The betrayers of the truth; whether the church is properly virgin, mother and bride

"I ought not to have spoken so; but behold, it happened to the Lord: he spoke and lost many. Let us therefore have comfort in the Lord, and yet speak words with caution."¹ He does not say: let us altogether keep silent, or resist those who speak the truth; because truly so to betray the word of God, which is truth and the law of Christlex dei / lex Christi / lex evangelica: God's law / the law of Christ / the gospel law, would be to betray him, since it is the same. Whence it seems that those of ours who pretend to be of the right side of the bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ, who so betray the truth in his members, have a ground of greatnessprioritas; majoritas: priority; greatness of sin over both betrayers of Christ, of the new as well as of the old testament. For they had received more benefits, bodily as well as spiritual, from Christ, [and] had had a greater knowledge of the truth, as well from the law of Christ as from his deeds. And therefore, by reason of greater ingratitudeingratitudo: ingratitude and knowledge in sinning, it seems, if they were in greater grace according to present justicesecundum presentem iusticiam: according to present justice, that they incur greater guilt;² and blessed Gregory touches this matter, homily 18, on that text of John 8:46, "If I say the truth, why do you not believe me?" "There are many today," he says, "who detest the hardness of the Jews, because they would not hear the preaching of the Lord; and yet such as they accuse them of having been toward faith, such are they themselves toward works. They hear the precepts of God, they know his miracles, but they refuse to be converted from their depravities."³ To the tenth little argumentraciuncula: little argument the reply isrespondetur: the reply is by granting that the churchecclesia: church is a virgin. And the decrees of the church are allegedallegare / allegacio: allege / allegation for this; and so it is said to grow young, to grow old, and it takes many other predicates whose ground must be distinguished: "some," he says, "are said properly of the church, as that it has temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods, privilegesprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging and a rule of living; but others are said of the church improperly, metaphorically and 432transumptively, as that the church is a virgin, an old woman, a bride and a mother, with namingsdenominacio; denominare: naming; to name of this kind. All these are said of the church transumptively, mystically and improperly."⁴ First, I suppose that it followssequitur: it follows: the church is improperly virgin, mother, bride of Christ, etc.; therefore she, the church, is virgin, mother and bride of Christ. This is clear in three ways: first from this, that the doctor often grants such propositions without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect; secondly from this, that otherwise he would not satisfy any such proposition by saying whether it ought to be granted without qualification or denied. For if this term "improperly" is a diminishing qualifierdistrahens: diminishing qualifier, then the greater part of the sayings of the saints about the church, and the greater part of holy scripture and of its manners of speaking, would be denied, which are nevertheless well granted.⁵ For Augustine writes in On the Words of the Lord, on John, sermon 50: "To the church Christ granted in spirit what his mother had in body, that she should be both mother and virgin. And this is proper to our God, that he can make a virgin out of one corrupted, as man on the contrary makes one corrupted out of a virgin";⁶ as Jerome says, book 1, on that text of Hosea 2:19: "I will espouse thee to me for ever: and I will espouse thee in justice, and judgment, and mercy, and commiserations; and I will espouse thee to me in faith." On which the holy doctor speaks thus: "O how great the clemency of God! The harlot who has fornicated with many lovers, and for this crime was handed over to the beasts, after she returns to her husband is by no means said to be reconciled to him, but betrothed. And see what [difference] there is between the union of God and that of men: a man, when he has taken a wife, makes of a virgin a woman, that is, not a virgin; but God, joined to harlots, 433changes them into virgins, according to that which is said to the adulteress through Jeremiah: You have not called upon me as lord, or father, or prince of your virginity. Whence the Apostle too speaks to the Corinthians, who believed after fornication and the worship of idols: I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ."⁷ And afterwards Jerome expounds why God repeated the betrothal of the church three times: "First," he says, "he betrothed her in Abraham or in Egypt, that he might have an everlasting wife. Secondly on Mount Sinai, giving her the justice of the law as betrothal gifts. And thirdly, at the coming of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, she was betrothed in perfect faith," when in seeing the Son she saw the Father too, John 14:10–11.⁸ So, therefore, the holy doctors, granting these things without qualification, did not dare to assert that the author of scripture says them improperly and falsely. But it seems to me that the doctor speaks improperly in calling the church an old woman, or in saying that after her beginning she grows young. For I do not remember having read these things of holy mother church; but the synagogue of Satan, the church of the malignant and the harlot whose head is the devil, which the doctor calls a part of holy mother church, can reasonably be called a most foul old woman.⁹

For the doctor lays it down that a foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown [man], even while he is in mortal [sin], if he has infused faith, is a membermembrum: member of holy mother church; and undoubtedly he is then a member of Satan, and the devil is his headcaput: head (as blessed Gregory says).¹⁰ And holy mother church is said properly to grow old and to flourish in virtues, since in Psalm 91:11 the prophet speaks thus: "my old age in plentiful mercy"; for in the third betrothal, when the bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ is an ancient woman and, like an old woman, troubled by the persecutions of the members of the devil, she has more plentiful 434mercy than in the time of her youth; and so she is truly called a widow, because of the bridegroom’s distance from her as she journeys as a pilgrimpars peregrinans; peregrinari: the pilgrim part; to be a pilgrim to the homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland, since in Psalm 131:15 the bridegroom says: "Blessing I will bless her widow."¹¹ Further, it would be work for the doctor to exposedetegere: to expose what properly and what improperly and figuratively befits holy mother church, because it is a word too suspect and carnal to say that the church properly has possessions and the privileges of Constantine, but improperly is mother or bride of Christ.¹² First (I say) it would have to be asked what the church would properly be, if anything; nothing remains that it could be but a substance; and descending further (as I have often touched on) one would have to grant that the church is a corporeal substance, and so an ensouled rational body, and so it would properly be a man, and consequently [one] to be espoused. It is confirmed: the church is properly privileged and possessioned (as is said); which would not be unless it could use privileges and feed on possessions. Therefore the church could eat and exercise like human acts, and consequently the church would be an ensouled substance which would generate every man; and so, since it would be an individual of the same most special speciesspecies specialissima: most special species as every man, univocally generating man, it would be a man (as the saints often say).¹³ And it is certain that it would improperly be a man, since it would have its own individuation, its own rationality and its most proper human perfection; for unless it were a substance able to exercise rational acts, such as acts of meriting, contemplating and rejoicing, it would otherwise eat so much food more unworthily than the priests of Baal.¹⁴ If it is said that the church properly is nothing but is some things, then it would have to be granted without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect that the church is nothing. For if those things which befit it improperly are granted without qualification 435of the church, much more would the predicates which befit it properly have to be granted of the church without qualification. If therefore properly it is nothing, it followssequitur: it follows without qualification that it is nothing, and consequently it is not something; and then it would not have a qualitative or a quantitative partpars quantitativa: quantitative part, as will be granted, and consequently no namingdenominacio; denominare: naming; to name of a part would be properly, truly and properly attributed to it.¹⁵ From which it follows that the catholic church is not privileged in caesarean fashion nor possessioned in secular fashion: not according to itself as a whole (both because it is indivisible, and also because this privilege or that endowmentdotacio: endowment does not befit many of the church), nor yet according to a part which would be a part of that church, since the blessed spirits who are of that church are indivisible; and so the church would not have a part or parts, and consequently the popepapa: pope would not properly be head of the church, since she would always properly be acephalous, as a people without a head.¹⁶ For "head" is not properly said except in comparison to a headedcapitari / capitatus: to be headed / headed body; now the church (as is said) is not properly a body, because so it would properly be a man; therefore it is not properly headed; and since it properly is [so], it follows that it is properly unheaded, and consequently it is unheaded; and by the same token any abbey or religious order would not properly be old or young,¹⁷