The Church,
the guardian of this treasure, not its mistress (as heretics
falsely make out), vindicated publicly in former times by very
ancient Councils this entire treasure, which the Council of Trent
has taken up and embraced. Augustine also in a special discussion
on one small portion of Scripture cannot bring himself to think
that any man's rash murmuring should be permitted to thrust out
of the Canon the book of Wisdom, which even in his time had
obtained a sure place as a well-authenticated and Canonical book
in the reckoning of the Church, the judgment of ages, the
testimony of ancients, and the sense of the faithful. What would
he say now if he were alive on earth, and saw men like Luther and
Calvin manufacturing Bibles, filing down Old and New Testament
with a neat pretty little file of their own, setting aside, not
the book of wisdom alone, but with it very many others from the
list of Canonical Books? Thus whatever does not come out from
their shop, by a mad decree, is liable to be, spat upon by all as
a rude and barbarous composition. They who have stooped to this
dire and execrable way of saving themselves surely are beaten,
overthrown, and flung rolling in the dust, for all their fine
praises that are in the mouths of their admirers, for all their
traffic in priesthoods, for all their bawling in pulpits, for all
their sentencing of Catholics to chains, rack and gallows.
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