124 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



I. And first, Madam, what are these mercies of your 

 past life ? And, that we may understand it better, what 

 have you been, yourself, hitherto ? I feel some embar- 

 rassment in answering my question. Born, as you 

 were, in the midst of heresy, you were no heretic. No, 

 thank God, you were no heretic, and nothing sliall force 

 me to apply to you that cruel — that justly cruel name, 

 against which all my knowledge of j'our past makes 

 protest. Saint Augustine, one of the most exact and 

 rigid of the teachers of Christian antiquity, refuses, 

 in more than one of his works, to include among here- 

 tics those who, born without the visible pale of the 

 Catholic Church, have kept the sincere love of truth in 

 their liearts, and are ready to follow it in all its mani- 

 festations and requirements.* Wliat constitutes heresy 

 is that spirit of pride, of revolt and schism which broke 

 out in heaven when Satan, dividing the angels of light, 

 tried to reconstruct, in his own fashion, the everlasting 

 truth of God, and to remodel God's work in the world : 

 it is the wrathful breath of this archangel's nostrils 

 with which he would inspire those who, in like malig- 

 nant spirit, should carry on his work from- age to age. 

 Meek and lowly of heart, you have never been inspired 

 by that spirit. You were not, then, a heretic. 



But what were you, then ? I was talking one day 

 with one of your most distinguished fellow-countrymen, 

 a Protestant by birth, now a Catholic and a priest ;t 

 and under the impulse of that earnest in([uisitiveness 



* "(^iii Hontcntiani Hiiam, qnamvis fabam atciuc pcrvcrsani, nulla pertiiiaci 

 auiinoHitate (U'fciKliiiit, pncsortiin qiiaiii non audacia pni'^uniptionis piuo 

 pepererunt, ecd a scductis atqne in ciToreni lapsls parontibiirt accepcrunt, 

 quaerunt autem cauta pollicitudine veiitatcni, corrigl parati, duin invcncriut, 

 neqiiaquam sunt inter hœreticos reindandi:'— letter XLIII., Edition of the 

 Benedictines of Saint Ma>ir. 



t The Reverend Father llcckcr, I'oimder and Superior of tlic Congregation 

 of Suiut I'aul. 



