Liber tertius

VIINTRODUCTION.for any reforming thoughts. But from the time of the Good Parhamenthe began from his chair at the university to defend those principlesAvhich had been advocated, and doubtless also attacked, iii the debatesof that parUament, and he gave utterance to them in his books. Inthem are precipitated those ideas by which the Good Parhamcnt wasgoverned, theses and dogmas denying the Churcli all temporal rule.Many of the theses seem actually to have been taken from the wellknown Long Bill of the Good Parliament, for example, wlien hecomplains of the oppression of the EngHsh Church by the Curia, of theprovisions, exemptions, demands for money and the frivolous appeals —formerly unusual — or of the conferring of English bishoprics onincapable persons, who would not perform their pastoral duties. The DeCiviH Dominio, hke the proceedings in the Good ParHament, made agreat sensation, despite the heavy style in which it is written, for theReformer is still burdened with hi.s whole heavy scholastic armour, andthat makes the book hard to read. In the second and third booksbesides he returns to his former arguments, and so there is no lack ofthe repetition of one and the same thing.The first book consists of four chief parts. In the first he supportsthe thesis that no man that is in a state of sin should hold offtce, orhave dominion. It is a mistake to put temporal rule into the hands ofthe unjust. Neithcr a witness's evidence nor a judge's judgment, neithermaterial possession nor inheritance, exchange nor donation gives theunjust any right to rule, No man can gi\ e another anything withoutGod's will—he can only impart what God gives. He gives only to thosein a state of grace. Only to the just does dominion belong. But how isit then with the rule of the priests? Generally it is said: He has giventhem rule over others. Yet the priest must be not the master, but theservant of his flock. He is commissioned not to rule, but to teach andto preach. He cannot at one and the same time be master and servant.Temporal authority he cannot have, spiritual belongs to every Christian;in this way every Christian is a priest and king. There are secularrulers appointed for corporal government, and therefore Gregory theGreat caUed himself not holiest father, but servaut of God's servantsthus pronouncing words that suited his office. In spiritual government heis the higher who serves his neighbour most. and the richest he Avhomost despises worldly goods. AII government must rest on the basis of