Chapter LXXX: Book VIII: 314

THE CHURCH AND THE DIFFERENT SECTS

EXTRACTS

[314] It is worth noticing that in bks. vii and viii Isidore
gives a list of the whole hierarchy of supernatural and human
existences beginning with God and ending with the devil. An
inspection of the order of subjects will suggest to the reader
that he was arranging them in order of merit. If this supposition
is correct, the table of contents of these two books is a very
significant one, as throwing light upon Isidore’s scale of values
for the divine, the human and the demonic.

Chapter 1. On the church and the synagogue.

4. The church began at the place where the holy spirit came from heaven and filled those who were sitting together.

5. In view of its present sojourn in strange parts the church is called Sion, because from the distant viewpoint of this sojourn it contemplates the promise of heavenly things, and therefore it has received the name Sion, that is, contemplation.

6. Moreover in view of the peace of the future land it is called Jerusalem, for Jerusalem means vision of peace. For there, all suffering ended, it shall possess with near contemplation the peace which is Christ.

Chapter 3. On heresy.

1. _Haeresis_ is so-called in the Greek from choosing, because, forsooth, each one chooses for himself what seems to him to be better, as the Peripatetic philosophers, the Academic, the Epicureans, and the Stoics, or as others who, following perverse belief, have departed from the church of their own free will.

2. And so heresy is named in the Greek from its meaning of choice, since each at his own will chooses what he pleases to teach or believe. But we are not permitted to believe anything of our own will, nor to choose what someone has believed of his.

3. We have God’s apostles as authorities, who did not themselves of their own will choose anything of what they should believe, but they faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ. And so, even if an angel from heaven shall preach otherwise, he shall be called anathema.