The church spread through the world; the devil head of his members; avarice and the death of Christ

To the eighth little argumentraciuncula: little argument it is granted that the universal churchecclesia: church is spread throughout the whole world, although the body of Christ, which is the church, is bounded by place; and Augustine is allegedallegare / allegacio: allege / allegation, City of God book 18, chapter 50, and City of God book 22, chapter 28.¹ Here I wonder why, in the proper sense of the wordsde virtute sermonis: in the proper sense of the words, it is granted on Augustine’s authority that the church is spread throughout the whole world, and yet the other things which Augustine asserts equally of the church herself are not granted; for through the greater part of the world there is no Christian; nowhere is there church 423except where there is some Christian; therefore through the greater part of the world there is no church.² And if it is said that it is there according to power, in that way truly any person of holy mother church is everywhere; and so he would grant with blessed Augustine that the church militantecclesia militans / triumphans / dormiens: the church militant / triumphant / sleeping as well as the church triumphant is a part of the whole church. For the holy doctors say this very often, although it is said most mendaciously that no doctor anywhere says that one church is made of these. For (as I have often alleged) Augustine lays it down in the Enchiridion, chapter 64, and in On the Questions of the Old and New Law, chapter 47, writes thus: "And not only we, but the citizens above too, are members of the church."³ For otherwise she would not be the body or bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ, and one person remaining continuously from the beginning of the world for ever. For there is no reason why one body is composed out of all Christians, however distant in place, but that by the same token [one is composed] out of the blessed and those on the roadviantes: those on the road; nor can a reason be given colourcolorare: give colour to how out of the whole multitude of the faith of Christians, although it was of very unlike species, there results one faith, which is the formal [principle] by which the church is constituted, but that equally out of all the predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]") there is one bride of Christ.⁴ For so out of the blessed, those on the road and the damned there comes one human race; whence what is said, that the church militant is not anywhere circumscriptivelycircumscriptive: circumscriptively, is false, since it is a body having one circumscribing place, as it has one faith; and so it is an ensouled rational body, for it is a perceptiblesensibilis: perceptible body exercising vital acts, as the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul, as it is said, Acts 4:32.⁵ Therefore the unlikeness [brought] to prove that it is not ensouled, although it lives, as spirits live and are not ensouled, is very remote. For if spirits were organic, 424perceptible and able to walk, as the militants of the church are, then in granting that they live one would have consequently to grant that they are ensouled; now the doctor grants this of the church. For he says in his answer to the ninth little argument that the church is something, because a substance, since the whole is its parts, and the said church has quantitative partspars quantitativa: quantitative part as well as qualitative ones; nor will it be feigned to have qualitative parts, if not souls; and consequently, as the church is living with many lives, so it is ensouled with many souls.⁶

Further, when it is denied that the devil is headcaput: head of his membersmembrum: member, the holy doctors are expressly contradicted, since blessed Gregory, homily 16, on that text of Matthew 4:1, "Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert," writes thus: "Surely the devil is head of all the wicked, and all the wicked are members of this head. Was not Pilate a member of the devil?"⁷ As, therefore, there is a body of the wicked, so there is a head of them, just as many who are reckoned highest pontiffssummi pontifices: highest pontiffs (of popes); high priests (of the Jewish priesthood) are heads of particular members of the devil; but no foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown [man] is head of holy mother church or of any member of her; but as Peter bore the type of all the predestinate pastors following him after Christ, so Iscariot bore the type of all the foreknown bishopsepiscopus; dominus episcopus: bishop; the lord bishop following him after the devil; not that before these there were not earlier ones in holy mother church, whose sons they were, born instead of the fathers, but that in the time of the new testament these were the chiefs after the head of the church and the prince of this 425world.⁸ And the difference between these captainscapitaneus: captain is that the good thirst chiefly for the virtues of their subjects and the gain of their souls, but the bad, on the contrary, thirst chiefly for the temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods of their subjects. Whence Iscariot, the greatest simoniac and a proprietary, carrying the purse, said, as if continuing the avarice of the pontiffs of the old testament: "What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you?" Matthew 26:15.⁹ Nor is there doubt that the avarice which the pontiffs had about the gain of the temple made them aim at the death of Christ; in John 11:47–48 it is written thus: "The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council against Jesus and said: What shall we do, for this man doth many miracles? If we let him alone so, all will believe in him; and the Romans will come, and take away our place and nation."¹⁰ On which Augustine, homily 49, notes first how, as the avarice of the priests grew strong in Christ’s time, the office was for sale: not only were there several priests at once, as he draws out of Zachary, Luke 1, but in the same year, by avaricious circumvention, the high priests were changed; and this avarice blinded them and stirred them to conspire blasphemously in the death of the Lord. "Lost men," says Augustine, "thought more how they might do harm, so as to destroy, than how they might take counsel for themselves, so as not to perish"; therefore they gathered a council against the salvation of their own soul, because they raged against the signs of saving truth.¹¹ Secondly, Augustine notes how fear of losing the gain of the temple was the chief cause of the death of Christ: "They feared," he says, "to lose temporal things, and did not think of eternal life, and so they lost both. 426And they had feared this, lest, if all men believed in Christ, no one would remain to defend the city and the temple against the Romans." For they had conceived Christ to be an enemy of the temple and of its ministers, and consequently the chief enemy of the church, because he exposeddetegere: to expose the traditions of avarice (Matthew 15), brought in a manifold woe against their crimes (Matthew 23), indeed carried the instruments of avarice out of their temple as a lord (Matthew 21:12 and John 2).¹² Therefore they accused him with a false report about a threatened power of ruin to the temple, that he could destroy that temple and in three days rebuild it (as is clear in Matthew 26, from Christ’s saying, John 2:19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I raise it up").¹³ Whence, as though they had this more at heart, they reproached the Lord crucified: "Vah," they say, "he that destroyeth the temple of God and in three days rebuildeth it," Matthew 27:40. "They thought rashly," says Augustine, "that the whole doctrinedoctrina: doctrine of Christ was against the temple and against their fathers’ laws"; and therefore by the just judgment of God there befell them the end which they so perversely feared. For in the forty-second year after the ascension of the Lord, through Titus and Vespasian, they lost both nation and place for ever, and so that text of Matthew 8:12 was verified of them: "But the children of this kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness."¹⁴ Whence they laid on him the more horrible species of heresy, which is blasphemy, by which they could extinguish him with more colour. In John 19:7 it is written: "We have a law; and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." And the law of killing a blasphemer is clear from Leviticus 24:16.¹⁵