Quote of the Day

Inigo, instead of feeling that his remorse was sent to drive him to the foot of the cross, persuaded himself that these inward reproaches proceeded not from God, but from the devil; and he resolved never more to think of his sins, to erase them from his memory, and bury them in eternal oblivion. Luther turned towards Christ, Loyola only fell back upon himself. 

Visions came erelong to confirm Inigo in the conviction at which he had arrived.  His own resolves had become a substitute for the grace of the Lord; his own imaginings supplied the place of God's Word.  He had looked upon the voice of God in his conscience as the voice of the devil; and accordingly the remainder of his history represents him as given up to the inspirations of the spirit of darkness…….These numerous apparitions had removed all doubts; he believed, not like Luther because the things of faith were written in the Word of God, but because of the visions he had seen.  "Even had there been no Bible," say his apologists, "even had these mysteries never been revealed in Scripture, he would have believed them, for God had appeared to him."  Luther, on taking his doctor's degree, had pledged his oath to Holy Scripture, and the only infallible authority of the Word of God had become the fundamental principle of the Reformation.  Loyola, at this time, bound himself to dreams and visions; and chimerical apparitions became the principle of his life and of his faith.

 

Jean Henri Merle D'aubigne