Fourth, they are fallacious and uncertain.
Fourth, they are fallacious and uncertain.
§ 398. (IV) In many ways traditions are fallacious and uncertain: (1) With regard to their origin. The Papists can affirm with no appearance of certainty and can prove with no weight of argument that what they are peddling as traditions came from Christ and the apostles. The Lenten fast is in the number of their traditions, but some refer its institution to Christ, some to the apostles, and others to decrees of the Church. From an incorrect understanding of Christ’s speech in John 21:23, there would have begun a tradition that John would never die, had that not been corrected by Scripture. Julius Rugerius, prothonotary of the pope, declares in his Opusc. de libris canon. et apocryph.: “A tradition is of no weight if it has been interrupted by any intervals of time from the times of the apostles. Consequently, it is necessary for a tradition to endure.”66 If we were to follow this rule, however, how many papistic traditions will be uncertain and counterfeit?
(2) With regard to their number. After all, the Papists are not yet certain about the number of their traditions. Accordingly, there are some who refer to traditions those dogmas that others try to deduce from Scripture. It can be demonstrated from church history that some things introduced into the Church a few years ago are being passed off as apostolic traditions.
(3) With regard to their diversity. The things that the ancients hold as traditions do not agree with each other, and some of these the Papists themselves reject. Justin, QQ. et resp. ad orth., q. 115, p. 362: “We do not kneel on Sunday. This custom began at the time of the apostles.” The Papists, however, do not accept this tradition. To this list we might add the traditions about the age of Christ, the celebration of Easter, the Lenten fast, not kneeling between Easter and Pentecost, giving the Eucharist to infants—all matters about which the ancients disagree among themselves and about which the Papists disagree with the ancients, as we have shown in our treatise On Holy Scripture [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 1], § 57ff.
(4) With regard to their effect. The opinion of tradition at one time deceived the great men of the Church, as appears especially from the examples of Papias in Eusebius, Hist. eccles., bk. 3, c. 33. Bellarmine responds: “The Church can discern true traditions from false ones” (De verbo Dei, bk. 4 c. 12). We ask, however: What does he mean by the word “Church”? He cannot mean the ancient teachers of the Church, for they disagree about traditions. Therefore he means the Roman pontiff alone, the head of the Roman Church, who, as can be demonstrated in many ways, is an untrustworthy guardian of heavenly teaching. In the same place, Bellarmine objects that “false books, too, were once adorned with the name of the apostles, a fact that cannot make their genuine writings fraudulent.” These books were rejected, however, as pseudonymous and pseudoapostolic, yet traditions once deceived great men in the Church. (Cf. our treatise On Holy Scripture [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 1], § 56; Whitaker, De Script., q. 6, c. 15, p. 750; etc.)