Custom yields to truth; the basilica is not the bride; satisfaction cannot be remitted; fifth objection: the Westminster dream

And an evil customconsuetudo: custom, because of the greatness of the danger, is rather to be rooted out, as the decree says (D.8 c.3): "An evil custom is to be cast away no less than a pernicious corruption; for unless it is quickly torn out by the roots, it is taken up by the wicked into the right of privilegesprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging, and transgressionsprevaricator; prevaricancia: transgressor; transgression and various presumptions, most notoriously unchecked, begin to be venerated as laws and to be celebrated perpetually in the manner of privileges."¹ And the teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence of this decree has been verified all too much in these days; hence, to interpret the rightness of custom and privilege, the decree adds, under the authority of Augustine (D.8 c.4): "When truth has been made manifest, let custom yield to truth. Let no one put custom before reason and truth, for reason and truth always exclude custom."² Since, then, natural reason and the truth of scripture plainly prove that the said privilege ought not to be understood barely according to the letter, but with reason and truth limiting [it by] the condition often expounded, the pertinent singular must be fitted [to it] according to an accommodated distributiondistribucio accomoda: accommodated distribution.³

By these things it is clear that the form of the argument that is first hinted at does not hold good: first, because many saints could have approved the aforesaid custom improvidently and afterwards repented; or the custom could then have been praiseworthy because of a moderate use, but now have been turned into a corruption contrary to faith because of an evil custom added on top, usurped for the sake of greed.⁴ Hence, if that reasoning held good, a catholic would never attack an evil usage, but a membermembrum: member of the devil would gain title by prescriptionprescripcio: prescription against God from the custom of sinning; the opposite of which Christ taught by reproving most sharply the customs of the Pharisees. But worldly prosperity, both in persons and in kingdomsregnum: kingdom, is often the kalends that prepare for ruin.⁵ 269As to the violation of holy mother churchecclesia: church, it has been said that she is not violated except through a failure to observe the law of the bridegroomsponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom; hence it is no greater idolatry to believe a rotten tree-trunk to be the Lord Jesus Christ than to believe a material house or basilica to be holy mother church, the bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ.⁶ Hence, since on the feasts of the dedication of a basilica by the bishop the church praises God in this, that he has deigned to call his church [his] bride, simple priests are to be instructed not to believe, faithlessly, that that basilica is the church, the bride of Christ.⁷

Further, as to the remission of the debt of satisfactionsatisfaccio; satisfacere: satisfaction; to make satisfaction, the answer isdicitur multipliciter: is said in many ways that neither a temporal lordtemporales domini: temporal lords nor God himself can remit it wholly; for then Christ would have died in vain to make satisfaction for the sin of the human race.⁸ It is necessary, therefore, that for every crime satisfaction be made in virtue of the merit of Jesus Christ, or that that crime be punished eternally. Now God cannot grant anyone licence to endure eternally in crime, and consequently he cannot grant a criminal licence not to make satisfaction for his offence. Nevertheless a man can, with shrewd circumspection, remit to his brother an injury and a bodily debt; and God will remit the fault after he has mercifully found the sinner making satisfaction for the debt.⁹ For no one could make satisfaction for the least offence against so great a lord unless he himself had mercifully and graciously accepted a light penance, baptism, or some penal work: his justice, I say, requires that he reward only one who deserves it. And it is clear how great a danger it is to give fugitive debtors occasion of boldness, so that they do not make satisfaction to God or to man, since, according to the principles of Augustine and of 270canon lawius: right / law, "the sin is not forgiven unless what was taken is restored": not that the despoiler must restore to his brother the numerically same thing, but that he make satisfaction in every way to the chief lordcapitalis dominus; tenere de: chief lord; to hold of.¹⁰ And he wills, from the inflexibility of his justice, that the debtor make satisfaction to his servant for the bodily debt, either by restoring to him an equivalent, or by serving perpetually in the pain of hell.¹¹ But that serviceservicium: service is not meritorious, like the merit by which one who has not the means makes satisfaction to a creditor in the wayvia / patria: the way / the homeland; rather it is demeritorious, profiting the blessed creditor and perpetually tormenting the damned creditor; therefore it is called not satisfaction but "satispassionsatispassio: satispassion".¹² Further, the theologian need not discuss all the laws of men on servitude and mainprisemanucapcio: mainprise, but it is enough to say that they are reasonable precisely so far as they accord with holy scripture.¹³

Fifth and last, we are accused by the common people through dreams; for the sons of the father of lies make up how it was revealed that the kingdom of England would pass on unpunished until, under a certain King Richard, the basilica of Westminster should be polluted.¹⁴ And the other variations which they falsely fabricate need not be recited here, since a lie is out of tune with itself. Hence whatever misfortune befalls our kingdom they apply to God’s vengeance for that homicide perpetrated in the sanctuary; but they do not know how to apply what followssequela: what follows except through the lies of dreams. Here I do not dispute whether there was such a dream, for we know from the faith of scriptureex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture] that the father of lies stirs up the fantasies of the faithful in dreams, to overthrow them or to hinder the progress of the church.¹⁵ For in Matthew 27:19 we read that Pilate’s wife was deluded by Satan to hinder the progress of the church [that came] from the merit of Christ’s death: "Have thou nothing to do with that just man," she says, "for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." Further, 271it seems likely to many that our kingdom will suffer shortly; but since I am not the prophet to whom that vision came, I do not presume to reveal that dream.¹⁶ And I believe that in the killing of these men horrible misdeedsfacinus: misdeed were committed; but it is difficult to assess the comparison of their gravity with others, since it is likely that other pollutions, through the killings and beatings of priests there and elsewhere in England, have brought graver crimes into the kingdom.¹⁷ Therefore I would wish all those crimes to be corrected; for I am certain from the faith of scripture that, once the kingdom has been purged of crime and reconciled to its God, no tribulation from without or from within is compossiblecompossibilis: compossible [with that state] unless it turn out to its profit; for in the prayer of the church it is put thus: "No adversity shall harm it, if no iniquity lords itdominus; dominari: lord; to exercise lordship / to lord it."¹⁸ Further, nevertheless, more credence is to be given to the living voice of the Holy Spirit than to the words or dreams of the father of lies, since he sometimes mixes in what is true, the more fraudulently to deceive. We must see from the words of scripture for which sins the destruction of kingdoms comes about; and it is clear from the saying of the wise man, Ecclesiasticus 10:8, that injustices as regards God and injuries as regards neighbour are the chief cause.¹⁹ And since it belongs to the king to extinguish both in his kingdom, it is clear that the king’s omission in correcting the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric that abuses its almselemosina: alms, and in correcting the secular knighthoodmilicia; milites: knighthood; knights that disturbs the peace of the church, is in the king the chief cause. But woe to the watchmenspeculator: watchman who were to say that to their king! For they, like the priests of Judea, are the chief cause of the persecution of our church, if it comes about; since on the failure of those on whose progress the prosperity of the kingdom stands, stands the adversity of the kingdom.²⁰ Now the priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter of God ought by antonomasiaautonomatice / antonomastice: by antonomasia (pre-eminently) to be clothed with justice; therefore, when they turn aside to injustice, they infect themselves and their own more gravely, 272for through the absence of life in the members their death is brought on.²¹ And of this [the prophet] complains in Isaiah 56:10: "His watchmen are all blind." And if this be so, Christ’s inferenceconsequencia: inference in Matthew 15:14 is to be believed: "If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit."²²

And as to the correction of the secular armbrachium seculare: the secular arm, it is clear that the disturbance by which they unjustly cause disturbance outwardly foretells, by topical evidenceevidencia: evidence, a future disturbance for those through whom their correction would have stood; in Matthew 7:2 it is written: "With the same measure that you shall mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." And this is the reason why Solomon, for the pacifying of his kingdom, at his father’s command had Joab killed at the horn of the altar, as is clear from 1 Kings 2, because in Isaiah 33:1 it is written: "Woe to thee that spoilest, shalt not thou thyself also be spoiled?"²³

But I do not maintainintendere (a thesis): maintain that the king’s knightsmilicia; milites: knighthood; knights ought to be killed; rather I was arguing by the topic from the greaterlocus a maiori: the topic from the greater: if in the time of the old testament it was lawful to kill a knight at the horn of the altar, much more is it lawful, for the pacifying of the kingdom and the cleansing of the church, to drag out an evildoer, saved in life and limb (as is clear in the first argument of the seventh chapter).²⁴