends and maintains that some in the Roman church have possessed. That false prophets have existed in every age both within and outside the people of God, all know; and there is nothing by which Satan has more fascinated the minds of men and rendered them more subject to himself than by predictions of future events. Among the Gentiles the Sibyls lived and were themselves Gentiles; their oracles were most celebrated, and all of them served to confirm the most foul idolatry, as is evident from all the prophecies taken from their books that are found in Livy, Cicero, and others. The Delphic oracle and others the whole world venerated. How far Satan may be able, how far God may be willing to permit him to predict future things, we do not now dispute. This is certain: among the Gentiles it was a most firmly held conviction that prophetic light resided with themselves alone; that their gods alone foreknew and foretold the future; and that they had communicated that gift of foreknowing future things to many. Occupied therefore by this prejudice as well, they declared war on the truth, persistently.

XX. In his thirteenth mark, which is the confession of adversaries, the cardinal manages poorly; had he not previously resolved to fill out the number of fifteen marks, he would beyond all doubt not have snatched up this most absurd one from the gutter. But would that there had been none among the ancient Fathers, the scholastics, or others, who so far concurred with paganism in their own confession as to affirm that those people could have been saved in that superstition, provided they truly lived according to reason; nor will the cardinal ever wring a more telling testimony from the mouths of any adversaries of his church. XXI. The unhappy end of those who opposed the church constitutes the fourteenth mark. This too the idolaters claimed for themselves. We have recalled the wickedness of the sacrilegious Gauls. The "Gold of Tolosa" passed into a proverb. Historians universally record the unhappy ends of those who undertook any enterprise with the sacred rites neglected or despised.

(footnote: 1 "A proverb concerning a thing ruinous and fatal to its possessor, about the sacrilegious plunder that proved destructive to the Gauls." See Justin, book xxxii, chapter iii. — Ed.)

— with the sacred rites neglected or despised — undertook any enterprise, all historians record as having unhappy ends. Moreover, one may conjecture from this how much confidence the Gentiles placed in this mark; for when the gospel first began to become known, the metropolis of all superstition had grown through various successes and prosperous turns of events in secular prosperity to such a height that it had nowhere higher to ascend. And from that point they persistently affirmed that all adverse turns of events, all unhappy outcomes of wars, and all evils by which the human race was in any way afflicted, were to be imputed to the Christians and their religion. Hence Tertullian: "They bring forward also that vanity to justify their hatred, namely, their belief that the Christians are the cause of every public disaster and every popular misfortune. If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky stands still, if the earth trembles, if there is famine, if there is plague, immediately the cry goes up, 'Christians to the lions.'" Similar things are found in Cyprian, To Demetrian; Augustine, book 3 of The City of God, chapter 30, and book 5, chapter 22; and in the latter part of Question 126 to the Orthodox, which is as follows: that the Greeks do not show themselves more unrighteous in this, that while those former times held the cities and the arts of war and prosperity were acquired, and the cities were at that time more frequently warred upon, yet after the Christian proclamation took hold of the nations, homes, and habitations, and left the rest of their prosperity desolate — and the cities that were formerly held by Greek-founded settlements now stand as witnesses of the former prosperity and of the present desolation, each of the two religions producing its own respective fruits. It is therefore most certain that Bellarmine fights here with none but the weapons of the Gentiles. Let the apologetic writings of the ancient Christians — of Justin, Tertullian, Arnobius, Augustine, Orosius — be consulted; they show clearly what the pagans determined concerning this mark and what ought in truth to be determined.

Temporal felicity divinely granted is the last of Bellarmine's marks of the true church. Had he approached the task of ruining the church with a sober mind, he would scarcely have employed this mark. It is pagan, it is Mohammedan, it is above all contrary to the word of God. Indeed the idolatrous crowd of Jews in Egypt argued this very point against the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 44:15-18): "Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word which you have spoken to us in the name of Jehovah, we will not listen to you. But we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings, and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off, and we saw no evil. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything, and we have been consumed by sword and by famine." Let the cardinal now come forward and teach us what difference there is between his mark and this mark of the Jews. From both sides they argue most vehemently, affirming on the one hand that temporal felicity was divinely granted from the time they devoted themselves to the worship of heavenly beings, and on the other hand that they incurred the greatest misery because of its neglect. But what are these things, I ask — bread, food, and merriment — compared to what the pagan orator brings forward in assertion of this mark? "However much," he says, "conscript fathers, we may love ourselves, yet it is not in numbers that we have surpassed the Spaniards, nor in strength the Gauls, nor in cunning the Phoenicians, nor in arts the Greeks, nor indeed in that native and innate sense of their own race and land the Italians and Latins themselves; but in piety and religion, and in that one wisdom of perceiving that all things are ruled and governed by the divine power of the immortal gods, we have surpassed all peoples and nations," Cicero, Oration on the Responses of the Haruspices, ix. If the cardinal were to hear a man of consular rank discoursing most gravely on the deeds, victories, and prodigious successes of the Romans, and abusing all of these things as confirmation of the most empty superstition, what, I ask, would he have to reply? He would not deny that these things furnish a mark of the true church and therefore of true religion and true worship; whether he would yield the point or not is uncertain; it is very difficult to conjecture how he would defend himself and the truth. So Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, book 2, states that he set forth the sacred rites of Rome so that those to whom the piety of the Romans, which the men practiced, was previously unknown might cease to wonder that the most favorable outcomes of wars always fell to them; for they will find that all those things were begun most religiously and with the most just causes, and that for this reason they had the gods most gracious to them in dangers — that is, "so that those to whom the piety of the Romans has hitherto been unknown may cease to wonder that the most favorable outcomes of wars have always fallen to them; for they will find that all their undertakings and enterprises were conducted most religiously, and for this reason they had the gods most propitious in dangers."

And all these things are said to this end: that the divine power and efficacy of the gospel, or of the word of the cross of Christ — which within a brief span of time erected conspicuous trophies over all idolatrous worship — might shine forth the more clearly. Relying on it alone, and on the presence and power of Christ in it, a very few men attacked innumerable men, the whole world; the poor attacked the masters of earthly things; the unwise attacked the most wise; the unlearned attacked the most learned — men fortified with prejudices, with arguments, with the most ancient traditions, with miracles, with those arguments which even those who are Christians in name only still regard as irrefutable — and they did not cease until, through a thousand dangers, deaths, torments, and innumerable perils, they had subdued the whole world to God and to Christ.

XXIV. But as soon as the light of the gospel began to shine forth, Satan seemed to foresee from many signs the ruin of his Catholic and most ancient dominion. Yet, lest he should appear to give way or to fail himself in extremity, he left no stone unturned by which he might fortify himself and his own against the heavenly truth and suppress it. For besides the fact that by savage cruelty he compelled his slaves to rage against the professors of the gospel, so that, if it could be done, he might suffocate the truth in the blood of those who cherished it — he also attempted to renew that superstition.

— that superstition, which was itself alone everything to him, he endeavored to renew in various ways and to add new strength and new luster to it. For since paganism had two parts — namely, vain opinions concerning God and divine things, and idolatrous worship — there were very many things in each part that were most widely received among all men, from which human reason itself, when it brought them to examination, was necessarily compelled to recoil. Lest anyone should therefore first take occasion from these things to doubt that whole most empty superstition in which they were ensnared, and thereupon to investigate the truth, as soon as the fame of the gospel spread abroad in the world, he stirred up great and learned men who, while preserving its autocracy, might devise and defend opinions concerning God and divine things more spiritual and less repugnant to right reason, and might establish modes of conducting worship at least less absurd and ridiculous than those that were in common use. In the first part of the work, Amelius, Eumenius, Plotinus, Proclus, Hierocles, Celsus, and others plied their diligent labor for him. For these men

Although they were most tenacious in their idolatry, they nevertheless diligently set forth views of God more sober than the common run of philosophers had previously delivered, and they condemned vain, false, and harmful opinions about the divine. That they did so by means of that very truth which they hated — truth that had already cast its rays into the minds of men — and that they made use of its benefit, is most certain. The chief men among those who labored to gloss over with paint the impious cult and its most wicked mysteries were Apollonius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Julian; and in these men consisted the last effort of a crumbling Hellenism. But the word of God and the Spirit prevailed, until, with the wickedness and impiety of men growing strong, nearly the entire world once more shamefully fell away from the true and pure worship of God.