Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/370



364 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.

therefore from God, and the apostles from Christ, and both according to the will of God. . . . Preaching there- fore the word through the countries and cities, when they had proved in the Spirit the first-fruits of their teaching they appointed bishops and deacons for the faithful. . . . They appointed them and then ordained .theni, so that when they themselves had passed away other tried men should carry on their ministry." ^ On the one hand, therefore, it is necessary that the mission of teaching whatever Christ had taught should remain per- petual and immutable, and on the other that the duty of accepting and professing all their doctrine should like- wise be perpetual and immutable. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, when in His Gospel He testifies that those who are not wdth Him are His enemies, does not designate any special form of heresy, but declares that all heretics who^are not with Him and do not gather with Sim, scatter Hi9:_flock and are His adversaries : He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth." ^

The, Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and en- ,de.avoj- than she has displayed in guarding the integrity C^ of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Euty- chians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were con- demned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dan- gerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as Math a drop of

^ S. Cj^rianus, Ep. Ixix. ad Magnum, n. 1.
 * S. Clemens Rom. Epist. I. ad Corinth, capp. 42, 46.