What induced the
Manichees to tear out the Gospel of Matthew and the Acts of the
Apostles? Despair. For these volumes were a torment to men who
denied Christ's birth of a Virgin, and who pretended that the
Spirit then first descended upon Christians when their peculiar
Paraclete, a good-for-nothing Persian, made his appearance. What
induced the Ebionites to reject all St. Paul's Epistles? Despair.
For while those Letters kept their credit, the custom of
circumcision, which these men had reintroduced, was set aside as
an anachronism. What induced that crime-laden apostate Luther to
call the Epistle of James contentious, turgid, arid, a thing of
straw, and unworthy of the Apostolic spirit? Despair. For by this
writing the wretched man's argument of righteousness consisting
in faith alone was stabbed through and rent assunder. What
induced Luther's whelps to expunge off-hand from the genuine
canon of Scripture, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, Maccabees, and, for
hatred of these, several other books involved in the same false
charge? Despair. For by these Oracles they are most manifestly
confuted whenever they argue about the patronage of Angels, about
free will, about the faithful departed, about the intercession of
Saints.
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