REFUTATION XIV. BERRUYER’S ERRORS.
The abstruse matters treated of in this Chapter will not, perhaps, be interesting to the general reader; but several will be desirous to study profoundly the mysteries of the Faith, and to them this will be highly interesting and instructive.
SUMMARY OF THESE ERRORS.
I. Jesus Christ was created in time, by an operation ad extra, natural Son of God, of one God, subsisting in three Persons, who united the Humanity of Christ with a Divine Person.
II. Jesus Christ, during the three days he was in the sepulchre, as he ceased to be a living man, consequently ceased to be the Son of God, and when God raised him again from the dead, he again begot him, and caused him to be again the Son of God.
III. It was the Humanity alone of Christ which obeyed, prayed, and suffered; and his oblations, prayers, and meditations were not operations, produced from the Word, as from a physical and efficient principle, but, in this sense, were mere actions of his Humanity.
IV. The miracles performed by Jesus Christ were not done by his own power, but only obtained by him from the Father by his prayers.
V. The Holy Ghost was not sent to the Apostles by Jesus Christ, but by the Father alone, through the prayers of Jesus Christ.
Several other errors of his on various subjects.
- Reading in the Bullarium of Benedict XIV. a Brief, which begins ” Cum ad Congregationem” &c., published on the 17th of April, 1758, I see there prohibited and condemned the second part of a work (the first having been condemned in 1734), entitled the “History of the People of God, according to the New Testament,” written by Father Isaac Berruyer; and all translations of the work into any language whatever are also condemned and prohibited. The whole of Berruyer’s work, then, and the Latin Dissertations annexed, and the Defence, printed along with the Italian edition, are all condemned, as containing propositions false, rash, scandalous, favouring and approaching to heresy, and foreign to the common sense of the Fathers and the Church in the interpretation of Scripture. This condemnation was renewed by Pope Clement XIII., on the 2nd of December, 1758, and the literal Paraphrase of the Epistles of the Apostles, after the Commentaries of Hardouin, was included in it : ” Quod quidem Opus ob doctrine fallaciam, et contortas Sacrarum Litterarum interpretationes scandali mensuram implevit.” With difficulty, I procured a copy of the work, and I took care also to read the various essays and pamphlets in which it was opposed. It went, however, through several editions, though the author himself gave it up, and submitted to the sentence of the Archbishop of Paris, who, with the other Bishops of France, condemned it. Besides the Pontifical and Episcopal condemnation, it was prohibited, likewise, by the Inquisition, and burned by the common hangman, by order of the Parliament of Paris. Father Zacchary, in his Literary History, says that he rejects the Work, likewise, and that the General of the Jesuits, whose subject F. Berruyer was, declared that the Society did not recognize it.
- I find in the treatises written to oppose Berruyer’s work, that the writers always quote the errors of the author in his own words, and these errors are both numerous and pernicious, especially those regarding the Mysteries of the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, against which especially the devil has always worked, through so many heresies; for these Mysteries are the foundation of our Faith and salvation, as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God made man, the fountain of all Graces, and of all hope for us; and hence, St. Peter says that, unless in Jesus, there is no salvation : ” Neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts, iv, 12).
- I was just concluding this Work, when I heard of Berruyer’s work, and the writings opposing it; and, to tell the truth, I was anxious to conclude this work of mine, and rest myself a little after the many years of labour it cost me; but the magnitude and danger of his errors induced me to refute his book as briefly as I could. Remember that, though the work itself was condemned by Benedict XIV. and Clement XIII., the author was not, since he at once bowed to the decision of the Church, following the advice of St. Augustine, who says that no one can be branded as a heretic, who is not pertinaciously attached to, and defends his errors : ” Qui sententiam suam, quamvis falsam, atque perversam, nulla pertinaci animositate defendunt corrigi parati cum invenerint, nequaquam sunt inter Hrereticos deputandi.”
- Before we commence the examination of Berruyer’s errors, I will give a sketch of his system, that the reader may clearly understand it. His system is founded principally on two Capital Propositions, both as false as can be. I say Capital ones, for all the other errors he published depend on them. The first and chief proposition is this, that Jesus Christ is the natural Son of one God, but of God subsisting in three Persons; that is to say, that Jesus Christ is Son, but not Son of the Father, as Principal, and first Person of the Trinity, but Son of the Father subsisting in three Persons, and, therefore, he is, properly speaking, the Son of the Trinity. The second proposition, which comes from the first, and is also what I call a Capital one, is this, that all the operations of Jesus Christ, both corporal and spiritual, are not the operations of the Word, but only of his humanity, and from this, then, he deduced many false and damnable consequences. Although, as we have already seen, Berruyer himself was not condemned, still his book is a sink of extravagancies, follies, novelties, confusion, and pernicious errors, which, as Clement XIII. says, in his Brief, obscure the principal Articles of our Faith, so that Arians, Nestorians, Sabellians, Socinians, and Pelagians, will all find, some more, some less, something to please them in this work. There are mixed up with all this many truly Catholic sentiments, but these rather confuse than enlighten the mind of the reader. We shall now examine his false doctrine, and especially the first proposition, the parent, we may say, of all the rest.