God, then, has divided the charge of the human race between two powers, _viz._, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human things. Each is the greatest in its own kind: each has certain limits within which it is restricted, and those limits defined by the nature and proximate cause of each; so that there is, as we may say, a world marked off as a field for the proper action of each. But forasmuch as each has dominion over the same subjects, since it might come to pass that one and the same thing, though in different ways, still one and the same, might pertain to the right and the tribunal of both, therefore God, Who foreseeth all things, and Who has established both powers, must needs have arranged the course of each in right relation to one another, and in due order. "_For the powers that are ordained by God._" (Rom. xiii. 1.) And if this were not so, causes of rivalries and dangerous disputes would be constantly arising; and man would often have to stop in anxiety and doubt, like a traveller with two roads before him, not knowing what he ought to do, with two powers commanding contrary things, whose authority however, he cannot refuse without neglect of duty. But it would be most repugnant, so to think, of the wisdom and goodness of God, Who, even in physical things, though they are of a far lower order, has yet so attempered and combined together the forces and causes of nature in an orderly manner and with a sort of wonderful harmony, that none of them is a hindrance to the rest, and all of them most fitly and aptly combine for the great end of the universe. So, then, there must needs be a certain orderly connection between these two powers, which may not unfairly be compared to the union with which soul and body are united in man. What the nature of that union is, and what its extent, cannot otherwise be determined than, as we have said, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobility of their ends; for one of them has for its proximate and chief aim the care of the goods of this world, the other the attainment of the goods of heaven that are eternal. Whatsoever, therefore, in human affairs is in any manner sacred; whatsoever pertains to the salvation of souls or the worship of God, whether it be so in its own nature, or on the other hand, is held to be so for the sake of the end to which it is referred, all this is in the power and subject to the free disposition of the Church: but all other things which are embraced in the civil and political order, are rightly subject to the civil authority, since Jesus Christ has commanded that what is Caesar's is to be paid to Caesar, and what is God's to God. Sometimes, however, circumstances arise when another method of concord is available for peace and liberty; we mean when princes and the Roman Pontiff come to an understanding concerning any particular matter.