Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/262

had driven out the spirits that infested his house, with a little earth from our Lord’s sepulchre, and this same earth having been taken afterward to the church, a paralytic brought thither was straightway cured; a woman in a procession, having touched the shrine of St. Stephen with a nosegay, and having with this nosegay rubbed her eyes, recovered her sight, lost long before; and several other miracles, at which he says that he was present. Of what shall we accuse him and two holy bishops, Aurelius and Maximinus, whom he summons for his witnesses? Shall it be of ignorance, lack of intelligence, credulity, or of evil intent and imposture? Is there a man in our day so bold as to think himself comparable to them, whether in virtue and piety, or in learning, judgement, and sufficiency? (c) Qui ut rationem nullam afferrent, ipsa auctoritate me frangerent.^[1]

(a) It is a dangerous audacity, and of moment, besides the unreasonable rashness that it carries with it, to despise what we do not understand. For when, by virtue of your eminent intelligence, you have established the boundaries of truth and falsehood, and you find that you have necessarily to believe things in which there is even more that is strange than in what you deny, you are immediately compelled to forego these boundaries. Now, what seems to me to bring so much confusion into our thoughts in our present religious troubles is the partial surrender that the Catholics make of their belief: it seems to them that they show themselves to be moderate and wise when they concede to their opponents some of the points in controversy. But, besides that they do not see what an advantage it is to him who attacks you for you to begin to give way to him and to draw back, and how greatly that encourages him to pursue his advantage, the very points that they select as the most trivial are sometimes very important. We must either submit altogether to the authority of our ecclesiastical government, or dispense with it altogether: it is not for us to fix how much obedience we owe it. And furthermore, — I can say this because I have tried it, — having formerly made use of this freedom in my own selection and sifting, regarding as of no importance