Mankind as two men; no member of the devil in the church

Loserth pp. 120.14–123.27

¶1120.14–121.28

120Hic dicitur concedendo assumptum, cum non possunt esse plures quam duo homines, et ita conceditur quod uterque istorum duorum hominum habet Deum pro capite, non pro parte eius, sed principaliter extrinsecus influente, et sic unus eorum est corpus domini quod est sancta ecclesia, sed alter non est corpus domini, sed corpus diaboli. Et sic non sequitur: Hoc corpus est domini, ergo hoc est corpus domini. Et hoc intendit Augustinus, III° De Doctrina Christiana, XXXII° cap., increpans Ticonium, quia vocavit prescitos corpus dominicum. Non enim est totum corpus naturale corpus domini bipertitum, nisi utraque pars fuerit corpus domini. Et cum Augustinus XXXII° postquam ostendit quod Christus et corpus suum quod est ecclesia sunt una persona, increpat eum in secunda regula qua vocat totum genus hominum corpus domini bipartitum. Non, inquit, sic debuit appellare. Non enim revera domini corpus est quod cum ipso non 121erit in eternum, sed dicendum fuitde corpore domini vero atque permixto, aut vero atque simulato, quia non solum in eternum, verum eciam nunc ypocrite non cum illo esse dicendi sunt. Ecce quam plane iste sanctus diffinit quod presciti non sunt de Christi ecclesia. Unde De Consecracione, d. IIª Hoc sacramentum, dicit canon quod per cibacionem eucaristie societatem vult intelligi corporis et membrorum quod est ecclesia in predestinatis. Et De Penitencia, d. IVª, Si ex bono; et sepe infra habetur quod nemo est de regno Christi quod est ecclesia, nisi vere filius quem pater dedit sibi. De quo dicit Joh. 111°, 16, quod oportet ut non pereat, sed habeat vitam eternam. Et sic multi sunt in ecclesia qui vocantur filii nuncupatim qui non sunt de ecclesia. Conceditur ergo quod homo qui est humanum genus est partim prescitus et partim predestinatus, et sic tempore suo partim salvatus et partim dampnatus, sed ille non est ecclesia, quamvis faciat quidquid facit aliquis homo, quia ad unitatem requiritur unitas capitis, sed ut dicit apostolus IIª Cor. VI°, 15. Que convencio Christi ad Belial? Non ergo sunt duo capita ex equo vel subordinata, cum secundum apostolum que a Deo sunt ordinata, sunt. Et sic homo humani generis est corpus naturale sed non corpus ecclesie propter diversitatem contrarietatis capitum et equivocacionem ordinacionis divine ad gloriam et ad penam.

Here the answer is by granting the assumption, since there cannot be more than two men; and so it is granted that each of these two men has God for head, not as a part of it, but as principally flowing in from without; and so one of them is the body of the Lord, which is holy church, but the other is not the body of the Lord, but the body of the devil.¹ And so it does not follow: "This body is the Lord’s, therefore this is the body of the Lord." And this is what Augustine means, On Christian Doctrine III, chapter 32, rebuking Tyconius because he called the foreknown the Lord’s body. For the whole natural body is not the bipartite body of the Lord unless each part were the body of the Lord.² And Augustine, in [chapter] 32, after he has shown that Christ and his body, which is the church, are one person, rebukes him in the second rule, in which he calls the whole race of men the bipartite body of the Lord. "He ought not," he says, "so to have called it. For that is not truly the Lord’s body which will not 121be with him for ever; but he should have spoken of the Lord’s body true and mixed, or true and feigned; for not only for ever, but even now hypocrites are not to be said to be with him."³ See how plainly this saint defines that the foreknown are not of Christ’s church. Hence in De consecratione, distinction 2, Hoc sacramentum, the canon says that by the eating of the eucharist he wishes to be understood the fellowship of the body and members, which is the church in the predestinate.⁴ And in De penitencia, distinction 4, Si ex bono, and often below, it is held that no one is of the kingdom of Christ, which is the church, unless [he is] truly a son whom the Father has given him; of whom John 3:16 says that he must "not perish, but have life everlasting". And so there are many in the church, called sons by name, who are not of the church.⁵ It is granted, therefore, that the man who is the human race is partly foreknown and partly predestinate, and so in his time partly saved and partly damned; but he is not the church, although he does whatever any man does; for unity requires unity of the head; now, as the apostle says, 2 Corinthians 6:15, "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" There are not, therefore, two heads on an equal footing or subordinated, since according to the apostle the things that are from God are ordered.⁶ And so the man of the human race is a natural body, but not the body of the church, because of the diversity of contrariety of the heads and the equivocation of the divine ordinance to glory and to punishment.⁷

¶2121.29–122.6

121Et patet quid concedi debeat et quid negari in ista materia. Nam concedi debet quod homo generis humani facit quidquid aliqua eius pars facit, et simul est 122beatus in celo et dampnatus in inferno, et est ambe iste ecclesie sed neutra illarum, et corpus illud secundum se totum est domini, sed non est corpus domini nec est corpus diaboli, cum totum integrale non est eius pars quantitativa sed est eius partes quantitative, et sic est collectim corpus domini et corpus diaboli.

And it is clear what ought to be granted and what denied in this matter. For it ought to be granted that the man of the human race does whatever any part of him does, and is at once 122blessed in heaven and damned in hell, and is both these churches but neither of them; and that body as a whole is the Lord’s, but is not the body of the Lord nor the body of the devil, since an integral whole is not its quantitative part but is its quantitative parts; and so it is collectively the body of the Lord and the body of the devil.⁸

¶3122.7–123.10

122Unde videtur mihi quod illi non minus heretice quam blaspheme scandalizant sanctam matrem ecclesiam qui dicunt quod habet ut partes componencia tot membra diaboli, quia indubie tunc foret turpissima et a Deo maxime odita, quia secundum magnam partem. Et cum Canticorum IV°, 7, de illa dicitur: Tota pulchra es amica mea et macula non est in te, et apostolus Eph. V°, 27, dicit illam esse ecclesiam, non habentem maculam neque rugam, et illud dicit decretum (ut patet in fine XIII cap.): cum ergo nullus debet dubitare quin omnia ista loquuntur de sancta matre ecclesia, manifestum videtur quod illa non habet in sui composicionem aliquod membrum diaboli, sed sicut prudens paterfamilias non adoptat in filium quem scit perdere patrem suum, sic de Deo, quia iuxta apostolum, si ordinaret filios, et heredes. Cum ergo iuxta decreta ille cadit in heresim qui aliter exponit scripturam sacram quam spiritus sanctus flagitat, sicut et ille qui imponit tantum vicium sancte Romane ecclesie, et indubie scandalum tale redundaret in Dei blasphemiam, quomodo rogo foret gratus matri ecclesie vel sponso suo qui imponeret eis tantam calumpniam? Nonne Exodi XXI°, 17 cap., precipitur lege sponsi: Qui maledixerit patri vel matri moriatur? Non ergo imponamus matri nostre malediccionem et heresim cuiusmodi necessario est singulus prescitorum. 123Sed instatur quod, sicut omnes partes predestinatorum sunt partes ecclesie, ita omnia capita predestinatorum sunt ecclesie capita, et sic caput aggregatum foret caput ecclesie. Hic dicitur (ut supra tetigi) quod illud probabiliter concedi potest de capite naturali et, intelligendo ecclesiam personaliter ut per accidens vel contingenter, est ecclesia, cum partes quantitative predestinati ordinantur ad beatitudinem. Sed locuti sumus communiter equivoce de capite, ut est persona regens capitaliter; quod est Christo proprium quoad totam ecclesiam.

Hence it seems to me that those give scandal to holy mother church, not less heretically than blasphemously, who say that she has as composing parts so many members of the devil; for then without doubt she would be most foul and most hated by God, since [she would be so] in a great part.⁹ And since in Canticles 4:7 it is said of her, "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee", and the apostle, Ephesians 5:27, says that she is the church "not having spot or wrinkle", and the decree says this (as is clear at the end of chapter 13): since therefore no one ought to doubt that all these speak of holy mother church, it seems manifest that she has not in her composition any member of the devil.¹⁰ But as a prudent father of a household does not adopt as a son one whom he knows will destroy his father, so of God; for according to the apostle, if he ordained [them] sons, [they are] heirs also.¹¹ Since, therefore, according to the decrees he falls into heresy who expounds holy scripture otherwise than the Holy Spirit demands, as does he also who imputes so great a vice to the holy Roman church, and without doubt such scandal would redound to the blasphemy of God, how, I ask, would he be pleasing to mother church or to her bridegroom who imputed to them so great a calumny?¹² Is it not commanded in Exodus 21:17 by the law of the bridegroom: "He that curseth father or mother, let him die"? Let us not, therefore, impute to our mother a curse and a heresy, such as each one of the foreknown necessarily is.¹³ 123But it is objected that, as all the parts of the predestinate are parts of the church, so all the heads of the predestinate are heads of the church; and so the aggregated head would be head of the church. Here the answer is (as I touched on above) that this can be granted as probable of the natural head and, understanding the church personally, as by accident or contingently, [it] is church, since the quantitative parts of a predestinate [person] are ordered to blessedness. But we have spoken commonly, [and] equivocally, of "head" as it is the person ruling as head; which is proper to Christ with respect to the whole church.¹⁴

¶4123.11–123.27

123Quarto arguitur per hoc quod iuxta dicta ecclesia foret per totum tempus veteris testamenti acephala, eo quod non potest habere caput nisi Christum, sed tunc non habuit Christum caput, ergo tunc non habuit caput. Et per idem videtur sequi quod eadem ecclesia fuit pro tempore crementi quotlibet membra sua, quia pro nullo instanti fuit nisi fideles qui tunc fuerunt. Unde in exemplo tacto in fine secundi argumenti videtur quod non manet eadem domus, quacunque parte ablata vel noviter veniente, quia per idem ablata iterum tanta et alia noviter veniente, et sic qualibet parte domus corrupta et una secundum se totam noviter generata, maneret eadem domus, sicut est de domo ecclesie. Hic sunt tres difficultates. Prima, utrum Christus fuit ante incarnacionem, quia certum est quod eternaliter fuit verbum Dei et semper caput ecclesie. Sed videtur non fuisse caput eius intrinsecum antequam fuit homo.

Fourthly, it is argued, by appeal to this: that according to what has been said the church would have been headless through the whole time of the old testament, in that it cannot have a head except Christ; now at that time it did not have Christ as head; therefore then it had no head. And by the same token it seems to follow that the same church was, for the time of its growth, any number of its members, because at no instant was it anything but the faithful who then were.¹⁵ Hence in the example touched on at the end of the second argument, it seems that the same house does not remain when any part is taken away or newly comes; for by the same token, when as much again is taken away and another newly comes, and so every part of the house is corrupted and one [house] is newly generated as a whole, the same house would remain, as is the case with the house of the church.¹⁶ Here there are three difficulties. The first, whether Christ existed before the incarnation; for it is certain that he was eternally the Word of God and always head of the church. But he seems not to have been its intrinsic head before he was man.¹⁷

Notes

1 A margin Responsio. Totum genus humanum est unus homo divisus in duos homines et unus illorum est corpus domini et alius est corpus diaboli. Contra Ticonium (120.14). Cum non possunt esse plures quam duo: in this figure mankind divides into two men only. Non pro parte eius: God is head as an outside principle, not as a part of either man.
2 Hoc corpus est domini … corpus domini: "the Lord’s" as owner of every body, against "the body of the Lord", the church. Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.32 (Loserth, 120.8). A margin Augustinus contra Ticonium (120.23). Loserth (120.22): cf. Hus, De ecclesia, Opp. I, fol. 206b.
3 Et cum Augustinus … increpat: the cum clause has no main clause; we render it as a statement. The rule in which Augustine shows Christ and his body one person is Tyconius’s first, de Domino et eius corpore; it is De doctr. chr. III.31 (§ 44; PL 34:82). Wyclif’s quotation is found in Augustine’s text (De doctr. chr. III.32; PL 34:82–83). Bipartitum here, bipertitum above, both as printed. The 145b folio mark at 121.1 is not Wyclif’s.
4 A margin Presciti non sunt de Christi ecclesia (121.6). Loserth: Decretum III, De cons. D.2 c.63 (the form is ours), whose incipit is Hoc sacramentum pietatis est, as Wyclif names it; Loserth quotes its § 1, Hunc itaque cibum et potum (PL 187:1762A). Cibacio: eating.
5 Loserth: Decretum II, C.33 q.3 (De pen.) D.4 c.8 (the form is ours), Si ex bono in malum deficiente, from Augustine’s De correptione et gratia (PL 187:1620A). John 3:16, DR "may not perish, but may have life everlasting"; oportet ut is Wyclif’s frame. Nuncupatim: by name only. In ecclesia … de ecclesia: in the church, but not of it.
6 Codd. que communicacio; Loserth corrected que convencio from 2 Cor. 6:15 (121.22), DR "And what concord hath Christ with Belial?"; the print has 15 in old-style figures (plate). Rom. 13:1 (Loserth, 121.24), Vulgate quae autem sunt, a Deo ordinatae sunt; we follow its sense, since the print’s comma (ordinata, sunt) would give "the things ordained by God, are". Ex equo: on an equal footing.
7 Ordinacio … ad gloriam et ad penam: God’s ordering of one man to glory, the other to punishment; "ordained" is said of the two equivocally.
8 Totum integrale: a whole made of quantitative parts, which is those parts taken together, not any one of them; collectim: collectively. Ambe iste ecclesie: the two "churches", of Christ and of the devil.
9 Scandalizant: give scandal to, defame. Odita as printed, a late form for exosa, "hated". Secundum magnam partem: foul in a great part of herself.
10 Cant. 4:7 and Eph. 5:27 agree with the Vulgate; DR. A A₁ illam esse, then a lacuna, wanting ecclesiam (122.14); B sicut dicit (122.15). Decretum … in fine XIII cap.: the decree and the chapter are not traced.
11 Rom. 8:17, DR "And if sons, heirs also"; Wyclif’s si ordinaret filios turns it to God’s ordaining. A A₁ lack in … ordinaret (122.20–22); B quem sit. Perdere patrem: to ruin his father.
12 Two canons are meant: that whoever expounds scripture otherwise than the Holy Spirit’s sense demands is a heretic (Decretum C.24 q.3 c.27, from Jerome; PL 187:1306B), and that whoever imputes such vice to the Roman church falls into heresy (no canon says this in terms; nearest, D.22 c.1 § 1, on taking away the Roman church’s privilege, Friedberg I, 73–74). Calumpnia: calumny.
13 Exod. 21:17, Vulgate Qui maledixerit patri suo, vel matri, morte moriatur, DR "He that curseth his father or mother, shall die the death"; Wyclif lacks suo and morte. A Nonne eodem XXI, A₁ corrected in the margin (122.29); A₁ adds morte in the margin (122.30). Lege sponsi: the law of Christ the bridegroom. Cuiusmodi … singulus prescitorum: we take it that each foreknown person, counted as her part, would be such a curse and heresy laid on her; doubtful.
14 A margin Nota; replicacio (123.1); Responsio. Omnia predestinatorum capita sunt capita ecclesie (123.4). Capite naturali: the bodily heads of the predestinate; personaliter: the church taken as one person. Est ecclesia (123.6) as printed, "is church"; ecclesie, "is the church’s", would fit better. Ut supra tetigi: 116.12–117.13 (06-a).
15 A margin Quarta obieccio (123.11). Acephala: headless. Fuit … quotlibet membra sua: the church would be identical with whatever members it had at each instant.
16 A corrumpta (123.21); A A₁ manet (123.22). Exemplo … secundi argumenti: the house, 119.26–29 (06-a). Domus ecclesie: the church as the house of God (118.13).
17 A margin Responsio. Prima difficultas; B margin Utrum Christus fuit ante incarnacionem (123.25). Intrinsecum: a head within the body, as against the head "flowing in from without" of 120.16.

How the Latin of this chapter was established

Plate readings; page · reading · note):
- 121: IIª
- 121: IVª
- 121: IIª
- 122: corpus
- 122: odita (print has odita) [NW]
- 123: Christum
- 123: Christum
- 123: fuit
- 123: Christus
- 123: fuit
- 121: erit (145b folio mark glued)
- 121: eternum
- 121: dicendum
OCR scars, translated as corrected: p. 120 111° (read III°); p. 121 Joh. 111° (read III°), VI°, 1. (read 15); p. 123 eo quod. (stray point). Doubts: p. 122 odita; p. 123 est ecclesia.