The predestinate are priests in the homeland; the foreknown minister the sacraments; first conclusion: clerical litigation should cease

Whence it seems to me that, among the names of the office just recounted, even in the predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]") who thereby merit blessedness, some are special, as apostleship and the episcopate.¹ For the sending to preach the gospel and anxious oversight in guarding seem to belong to the officers of the bridegroomsponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom only for the state of the wayvia / patria: the way / the homeland. 446But priesthood seems to be eternal, since the blessed give and teach holy things, enlightening their fellows for ever; and to it can be applied that word of Apocalypse 1:6: "[Thou] hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests."² And so the predestinate who worthily preside over subjects seem to me to be preferred to them in blessedness, and so in the heavenly hierarchy they are set over them in a perpetual priesthood, as blessed Gregory hints in Homily 17, on that of Luke 10:1, "After these things the Lord appointed other seventy";³ and Chrysostom more expressly, in Homily 34 of the Opus imperfectum: "Better," he says, "is a layman who on the face of it professes the secular life but strives after the spiritual, than a priestsacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter who professes the spiritual life but embraces the carnal life; and better before God is a layman doing penance than a clericclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric remaining in sins. For the layman will receive the priestly stole on the day of judgement, since all are then anointed with chrism in priesthood; but the sinful priest is stripped of the dignity of the priesthood that he had"; and then he will be among the unbelieversinfidelis: unbeliever; with a dative, faithless (to) and hypocrites (as the Truth says, Matthew 24:51).⁴ All the blessed, too, will be virgins spiritually (as is clear from Apocalypse 14:4). And all will be martyrs in their own way, since it is said in Luke 14:27: "And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." All, I say, will be priests in the homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland, since they give the holy things, the accidental [goods] of blessedness, to their fellow-blessed.⁵ And hence Abel, with whom the human churchecclesia: church in triumph began, was expressly virgin, martyr and priest, as Augustine notes in On the 447Wonders of Holy Scripture, chapter 3: "The whole of justice," he says, "is this: virginity, priesthood and martyrdom. Which threefold justice was first in Abel, who both offered gifts pleasing to God, left no offspring of his race in the world, and merited the crown of martyrdom by the shedding of his blood."⁶ Every one, therefore, who is to be saved must be spiritually a virgin, in that, turning aside from evil, he follows the Lamb, the bridegroom of the church; he must, secondly, be a priest, offering to God the fruit of merit; and he must, thirdly, joining these two to each other, persevere in them to the end as a martyr. And therefore Christ notes pointedly, in Matthew 23:35, how the church is said to have begun from Abel the just, to whom, according to Augustine, Jesus committed the primacy of justice. "In this," he says, "that he does not name Zacharias 'just', as he names Abel 'just', he shows that Zacharias holds the inheritance of Abel’s justice; as in the genealogy of Christ it is written first and alone that David was king, when it is said: 'And Jesse begot David the king'; but to Solomon and the others the name of king is not added, since the other fathers held the kingdomregnum: kingdom by hereditary right."⁷ But another cause is to be noted (which I gave above): that Abel was the first veteran of the church triumphantecclesia militans / triumphans / dormiens: the church militant / triumphant / sleeping, who, in happy hope of spiritual nectar, was sent to the place of refreshment, to be purged.⁸ And as to the form of the argument, it is clear that whatever God gives to a rational creature, he first fits it for that; and as to the decree of blessed Gregory, it is clear that it is understood [to mean] that one who abuses his power so deprives himself of it, as regards the aspect of meriting for himself, while yet the power remains under the aspect of meriting for others.⁹ And so God gave power to Judas for a manifold cause; and he was not unqualifiedinhabilis: unqualified (to hold office) to receive that power, although 448through his own fault he was unqualified to merit blessedness for himself; nor did Christ ordain him so to demerit, but permitted it, ordaining that he should in this profit his bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom by accident.¹⁰ Whence such a mixing and setting-over profits holy mothermater nostra: our mother church, by the grace of the one who ordains, even more than if he set over it only a membermembrum: member of the church. For it profits a vigorous soldier, for exercise, that he have someone rebelling against him. Nor do I contradict, but assent, that it often happens that a bishop feigns or thinks that he signs a priest with the charactercarecter, caracter (sensibilis): (perceptible) character, where, through unfitness for orders or the negligence of the ordinary, he remains a layman, unsigned (of which elsewhere).¹¹

And it seems to me that a foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown man, even in actual mortal sin, ministers the sacraments to the faithful, though damnably for himself, yet profitably for his subjects. For so Balaam (Numbers 23) and Caiaphas (John 11) prophesied, and devils, often cast out by Christ from persons whom they had possessed, publicly confessed the Lord Jesus Christ.¹² And the Saviour defined this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence in Matthew 7:22: "Many," he says, "will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you"; as is clear of the one in Mark 9 and Luke 9 whom the apostles rebuked because he worked miracles and did not follow them. But Christ approved [him] as to the substance of the miracle, so that we should not judge, from signs of this kind of themselves, a son of God or a son of the devil.¹³ So therefore bad priests wrong the pious faithful who do not demerit, but do not harm them, in ministering to them the church’s sacraments, as is clear in 449the decrees, Causa 1, question 1, Si fuerit, from the testimony of Augustine, and Causa 15, last question, last chapter, and in book 3 of the Decretals, On the joint dwellingcohabitacio: joint dwelling of clerics and women, Vestra.¹⁴

From these things it seems, first, that all contention in the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric about temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods that has been conducted under the titletitulus: title of an ecclesiastical cause should cease.¹⁵ And I have made many arguments for this, and allegedallegare / allegacio: allege / allegation authorities of scripture for it. For, granted licence to contend in this way, the way of suffering wrongs would be safer; therefore, generally, under pain of sin, that way would have to be chosen. The inferenceconsequencia: inference is clear from this, that the more meritorious and easier way is generally to be chosen;¹⁶ and therefore Gregory says in Homily 17: "He who takes up the place of preaching ought not to inflict evils but to bear them, so that by his very meekness he may soften the anger of those who rage, and, himself wounded by afflictions, may heal the wounds of sins in others."¹⁷