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that are in the righteous (for they are the two worlds, and
a member and image of Jesus Christ. And thus all the names suit them:
righteous, yet sinners; dead, yet living; living, yet dead; elect, yet
outcast, etc.).
There are then a great number of truths, both of faith and of morality,
which seem contradictory and which all hold good together in a wonderful
system. The source of all heresies is the exclusion of some of these truths;
and the source of all the objections which the heretics make against us is
the ignorance of some of our truths. And it generally happens that, unable
to conceive the connection of two opposite truths, and believing that the
admission of one involves the exclusion of the other, they adhere to the
one, exclude the other, and think of us as opposed to them. Now exclusion is
the cause of their heresy; and ignorance that we hold the other truth causes
their objections.
1st example: Jesus Christ is God and man. The Arians, unable to reconcile
these things, which they believe incompatible, say that He is man; in this
they are Catholics. But they deny that He is God; in this they are heretics.
They allege that we deny His humanity; in this they are ignorant.
2nd example: On the subject of the Holy Sacrament. We believe that, the
substance of the bread being changed, and being consubstantial with that of
the body of our Lord, Jesus Christ is therein really present. That is one
truth. Another is that this Sacrament is also a type of the cross and of
glory, and a commemoration of the two. That is the Catholic faith, which
comprehends these two truths which seem opposed.
The heresy of to-day, not conceiving that this Sacrament contains at the
same time both the presence of Jesus Christ and a type of Him, and that it
is a sacrifice and a commemoration of a sacrifice, believes that neither of
thes
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