Christ’s privilege above Caesar’s; the lords may relieve the clergy of temporal goods

Again, in proportion as a lorddominus; dominari: lord; to exercise lordship / to lord it is more powerful, more prudent and more affectioned to his churchecclesia: church, he would bestow on them more excellent privilegesprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging; now these conditions are found by antonomasiaautonomatice / antonomastice: by antonomasia (pre-eminently) in Christ in comparison with Caesar; therefore also a privileging proportionally corresponding.¹ No one, therefore, will say that Caesar privileged the church more than the Lord Jesus Christ did; nor is it lawful to feign that Christ was not more powerful to give them temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods, as the apostles also could have received them more copiously, as is clear in their lives. Hence Simon Magus wished to give Peter much money for the apostolic privilege (as is clear, Acts 8), and undoubtedly it would be better than any amount of money or all the temporal goods of this world.² We, then, will not be more degenerate than the said Simon, valuing the privilege of Caesar more than the privilege of the Lord Jesus Christ.³

Nor does it avail to say that these privileges are so called equivocally, in name only, and therefore are not comparable; for God is better than the devil, the goods of grace are better than the goods of fortune, and according to the saints it is better to lack temporal goods in the secular manner than to have them. If, then, these things, so disparate, are comparable in a good said analogically, from the equal or from the greater, goods less disparate [are comparable].⁴

And besides this, God gave his own some temporal goods which, as to quantity and manner of having, are comparable to the gift of Caesar or of another secular lord; in this, then, that the said privileges are called [privileges] so equivocally, one must grant that the one exceeds the other infinitely in perfection, as spirit exceeds bodily nature.⁵

Again, according to what was said here in the corollaries of the definitiondescripcio: definition of privilege, no one can give a privilege unless Christ has principally given it; and since it does not befit a lord to give through a servant a gift more perfect than he gives 179singularly through himself, it follows that the privilege given by Christ as his own exceeds the privilege which he gave through Constantine, especially since those privileges seem to have been contrary.⁶ Therefore, the one being good, the other would savour in part of venomous malice; and consequently it would not be a privilege, any more than it would have been one that, of the sons of Zebedee, one should have sat at the right hand of Christ and the other at the left in a temporal kingdom.⁷ It is confirmed from what has often been said: a privilege is for a son of the father of the household to be placed in a worthier place for reward and in a safer place for escaping danger; nor is it right to doubt that Christ called his apostles to such a place, in which also, by a certain prerogative, the Baptist was, as Christ says, Matthew 11:11: "Among them that are born of women, who had fallen through sin, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist."⁸ Since, then, this definition of Christ is necessarily true, it is clear that neither Peter nor anyone else short of Christcitra Christum: short of Christ was greater than the Baptist with respect to God, a greatnessprioritas; majoritas: priority; greatness that is not reckoned by secular possession, since the Baptist was, short of Christ, the poorest of all, but by the degree of evangelical poverty, which consists in true humbling, in meritorious hardshippenalitas: hardship and in the building up of the church.⁹ In this, then, the Baptist was placed more securely for avoiding danger and more highly for seeking reward. Since, then, any state is the higher which God accepts the more, it follows that the state in which Christ placed the apostles and taught the church is a state higher than the state of secular glory in which the vicars of Christ have been placed and endowed by Caesar. Nor does it avail to say that that state was more perfect then, but now this state is more perfect: both because the fruit of the state shows the opposite, from the entanglement and detriment of the church, and also because the reasoning of the faith of scripture contradicts it; 180for the law of the counsels is perpetual, having no contrary, since it places man in a state nearer to the state of both innocences, whereas the state of secular greatness must be deserted because of its repugnance to the state of blessedness.¹⁰ How then is it not more imperfect than the other state, since it regards temporal greatness, which must be deserted, while the other [regards] greatness of virtue, which must always be had?¹¹ From these things it is gathered that the temporal lordstemporales domini: temporal lords, most of all by zeal for the privileges of the church, could discharge their clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric of the occupation of temporal goods beyond what is necessary for doing the evangelical work; for by doing so they could bring the church of the clergy back to a more perfect state, from what has been said; now since it is impossible that a man can do a good in kind unless he could do it well, it follows that the temporal lords could do it well.¹² Far be it, I say, to believe that the state in which Caesar placed the clergy could not be lawfully dissolved because of the conditionhabitudo: condition of the priests of Christ toward the mass of temporal goods. And since the state in which Christ placed his clergy could [on that view] be lawfully dissolved because of the imperfection of the condition of their life toward evangelical poverty and the other charisms with which Christ endowed the church, would not that word be suspect, accusing the proprietaries of inordinate affection for temporal goods, which says that God’s lawlex dei / lex Christi / lex evangelica: God's law / the law of Christ / the gospel law and his counsel are temporal things falling under dispensation, but not the ordinanceordinacio; ordinancia: ordinance; of the sacrament, ordination of Caesar as to the donation of temporal goods?¹³ Do we believe that excommunication, or the interpretation of a curse, binds the one who dissolves the ordinance of temporal lords more than the excommunication of Christ, of John and of Paul binds the one who dissolves the counsel of Christ? Does not Paul say, Galatians 1:9: "If any one preach besides that which hath been preached, let him be anathema"; and since he 181instructed his fellow apostle Timothy, 1 Timothy 6:8: "Having therefore food and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content"?¹⁴ Is it not contrary to this contentment to aspire inordinately to have, perpetually and indissolubly, secular lordshipdominium: lordship of whatever amount?¹⁵ Does not blessed Gregory say (as I recited above, chapter 3) that "the labour of seeking and defending temporal goods, and the grief of losing them, if it exceeds the labour and grief about spiritual goods sought or lost, shows that affection for earthly things presides inordinately in the mind"?¹⁶ Does not blessed Augustine, in the book De vera religione, chapter 92, say the same? Where, after he had shown what it is to cleave to God, and to whom the abundance of temporal goods flows, etc., he answers: "When," he says, "there is plenty of changeable goods, he does not trust in them; but when they are withdrawn, he learns whether they have not taken hold of him; because for the most part, when they are with us, we think that we do not love them, but when they begin to be absent, we find out who we are; for that was present without our love which departs without grief."¹⁷ If, then, any clergy is so given to the world that it grieves more for the loss of temporal goods than of virtue, and insists more on the acquisition or defence of them than of spiritual good, to that extent it makes itself unqualified to have these temporal goods, and consequently makes itself deserving to lose them. Nor is he who finally perseveres in this mind the one to whom these things were given, because he is a membermembrum: member of the devil and not part of the church (as is clear in the solution of the sixth argument of chapter 6 of this [work]).¹⁸ For true religion stands in the right love of blessed things, as in the book De vera 182religione, 93: "And this is perfect justice, by which we love the more excellent more and the lesser less." Vain, therefore, is the religion of one who does the opposite; the privilege of ciresorum cast upon those who strive purely is to be removed by way of remedy.¹⁹