Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name: of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our UniversitiesCampion, Edmund, Saint
Religion
Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name: of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities
Campion, Edmund, Saint
Catholic Church -- Apologetic works
the promised Spirit that they may make wholesome and prudent
decrees. Let there now leap to the front some mannikin master of
an heretical faction, let him arch his eyebrows, turn up his
nose, rub his forehead, and scurrilously take upon himself to
judge his judges, what sport, what ridicule will he excite! There
was found a Luther to say that he preferred to Councils the
opinions of two godly and learned men (say his own and Philip
Melanchthon's) when they agreed in the name of Christ. Oh what
quackery! There was found a Kemnitz to try the Council of Trent
by the standard of his own rude and giddy humour. What gained he
thereby? Infamy. While he, unless he takes care, shall be buried
with Arius, the Synod of Trent, the older it grows, shall
flourish the more, day by day, and year by year. Good God! what
variety of nations, what a choice assembly of Bishops of the
whole world, what a splendid representation of Kings and
Commonwealths, what a quintessence of theologians, what sanctity,
what tears, what fears, what flowers of Universities, what
tongues, what subtlety, what labour, what infinite reading, what
wealth of virtues and of studies filled that august sanctuary! I
have myself heard Bishops, eminent and prudent men,--and among
them Antony, Archbishop of Prague, by whom I was made
Priest,--exulting that they had attended such a school for some
years; so that, much as they owed to Kaiser Ferdinand, they
considered that he had shown them no more royal and abundant
bounty than this of sending them to sit in that Academy of Trent
as Legates from Bohemia. The Kaiser understood this, and on their
return he welcomed them with the words, "We have kept you at a
good school." Invited as our adversaries have been under a safe
conduct, why have they not hastened thither, publicly to refute
those against whom they go on quacking like frogs from their
holes? "They broke their promise to Huss and Jerome," is their
reply. Who broke it? "The Fathers of the Council of Constance."
It is false; they never gave any promise. But anyhow, not even
Huss would have been punished had not the perfidious and
pestilent fellow been brought back from that flight which the
Emperor Sigusmund had forbidden him under pain of death; had he
not violated the conditions which he had agreed to in writing
with the Kaiser and thereby nullified all the value of that
safe-conduct. Huss's hasty wickedness played him false. For,
having instigated deeds of savage violence in his native Bohemia,
and being bidden thereupon to present himself at Constance, he
despised the prerogative of the Council, and sought his
safe-conduct of the Kaiser. Caesar signed it; the Christian
world, greater than Caesar, cancelled the signature. The
heresiarch refused to return to a sound mind, and so perished. As
for Jerome of Prague, he came to Constance protected by no one;
he was detected and arraigned; he spoke in his own behalf, was
treated very kindly, went free whither he would; he was healed,
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