Hoist

“ But these strong measures of yours are as nothing to us, nor is our success at all more secure, so long as Hosius remains. While he is in his own place, the rest also continue in their Churches, for he is able by his arguments and his faith to persuade all men against us. ”

“ Is it to save their consciences that they call us infidels, traitors, madmen, wanderers from the entire faith of Christ, and an accursed clergy? Let God be the judge of this.
As to your proposed change of benefice. It seems to me in all conscience you should on no account give it up; for I hope that you are a shield where you are, against Antichrist. It is on this account in my judgment that God hath decreed that, as there was a rector in that parish who was the greatest enemy of the truth, so you, on the other side, should be the friend of God’s word. ”

“ He is a man that would manifestly die and count it great gain rather than make even the slightest concession in any matter of conscience. Ye must, therefore, insert in the creed some word or phrase that he will not subscribe, but to which the majority shall not make any strenuous objection. It must not appear to the Church that 'the communion of saints' hath caused trouble."
"There is no such word or expression in any gospel," answered Hosius, sententiously. ”

“ I will endeavour, too, O Lord, and I now propose to myself, with my whole strength, to flee from all impure and inordinate affections and all the stains of the soul, by which a temple sacred to thee might be violated and profaned; because, O Lord, as doubtless thou necessarily very much lovest thine own holiness, so, of necessity, thou greatly hatest sin, and abhorrest all impurity. ”

“ Are you any more your own, than he that has no estate or dignity in the world? Must mean and little people preserve their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost, by watching, fasting, and prayer; but may you indulge yours in idleness, in lust, and sensuality, because you have so much rent, or such a title of distinction?
And you must either think thus, or else acknowledge that the holiness of saints, prophets, and apostles, is the holiness that you are to labour after with all diligence and care. ”

“ Reverend sir, it hath come to my ears that you have spoken of me in plain words as a heretic. If this is so, I beg you to send me a reply. You will then see, by God’s grace, that I will publicly confess and defend the faith I hold, not by detraction in nooks and corners, but in manner becoming a true Christian. I would that you knew yourself and the way you have been shearing the sheep in Prachaticz this thirty years or more! Where do you reside? Where do you work? Where do you feed the sheep? ”

“ But, that thou mayest be the more fully restored to my favour, when thou hast confessed against thyself thy injustice to me, go and show thyself also to the priest, to whom I have given the power to bind and to loose. For he that hides his sins shall not prosper; but he that shall confess, and forsake them, shall obtain mercy. My son, for thy soul be not ashamed to tell the truth. For there is a shame that leads to sin, and there is a shame that leads to glory. Open thy conscience, therefore, fully and sincerely to my vicar, and he will open heaven to thee ”

“ And whereas they said that they rise at midnight when other men sleep, and pray for the sins of the people—forasmuch as their selling of their prayers and masses for the dead for gifts, is no better than hypocrisy and heresy; therefore, if we do speak against them and destroy their monasteries, we do not therein destroy the service of God, but rather the service of the devil, and the schools of heretics: and if ye knew them as we know them, ye would as diligently destroy them as we do. ”

“ Holy and terrible is his Name; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
BEFORE GOING INTO COMPANY OR CONVERSATION.
Judge me, O Lord, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy; deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.
And save me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is the right hand of iniquity.
Uphold thy servant to good, let not the proud calumniate me.
Behold, I have loved thy commandments, O Lord, quicken thou me in thy mercy. ”

“ I conjure you to love priests of good morals, and to honour, in preference, those who exert themselves in diffusing the word of God; I conjure you to beware of deceitful men, especially impious priests, of whom the Lord has said, they are outwardly dressed in sheep’s clothing, while within they are ravening wolves; I conjure the powerful to treat their poor servants with kindness, and to command them with justice ”

“ In some cases the thing demanded is personal sanctification, according to which a person must be holy before he can be justified in his Lord. “If any man shall say that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or the sole remission of our sins, and not by grace and charity, which is diffused in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and is inherent in them, let him be anathema.” ”

“ In many things we all offend, and thou, O Lord, hast proved me, and known me, and numbered all my steps, for all things are naked and open to thy eyes. Thou best knowest what is in man, and understandest my thoughts afar off; but who is there of us who understands his sins? From my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord. For I fear all my works, knowing that thou dost not spare the offender; my iniquities are multiplied above the hairs of my head, and I was not able to see. ”

“ Let any one then who would he ashamed to address a Christian in the language of a heathen, he himself ashamed to appear a worse character than the heathen himself. Accept, he says, of a useful and salutary maxim, which I would wish thee to fix firmly in thy mind. We must choose some good man (one, in fact, like our angel guardian) , and keep him always before our eyes; to live as if he were always looking at us, and to do every thing as if he always saw us. A vast number of sins is avoided, by the presence of a witness with those who are going to sin. ”

“ Woe unto this generation, for its leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy!—if that should be called hypocrisy which cannot be hidden because of its abundance, and through impudence does not seek to hide! To-day, foul rottenness crawls through the whole body of the Church. If a heretic foe should arise openly, he would be cast out and withered ”

“ Soothly, pride is one of the seven deadly sins—pray God save us all therefrom!—yet is heresy, as the Church teacheth, an eighth deadlier than all the seven. And if holy Church hath the words of God, and is alonely guided of His Spirit, then must it be an awful and deadly sin to gainsay her bidding. There be that take in hand to question the same: whom holy Church condemneth. I Cicely cannot presume to speak thereof, not being a priest, unto whom alone it appertaineth to conceive such matter. ’Tis true, there be that say lay folk can as well conceive, and have as much right as any priest ”

“ But as sin opposes holiness, and the sinner resists sanctification, the work of the holiness of God reveals itself in His kingdom of grace, not only positively in the sanctification of those who suffer themselves to be sanctified and raised to newness of life, but negatively also, in the destruction of all those who obstinately refuse the guidance of His grace ”

“ Thus, one who abjures either renounces the true faith which he held, or a heresy and an error. It is as if one were a Christian, and through fear or the devil’s enticement were to mix himself up with Jews or pagans and swear that he wished no longer to hold Christianity. Vice versâ, if a man holds a heresy—e.g., suppose he believes that the Lord Christ is not very God, as Jews and pagans believe—and then renounces this error, he is said to have abjured. ”

“ But if any one sin, and is conscious of it himself, but hath nobody that can prove it upon him, he offers a ram, the law enjoining him so to do; the flesh of which the priests eat, as before, in the holy place, on the same day. And if the rulers offer sacrifices for their sins, they bring the same oblations that private men do; only they so far differ, that they are to bring for sacrifices a bull or a kid of the goats, both males. ”

“ What could be more hypocritical than such a body posing as the champions of religion, and especially of the religion of Christ! If the Prophet of Nazareth were alive again to-day, who would expect to find him at a Lord Mayor's banquet? Would he frequent the Stock Exchange, be at home in the Guild-hall and the Mansion House, or select his disciples from the worshippers in the myriad temples of Mammon? ”

“ Let him hearken then how holily and how godly one Hosius writeth of this matter, a bishop in Polonia, as he testifieth of himself; a man doubtless well spoken and not unlearned, and a very sharp and stout maintainer of that side. One will marvel, I suppose, how a good man could either conceive so wickedly or write so despitefully of those words which he knew proceeded from God’s mouth, and specially in such sort as he would not have it seem his own private opinion alone, but the common opinion of all that band. ”

“ We must labor to convict them of sin, to show them their folly and madness, to convince them that they are dead in trespasses and sins, and condemned already, and that they can be restored to life, and freed from condemnation only by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is dispensed through the Church, and the Church only. ”

“ Thou errest, thou errest, my son, if it is another life that thou lookest for. Shall the disciple be above his master, and the servant greater than his Lord? Since, then, I have suffered in the flesh, arm thyself too with the same thought, and rather he glad than sorry if thou art deemed worthy to suffer reproach for my Name. ”

“ Sin has introduced similar disorder amongst men, and even amongst professors of religion, and into congregations. ‘Let every one keep his own place, that there be no schism in the body.’ The body can do much, can bear heavy burdens, all its parts being in their own positions. Even so in the Church; much good can be done by every member keeping and filling his own place without high-mindedness. ”

“ Then the Venerable Beard spoke up nobly. "The red hand of heresy grapples white faith by the throat. What is the use of all our theological blue laws if the black heart of atheism continues to control our yellow press?"
"Softly, softly, Brother," the Threadbare Coat made answer; "It is not charitable, neither is it wise, to bite the hand that feeds the press."
"Do not worry," replied the Vest with the Silver Horseshoes. "I never let my theological hand know what my secular hand doeth. Let us proceed to business. The burning of any heretic is good for a headline." ”

“ All that one finds opposing the true Church is the dust and ashes of churches. The other day, when reading Bossuet, I came across an admirable definition of a heretic. ‘A heretic,’ says Bossuet, ‘is one who holds an opinion of his own; one who acts according to his own ideas and his own feelings.’ Now the Jew, who has never received baptism nor been instructed in the truth, cannot rightly be called a heretic. ”

“ First, that those who are walking in the light have sin in them which needs the cleansing blood. I know very well, and thank God for the blessed assurance that ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.’ I know, too, that our blessed Saviour is the great deliverer, and that He will so surely and so effectually save His people from their sins, that every one of them, without a single exception, will finally be presented without a single spot, or stain, before His throne. ”

“ Are the heavens not opened above thee? When the priest pronounces the awful words, do not the heavenly spirits come down from heaven to officiate as thy servants, and to surround thee with their homages? Dost thou not judge men upon that mysterious tribunal, and cast looks of discernment upon that multitude of worshippers which fills thy temples? Dost not thou separate the goats from the sheep? Dost thou not there pronounce sentences of life and death? ”

“ The errors of the Gentiles concerning God are, it is true, more numerous than those of the Jews, and the errors of the Jews regarding the true faith are more numerous than those of heretics, yet the sin of infidelity of the Jews is greater than that of the infidelity of the heathen, and the sin of infidelity of heretics is greater than the sin of infidelity of the Jews and Gentiles. ”

“ We are all worshipers and ministers of the one true Gud, having been born and baptised in the faith and duly ordained in its ministry. But of late certain heresies have arisen among us, and we are gathered here to ferret out the heretic and bring him to the bar of ecclesiastical justice. Sad to confess, I find that I alone have remained staunch in our faith, which is founded on the rock of unchanging truth. ”

“ Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people.
Acts XXIII, 4. And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God's high priest?
5. Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.
2 Peter II, 10. But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
11. Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord. ”