9. From this there follows the truth that the ban of itself ruins, condemns or harms no one, but seeks and finds the ruined and condemned soul for the purpose of bringing it back. For all chastisement is for the correction of sin; the ban is simply a chastisement and motherly correction; therefore it makes no one worse or more sinful, but is ordained solely to restore the inward spiritual fellowship when justly laid, or to deepen it when unjustly imposed. This is proved by St. Paul when he says in II Corinthians xiii: This I write to you according to the power which the Lord hath given me, to edification and not to destruction," [2 Cor. 13:10] And thus, when he rebukes him who had taken his step-mother to wife, he says in I Corinthians v: "I together with you deliver him unto the devil for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved at the last day." [1 Cor. 5:5] Thus also in the passage quoted above he said: "We should not count him who is under the ban as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother, in order that he may be put to shame and not be lost." [2 Thess. 3:15] Nay, even Christ Himself, as man, had not the power to cut off and deliver a single soul to the devil, as He says in John vi: "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out, and this is the will of My Father Who sent Me, that I should not destroy or lose what He giveth Me." [John 6:37, 39] Again He says: "The Son of Man is not come to destroy, but to save men's souls." [Luke 9:56] If Christ Himself and all the apostles had no other power than to help souls, and have let behind them no other power in the Church, how dare the blind tyrants presume and boast in their presumption that they have power to curse, to condemn and to destroy, which power is even denied them by their own canon law; for in the Liber Sextus[10], which treats of the sentence of excommunication, we read: "Since the ban is a medicine and not a poison, only a discipline, not a destructive uprooting, in so far as the one subjected to it does not despise it: therefore let every spiritual judge give diligence to prove himself one who seeks by the ban naught but to correct and to cure."