Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/565

Rh to express it in Scripture language. Look at the treatises of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and those other scourges of the Church; you will find an infinite heap of instances, so that scarcely a page occurs, which is not coloured by some perverted passages of Scripture, the Old or the New. But so much more are they to be avoided and dreaded, the more they skulk behind the cover of the Divine Law. For they know that the ill savour of heresy would scarce commend itself to any one, if exhaled in its own simplicity; so they sprinkle it with the fragrance of a heavenly voice, that men who would be quick in rejecting human error, may be slow in despising Divine oracles.

Such were they whom the Apostle has stricken in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, saying, "Of this sort are false Apostles, deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ." What is "transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ?" This is meant by it. The Apostles adduced texts from the Divine Law, so did they; the Apostles brought authorities from the Psalms, so did they; the Apostles appealed to the Prophets, so did they quite as much. But when, what both parties had agreed in adducing, they differed in interpreting, then was the distinction seen between the innocent and the deceitful, the honest and the counterfeit, the true-hearted and the perverse, in a word, the true Apostles, and the false Apostles. "And no wonder," he continues, "for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light; so that it is not a great thing that his ministers are transformed into ministers of righteousness." According then to St. Paul's teaching, as often as false apostles, or false prophets, or false doctors, pervert texts of Scripture into authorities for their errors, they are evidently following the crafty device of their father, who, we may be sure, would never adopt it, did he not well know that the pretence of Scripture texts is the most successful mode of insinuating impious doctrine.

Does any one ask, how we know that the devil is accustomed