Works, not names; relics and the devil’s signs; seventh conclusion: baptism and the foreknown

Nor does confusion of the church’s polity follow from this; for the church militantecclesia militans / triumphans / dormiens: the church militant / triumphant / sleeping ought to believe the works of its curatecuratus: curate, and 465not the bare name or the prefecture in the face of the churchecclesia: church, since such evidenceevidencia: evidence would be too fallacious.¹ Yet such a pretended superiorprepositi: superiors is to be obeyed, obedience to the law of Christlex dei / lex Christi / lex evangelica: God's law / the law of Christ / the gospel law being always preserved; and in this blindness the church is so troubled that some believe signs of death, done at the traces of dead men departed, more than the living works of survivors, however conformably to the law of Christ they live.² And I believe that the illusion of the devil in such signs blinds the people; after one, then, in whom the living holiness of life has shone, the brightness of signs can probably be believed [to come] to show his holiness; but even so not as evidently as in one fruitful work.³

Hence such blameworthy blindness, an inordinate and covetous cult around relics, make the people, in punishment of sin, be much deceived. Hence in many homelandsvia / patria: the way / the homeland covetousness of money brings it about in many churches that part of a person bought so that he may be canonized as confessor or martyr is honoured more, with pilgrimage, costly offering and the adornment of the tomb with gold and precious stones, than the body of the mother of God, of the apostles Peter and Paul, or of another who is notoriously blessed.⁴ And the evidence for such things stands in this, that such things can be done truly and meritoriously, and prelates to whom this is unknown approve that it is so; I reprove no such deed and I approve few or none, since pilgrims, those who adore relics and those who gather money could not only be occupied more usefully, this being left aside, but from what is done in the law of Christ and scripture it seems to follow that all who worship so ought then to be better occupied, and consequently sin grievously by omitting the better.⁵ I leave aside the sins that occur on both sides in this matter, and how it is a pharisaic deed of the fathers of the old testament, but not efficaciously founded for us from the new 466law, but for the most partut plurimum: for the most part ambiguous, and vitiated either on the side of the worshippers or on the side of those who hold the relics.⁶ For as in the old law, when the Jews declined from the worship of imperceptibleinsensibilis: imperceptible; of a thing that cannot feel, without sensation things, the signs of an adulterous generation prevailed, so in the new law, when affection for heavenly things grows torpid, human traditions and ritesritus: rite of perceptiblesensibilis: perceptible ceremonies must prevail, the religion and affection of imperceptible things being given up; and to this the three enemies of the soul move [men].⁷ For it is necessary that the devil seduce hypocrites under the appearance of holiness by illusions of perceptible signs, since the sins done among the people require this, and the devil sees that the people is more prone to that seduction. For thus it is read in 1 Kings 28 that Saul consulted a pythoness, who by the devil’s art raised up for him a devil putting forward the likeness of Samuel; and that devil mixed in many truths, so as to lead Saul into despair and to seduce him more craftily into other errors, after and before.⁸ And Augustine declares in book 2 of On the Wonders of Holy Scripture, chapter 10, that it was a devil and not the spirit of Samuel: first, because a woman so evil-doing would not have power, by the devil’s art, to command so holy a soul; secondly, because the tyrant Saul did not merit so great an enlightening and ministry from a good spirit disturbed by two men so unworthy; and thirdly, because that spirit says: "To morrow thou and thy sons shall be with me." But Saul and his sons are believed to have been reprobate, and so with the devil and not with the spirit of Samuel.⁹ These things move this saint 467to believe that this whole deed was done by illusion of the devil; and I believe that no one will produce evidence that it is not lawful for the faithful to hold the opinion that the bier of the warring popepapa: pope was translated into the church by the devil’s art.¹⁰ Nor does it follow from Augustine’s teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence that the scripture of 1 Kings 28 is false; for he says that the name of Samuel signifies, by transference, the devil who figured him; for so it is said in 1 John 5:8 that the spirit, the water and the blood "are one" in office, designating the trinity of the divine essenceens / esse / essencia: a being / being (existence) / essence; and in the common way of speaking one who puts forward the person of another is called by the name of him whose place he puts forward. For so John is called Elias, and an angel, the vicar of God, speaks in the old law in the person of God, whose teaching he represents.¹¹ Returning, then, to the point, it is clear that the priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter of Christ must give up the gentile rites of civil greatnessprioritas; majoritas: priority; greatness and attend altogether to how they may serve more abundantly and more humbly, fruitfully, in the holy church of God, knowing, as faith teachesex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture], that according to this are praise and greatness from God. Therefore, according to Chrysostom, as the nobler membersmembrum: member of the human body do not attack the less noble but, helping one another reciprocally, fulfil their offices, so it ought to be with the members of holy mother church: each one, without the pomp of greatness or solicitude for it, ought, by helping and loving each, to work in his own calling, contentious opposition being withdrawn.¹² Seventhly, it seems that no foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown [person] duly receives a baptism by which his original sin is blotted out without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect; it is clear from what was said in chapter 27 of book 5. For every foreknown [person] remains perpetually in the defect of final perseverance, which is a most grievous and indelible sin, and consequently is not taken away without qualification by baptism.¹³ Nevertheless, as there is a grace of predestination 468and a grace according to present justicesecundum presentem iusticiam: according to present justice, so there is a sin of foreknowledgepresciencia: foreknowledge or of final impenitence and a sin according to present injustice; and since the terms seem strange to many and beyond the verbal signification, I have expounded them elsewhere, declaring how these are called graces and sins equivocallyequivoce: equivocally and how they are alternately opposed to one another.¹⁴ For every foreknown [person] has a perpetual and original defect; yet for a time that [defect] is suspendedsuspendere; suspencio: to suspend; suspension in its malice by grace according to present justice, such as baptismal grace and others; and therefore I said that original sin is not blotted out without qualification. And if it is asked what the foreknown [person] existing in grace according to present justice merits, the answer isdicitur multipliciter: is said in many ways that, among those who speak correctly and do not equivocate, he never merits blessedness, since he is never worthy of blessedness, but he merits a perpetual mitigation of eternal punishment, with other temporal goods; and so God redeemed the foreknown not to blessedness but to the mildness of eternal punishment, as he redeemed all the damned.¹⁵ And correspondingly the foreknown [person] is absolved from sin, not so that he is not punished perpetually at all, but so that he is not punished so grievously perpetually. And so (as Lincoln says) he redeemed sins, not acts but defects, whose malice is suspended by temporal grace.¹⁶ And so the foreknown, whether secularsecclesia laycalis / secularis: the lay church / the secular church or clerics, however justly they seem to be set over the goods of God, are so only in a certain respectsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect, while they are in temporal grace, and unjustly without qualification, while they altogether lack momentary charitycaritas: charity. From which it is clear that judges, secular as well as ecclesiastical, very often fail in their judgements from the rules¹⁷