View Volume II - In Today's Catholic World

292 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
contemns the correction of his pastor :
"
If he will not hear the
Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican"
(Matt, xviii, 17). Perhaps, however, some will say : Among the
many Churches in the world, which is the true one which is it
we are to believe ? I briefly answer having treated the subject
at length in my Work on the Truth of the Faith, and also in the
Dogmatic part of this Work that the only
true Church is the
Roman Catholic, for this is the first founded by Jesus Christ. It
is certain that our Redeemer founded the Church in which the
faithful may find salvation ; he it was who taught us what we
should believe and practise to obtain eternal life. After his
death, he committed to the Apostles, and their successors, the
government of his Church, promising to assist them, and to be
with them all time, "even to the consummation of the world"
(Matt, xxviii, 20). He also promised that the gates of hell should
" Thou art Peter, and on this rock I
never prevail against it :
will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it" (Matt, xvi, 18). Now, every heresiarch, in founding
his Church, separated himself from this first Church founded by
Jesus Christ ; and if this was the true Church of our Saviour, all
the others are, necessarily, false and heretical.
72. It will not do to say, as the Donatists did of old, and tho
Protestants in later times, that they have separated themselves
from the Church, because although in the beginning it was the
true one, still, through the fault of those who governed it, the
doctrine preached by Jesus Christ became corrupted, for he, as
we have seen, has promised that the gates of hell should never
prevail against the Church he founded. Neither will it avail
them to say that it was only the visible, and not the invisible
Church that failed, on account of the wickedness of the shepherds,
for it is necessary that there should always be a visible and infal
lible judge in the Church, to decide all doubts, that disputes may
be quashed, and the dogmas of Faith be secure and certain. I
wish every Protestant would consider this, and see how he can
be certain, then, of his salvation outside the Holy Catholic
Church.