it changed! It has
indeed been permitted to change the custom of not making priests without
such great circumspection that there were hardly any who were worthy; and it
is not allowed to complain of the custom which makes so many who are
unworthy!
886. Heretics.--Ezekiel. All the heathen, and also the Prophet, spoke evil
of Israel. But the Israelites were so far from having the right to say to
him, "You speak like the heathen," that he is most forcible upon this, that
the heathen say the same as he.
887. The Jansenists are like the heretics in the reformation of morality;
but you are like them in evil.
888. 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, Epistle ii: false prophets in the past, the image of future
ones.
889.... 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 pre