Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/389

356  signs of the old age of the Church, and of the anger of God against his sons. 1 Cor. xiv. 21. 1699.

God permits that all powers be opposed to the preachers of the truth, to the end that his victory may be attributed only to the Divine grace. Acts xvii. 8.

It too often happens, that those members which are more holily and more strictly united to the Church, are looked upon and treated as unworthy, so that they should be in the Church, even as separated from it; but the just lives by faith, and not from the opinion of men. Acts iv. 11.

The state of persecution and punishments, which any one endures, as if a wicked and impious heretic, is, for the most part, the last and most meritorious probation, as being the one which renders a man most like unto Jesus Christ. Luke xxii. 37.

Pertinacity, prevention, obstinacy in being unwilling either to examine anything, or to perceive that one has been deceived, do daily, in the case of many, change into the odour of death that which God placed in his Church to be therein the odour of life, to wit, good books, instructions, holy examples, &c. 2 Cor. ii. 16.

The deplorable season, in which it is believed that God is honoured by persecuting truth and its disciples, this time hath arrived.... To be held and treated by the ministers of religion as impious, and unworthy all commerce with God, as a rotten member, capable of corrupting all in the society of the holy, is, for pious men, a death more terrible than the death of the body. In vain does any one flatter himself respecting the purity of his intentions, and a certain zeal for religion, by persecuting good men with fire and sword, if he is blinded by his own passion, or carried away by another's, because he is unwilling to examine anything. We frequently believe we sacrifice the impious one to God, and sacrifice the servant of God to the devil. John xvi. 2.

Nothing is more opposed to the Spirit of God, and the teaching of Jesus Christ, than to make common oaths in the Church, seeing this is to multiply the opportunities for perjury, to stretch out snares for the weak and uneducated, and to cause that the name and truth of God some time serve the counsel of the wicked. Matt. v. 37. 