Friday, June 20, 2014

St. Vincent of Lérins: "Churches of the saints"

"LEST any one perchance should rashly think the holy and Catholic consent of these blessed fathers to be despised, the Apostle says, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, God has placed some in the Church, first Apostles, (1 Co 12:27-28) of whom himself was one; secondly Prophets, such as Agabus, of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles; (Acts 11:28) then doctors, who are now called Homilists, Expositors, whom the same apostle sometimes calls also Prophets, because by them the mysteries of the Prophets are opened to the people. Whosoever, therefore, shall despise these, who had their appointment of God in His Church in their several times and places, when they are unanimous in Christ, in the interpretation of some one point of Catholic doctrine, despises not man, but God, from whose unity in the truth, lest any one should vary, the same Apostle earnestly protests, I beseech you, brethren, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. (1 Co 1:10) But if any one dissent from their unanimous decision, let him listen to the words of the same apostle, God is not the God of dissension but of peace; (1 Co 14:33) that is, not of him who departs from the unity of consent, but of those who remain steadfast in the peace of consent: as, he continues, I teach in all Churches of the saints, that is, of Catholics, which churches are therefore churches of the saints, because they continue steadfast in the communion of the faith."

~St. Vincent of Lérins (d. c. 450): Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith, Chap 28, para. 73.

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