XLII

that the one power is to the other, as the means to the end. For we cannot understand that one power hath power over another power; or that one power can have right or command over another. For subjection, command, right, and power, are accidents, not of powers, but of persons. One power may be subordinate to another, as the art of a saddler to the art of a rider. If then it be granted, that the civil government be ordained as a means to bring us to a spiritual felicity; yet it does not follow, that if a king have the civil power, and the Pope the spiritual, that therefore the king is bound to obey the Pope, more than every saddler is bound to obey every rider. Therefore as from subordination of an art, cannot be inferred the subjection of the professor; so from the subordination of a government cannot be inferred the subjection of the governor. When therefore he saith, the civil power is subject to the spiritual, his meaning is, that the civil sovereign is subject to the spiritual sovereign. And the argument stands thus, “The civil sovereign is subject to the spiritual; therefore the spiritual prince may command temporal princes.” Where the conclusion is the same with the antecedent he should have proved. But to prove it, he allegeth first, this reason: “Kings and popes, clergy and laity, make but one commonwealth; that is to say, but one Church: and in all bodies the members depend one upon another: but things spiritual depend not on things temporal: therefore temporal depend on spiritual, and therefore are subject to them.” In which argumentation there be two gross errors: one is, that all Christian kings, popes, clergy, and all other Christian men, make but one commonwealth. For it is evident that France is one commonwealth, Spain another, and Venice a third, etc. And these consist of Christians; and therefore also are several bodies of Christians; that is to say, several Churches: and their several sovereigns represent them, whereby they are capable of commanding and obeying, of doing and suffering, as a natural man; which no general or universal Church is, till it have a representant; which it hath not on earth: for if it had, there is no doubt but that all Christendom were one commonwealth, whose sovereign were that representant, both in things