Three corollaries on suits and the malice of priests; Thomas: Christ head of all men

But it must be known that there are some whom mother church, nursing them in the lap of charitycaritas: charity, tolerates until she brings them to the growth of spiritual age; who sometimes both hold the habit of sanctity and are not able to carry out the merit of perfection. For they hardly rise to spiritual gifts, and therefore serve those joined to them in protecting the things that are earthly, and sometimes go too far in the anger of that defence.¹ And these, religiousreligiosi: the religious in name, this holy popepapa: pope declares to be entangled in a twofold malice: first, because they sin not only from infirmity but from knowledge, against their conscience; second, because, feigning sanctity in defending 55the goods of the churchecclesia: church, they seek praise for a crime.² From these demonstrable conclusions of this saint a churchman, regular as well as secular, can weigh, if they diligently examine their conscience with scripture, feeling out intention, volition and the motions of the soul against the intention of the supreme judge, that they would not contend so assiduously for the so-called goods of the church. It is clear, second, how the lord pope would not foster but extinguish suits of this kind according to the rule of the gospel: for if the examination of the life of clericsclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric were committed to kingdoms, provinces and parishes, so that stipends were not ministered to them when their ministry was perceptiblysensibilis: perceptible withdrawn, life would be more tolerable for the higher superiorsprepositi: superiors, and better for priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter with the people, than it is now.³ And the failings of patronspatronus: patron and people a higher watchman could correct more easily than bear the whole burden by himself, with false witnesses begetting suits. Nor is any other law required in distributing the offices of priests than knowledge on the part of the head, through credible witnesses, that one man is [fit to be] rector in the priestly ministry, [the head being] the more careful to set the abler man over [others]; and if [the other] did not rejoice at this, he would be deposed, as suspected of hypocrisy and cupidity.⁴ And it is clear, third, that the cause of the dissension and disturbance of the church is the malice of priests. For their virtue would most pacify the church; therefore, conversely, their perversity most disturbs the church, because the sin that is of itself the cause of the church’s disturbance is graver in them. For they say, against the faith, that they are men of holy mother church, although they are apostatizing parts of the devil; and consequently they make confusion in faith, confusion in the sacraments, and a withdrawal of the spiritual suffragesuffragia: suffrages that is to be derived from God instrumentally through them.⁵ 56Hence I confidently foretell that, before our correction according to the primitive state, the disturbance of kingdoms will not cease. Since, therefore, the apostle was caught up to the third heaven, seeing the length of the church’s course as to time, the breadth as to the number of prelatesprelatus: prelate, and the depth as to the sense in which clerics are sunk deep in the sense of the Lord, it ought not to be called into doubt that he prophesied, according to the exposition of blessed Gregory, of the church at the present instant, calling them hypocrites, lovers of themselves, adulterating the word of the Lord and having their conscience seared (as is clear from 1 Timothy 4:2).⁶ And it would be a principal sign that a cleric loves himself, in the apostle’s manner of speaking, if, for an affection of ownership of temporal goods, leaving aside the care of a presbytersacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter, he busies himself about himself. For what greater adulteration of the word of the Lord could there be than to understand it in the devil’s sense, according to which it is maintained to be heretical and blasphemous; indeed, that by its authority it is lawful to commit a light lie? Or what cautery could be more dangerous than for a cleric to have a conscience burnt by cupidity, so that, ceasing from works reprehensible in the face of the church, he, on account of the glowing love that he has for temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods, publishes and maintains, without fruitful works, that he is a member of holy mother church?⁷ For although such a man by his cautery empties out the perceptible flux of vices, yet the devil, author of such superfluous flux, spreads all the more, through the hidden channels of hypocrites, through the whole remainder of the body, the flux of slippery sin; and so, made a heresiarch by feigned customconsuetudo: custom, he has 57in the head, that is, in reason, the cautery of Antichrist. For none, according to blessed Gregory in the Register, second chapter, do harm more dangerously or more widely in the church of holy God.⁸ But, returning to the difficulty left aside, it is objected, by appeal toobicitur per: it is objected, by appeal to St Thomas, On Christ, conclusion eight, article 3, where he says that "Christ is the head of all men, as much of the faithful, who are united to him in act through grace, as of unbelievers, who are only in potency his members"; and afterwards he subdivides according to the predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]") and the foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown, who, departing from this world, wholly cease to be members of Christ. And he proves this by many an argument.⁹ As to this testimony of St Thomas, it seems to me that he equivocates, saying truly that Christ according to the Godheaddeitas / divinitas: the Godhead / divinity is the extrinsic head of the whole human race, which can be called aggregativelyaggregative: aggregatively one natural body, to which Christ also does good, as also to the whole world, according to his humanity, since by virtue of Christ’s passion a certain secondary perfection is acquired for the whole world. And so according to his humanity he does good to the whole human race, since he punishes all the damned: either for unbeliefinfidelitas: heathenism, unbelief, as those who do not look to the Lord Jesus Christ; or for despair, which they ought to have put away and aspired to heavenly things; or, third, for rash judgment, which they ought to have put away and adhered finally, in charity, to the Lord Jesus Christ.¹⁰ And so is understood Christ’s threefold "because", John 16:8: "He will convince the world of sin and of justice and 58of judgment." Of sin, the sin of unbelief, which by antonomasiaautonomatice / antonomastice: by antonomasia (pre-eminently) is called sin: "because they believed not in the Father nor in me"; of justice, which they ought to have had, aspiring with fitting means to the natural homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland: "because I go to the Father"; and of judgment, by which they rashly judge that the dogma of the world and of the devil is to be loved more ardently, since "the prince of the world is judged" by Christ, who teaches the opposite.¹¹ And so the opposites of faith, hope and charity, which would correspond in order to the Trinity, damn the foreknown at the final judgment (as I have set out at length elsewhere). For I have not seen in St Thomas, or in another approved doctor, that that whole race, but [only] its predestinate part, is holy mother church, the bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ and the universal or catholic church, the mystical body of Christcorpus Christi misticum: the mystical body of Christ of which scripture speaks. And it is of such [a church] that we are speaking.¹²