For, in the instances I am now to adduce, you will see councils and
popes ranged on one side, and Jesuits on the other; and yet you have
never charged your brethren for this opposition even with presumption,
much less with heresy.
You are well aware, father, that the writings of Origen were
condemned by a great many popes and councils, and particularly by
the fifth general council, as chargeable with certain heresies, and,
among others, that of the reconciliation of the devils at the day of
judgement. Do you suppose that, after this, it became absolutely
imperative, as a test of Catholicism, to confess that Origen
actually maintained these errors, and that it is not enough to condemn
them, without attributing them to him? If this were true, what would
become of your worthy Father Halloix, who has asserted the purity of
Origen's faith, as well as many other Catholics who have attempted the
same thing, such as Pico Mirandola, and Genebrard, doctor of the
Sorbonne? Is it not, moreover, a certain fact, that the same fifth
general council condemned the writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril,
describing them as impious, "contrary to the true faith, and tainted
with the Nestorian heresy"? And yet this has not prevented Father
Sirmond, a Jesuit, from defending him, or from saying, in his life
of that father, that "his writings are entirely free from the heresy
of Nestorius."
It is evident, therefore, that as the Church, in condemning a
book, assumes that the error which she condemns is contained in that
book, it is a point of faith to hold that error as condemned; but it
is not a point of faith to hold that the book, in fact, contains the
error which the Church supposes it does.
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