§ 1. Just as the nature of the human being consists of soul and body, so too there are two principles by which, according to nature, he is directed and led to his proper ends. The first is political power, which God willed to exist for the safety of bodies, peace, and the natural honorable conduct of life; the second is spiritual power, which raises the soul toward divine and supernatural things.
§ 2. The rivalry between priesthood and kingship is ancient. Many, admiring or flattering royal majesty, place the scepter before the miter; wiser and more eminent men, remote from every suspicion of flattery, prefer the priesthood. The rights of kings are great. In the king is the fountain of dignities and the image of the highest glory. Cyril says in On the Right Faith in Christ: “To them it is said, ‘You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.’” They sit upon God’s throne, are avengers, and bear the sword; they are the Lord’s anointed, lights of the Church, sacrosanct, together with the very many other things which eternal Majesty has sanctioned for the stability of human majesty.
Nevertheless, the priesthood is greater than kingship, for to it it was said: “Whatever you loose upon earth will be loosed also in heaven, and whatever you bind upon earth will be bound also in heaven.” The priest, therefore, will loose or bind the king, and the priest’s judgment will be ratified in heaven before God. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who was praised for the lot of a priest and for the judgment of a good king, testifies that kings are not exempt from that jurisdiction. Nor do those deny it who transferred the dignity of the old priesthood to the curia and royal diadem, for they have arrogated this power to themselves and to their churches, as they call them. I shall treat that matter when I discuss political magistracy; now I shall set forth the difference between the two powers and the eminence of the spiritual power.
§ 3. The first difference between sacred and civil power is seen in the end of each. The end of the ecclesiastical magistrate is to lead subjects to piety, religion, and supernatural happiness, and that by virtue of his office and a singular obligation. The political magistrate looks to peace, public tranquillity, and moral virtue. Yet because he is sometimes a Christian, he must refer all those things to God’s glory and eternal salvation. Therefore these powers must be joined with the greatest zeal, so that by mutual assistance they may make good citizens. Hence the ecclesiastical magistrate will make provision in every way for public quiet, and the prince will remove from the midst those things which obstruct religion, such as blasphemies, the frenzies of the circus, and the obscenities of the theater.
Next, they also have a different efficient cause. For although both kingship and priesthood are from God, there is nevertheless generally a difference in the manner of conferral. The people, or the whole state, confers civil jurisdiction; although that right resides in a few, the few nevertheless received it from the whole state. The right of the priesthood is greater and more divine than to be conferred by the people or a prince. The right of civil power arises from nature and is assigned by the state to one or more persons; but among sacred prelates the person is designated by human beings and the power is conferred by God.
§ 4. They differ in the manner of governing and in the means tending toward their different ends. The pontiff, by teaching, exhorting, and proposing eternal rewards, calls people away from vices and leads them to virtue. The emperor also employs these means, but uses command more than admonition. The reason for the difference is that civil power in itself regards external acts only; ecclesiastical power presses upon minds and inward piety. Hence civil punishments are generally external, such as infamy, exile, and death; ecclesiastical punishments are mostly internal, such as excommunication and irregularity, which pertain to souls, although it employs external punishments too.
§ 5. If civil and spiritual power are compared with one another, civil power has a prerogative in certain things; spiritual power is more excellent absolutely. If contention is absent from either side, this readily becomes clear.
Civil power has certain things which are not fitting for sacred power. The first of these is the insignia and display of majesty and the multitude of guards. For a bishop is not to be approved if he proceeds with royal or princely splendor, unless he is also a prince.
The second is that civil authority has a right over bodies—to cut them down and kill them. Spiritual authority, however, cannot exceed paternal correction in punishments of the body. Of itself it has no power to kill, mutilate, torture, cut to pieces with whips, punish by exile, or consign someone to a severe and perpetual prison. For these are works of the corporeal sword. Thus Gregory writes to John, bishop of Constantinople, in book 2, epistle 52: “Your Fraternity knows well what the canons say concerning bishops who wish to be feared through blows. For we have been made shepherds, not strikers; and the eminent preacher says, ‘Reprove, entreat, rebuke, in all patience and doctrine.’ But this preaching which exacts faith by blows is new and unheard of.”
Moderate correction is nevertheless permitted; persons are rightly chastised with blows, prisons, and exiles according to the prescription of the canons when their deserts so require. But when this power exercises graver punishments, it has been received from the secular power and employs the secular hand.
The third is that kings have power even over priests themselves unless they are exempt, as they now are in fact and by law. I shall speak about this later, when I treat exemption.
§ 6. Spiritual power is absolutely more worthy and more excellent than civil power. For it is architectonic, and civil power is subordinated to it, since the end of sacred power is far more excellent. Therefore Christ, the king of the daughter of Sion, the meek king, always exercised the former power, but scarcely ever the political power.
§ 7. The prerogative of sacred power is manifold.
The first dignity is certainly attributed to the priesthood by the judgments of all nations; its cause is that the priest is placed as an intermediary between God and the people. Hence too the priest is protected more by divine power than by his own power. Thus an otherwise atheistic writer and denier of divine providence judges concerning this matter; looking upon the effect, he did not know the cause. Machiavelli says in chapter 11 of his Prince: “Now there remains for us only to discuss the pontifical and sacred principate. All difficulties surround it before it is possessed. For it is sought either through the favor of virtue or of fortune; yet it is preserved by the effort of neither. It is maintained by institutions which have now grown old by antiquity in religion itself, and the force and nature of all these is so great that they preserve their princes in authority, however they conduct themselves or order their life. These alone among all persons possess dominion,
“yet do not defend it. They also possess peoples subjected to them, but no care of governing those peoples touches them. Although their provinces are undefended, there is no one who takes them away. Likewise, although the peoples under their administration perceive themselves neglected, they give it no consideration. So far are they from thinking that they should withdraw or free themselves from these princes that they are not even able to do so. These alone among all persons, therefore, possess secure and happy dominions.”
Yet amid his calumnies and impiety these words shine forth: that they are ruled by a heavenly divinity and that God bears them on high.
Indeed, not only the true and Christian priesthood possesses this praise and power, but also that of the Jews, which was held in great honor because it was a type and image of that supercelestial light which Christ—the true priest according to the order of Melchizedek and the true king of the Church—introduced through himself and through his legates and vicars, the pontiffs. The authority of the typological priesthood is fortified by the most holy law of God, Deuteronomy 17:
If you perceive that a difficult and ambiguous judgment exists among you between blood and blood, cause and cause, leprosy and non-leprosy, and you see the words of the judges within your gates vary, arise and ascend to the place which the Lord your God will choose. You shall come to the priests of Levitical stock and to the judge who shall be at that time; and you shall inquire of them, and they will indicate to you the truth of the judgment. You shall do whatever those who preside over the place which the Lord has chosen say and teach you according to his law; you shall follow their sentence and shall turn aside neither to the right nor to the left.
Hence superstition also transferred power to the impious and idolatrous priests of the nations. “In ancient times,” says Strabo in book 17 of his Geography, “at Meroë, which is the metropolis of the Ethiopian kingdom, the highest power was in the hands of the priests, and their authority was so great that sometimes they commanded the king to die by sending a messenger and substituted another in his place.”
They possessed the same power in neighboring Egypt, according to Aelian in book 14, chapter 34, of the Varia Historia; for among the Egyptians the judges were the same persons as the priests. In former times the Magi, who were both wise men and sacrificers, ruled in Persia. “But now,” says Agathias, “the Persians honor the Magi of this time and venerate them exceedingly, so that by their counsel and predictions all public matters are administered. Presiding and judging separately, they determine what reward each person merits for a thing well done and what punishment one who has committed a crime merits; nor indeed will anything seem either lawful or equitable to the Persians which has not been confirmed by the sentence of the Magi.” Thus he writes in book 2 of his Histories. The cause of so honored a superstition was that they regarded the divinity itself as venerable and therefore thought that its worshipers also ought to be revered.
And so the Romans likewise conferred many matters upon the jurisdiction of the priesthood: they sought from the priests the reckoning of treaties, wars, and peace.
§ 8. A second prerogative lies in exemption from laws and civil burdens, and it is a liberty greater than all others. This has been granted partly by divine and partly by human law. By divine law they possess the immunity which is necessary for the office of sacrificing, teaching, binding, and absolving.
For when Christ sent his Apostles into all the earth, no power in the entire world could impede, delay, or in any way restrain them. And so, against the edicts of the Jews, Roman governors, and barbarian kings, and against persecutions, prisons, torments, and crosses, they announced the name of the Lord without fear. They can be impeded in their office neither by express decrees nor through indirect measures and cunning craft. They cannot be so occupied with curial offices that they cannot be free for studies, prayers, and exhortation. This reason applies to all civil burdens which prohibit spiritual exercises. For if God established Apostles, Doctors, Evangelists, and Bishops, and if he willed them to perform their office, then that which opposes the divine hierarchy is tyranny and impious dominion. Nor is their mission a just one if there is another power in the Christian world which can lawfully overthrow and impede it. For example, it is the Bishop’s office to feed the sheep, preserve them whole, bind up the broken, strengthen the weak, be present to all through admonition, exhortation, counsel, and aid, and profit them through consolation and rebuke. Therefore, the emperor cannot occupy him in court business, embassies, warfare, or provincial administration in such a manner that he is compelled to desist from his function, for it is altogether necessary that provision be made for that function through the Bishops themselves or other suitable and diligent laborers lawfully substituted for them. This immunity, therefore, belongs to divine right. For St. Paul or Peter was not compelled to answer Nero when he called their names or to go campaign against barbarians; nor were Bishops and presbyters such as Timothy, Titus, and others, upon abandoning the word of God, bound by imperial commands, nor could they have been bound.
Another exemption belongs to human law and was granted by the munificence and authority of pious princes. All the legal defenses are full of such things, as is the law of Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, Augustuses, title 2 of book 1 of the Code:
It pleases us, after the tenor of reasonable counsel has been weighed, to prescribe with strict moderation the particular necessities of the individual cities from which churches shall be immune. For first the injury of that usurpation must be driven away, lest estates dedicated to the uses of heavenly mysteries be harassed by the dregs of sordid public services. From this time forward let nothing extraordinary or superindicted be demanded; let no anxiety about transport be invented; finally, let nothing be ascribed to their functions beyond the canonical contribution which the sudden burden of an unforeseen necessity has demanded. If anyone contravenes this, after the sharpness of the vengeance which must rightly be exacted against sacrilegious persons, let him be subjected to perpetual deportation into exile.
And there is the constitution of Emperor Frederick II:
We command it to be proclaimed throughout Italy that all statutes and customs introduced against the liberty of the Church and her persons, contrary to canonical and imperial sanctions, are null and void; a new constitution commands that they be utterly abolished from the capitularies, and decrees that similar attempts shall henceforth be null by the law itself. If anything contrary is done, the appointed penalties will threaten. But if any despisers of this new constitution are found within a year, their goods throughout our entire empire may be occupied by everyone with impunity.
And that of Constantine:
Let the injustice of every undue summons and the wickedness of unjust exaction be repelled from clerics, and let there be no summons against them for sordid public services. And when merchants are called to some suitable contribution, let every disturbance of this kind cease with respect to clerics. For if they have amassed anything either by thrift, foresight, or commerce—yet commerce conscious of honor—it ought to be administered for the use of the poor and needy. Let them consider that whatever could have been sought and collected in their workshops or shops has been collected as the profit of religion. Moreover, the statutes of the deified prince my father provided by manifold observance even for their people who engage in commerce, so that these clerics might abound in more privileges. Therefore, let the necessity of extraordinary services and every molestation cease with respect to the aforesaid.
Let them not be called to any compulsory transport service, nor their resources and property. Let a prerogative of this kind come to the aid of all clerics, so that the wives of clerics and their children too, and their servants, males as well as females, and their sons and daughters, may remain forever immune from public services of this kind.
The whole third title of the first book, On Bishops, Clerics, and Orphanages, pursues these matters.
This exemption of property and persons is consonant with divine law, but was granted by human laws. It could scarcely have been denied, because it was becoming and nearly necessary that God’s ministers should be endowed with that immunity. But that all those things be preserved for the sacred order is required by the covenants and agreements and by the sanctity and good faith of those who granted them.
§ 9. The third prerogative is that the emperor or prince has no right in ecclesiastical matters. Thus King Uzziah too, says Cyprian in his book On the Unity of the Church, “when, carrying the censer and violently assuming for himself a sacrifice contrary to God’s law, he was unwilling to obey and believe Azariah the priest when he resisted him, was confounded by divine indignation and marked on his forehead by the variegation of leprosy. When the Lord was offended, he was marked in that part of the body where those who merit the Lord are marked. And the sons of Aaron, who placed upon the altar strange fire which the Lord had not commanded, were immediately extinguished in the sight of the avenging Lord.”
Therefore, in the Third Roman Synod under Symmachus it was decreed that kings should not involve themselves in sacred affairs, distinction 96, chapter 1, Bene. Thus also at the Council of Chalcedon Marcian wished to be present not as judge but to protect the decrees: “We wished to be present,” he says, “to confirm the faith, not to display power, according to the example of the most religious prince Constantine.” Finally, in chapter 5 he denies that he judges divine matters. No less did Theodosius, when he sent Candidianus, count of the household troops, to the Council of Ephesus, forbid him to involve himself in ecclesiastical discussions. Hence Constantine the Great, when the Donatists appealed to him, referred them back to Melchiades. Valentinian too, when Hypatianus, bishop of Heraclea, consulted him about the location of a council, replied: “It is not lawful for me to involve myself in ecclesiastical business; let them assemble wherever they please.” Socrates, book 4, chapter 3. The same emperor fined a Bishop who appealed from a synod to a secular tribunal and prohibited such appeals. Emperor Gratian referred the causes of Bishops from the secular tribunal to the Metropolitans.
Therefore, the constancy of Ambrose is deservedly praised. In the presence of the younger Emperor Valentinian and secular judges, he refused to dispute against Auxentius, the Bishop of the Arian party, and yielded nothing of his liberty either to threats or to reverence for the August power. This reverence for pontiffs came upon even impious emperors and kings. Theodoric, the Arian king of the Goths, wished the judges in the accusation of Symmachus to be Bishops, to whom he remitted the inquiry. His grandson Athalaric imitated him and refused to allow clerics to be judged by secular men.
But more will be said about these matters elsewhere. For now these things had to be said concerning the difference between empire and priesthood, a difference which Ambrose in chapter 2 of On the Dignity of the Priesthood reports to be so great that, if you compare priesthood to kingship, priesthood will be what gold is among metals. Gregory Nazianzen says: “We too exercise authority—and one more excellent, unless indeed it is equitable to subject the spirit to the fasces of the flesh.” Chrysostom says the same in homilies 4 and 5 on Isaiah.
Gelasius therefore truly distinguished these two powers when he wrote to Emperor Anastasius: “There are two things, Emperor Augustus” (distinction 96, chapter 10), “by which this world is principally governed: the sacred authority of the Pontiffs and the royal power. Of these, the burden of the priests is so much the weightier because they will have to render an account at the divine judgment even for the kings of human beings.” Gregory VII adduces these words in confirmation of the truth.
§ 10. The civil magistrate is the priests’ advocate and defender. “Most Christian prince,” says Boniface to Honorius, “Mother Church would be afflicted with many more things if her causes were not secure before you and if, in the suppression of idols and the correction of heretics, she had not prevailed by your faith, divine worship always flourishing together with the empire.” Hence the emperor is also bound to the pontiff by oath. His oath in the constitution of Otto is this:
To you, Lord Pope John, I, King Otto, make promise and oath through the Father and the Son, through this wood of the life-giving cross, and through these relics of the saints: that, if by the Lord’s permission I come to Rome, I will exalt the holy Roman Church and you, her ruler, according to my power; and never by my will, counsel, consent, or exhortation shall you lose the life, limbs, and honor which you possess. In the city of Rome I shall make no assembly or ordinance concerning anything which pertains to you or to the Romans without your counsel; and whatever of the land of St. Peter comes into our power I shall restore to you. Whoever I entrust with the Italian kingdom, I shall cause him to swear that he will be your helper in defending the land of St. Peter according to his power. So help me God and these holy Gospels of God.
And so kings and princes have been accustomed to call themselves sons of the Church; tyrants call themselves her masters. Gregory VII speaks excellently: “Who doubts that the priests of Christ are accounted fathers and teachers of kings, princes, and all the faithful? Is it not recognized as wretched madness if a son endeavors to subject his father to himself, or a disciple his teacher, and to submit him by unjust obligations to his own power—the man by whom he believes that he can be bound and loosed not only on earth but also in heaven?” A judge of kings, at least in the manner in which he judges kings, is greater than kings.
Over kings, fearful among their own flocks, The priest has authority even over the kings themselves.
§ 11. The civil power honors the priesthood exceedingly. Thus Marcellus writes to Maxentius: “It belongs to a good and religious prince to restore churches that have been crushed and torn apart, to build new ones, and to honor and protect the priests of God. Hence we read that the holy Apostles and their successors established under divine attestation that persecutions ought not to be made, disturbances ought not to be inflicted, those laboring in the Lord’s field ought not to be envied, and the dispensers of the eternal king ought not to be expelled.”
Nor is excess in that honor easy, since God is honored in his minister.
§ 12. In sacred matters the royal will is subject to the priest. Thus distinction 10, chapter 3: “It is certain that this is salutary for your affairs: when the causes of God are treated, in accordance with his constitution, you should endeavor to subject the royal will to Christ’s priests, not to prefer it; you should learn the sacrosanct things from their prelates rather than teach them; you should follow the ecclesiastical form, not prescribe by human agency rights which it must follow; and you should not wish to rule over the sanctions of him to whose clemency God willed the neck of your pious devotion to be submitted, lest, while the measure of the heavenly ordering is exceeded, an insult be made against the one who orders.”
The reason is set forth by Clement I in epistle 3, On the Office of Priests:
For because you perform the Lord’s embassy, it is yours to teach the peoples; it is theirs to obey you as God. But if all presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, and the remaining clerics, and all princes of both higher and lower rank, and the remaining peoples, tribes, and tongues do not obey you Bishops, they will be not only infamous but exiles from the kingdom of God and the fellowship of the faithful, and strangers to the thresholds of God’s holy Church. For it is yours to instruct them; it is theirs to obey you as God, whose embassy you perform, since the Lord says, “He who hears you hears me, and he who despises you despises me. He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” For nothing is more unjust or dishonorable than for sons to exist rebellious against fathers, or clerics or laymen disobedient to their teachers, or disciples disobedient or insolent toward their masters.
§ 13. Hence we read the very free rebukes of many priests directed to the highest princes. Gelasius, epistle 13 to Emperor Anastasius: “Supported, therefore, by such institutions and authorities” (distinction 96, chapter 10), “many Pontiffs have excommunicated some Kings and other Emperors. For if some particular example concerning the persons of princes is required, blessed Pope Innocent excommunicated Emperor Arcadius because he consented that St. John Chrysostom be driven from his see. Blessed Ambrose, although holy but not Bishop of the universal Church, excluded from the Church the great Emperor Theodosius, excommunicating him for a fault which did not appear so grave to other priests. He also shows in his writings that gold is not so much more precious than lead as sacerdotal dignity is higher than royal power, writing in this manner near the beginning of his Pastoral: ‘The episcopal honor and sublimity, brothers, can be equaled by no comparisons. If you compare it with the brilliance of kings and the diadem of princes, it will be much farther beneath it than if you compare the metal lead with the splendor of gold, since you see the necks of kings and princes submitted to the knees of priests and, after kissing their right hands, believe themselves fortified by their prayers.’”
§ 14. Kings can be excommunicated by Bishops. See distinction 96, chapter 10, Duo sunt. For since the offenses of princes can deserve this and the princes are subject to priests, it follows that priests have the power to punish them. But the primary spiritual punishment is excommunication. This power existed also among the Jews and was exercised first against the impious, then against the faithful. For they made those men “without the synagogues” who were impious or whom they regarded as such. This censure flourished among the Essenes as the gravest of all. As Josephus reports in book 2, chapter 7, of The Jewish War: “Those discovered in sins they expel from their congregation; and the man condemned in this manner is generally consumed by a pitiable death. For, bound by their oaths and customs, he cannot receive food offered by others, but, plucking grasses in the manner of beasts and wasted by hunger, he decays in his limbs. For this reason they often took pity upon many and received them when they were breathing their last, judging that they had paid a punishment sufficient for their sins, which had brought them as far as death.”
In exactly the same manner excommunicated men wandered among the Gentiles, as did Thyestes and others, by whose fellowship people believed themselves contaminated. Such were those consecrated to Dis, who could be killed by anyone with impunity, as Dionysius reports in book 2. And Caesar in book 6 of The Gallic War says that among the Gauls those who did not obey the Druids were held in the place of criminals, everyone fled their approach and conversation, judgment was not rendered for them, and no honor was accorded them.
§ 15. The Christian priesthood is royal. First Peter 2. For Christ was both king and priest. He answered Pilate: “You say it, because I am a king.” And Nathanael truly says in John 1: “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Nor did the whole people, knowing the Messiah’s dignity, fail to acclaim him when he came, John 12: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.” For the Prophet had foretold that the meek king of the daughter of Sion would come. Therefore, when he transferred the priesthood, he also added kingship.
Christ did not abolish political dominion, but nevertheless willed it to be subject to spiritual power. In this respect, indeed, the latter can be called more than royal. Ignatius says truly in epistle 10: “For if the man who rises against a King will rightly be judged worthy of punishment, as one who violates the good constitutions of the laws, how much graver a penalty do you think the man will undergo who wishes to act without the Bishop, breaking concord and confounding the proper order? For the priesthood is the summit of all the goods which exist among human beings.”
Although these things sometimes provoke the indignation of political writers, the matter itself nevertheless remains clear by natural, divine, ecclesiastical, and civil law. For the dignity of the priesthood cannot be moved from its place without shaking religion.
§ 16. Many others have defended the Church’s sacred right, but Gregory of Toulouse did so eminently in book 15, chapter 1, of On the State. These are his words, §11:
“Zacharias, supreme Pontiff of God’s Church, transferred the Gallic kingdom from Louis to Pepin. [Diodorus Siculus, book 4 of the Library, chapter 1.] And Stephen II, supreme pontiff, transferred the empire from the Greeks to the Germans and to Charlemagne, the son of Pepin. [Canalius, cause 16, question 5.] Gregory V, the Saxon supreme pontiff, about the year 995, confirmed for the Germans by a greater privilege the power of electing. [Chapter Venerabilem—perhaps ‘the Venerable Bede’—On Election, book 1, title 6, of the Decretals; Blondus, book 3, decade 2; Platina, Gregory V; Krantz, book 4, chapter 25.]
“And St. Ignatius commands: ‘Let the presbyters,’ he says, ‘and all the clergy, together with all the people, with the soldiers and princes, and even the Caesars, obey the Bishop; the Bishop, Christ.’ [St. Ignatius, epistle 9.] No one doubts that St. Ambrose exercised this power against Theodosius I, Caesar, for he interdicted the sacred rites to the Emperor and removed him from the barriers of the Church until he repented of the crime that, in Thessaly, on account of an insurrection and the killing of a single tribune, he had killed seven thousand. [Ambrose, book 5 of the Epistles, epistle 28; Rufinus, book 2, chapter 18; Eutropius, book 12.] Innocent I approved the same thing against Arcadius Caesar. [Chapter Nos si incompetenter, §1, cause 2, question 7.] Liberius, the supreme pontiff, also resisted the gatherings convoked by Caesar against Athanasius. [Ammianus Marcellinus, book 15, and Athanasius.] Tertullian calls the Supreme Pontiff the king of the age. [Tertullian, book To His Wife.]
“Peter had two swords, bearing a symbol of each jurisdiction, which the Lord God Jesus Christ said were enough; nevertheless, he prohibited him from the exercise of the material and corporeal sword and ordered him to keep it in its sheath. [St. Matthew, chapter 26.] Nor did he wish his Church indiscriminately to inflict temporal death. [Chapter In archiepiscopatu, On Abduction; chapter Sententiam sanguinis, Lest Clerics or Monks, and so forth; Occidit; and canon Legitur, cause 2, final question; chapter Nos si incompetenter, § Iis ita, cause 2, question 7.] Although, in the old law—which foreshadowed our Church—the priests employed that sword: Samuel against King Agag [1 Kings 14 and 15]; Elijah against the prophets of Baal [3 Kings 18] and against the captains of fifty belonging to Ahaziah [4 Kings 1]; Elisha against the mocking boys [4 Kings 2]; Jehoiada against Athaliah [4 Kings 11; 2 Chronicles 22]; Eliakim against Holofernes [Judith 4]; and St. Peter himself against Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5].”
Thus the Church’s right remains: the right which she received from God, which she held by the will and covenant of kings, and which she rendered ratified and certain by long possession.