Fifthly,the teaching that matrimony is a sacrament giveth to the clergy the judging of the lawfulness of marriages;and thereby,of what children are legitimate;and consequently,of the right of succession to hereditary kingdoms.
Sixthly,the denial of marriage to priests serveth to assure this power of the Pope over kings.For if a king be a priest,he cannot marry and transmit his kingdom to his posterity;if he be not a priest,then the Pope pretendeth this authority ecclesiastical over him,and over his people.
Seventhly,from auricular confession they obtain,for the assurance of their power,better intelligence of the designs of princes and great persons in the civil state than these can have of the designs of the state ecclesiastical.
Eighthly,by the canonization of saints,and declaring who are martyrs,they assure their power in that they induce simple men into an obstinacy against the laws and commands of their civil sovereigns,even to death,if by the Pope's excommunication they be declared heretics or enemies to the Church;that is,as they interpret it,to the Pope.
Ninthly,they assure the same,by the power they ascribe to every priest of making Christ;and by the power of ordaining penance,and of remitting and retaining of sins.
Tenthly,by the doctrine of purgatory,of justification by external works,and of indulgences,the clergy is enriched.
Eleventhly,by their demonology,and the use of exorcism,and other things appertaining thereto,they keep,or think they keep,the people more in awe of their power.
Lastly,the metaphysics,ethics,and politics of Aristotle,the frivolous distinctions,barbarous terms,and obscure language of the Schoolmen,taught in the universities (which have been all erected and regulated by the Pope's authority),serve them to keep these errors from being detected,and to make men mistake the ignis fatuus of vain philosophy for the light of the Gospel.
To these,if they sufficed not,might be added other of their dark doctrines,the profit whereof redoundeth manifestly to the setting up of an unlawful power over the lawful sovereigns of Christian people;or for the sustaining of the same when it is set up;or to the worldly riches,honour,and authority of those that sustain it.And therefore by the aforesaid rule of cui bono,we may justly pronounce for the authors of all this spiritual darkness,the Pope,and Roman clergy,and all those besides that endeavour to settle in the minds of men this erroneous doctrine,that the Church now on earth is that kingdom of God mentioned in the Old and New Testament.
But the emperors,and other Christian sovereigns,under whose government these errors and the like encroachments of ecclesiastics upon their office at first crept in,to the disturbance of their possessions and of the tranquillity of their subjects,though they suffered the same for want of foresight of the sequel,and of insight into the designs of their teachers,may nevertheless be esteemed accessaries to their own and the public damage.For without their authority there could at first no seditious doctrine have been publicly preached.I say they might have hindered the same in the beginning:but when the people were once possessed by those spiritual men,there was no human remedy to be applied that any man could invent.And for the remedies that God should provide,who never faileth in His good time to destroy all the machinations of men against the truth,we are to attend His good pleasure that suffereth many times the prosperity of His enemies,together with their ambition,to grow to such a height as the violence thereof openeth the eyes,which the wariness of their predecessors had before sealed up,and makes men by too much grasping let go all,as Peter's net was broken by the struggling of too great a multitude of fishes;whereas the impatience of those that strive to resist such encroachment,before their subjects'eyes were opened,did but increase the power they resisted.I do not therefore blame the Emperor Frederick for holding the stirrup to our countryman Pope Adrian;for such was the disposition of his subjects then,as if he had not done it,he was not likely to have succeeded in the empire.But I blame those that,in the beginning,when their power was entire,by suffering such doctrines to be forged in the universities of their own dominions,have held the stirrup to all the succeeding popes,whilst they mounted into the thrones of all Christian sovereigns,to ride and tire both them and their people,at their pleasure.
But as the inventions of men are woven,so also are they ravelled out;the way is the same,but the order is inverted.The web begins at the first elements of power,which are wisdom,humility,sincerity,and other virtues of the Apostles,whom the people,converted,obeyed out of reverence,not by obligation.Their consciences were free,and their words and actions subject to none but the civil power.