No true privilege outside scripture; the Westminster case; poverty the highest privilege

Hence, to pacify the disciples and instruct them what privilege and priorityprioritas; majoritas: priority; greatness they should choose, he says that whoever will be prior or greater among them in heaven must be a humbler and more diligent servant here on earth (as I have shown elsewhere), in the way opposite to primacy or the honour of the world.¹ Therefore Chrysostom says: "He has set heavenly primacy as the fruit of humility, 173so that whoever desires heavenly primacy may follow heavenly humility here; but those who desire primacy on earth will find confusion in heaven. Therefore," he says, "let there now be no contest about primacy among the servants of Christ, nor let each of them hasten after how he may appear greater than another, but after how he may seem lower than all."² And this doctrinedoctrina: doctrine would suffice the whole churchecclesia: church for the choice of privilege or primacy; nor is it possible that the church be truly pacified before this rule has been taught in practice. From these things it is drawn out that there is no true privilege of the church except in so far as it is founded on, taught by or drawn out of scripture.³ It is clear thus: every law useful to holy mother church is taught explicitly or implicitly in scripture; every privilege is of this kind, from what has been said; therefore the conclusionconclusio: conclusion. It is confirmed from what has often been said: all truth is in sacred scripture; every privilege is a truth, because it is a law; therefore the conclusion. Hence Augustine, De doctrina christiana II, at the end: "Whatever a man has learned outside sacred scripture, if it is harmful it is condemned there; if it is useful it is found there"; and he says the same in the fourth letter to Volusianus (as I have expounded at length elsewhere).⁴ It follows, then: if whatever useful thing anyone has learned outside sacred scripture is found there, [and] every privilege granted in charters or bulls is something useful (as is clear from the definition), therefore every privilege of the church is in sacred scripture; therefore, since scripture is of greater authority and acceptance than bulls or charters (as I have said elsewhere), these are for the most partut plurimum: for the most part superfluous among the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric.⁵ For if they were taken away, the one privileged would lean on the ministry of the church, which is of itself the cause of the privilege, and would not so trust in 174charters, leaving his office aside. For such security confounds the church, since with sophistical darts, upon an equivocation which is hypocrisy and a lie, the devil and his members close in upon the church.⁶ Who, I ask, is not deceived today in adhering to a part of the church of the malignant and cultivating it as a member of the church? Who, moreover, does not aspire to the pomp of the world, or to primacy or privilege, although it is a most wicked corruption, insomuch that we often fall into that prophetic woe, Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to you that call good evil, and evil good"?⁷ Does not our diligence show that we value charters and human privileges more than sacred scripture and the privileges which Christ instituted for his own? And undoubtedly, as such, we fall by abuse from whatever true privileges [we have], because according to blessed Gregory (and it is placed in the Decretum, C. 11 q. 3 c. Privilegium) "he ought to lose a privilege who abuses his power".⁸ Since, therefore, everything reasonable or useful to the church of Christ is first granted by him and inscribed in his charter or book, it is clear that we ought first to attend to the scrutiny of that book and to the condition under which he privileged. For it does not follow: a given potentate of the world granted this as a privilege to a given church, therefore it is reasonable or true. Therefore beyond the grant one must scrutinize the rule by which the ground of the privilege ought to be judged.⁹ Suppose, I say, that Peter, a potentate of the world, grants a privilege to Westminster in this form: that whoever, however much a malefactor, has entered its precincts shall have immunity of every kind; provided, however, that in the first conclusion which is put to him after his entry by the superiorprepositi: superiors of the place 175he speaks the truth.¹⁰ Now the case seems possible and honest, since he could use the privilege given him for this for a lie and for any crime whatever, as is said; therefore much more for the humble confession of the truth. I suppose, moreover, that Peter, a malefactor entering Westminster to have immunity, is first asked by the superior of Westminster whether he will have immunity in the said church; and I suppose that Peter, conscious of the desert he has contracted by his crime, says, despairing of pardon or truly reckoning himself worthy of temporal death, that he will not have immunity in the said church. Then, this case having been carried through at will, it is clear that from the case and the other circumstances posited and to be posited each part of the contradiction follows, as the sophists know in the matter of insolubles.¹¹ And in truth anyone who enters the threshold of the church in order to be harboured in crime falls more culpably into an insoluble matter, of which kind is sin, than it follows that Peter falls.¹² Hence I do not know how to solve it otherwise, nor do I believe that anyone else knows, except that the said so-called privilege is not a privilege, because it cannot be founded in scripture; and so, generally, every private law not foundable in scripture is not a privilege, because it does not turn to the profit of the church, since (as Augustine says) whatever is useful is found there. And if it implies a contradictionclaudit contradictionem / contradictorium: it implies a contradiction that this should be a privilege, much more every case in which a privilege is posited to be given to a place, that whoever has entered with whatever crime should enjoy immunity in a given church; for that is an impossibility further removed from appearance than the preceding.¹³ Since many enter sanctuary with that sin by reason of which they are bound to lose the liberty, indeed, since the principle of Gregory is true, that everyone, and especially one foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown, 176"is bound to lose a privilege who abuses his power", and every criminal as such abuses his power, since by reason of the mortal sin infecting him he abuses the goods of nature: it follows that everyone entering the precincts of the church criminally is bound, as such, not to enjoy the privileges of the church for that time.¹⁴ And this is known to those who know that whatever a criminal does, by reason of the sin infecting him he sins mortally. Let a man, therefore, found the reasonableness of a privilege on scripture, and otherwise it is worth nothing. Now those privileges to which we ought to attend more shine out more in the mirror of scripture, and the less necessary ones more indistinctlyconfuse / confusus (fides, noticia): indistinct(ly); because God, who could not fail his bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom in privileges and in writings that witness to them, knew that the chaff would turn aside more to earthly than to heavenly things; therefore, so that the degree of scripture’s making known might be a rule for us, he expressed the spiritual privileges, adding an indistinct teaching about the bodily ones which would be adduced.¹⁵ From these things, thirdly, it is gathered that the highest privilege for the state of the wayvia / patria: the way / the homeland would be for the church to be discharged of the civil possession of temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods, running freely after Christ in evangelical poverty.¹⁶ It is clear from the two preceding conclusions, for so the believer is disposed more like Christ and more ready for conquering the kingdomregnum: kingdom of heaven. Hence also this privilege is noted in the church more expressly, more highly and more often for the dearer disciples of Christ (as is clear, Matthew 10, Luke 14 and 1 Timothy 6); for upon this the goods of grace followed more copiously.¹⁷ It is confirmed, first, thus: Christ placed his vicars in the greatest liberty and privilege in this, that he enjoined that rule singularly on his apostles; therefore the conclusion. For it is not lawful to deny that Christ privileged his college when he gave them singular laws, 177such as the evangelical counsels, for the greatest profit of himself and of the church, as is clear from the promiseindoles: promise which came of it. Therefore, by the definition of privilege, he privileged his church in this.¹⁸ It is confirmed, secondly: that state is the most perfect, as is clear in the Sext, chapter Exiit qui seminat, by Nicholas III; and to place a wayfarer in so high a state is proportionally to privilege him; therefore the conclusion. For if to give the goods of fortune, which are the most abject, is to privilege the recipient, much more to give him the goods of grace.¹⁹ Again, whatever wayfarerviator: wayfarer has been discharged of the burden of temporal goods, to follow more nearly, more readily and more laudably the young hart leaping upon the mountains, is as such more richly privileged; now so it was with the apostles, who renounced, as to civil possession, all their goods; therefore the conclusion.²⁰ For a believer will not deny that such possession of temporal goods is a weight on the soul, as blessed Gregory teaches, Moralia XXXI (as I declared in chapter 12 of this [work]). Hence the apostles truly reckoned it a great privilege to themselves that they were discharged of the daily ministry at the tables of the faithful (as is clear, Acts 6); therefore much more [is it a privilege] to discharge them from the secular state, which is more abject.²¹ For in this consists the excellence of the state of the clergy over the secular lords (as is here supposed): not in the character of order, since the most abject servitude stands with that (as is clear of Iscariot), but in this, that they are deputed as more vigorous knightsmilicia; milites: knighthood; knights to wage more meritoriously the wars of the Lord and to conquer the kingdom of heaven. For in Matthew 5:3 it is said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."²²