receive from God the vice-gerent power, because for that office a vicarship and conformity of morals is required, and the authority of an instituent. 13. The Pope is not the true and manifest successor of Peter, prince of the apostles . . if he lives with morals contrary to Peter, and if he seek avarice, he is then vicar of Judas Scoriot. And with equal evidence the cardinals are not the true and manifest successors of the college of the other apostles of Christ, unless they have lived after the manner of the apostles, keeping the commandments and counsels of our Lord Jesus Christ. 14. Doctors laying down that any one to be corrected by ecclesiastical censure, if he be unwilling to be set aright, is to be delivered over to secular judgment, certainly follow in this the priests and scribes and Pharisees, who, when saying it is not lawful for us to put any one to death,[1] delivered over Christ himself, when not wishing to obey them in all things, to the secular power, and that they are real homicides, more grievous than Pilate. 15. Ecclesiastical obedience is obedience according to the invention of priests of the Church, exclusive of the express written authority. 16. The immediate division of human works is, that they are either virtuous or vicious: because if man is vicious and does anything, he then acts viciously; and if he is virtuous, and does anything, he then acts virtuously; because as vice, which is called crime, or deadly sin, infects universally the acts of a vicious man, so virtue enliveneth all the acts of a virtuous man. 17. Priests of Christ living according to his law, and possessing an acquaintance with the Scripture and a desire to edify the people, ought to preach, notwithstanding a pretended excommunication. But if the Pope or any other prelate commands a priest so disposed not to preach, he ought not submissively to obey. 18. Any one receives the office of a preacher by mandate, who attains the priesthood, and that mandate he ought to execute, notwithstanding the pretended excommunication. 19. By ecclesiastical censures of excommunication, suspension, and interdict, the clergy get under their feet[2] the lay people for their own exaltation, multiply avarice, protect wickedness, and prepare the way for antichrist. It is an evident sign that such censures
