Common arguments: the pope’s power would be infinite, and the calculators’ cases would empty purgatory and hell

Further, common arguments are made against every teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence of the theologians and decretists on this matter. For it seems, first, that the power of the popepapa: pope is an infinite power; for the pope has power to grant to infinitely many persons indulgencesindulgencie: indulgences lasting for an infinite time; therefore he is of infinitely greater power than a bishopepiscopus; dominus episcopus: bishop; the lord bishop, who can grant only forty days, and only to finitely many subjects.¹ 571The inferenceconsequencia: inference is clear from this: that by this measure power is greater, since all those [powers] are univocallyunivoce: univocally of a like species; and the antecedentconsequens / antecedens: consequent / antecedent seems [true], both because the pope exercises lordshipdominus; dominari: lord; to exercise lordship / to lord it over the whole treasury of the churchthesaurus ecclesie: treasury of the church, which treasury is in a certain way infinite, and because there is no assigning to how many persons the pope can distribute that treasury, nor to how much.² Again, it seems that the pope ought in conscience to do that work of spiritual mercy generally; for one who is able to relieve his brother and inexcusably puts it off until his brother’s bodily death is guilty of homicide; therefore much more one who puts off freeing his brother from spiritual death; of which kind is any pope whatever who is niggardly with a general indulgence. Nor is it valid to say that the prelateprelatus: prelate's power would grow cheap in this, because generally a power becomes dearer from the receiving of benefit.³ What excuse, then, would he have who could free his neighbour, whom he ought to love as himself, from perpetual damnationdampnacio: damnation, and yet without reason omits it? Shall not he who is commanded even on the sabbath to draw his brother’s ox out of the pit incur transgression, if he neglects to free his neighbour’s soul from hell? If ignorance of the divine will excuses [him], how does the pope attempt to grant such an indulgence to anyone?⁴ Again, suppose that the said Pope Gregory looseslaxare: loose his plenitude of powerplenitudo potestatis: plenitude of power to as great an extent as God shall have permitted, and that the power given him shall have sufficed for helping spirits in hell, in purgatory and in this world, and that so he grants to any presbytersacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter whatever the plenitude of vicarial power for absolving and indulgingindulgere: to indulge generally both living and dead, as far as the keys of the church shall have permitted: the case does not seem to be deniable, 572because then the said Gregory would not be of precisely as much power as another pope after or before would be; indeed, not of precisely as much power as he himself would be, because there would be no assigning in him a greatest power, nor any partial power (as is clear in the matter De maximo et minimo).⁵ The case being admitted, then, it seems that all spirits would be freed from hell and purgatory, and all those on the roadviantes: those on the road would be confirmed in the grace of final perseverance. For the treasury of the church, of which he has received full dispensation, is infinitely more good than the habit opposed to it is evil, and it is assignedlimitare; limites: to assign (an office); limits to act according to its utmost; therefore it would extinguish all evil.⁶ Who, then, would accuse of imprudence such a pope, who would destroy all the malice of the world, restoring the golden age, as in the state of innocence? And with whom God would so effectively concur, approving? The pope, then, would have to be roused to profiting the church so urgently, if he does not mistrust, but trusts in, the plenitude of power that he claims.⁷ Again, the lord pope can remitremissio; remittere: remission; to remit half or a third part of the whole penance, or any aliquot partpartes potestative / subiective / aliquote: potestative / subjective / aliquot parts of it whatever (as this position says and the pardonersperdoniste: pardoners proclaim) in the homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland; now if he can do this, then he can remit the whole penance altogether; and as of one person, so of the whole church; therefore he can preserve the whole church from all punishment of purgatory or of hell.⁸ To this the decretists commonly say that the pope does not, as a rule, remit according to a part of a quantity, but according to a proportional part, as I touched on through Hostiensis above, and as the gloss on the Decretum recounts, C. 13 q. 2, on the chapter Tempus; and this school seems 573to have been dreamt up so that the people may always have something to redeem.⁹ Against this it is asked, first, whether the pope can, of the plenitude of his power, for any equally meritorious work, in a person having as much guilt and equally capable of forgivenessvenia: forgiveness, remit as much sin? If he can, I posit that he grants to anyone truly confessed and contrite who gives alms as four, remission of sin as four, and indulgence as four; and I posit further that every sinner of the church now militant multiplies his alms until his whole sin is forgiven and the punishment remitted, as could easily happen once this was ordained.¹⁰ That being established, then, as a perpetual law, the devil would easily be shut out from punishing men in hell, and all punishment in purgatory would be taken away; and by the same token the dead who are punished, either in purgatory or in hell, would be freed by such indulgences. If it is said that the pope cannot establish such a law, but must always remit proportionally, it seems, first, that this derogates from the divine power, [namely] that God cannot bestow so great a reward on equally worthy persons for equal merits: as, to Peter, having sin as eight in purgatory or hell, he can give remission of punishment and guilt as four for the alms of a wayfarerviator: wayfarer who gives a penny for him; but to Paul, held there for sin as four, he could not, other things being equal, give remission of punishment and guilt as four for so great an alms made on the way for him; because then God could communicate such power to his vicar, so that he would absolve altogether from punishment and guilt both living and dead.¹¹ But it is evident that the first assumptionassumptum: the assumption, which follows from the opinion, implies a contradictionclaudit contradictionem / contradictorium: it implies a contradiction. Secondly, this teaching seems to derogate from the papal power; because, if a law binds the pope 574so that he can do the greater and not the less, how would it be granted to his law that he assesses at will that any aliquot part of punishment or guilt be remitted for an alms however small? Does it follow, by the very fact that he says a third or a fourth or any other part of penance [is] indulged for a penny, that it is so? Would it not have to be that a reason underlies it beforehand with God?¹² Where, then, there is evidenceevidencia: evidence of a greater reason for loosing, there is evidence of a greater power for it, and conversely of unreasonableness; as it is repugnant to the first reason, through which all indulgences must be made, that there be here infinitely many punished, of whom the first is in some degree capable of forgiveness according to the worthiness had from God, the second twice as capable, and so to infinity; and yet, in proportion as a greater alms is made for the one more capable before God, it has, by the pope’s assessmenttaxacio (pene): assessment, less efficacy for remitting sin or penance.¹³ Many such impossible conclusions follow from the pope’s power of assessing at his pleasure the punishments and sins of a man to be aided by intercessionsuffragari: to aid by intercession, and from the calculatory casescasus calculatorii: calculatory cases which this school has to admit.¹⁴

Thirdly, it seems that it lies within the pope’s power to absolve altogether both living and dead from punishment and from guilt. And I posit that there are infinitely many men and infinitely many pennies, created and annihilated, either together or successively, by God’s absolute powerpotencia absoluta: absolute power; and that the pope enjoins the first of them to give the first penny for blotting out the first part of Peter’s penance, and enjoins the second that the second give the second penny for blotting out the second part of his penance, and so to infinity. And it is clear that in the end the whole of Peter’s penance would be blotted out.¹⁵