886

The Jansenists are like the heretics in the reformation of morality; but
you are like them in evil.

887

You are ignorant of the prophecies, if you do not know that all this
must happen; princes, prophets, Pope, and even the priests. And yet the
Church is to abide. By the grace of God we have not come to that. Woe to
these priests! But we hope that God will bestow His mercy upon us that
we shall not be of them.

Saint Peter, ii: false prophets in the past, the image of future ones.

888

... So that if it is true, on the one hand, that some lax monks, and
some corrupt casuists, who are not members of the hierarchy, are steeped
in these corruptions, it is, on the other hand, certain that the true
pastors of the Church, who are the true guardians of the Divine Word,
have preserved it unchangeably against the efforts of those who have
attempted to destroy it.

And thus true believers have no pretext to follow that laxity, which is
only offered to them by the strange hands of these casuists, instead of
the sound doctrine which is presented to them by the fatherly hands of
their own pastors. And the ungodly and heretics have no ground for
publishing these abuses as evidence of imperfection in the providence of
God over His Church; since, the Church consisting properly in the body
of the hierarchy, we are so far from being able to conclude from the
present state of matters that God has abandoned her to corruption, that
it has never been more apparent than at the present time that God
visibly protects her from corruption.

For if some of these men, who, by an extraordinary vocation, have made
profession of withdrawing from the world and adopting the monks' dress,
in order to live in a more perfect state than ordinary Christians, have
fallen into excesses which horrify ordinary Christians, and have become
to us what the false prophets were among the Jews; this is a private and
personal misfortune, which must indeed be deplored, but from which
nothing can be inferred against the care which God takes of His Church;
since all these things are so clearly foretold, and it has been so long
since announced that these temptations would arise from people of this
kind; so that when we are well instructed, we see in this rather
evidence of the care of God than of His forgetfulness in regard to us.

889

Tertullian: _Nunquam Ecclesia reformabitur._

890

Heretics, who take advantage of the doctrine of the Jesu