Bellarmine · De Controversiis · On the Church Militant · The Church Spread Throughout the Whole World
Chapter 23: The Third Mark: Duration
Our translation, from the Latin of the Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1870–74), vol. II, De Ecclesia Militante, On the Church Militant (of the controversy On Councils and the Church). The Latin source text is public domain; this English rendering is released with the site. Scripture quotations follow Bellarmine's Vulgate citations, rendered in Douay-Rheims wording where he quotes exactly. Click “Show the Latin” for the original (raw OCR of the scan; scanning errors remain — the scan itself is the authority).
The third Mark is long and never-interrupted Duration. For the Church is called Catholic not only because it always has been, but also because it always shall be, according to that of Daniel 2: a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and Acts 5: If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it. But of the heretics Saint Paul says, 2 Timothy 3: But they shall proceed no farther. And blessed Cyprian, Book 4, letter 2, says that schismatics always burn hot at their beginnings, but can have no increase, but straightway fail together with their perverse rivalry. And blessed Augustine, on Psalm 57, on that verse They shall come to nothing, like water running down, says: “Let not certain rivers, brethren, which are called torrents, terrify you. They are filled with winter waters. Do not fear: after a little while it passes, the water runs down, for a time it roars, soon it will cease. They cannot stand long. Many heresies are now dead; they ran in their channels as much as they could, they ran down: their channels are dried up, scarcely is the memory of them found, or that they ever were.”
Now it is established that our Church has lasted from the beginning of the world until now. Or if we speak of the state of the New Testament, that it has lasted from Christ until now through 1577 years, though the Jews first, then the pagans, lastly the heretics attacked it in vain; and not only lasted, but even grew out of persecutions. For as the waters of the flood overwhelmed and cast down the palaces of kings, but ever raised higher and higher the ark of Noah, so persecutions easily destroy temporal kingdoms, but the kingdom of Christ, which is the Church, they not only do not destroy, but even make illustrious. And so Justin, in his dialogue with Trypho, says that persecution is to the Church what pruning is to vines; for as vines are provoked to fruitfulness by pruning, so also the Church grows by persecutions. And Tertullian, in the last chapter of the Apologetic, elegantly calls the blood of the Martyrs the seed of Christians; which Leo seems to have explained, sermon 1 on the holy Peter and Paul, when he says: “The Church is not diminished by persecutions, but increased, and ever is the Lord's field clothed with a richer harvest, while the grains which fall singly are born again multiplied.”
But although the heretics of this time do not grant that our Church has lasted 1577 years, yet they grant that it has lasted without any interruption from Gregory I until now, that is, nearly a thousand years. Which time, even if it were the only one, would still be longer than the age of any heresy has been. But nevertheless it is false that it has not lasted longer; for they cannot show through any history, or the writings of the ancients, that a change of religion was made in the Roman Church in the time of Saint Gregory.
Next, that our Church is the true Church can be proved also by this argument: for before the times of Luther there were not in the world any religions but these — Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Greekism, Nestorianism, the heresy of the Hussites, and the Roman Church. But it is certain that the true Church of Christ was not among any of the aforesaid sects, as even the Lutherans confess; therefore it was in the Roman Church, or else all the true and visible Church perished from the world, which cannot happen, as we taught above. But all the heretical sects soon failed, except those which have now arisen.
Theodoret in his book on heretical fables relates that seventy-six diverse heresies arose down to his times; and in Book 3 of the same work he testifies that all those were extinguished, very few excepted. Augustine in his book on heresies numbers 88 heresies, of which he testifies that very many perished, in his exposition of Psalm 57. We number down to the times of Luther 200 most diverse families of heretics; but of these there survive nothing but certain remnants of the Nestorians and Eutychians in the East, and of the Hussites in Bohemia; all the rest have utterly perished. And the providence of God is very wonderful in this matter, that there were down to the times of Luther at least 200 heresiarchs, many of whom had many Bishops, many Churches, many most powerful Patrons, and Emperors, and Kings, and wrote innumerable books, so that they seemed never able to fail; and yet they so failed that now neither they themselves survive, nor their books, nor their dogmas, nor their names, nor any traces, except in the books of the Catholics. And so, if the Catholics had not written their names in their books, we should not even know that they had ever been in this world.
On how firm roots did the Arian heresy seem to rest in the times of Athanasius and Hilary? But now where, I pray, is it? It has vanished like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth. Two hundred years ago the heresy of the Albigensians reigned in Gaul, which, besides the strength of its doctrine, abounded more in troops of soldiers and in power than now the heresy of the Calvinists, as can be known from Book 6 of Paulus Aemilius on the affairs of the Gauls; and yet where now are the Albigensians? How many are there who have even heard them named?
Moreover the Lutherans, scarcely born, began to wither. The reign of Luther began in the year 1517, but scarcely seven years did it reign in peace. For in the year 1525 arose Zwingli, and after two other years arose the Anabaptists, who drew to themselves the greater part of the Lutherans separated from Luther. And those who remained Lutherans so changed the doctrine of Luther that scarcely any pure Lutherans are now to be found; of which Illyricus gravely complains in the prefaces of all the Centuries.
But neither did Zwingli reign long. For in the year 1538 arose Calvin, who so quickly prevailed that he left scarcely a few towns of the Swiss to the Zwinglians. The Calvinists themselves too, through the Libertines in Gaul, through the Trinitarians in Poland, and the Samosatenes in Transylvania, are daily reduced more to fewness.
Moreover Calvin, as he was shrewd, foresaw and foretold that his reign would not be lasting, in the preface of the Genevan Catechism which he sent to the Ministers in East Frisia: “Concerning posterity,” he says, “I am so anxious that I scarcely dare to think of it. For unless God shall wonderfully succor us from heaven, I seem to myself to see extreme barbarism hanging over the world. And would that our sons may not a little later perceive this to have been rather a true prophecy than a conjecture.” Which anxiety of Calvin declares plainly enough that his sect is a thing merely human, devised not by the Spirit of God but by a certain human industry and artifice, and finally that it is very far from the Spirit of Him who said: Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The Centuriators too, in the preface of the second Century, prophesy the same of their own Lutheranism: “The greatest variations and declines,” they say, “seem to hang over the doctrine; and so do the sins of men deserve, which become daily more atrocious. And the times indeed of the German Prophet Martin Luther, by whose voice and ministry the light of the Gospel was as it were recalled from Egyptian darkness, correspond nearly to the age of the Apostles. But now, he being taken away, we have entered as it were upon another age of the Gospel, where many fanaticisms begin to sprout, and gradually to reign.” And in the preface of the fifth Century, after they had shown that the chief articles on free choice, on justifying faith, on good works, are no longer defended by very many Lutherans in the Lutheran way but in the Papist way, they subjoin: “The revealed truth has now perished, and that suddenly. Philosophy, Papism, and other sects far and wide occupy the first chair in the temple of God.”
We conclude therefore with Saint Jerome, at the end of his Dialogue against the Luciferians: “I will bring forth,” he says, “the brief and open opinion of my mind: that one must remain in that Church which, founded by the Apostles, endures unto this day.” And with Saint Augustine, in his book on the profit of believing, chapter 17: “Shall we doubt,” he says, “to hide ourselves in the bosom of that Church which, from the Apostolic See through the successions of Bishops, the heretics barking round about in vain, obtained the summit of authority?”
Show the Latin (Vives edition, OCR)
CAPUT VI. Nota tertia. Tertia Nota est Duratio diuturna, nec un¬ quam interrupta. Ecclesia enim dicitur Ca¬ tholica, non solum quia semper fuit, sed etiam quia semper erit, juxta illud Dan. II : Regnum quod in aeternum non dissipabitur . Et Act. V : Si est ex hominibus Concilium hoc , aut opus, dissolvetur ; si vero ex Deo est , non poteritis dissolvere. De haereticis autem S. Paulus dicit : Sed ultra non proficient (1). II. Timoth. III et B. Cyprianus lib. IV, epist. 2. dicit schismaticos semper inter initia fer¬ vere, incrementa vero habere non posse, sed statim cum prava sua aemulatione defi¬ cere. Et B. Augustinus Psalm. LVI1 in illud: Ad nihilum devenient tanquam aqua decur¬ rens : « Non vos terreant, inquit, fratres, quidam fluvii, qui dicuntur torrentes. Hye- malibus aquis implentur. Nolite timere : post paululum transit, decurrit aqua, ad tempus perstrepit, mox cessabit. Diu stare non pos¬ sunt. Multae haereses jam emortuae sunt, cu¬ currerunt in rivis suis quantum potuerunt, decurrerunt : siccati sunt rivi , vix eorum memoria reperitur, vel quia fuerint. » Jam vero constat Ecclesiam nostram du¬ rasse ab initio mundi hucusque. Vel si de statu novi Testamenti loquamur, durasse a Christo hucusque per 1577 annos, frustra eam oppugnantibus primo Judaeis, deinde paganis, ultimo haereticis; neo solum du¬ rasse, sed etiam ex persecutionibus crevisse. Ut enim aquae diluvii, palatia regum obrue¬ bant, atque dejiciebant, arcam vero Noe semper magis ac magis attollebant, ita per¬ secutiones regna temporalia facile destruunt, Christi regnum, quod est Ecclesia , non mo¬ do non destruunt, sed etiam illustrant. Ita¬ que Justinus in Triphone, dicit persecutio¬ nem id esse Ecclesiae , quod est vineis puta¬ tio ; ut enim vineae putatione ad ubertatem provocantur, ita quoque Ecclesia persecutio¬ nibus crescit i et Tertullianus cap. ult. Apo¬ logetici sanguinem Martyrum eleganter se¬ men Christianorum vocat , quod explicasse videtur Leo serm. I. de SS. Petro et Paulo, cum ait : « Non minuitur persecutionibus Ecclesia, sed augetur, et semper Dominicus ager segete ditiore vestitur, dum grana, quae singula cadunt, multiplicata nascun¬ tur. » Quamvis autem haeretici hujus temporis non concedant nostram Ecclesiam 1577 an¬ nis durasse, concedunt tamen durasse sine ulla interruptione a Gregorio I. hucusque, id est, annos fere mille. Quod tempus etiam si solum esset, adhuc esset longius, quam fuerit aetas ullius haeresis. Sed tamen fal¬ sum est non diutius durasse ; ipsi enim non possunt ostendere per ullam historiam, aut veterum scripta, factam esse mutationem religionis in Ecclesia Romana tempore S. Gregorii. Deinde nostram Ecclesiam esse veram Ec¬ clesiam probari potest ^tiam hoc argumen¬ to ; nam ante Lutheri tempora, non erant in mundo, nisi hae religiones, Paganismus, Ju- daismus, Mahumetismus, Graecismus, Nesto- rianismus, Hussitarum haeresis, et Romana Ecclesia. Sed certum est non fuisse veram Ecclesiam Christi apud ullam ex praedictis sectis, ut etiam Lutherani fatentur, ergo fuit apud Romanam Ecclesiam, aut certe pe¬ riit de mundo omnis vera, et visibilis Ec¬ clesia ; quod non posse fieri, supra docui¬ mus. At vero sectae omnes haereticae brevi defecerunt praeter eas, quae nunc exortae sunt. Refert Theodoretus in lib. de haereticis fabulis, septuaginta sex diversas haereses us¬ que ad sua tempora exortas ; et libro III ejusdem operis testatur omnes illas extinc- tas fuisse, paucissimis exceptis. Augustinus in lib. de haeresibus numerat 88 haereses, ex quibus plurimas periisse testatur in ex¬ positione Psalm. LVU. Nos numeramus us¬ que ad tempora Lutheri 200 haereticorum diversissimas familias : ex his autem non supersunt, nisi reliquiae quaedam Nestoria- norum, et Eutychianorum in Oriente ; et Hussitarum in Bohemia; reliquae omnes funditus interierunt. Et mirabilis valde est in hac re providentia Dei, quod fuerint hac¬ tenus usque ad Lutheri tempora, ut mini¬ mum 200 haeresiarchae , quorum multi ha¬ buerunt multos Episcopos, multas Ecclesias, multos potentissimos Patronos, et Imperato¬ res, et Reges, et scripserunt libros innume- (1) Dan. II, 44; Act. V$ 38 et 35; II. Tim. III* 9. 372 LIBER IV. rabiles, ut viderentur numquam posse defi¬ cere; et tamen ita defecerunt, ut jam non supersint nec ipsi, nec libri eorum, nec dog¬ mata, nec nomina, aut vestigia ulla, nisi in libris Catholicorum. Itaque si Catholici non scripsissent eorum nomina in suis libris, nes¬ ciremus quidem eos fuisse unquam in hoc mundo. Quam firmis radicibus nixa videbatur hae- resis Ariana temporibus Athanasii et Hila- rii? At nunc ubi, quaeso, est? Evanuit velut pulvis, quem projicit ventus a facie terrae. Ante annos ducentos regnabat in Gallia hae- resis Albigensium, quae praeter vires doctri¬ nae, magis abundabat copiis militum , et po¬ tentia, quam nunc haeresis Calvinistarum, ut cognosci potest ex lib. VI Pauli iEmilii de rebus Gallorum ; et tamen ubi nunc sunt Al- - bigenses? Quotusquisque est, qui eos vel no¬ minari audierit? Porro Lutherani vfx nati arescere coepe¬ runt : coepit regnum Lutheri anno 1517 ;sed vix septem annis pacifice regnavit. Nam an¬ no 1525, surrexit Zwinglius, et post duos alios annos surrexerunt Anabaptistae, qui majorem partem Lutheranorum a Luthero separatam ad se traxerunt. Qui vero manse¬ runt Lutherani, ita immutarunt Lutheri doc¬ trinam, ut vix ulli jam inveniantur puri Lu¬ therani. De quo graviter conqueritur Illyri¬ cus in praefationibus omnium Centuriarum. Sed nec Zwinglius diu regnavit. Nam an¬ no 1538 surrexit Calvinus, qui ita brevi in¬ valuit, ut vix pauca quaedam oppida Helve¬ tiorum Zwinglianis reliquerit. Ipsi quoque Calvinistae per Libertinos in Gallia, per Tri- nitarios in Polonia, et Samosatenos in Tran- sylvania, quotidie magis ad paucitatem re¬ diguntur. Porro Calvinus, ut erat sagax, regnum suum non fore diuturnum praevidit et prae¬ dixit in praefatione Catechismi Genevensis, quem ad Ministros in Frisia Orientali misit : « De posteritate, inquit, ego sic sum anxius, ut tamen vix cogitare audeam. Nisi enim mirabiliter Deus e coelo succurrerit, videre mihi videor extremam barbariem impen¬ dere orbi. Atque utinam non paulo postsen- tiant filii nostri fuisse hoc verum potius va¬ ticinium, quam conjecturam. » Quae Calvini anxietas satis aperte declarat sectam ipsius rem esse plane humanam, non spiritu Dei, sed industria quadam, atque artificio huma¬ no excogitatam, ac denique longissime ab¬ esse a spiritu ejus, qui dixit : Super hanc pe¬ tram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae in¬ feri non praevalebunt adversus eam (1). Centuriatores quoque in praefatione se¬ cundae Centuriae idem vaticinantur de suo Lutherismo : « Maximae, inquiunt, in doc¬ trina variationes, et inclinationes impendere videntur; et sic merentur hominum peccata, quae fiunt in dies atrociora. Ac tempora qui¬ dem Germanici Prophetae Martini Lutheri, cujus voce et ministerio lux Evangelii quasi e tenebris ZEgyptiacis revocata est, prope- modum Apostolorum aetati respondent. Nunc vero ipso sublato, quasi alteram Evangelii aetatem ingressi sumus, ubi plures phana- tismi incipiunt pullulare, et paulatim regna¬ re. » Et in praefatione Gentur. Y, postquam ostenderunt praecipuos articulos de libero arbitrio, de fide justificante, de bonis ope¬ ribus, non defendi amplius a Lutheranis plu¬ rimis Lutheriee, sed Papistice, subjungunt : « Periit jam, idque repente, veritas patefac¬ ta. Philosophia, Papismus et aliae sectae longe lateque in templo Dei primam cathe¬ dram occupant. » Concludimus ergo cum S. Hieronymo iii extremo Dialogo adversus Luciferianos : «Brevem, inquit, apertamque animi mei sententiam proferam, in illa esse Ecclesia permanendum, quae ab Apostolis fundata, usque ad diem hanc durat. » Et cum S. Au¬ gustino lib. de utilitate credendi, cap. 17. : « Dubitabimus, inquit, nos illius Ecclesiae concedere gremio, quae, ab Apostolica sede per successiones Episcoporum frustra haere¬ ticis circumlatrantibus culmen auctoritatis obtinuit? »