That
there is only one holy, Catholic and apostolic church we are bound to believe
and to hold, our faith urging us, and this we do firmly believe and simply
confess; and that outside this church there is no salvation or remission of
sins, as her spouse pro- claims in the Canticles, "One is my dove, my
perfect one. She is the only one of her
mother, the chosen of her that bore her" (Canticles 6:8); which represents
one mystical body whose head is Christ, while the head of Christ is God. In this church there is one Lord, one faith,
one baptism. At the time of the Flood
there was one ark, symbolizing the one church.
It was finished in one cubit and had one helmsman and captain, namely
Noah, and we read that all things on earth outside of it were destroyed. This church we venerate and this alone, the
Lord saying through his prophet, "Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword,
my only one from the power of the dog" (Psalm 21:21). He prayed for the soul, that is himself, the
head, and at the same time for the body, which he called the one church on
account of the promised unity of faith, sacraments and charity of the
church. This is that seamless garment
of the Lord which was not cut but fell by lot.
Therefore there is one body and one head of this one and only church,
not two heads as though it were a monster, namely Christ and Christ's vicar,
Peter and Peter's successor, for the Lord said to this Peter, "Feed my
sheep" (John 21:27). He said
"My sheep" in general, not these or those, whence he is understood to
have committed them all to Peter.
Hence, if the Greeks or any others say that they were not committed to
Peter and his successors, they necessarily admit that they are not of Christ's
flock, for the Lord says in John that there is one sheepfold and one shepard.
We
are taught by the words of the Gospel that in this church and in her power
there are two swords, a spiritual one and a temporal one. For when the apostles said "Here are
two swords" (Luke 22:38), meaning in the church since it was the apostles
who spoke, the Lord did not reply that it was too many but enough. Certainly
anyone who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not paid
heed to the words of the Lord when he said, "Put up thy sword into its
sheath" (Matthew 26:52). Both then
are in the power of the church, the material sword and the spiritual. But the one is exercised for the church, the
other by the church, the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand
of kings and soldiers, though at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword ought to be under the other and
the temporal authority subject to the spiritual power. For while the apostle says, "There is
no power but from God and those that are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1),
they would not be ordained unless one sword was under the other, and, being
inferior, was led by the other to the highest things. For according to the blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity
for the lowest to be led to the highest through intermediaries. In the order of the universe all things are
not kept in order in the same fashion and immediately but the lowest are
ordered by the intermediate and inferiors by superiors. But that the spiritual power excels any
earthly one in dignity and nobility we ought the more openly to confess in
proportion as spiritual things excel temporal ones.
Moreover
we clearly perceive this from the giving of tithes, from benediction and
sanctification, from the acceptance of this power and from the very government
of things. For, the truth bearing
witness, the spiritual power has to institute the earthly power and to judge it
if it has not been good. So is verified
the prophecy of Jeremias (1:10) concerning the church and the power of the
church, "Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over
kingdoms" etc.
Therefore,
if the earthly power errs, it shall be judged by the spiritual power, if a
lesser spiritual power errs it shall be judged by its superior, but if the
supreme spiritual power errs it can be judged only by God not by man, as the
apostle witnesses, "The spiritual man judgeth all things and he himself is
judged of no man" (1 Corinthians
2:15). Although this authority was
given to a man and is exercised by a man it is not human but rather divine,
being given to Peter at God's mouth, and confirmed to him and to his successors
in him, the rock whom the Lord acknowledged when he said to Peter himself
"whatsoever thou shalt bind" etc. (Matthew 16:19). Whoever therefore resists this power so
ordained by God resists the ordinance of God unless, like the Manicheans, he
imagines that these two beginnings, which we judge to be false and heretical,
as Moses witnesses, for not "in the beginnings" but "in the beginning"
God created heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1). Therefore we declare, state, define
and pronounce that is altogether necessary to salvation for every human
creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.