Endowment breeds war; the false security of charters

Indeed, as is probably believed, the whole dissension between kingdomsregnum: kingdom and peoples of different sectsreligio privata; secta: private religion; sect arises from the culpable omission of the counsels and privilegesprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging which Christ instituted for his clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric. For if all the revenuesreditus: revenue(s) with which the churchecclesia: church is endowed in Christendom were distributed among the secular lords, and the clergy showed in themselves, with one accord and to good effect, contempt of the world, and thirdly preached watchfully to the laity of the deceitful affection for temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods for the moment in which we are pilgrimspars peregrinans; peregrinari: the pilgrim part; to be a pilgrim away from the Lord,¹ and of how an instantaneous worldly desire brings on perpetual damnation, while a brief contempt of the world prepares effectively for attaining blessedness, 291then wars would cease in Christendom, either without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect or in part, and the church of Christ would be disposed to conquer the unbelievinginfidelis: unbeliever; with a dative, faithless (to) people with the arms of the virtues. For so it was in the time of the apostles, when the clergy lived purely without propertyexproprietarii / exproprietarie: the propertyless / without property according to the counsels of Christ; but, [the clergy] being mingled with left-hand human traditions together with the right-hand counsels of Christ,² the wine with which the church was to be inebriated has been watered, and the kind of the sinews of the church’s charitycaritas: charity weakened, and, there being no keeper, the cocklezizania: cockle of discord sown everywhere.³ For since the body of the church has been assignedlimitare; limites: to assign (an office); limits by God what foods it should be fed with, and how, according to its unlike parts, God, as he grants commensurate spiritual nourishment to be distributed to the faithful through the prelatesprelatus: prelate, so gives bodily food to be shared out through the active, to the preachers in the field as well as to the contemplatives in bed.⁴ Therefore, when those violent ones usurp [their] office and inordinately consume their fodder, the whole body of the church must be disordered, from failure to observe the order of its parts.⁵ For if bulimia arises in a man, and, in short, if any membermembrum: member, by a canine appetite against the rules of the governing power, draws away the nourishment of another or occupies the office of another member, a dyscrasia arises in the whole body.⁶ For if a wayfarerviator: wayfarer had a worm in his stomach which consumed the nourishment of the members, how would their health and strength be preserved?⁷ So it is if the priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter of Baal with their wives and children consume the goods of the people deceitfully, through nightly and underground passages, as the letter of Daniel 14 makes clear; and so it is in the body of the church, whose governing power is the wisdom of the Father.⁸ And its laws, as the commandments and counsels, are privileges assigning singly to the members of the church the office of working and their nourishment, as the higher members ought to be fed chiefly by the animal spirit, and to rule and move the members placed beneath; 292and if these are dislocated and fed unnaturally, discord must arise in the other members.⁹

Hence I believe that war, guile and contention will never cease without qualification in the body of the church before the dislocation of the clergy, the usurpation of secular office, and in consequence the omission of the office of watchmanspeculator: watchman, has been set right by the governing power of the church. For the upper part of the world is constituted in such harmony that, according to the Commentator, one star added to the heaven would either move with fatigue and pain or would not move, without qualification;¹⁰ and much more, in the kingdom of heaven, which is the church, the contrariety of superiors to their mover makes the whole church troubled to the point of fatigue. And the whole contrariety consists in this, that temporal goods are loved more than perpetual goods. Therefore woe to those who foolishly cause temporal things to be put before spiritual in the affection of pastors.

But if prelates are more avaricious, more covetous of worldly honour, living more according to the pomp of the world, pressing harder upon secular things through wars stirred up out of the goods of the poor to avenge their own injuries, and (what is most dangerous) defending sophistically, under the cloak of holiness, whatever they have perpetrated, with the paint of adulterating the word of God, how will the kingdom stand with this circle of five?¹¹ I know that on this wheel of the devil’s chariot even the elect would be led astray (if it can be), and so no preparation is made here for increasing the people of the Lord, but [the people] of the henchmen of Antichrist.¹²

And as to the second part of the assumptionassumptum: the assumption, it is clear that security from the world is claimed faithlessly by clerics in such endowmentsdotacio: endowment; for the charter of the gospel which Christ granted cannot fail.¹³ Hence in Matthew 6:25 he commands his clergy not to be solicitous 293what they shall eat or drink, or how they shall be clothed, as those who live like the heathen are solicitous; because, as he argues by the topic from the greaterlocus a maiori: the topic from the greater: if God provides food for the birds of the air and covering for the lilies of the field, how much more for those who are of the household of the faith?¹⁴ For if in the time of the old law, when almselemosina: alms were less urged, the Psalmist says in Psalm 36:26, "I have been young and now am old; and I have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread," how much more today?¹⁵ Let the clergy therefore remove the offence of the Lord by not turning aside from his law, as we commonly do by inordinately desiringaffectare: to desire pleasure and curiosity; and it is not compossiblecompossibilis: compossible that the necessaries of our life should fail us to [our] impairment, for in Matthew 6:33 the Truth says: "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." And the privilege of Christ granted to his disciples in Luke 10 is more secure than a worldly charter or grantconcessio: grant, since the Lord of the world, who cannot lie, commands thus: "Into whatsoever house you enter, there remain, eating and drinking such things as they have."¹⁶ But we must take careful heed not to lose this privilege through abuse, which happens when, against the rule and life of the apostle, we are burdensome to our hosts. How then does it stand with the faith and the christian religion that the clergy, confederated with and bound to the world by charters, trusts more in caesarean endowment than in divine, since in Luke 21:34 he commands that we beware of surfeiting and the cares of the world?¹⁷ And it is clear from the faith of scriptureex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture] how those who observe that preposterous order are most insecure as regards men and as regards God. For security must first originate in God, and it cannot be founded except in the observance of his law. And 294this is the reason why God, to wipe worldly blindness from the eyes of our mind, now ordains the transfer of kingdoms, in which the worldly security of the clergy is extinguished, now permits robbers, thieves, fire or some other chance event to come about, so that the temporal goods in which secular clerics preposterously trusted may be taken away; and now, thirdly, he permits dissensions to arise between parties, removing the mighty of the world from the midst, whereby the conjecture of human providence, even in the superiors of the church, is quite often brought to nothing.¹⁸