Faith

Those who are blind from their infancy, why are they so? I will not tell you, until you promise me to receive baptism, and, being baptized, to live aright. It is not right to give you the solution of these questions. Preaching is not meant just for amusement. For even if I solve this, on the back of this follows another question; of such questions there is a bottomless deep. Therefore do not get into a habit of looking to have them solved for you, or else we shall never stop questioning. For look, if I solve this, I simply lead the way to question upon question, numberless as the snowflakes. So this is what we learn, rather to raise questions, not to solve the questions that are raised. For even if we do solve them, we have not solved them altogether, but (only) as far as man’s reasoning goes. The proper solution of such questions is faith—the knowing that God does all things justly and mercifully and for the best; that to comprehend the reason of them is impossible. This is the one solution, and another better than this does not exist.

The faith of simple folk is scoffed at, the hidden things of God are exposed, questions about the most exalted truths are rashly ventilated, the Fathers are derided because they held that such things are rather to be tasted than solved. Thence it comes to pass that the Paschal Lamb, contrary to the command of God, is either cooked with water, or is eaten of raw in a rude and bestial fashion. What is left is not burnt with fire but is trodden under foot; so human reason usurps for itself everything, and leaves nothing for faith. It tries things above it, tests things too strong for it, rushes into divine things; holy subjects it rather forces open than unlocks, what is closed and sealed it rather plunders than opens; and whatever it finds out of its reach it holds to be of no account and disdains to believe.

In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.