Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/364

Rh proceed from antichrist, which in their processes they call fulminations, by which the clergy chiefly proceed against those who lay Dare the wickedness of antichrist, who will use the clergy chiefly for himself. 20. If the Pope is evil, and especially if he is a reprobate, then as Judas he is an apostle of the devil, a thief, and the son of perdition, and is not the head of the holy Church militant, since he is not even a member of it. 21. The grace of predestination is a bond by which the body of the Church, and every member of it, is indissolubly joined to Christ the head. 22. Pope or prelate, evil and a reprobate, is equivocally pastor, and truly thief and robber. 23. The Pope ought not to be called most holy, even according to his office, because otherwise the king would have a right also to be called most holy as to his office, and torturers and criers should be called holy, nay the devil even would have a right to be called holy, as being an officer of God. 24. If the Pope live in a manner contrary to Christ, although he should ascend through the right and lawful election according to the common human ordinance, yet he would ascend by another way than through Christ,granting even that he should enter by an election principally made by God: for Judas Scariot was elected rightfully and lawfully by the Lord Jesus Christ to the episcopacy, and yet he ascended by another way to the sheep-fold. 25. The condemnation of the 45 articles of J. Wickliff, by the doctors, was an unreasonable one, and unjust, and wickedly done, and the cause alleged by them was feigned; viz., from this circumstance, that none of them was catholic: but any one of them is either heretical, or erroneous, or scandalous. 26. Not for this very reason because the electors, or the majority of them, consent vivâ voce, according to the usages of men, to some person, such person is not for that very reason lawfully elected; not for that very reason the true and manifest successor, or vicar of the apostle Peter, or of another apostle, in ecclesiastical office: whence, whether the electors have elected him rightly or otherwise, we ought to trust to the works of the elect; for in proportion as any one works more abundantly in a manner meritorious unto the proficiency of the Church, in greater abundance has he from God the means for this. 27. There is not a spark of appearance, that there should be one head