He also recognises the various grades of the hierarchy, priestly
and episcopal Orders. “The Church is a general hospital for healing
those who are spiritually sick”;[579] the rules which she gives to
the clergy, the recital of the Divine Office for instance, must be
obediently carried out.[580] She has a right to temporal possessions,
only “at the present day almost all declare these to be spiritual
things; they, the clergy, are masters in this ‘spiritual’ domain and
are more careful about it than about their real spiritualities, or
about their use of thunderbolts [excommunications] in the sentences
pronounced by the Church.”[581]
According to him, the prelates and the Church have a perfect right
to condemn false teachers however much the latter may “utter their
foolish cry of ‘we have the truth, we believe, we hear, we call
upon God.’” “Just as though they must be of God because they seem
to themselves to be of God. No, we have an authority which has been
implanted in the Church, and the Roman Church has this authority in
her hands. Therefore the preachers of the Church, unless they fall
into error, preach with assurance [on account of their commission].
But false teachers are pleased with their own words, because they
are according to their own ideas. They appear to demand the greatest
piety, but are themselves governed by their own opinion, and their
self-will.”[582] “Whoever declares that he is sent by God must either
give proof of his mission by wonders and heavenly testimony, as
the Apostles did, or he must be recognised and commissioned by an
authority confirmed by Heaven. In the latter case, he must stand and
teach in humble subjection to such authority, ever ready to submit to
its judgment; he must speak what he is commissioned to speak and not
what his own taste leads him to invent.... Anathema is the weapon,”
he exclaims—unconscious of his own future—“which lays low the
heretics.”[583]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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