the sole power to judge whether it be to the salvation of men’s souls or not. And this is the doctrine not only that Bellarmine here, and many other doctors teach in their sermons and books, but also that some councils have decreed, and the Popes have accordingly, when the occasion hath served them, put in practice. For the fourth council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the Third, in the third chapter De Haereticis , hath this canon: “If a king, at the Pope’s admonition, do not purge his kingdom of heretics, and being excommunicate for the same, make not satisfaction within a year, his subjects are absolved of their obedience.” And the practice hereof hath been seen on divers occasions; as in the deposing of Chilperic, king of France; in the translation of the Roman empire to Charlemagne; in the oppression of John, king of England; in transferring the kingdom of Navarre; and of late years, in the league against Henry the Third of France, and in many more occurrences. I think there be few princes that consider not this as unjust and inconvenient; but I wish they would all resolve to be kings or subjects. Men cannot serve two masters. They ought therefore to ease them, either by holding the reins of government wholly in their own hands; or by wholly delivering them into the hands of the Pope; that such men as are willing to be obedient, may be protected in their obedience. For this distinction of temporal and spiritual power is but words. Power is as really divided and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another “indirect” power, as with a “direct” one. But to come now to his arguments.
The first is this, “The civil power is subject to the spiritual: therefore he that hath the supreme power spiritual, hath right to command temporal princes, and dispose of their temporals in order to the spiritual.” As for the distinction of temporal and spiritual, let us consider in what sense it may be said intelligibly, that the temporal or civil power is subject to the spiritual. There be but two ways that those words can be made sense. For when we say, one power is subject to another power, the meaning either is, that he which hath the one, is subject to him that hath the other; or