23. We give the name of ‘torrents’ to the brooks, that are gathered by the winter rains, which likewise at certain seasons are dried up. Thus with justice the framers of wrong doctrines are called ‘torrents’; because being cold to the warmth of charity, they grow to a height in the deadness of the winter season; because they do not flow out with perpetual fulness, but by the pleadings of Catholics, as by summer suns, are dried up. And indeed the fabricators of wrong doctrines springing up against Holy Church, are already made an end of by the heat of truth, yet notwithstanding the things which they taught their disciples do not cease to maintain and to defend. Thus then they that follow the errors of those persons ‘dwell in the desert places of torrents,’ i.e. put their trust in the preaching of those, whose effusions are already by the answering and reasoning of Catholics dried up. Now what else do we take ‘the caves of the earth’ for, but the hidden preachings of heretics? For hereti...
