But this saying must not be understood to mean that Christ, who is God, is not the lord of this kingdom, for the Psalmist says: "The sea is His, and He made it, and His hands formed the dry land."[317] We must understand it to mean that, as _the pattern of the Church_, He had not the care of this kingdom. It is as if a golden seal were to speak of itself, and say: "I am not the standard for such and such a class of things;" for in so far as it is gold, this saying is untrue, seeing that gold is the standard of all metals; but it is true in so far as it is a sign capable of being received by impression. [Footnote 317: Ps. xcv. 5.--(W.)] It belongs, then, to the very form of the Church always to speak the same, always to think the same; and to do the opposite of this is evidently contrary to its essential form--that is to say, to its nature. And from this it may be collected that the power of bestowing authority on this kingdom is contrary to the nature of the Church; for contrariety which is in thought or word follows from contrariety which is in the thing thought and the thing said; just as truth and falsehood in speech come from the being or the not-being of the thing, as we learn from the doctrine of the _Categories_. It has then become manifest enough by means of the preceding arguments, by which the contention of our opponents has been shown to lead to an absurd result, that the authority of the Empire is not in any way dependent on the authority of the Church. XVI.--Although it has been proved in the preceding chapter that the authority of the Empire has not its cause in the authority of the Supreme Pontiff; for we have shown that this argument led to absurd results; yet it has not been entirely shown that the authority of the Empire depends directly upon God, except as a result from our argument. For it is a consequence that, if the authority comes not from the vicar of God, it must come from God Himself. And therefore, for the complete determination of the question proposed, we have to prove directly that the emperor or monarch of the world stands in an immediate relation to the King of the universe, who is God. For the better comprehending of this, it must be recognised that man alone, of all created things, holds a position midway between things corruptible and things incorruptible; and therefore[318] philosophers rightly liken him to a dividing line between two hemispheres. For man consists of two essential parts, namely, the soul and the body. If he be considered in relation to his body only, he is corruptible; but if he be considered in relation to his soul only, he is incorruptible. And therefore the Philosopher spoke well concerning the incorruptible soul when he said in the second book "of the Soul:" "It is this alone which may be separated, as being eternal, from the corruptible."[319]