married folk, appear vile in their eyes[112]. [Sidenote: Papal Dispensations and their Inconsistency] From what has been said we learn that the Roman pontiff is guilty of two glaring errors. In the first place, he grants dispensations from vows[113], and does it as though he alone of all Christians possessed this authority; such is the temerity and audacity of wicked men. If it be possible to grant a dispensation from a vow, then any brother may grant one to his neighbor or even to himself. But if one's neighbor cannot grant a dispensation, neither can the pope by any right. For whence has he his authority? From the power of the keys? But the keys belong to all, and avail only for sins (Matthew xviii) [Matt. 18:15 ff.][114]. Now they themselves claim that vows are "of divine right." Why then does the pope deceive and destroy the poor souls of men by granting dispensations in matters of divine right, in which no dispensations can be granted? He babbles indeed, in the section "Of vows and their redemption,"[115] of having the power to change vows, just as in the law the firstborn of an ass was changed or a sheep [Ex.13:13]--as if the firstborn of an ass, and the vow he commands to be everywhere and always offered, were one and the same thing, or as if when God decrees in His law that a sheep shall be changed or an ass, the pope, a mere man, may straightway claim the same power, not in his own law but in God's! It was not a pope, but an ass changed for a pope[116], that made this decretal; so egregiously senseless and godless is it. The other error is this. The pope decrees, on the other hand, that marriage is dissolved if one party enter a monastery even without the consent of the other, provided the marriage be not yet consummated. Gramercy, what devil puts such monstrous things into the pope's mind! God commands men to keep faith and not break their word to one another, and again, to do good with that which is their own; for He hates "robbery in a holocaust," [Isa. 61:8] as he says by the mouth of Isaiah. But one spouse is bound by the marriage contract to keep faith with the other, and he is not his own. He cannot break his faith by any right, and whatever he does with himself is robbery if it be without the other's consent. Why does not one who is burdened with debts follow this same rule and obtain admission to an order, so as to be released from his debts and be free to break his word? O more than blind! Which is greater; the faith commanded by God or a vow devised and chosen by man? Thou art a shepherd of souls, O pope? And ye that teach such things are doctors of sacred theology? Why then do ye teach them? Because, forsooth, ye have decked out your vow as a better work than marriage, and do not exalt faith, which alone exalts all things, but ye exalt works, which are naught in the sight of God, or which are all alike so far as any merit is concerned[117].