A Bad Catholic Is Better than a Heretic

Every sinner is miserable, but none more miserable than the heretic. For no one is so impious, says St. Jerome, than him whom the heretic conquers by impiety (lib. VII in Isaiam). If any Catholic falls into sin, if he commits theft, adultery, if perhaps he commits murder, certainly it is miserably done with sin.

Yet nevertheless, since there is a certain sense of life, and a fundament of the edifice, there is the light of dawn, i.e. faith is in him, and he has many and great helps to eternal life. He does not walk in darkness. He knows his physician. He is able by faith, which he has, by the help of God, to cry to God, to build upon the fundament, to call upon the Common Liberator, to implore His clemency and mercy. Neither is the maternal bosom of the Church lacking to him: as show all her pharmacies of spiritual medicines.

But the heretical man has none of these things: for, the light of faith having been extinguished in his heart, he chases empty shadows and phantasms: he knows not whither he goes, and whither he runs, he recedes further from the way. And he is always enveloped by a thicker darkness, until he goes from interior darkness, which he suffers in soul, to that exterior one, which is in gehenna (Hell).

Defensio Fidei in causa neophytorum siue Morischorum Regni Valentiae.
Jaime Bleda (O.P.), 1610, tract. II cap. III §1 pp. 236-237

Posted on October 4, 2025