The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES ture, they were found faithful. They showed to the multitude a living immortality in their death, and they watered the earth with a blood whose heat could not be extinguished, because they were burning with the ardours of charity. It is by charity that the Apostles built up their Creed. They said that to believe together was worth more than to doubt separately; they constituted the hierarchy on the basis of obedience—rendered so noble and so great by the spirit of charity, that to serve in this manner is to reign; they formu- lated the faith of all and the hope of all, and they put this Creed in the keeping of the charity of all. Woe to the egoist who appropriates to himself a single word of this inheritance of the Word; he is a deicide, who wishes to dismember the body of the Lord. This Creed is the holy ark of charity; whoso touches it is stricken by eternal death, for charity withdraws itself from him. It is the sacred inheritance of our children, it is the price of the blood of our fathers! It is by charity that the martyrs took consolation in the prisons of the Czesars, and won over to their belief even their warders and their executioners. It is in the name of charity that St. Martin of Tours pro- tested against the torture of the Priscillians,1 and separated 1 The Priscillianist heresy was disturbing the Church, especially in Spain. The Emperor Maximus, a Spaniard, was inclined to put it down with a strong hand and confiscate the heretics’ property. The Gallic clergy hounded him on, and the Councils of Bordeaux and Saragossa encouraged him. Two Spanish priests, /thacus and Jdacus, clamoured for the herctics’ punishment by the secular arm. But St. Martin of Tours, stalwart champion of orthodoxy as he was, resisted, and in 385 he went to Tréves to plead for the persecuted Priscillianists, He prevailed. So long as Martin stayed at court the Ithacan party was foiled. When he left they had the upper hand again, and Maximus gave the suppression of the heretics into the hands of the unrelenting Evodius. Priscillian was killed. Exile and death were the fate of his followers. Heresy blazed the stronger, 9