grace of Jesus Christ; yea, he who shall have striven lawfully shall he crowned.[1] This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin,[2] the holy synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin. And if any one is of a contrary opinion, let him be anathema. This same holy synod doth nevertheless declare, that it is not in its intention to include in this decree, where original sin is treated of, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother of God; but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV.,[3] of happy memory, are to be observed, under the pains contained in the said constitutions, which it renews.
DECREE CONCERNING REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
On the Institution of a Lectureship of Sacred Scripture, and of the Liberal Arts.[4]
The same sacred and holy synod, adhering to the pious constitutions of the sovereign pontiffs, and of approved councils, and embracing and adding to them; that the heavenly treasure of the sacred books, which the Holy Ghost has with the greatest liberality delivered unto men, may not lie neglected, hath ordained and decreed, that, in those churches where there is found to be a prebend, prestimony,[5] or other stipend, under what name soever, destined for readers[6] in sacred theology, the bishops, archbishops, primates, and other ordinaries of those places, shall force and compel, even by the subtraction of the fruits, those who hold
- ↑ 2 Tim. ii. 5.
- ↑ Rom. vi. 12; vii. 8.
- ↑ Comp. Sess. vi. can. xxiii.
- ↑ Cf. Sess. xxiii. § 18, etc.
- ↑ This word probably means "a fund, or revenue, appropriated by the founder for the subsistence of a priest, without being erected into any title of benefice, chapel, prebend, or priory, and which is not subject either to the pope or to the ordinary, but whereof the patron, and those who have a right from him, are the collators, and nominate and confer pleno jure"—Encycl. Brit. v. xvii. p. 349. Hoffman, Lex. t. iii. p. 879, defines it—"beneficium cum aliquo onere," referring to Council of Trent, Sess. xxiii. 18. See Du Cange, vol. v. p. 781.
- ↑ I. e. lecturers. So at Oxford we have "readers" of rhetoric, anatomy, &c.
