Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/384

 348 Readings in European History kingdoms," etc. Therefore, if the earthly power shall err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power; if the lesser spiritual power err, it shall be judged by the higher. But if the supreme power err, it can be judged by God alone and not by man, the apostles bearing witness, saying, The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. Hence this power, although given to man and exercised by man, is not human, but rather a divine power, given by the divine lips to Peter, and founded on a rock for him and his successors in him (Christ) whom he confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, " Whatsoever thou shalt bind," etc. Whoever, therefore, shall resist this power, ordained by God, resists the ordination of God, unless there should be two beginnings [i.e. principles], as the Manichaean imagines. But this we judge to be false and heretical, since, by the testimony of Moses, not in the beginnings but in the begin- ning, God created the heaven and the earth. We, moreover, proclaim, declare, and pronounce that it is altogether neces- sary to salvation for every human being to be subject to the Roman pontiff. 1 Given at the Lateran the twelfth day before the Kalends of December, in our eighth year, as a perpetual memorial of this matter. 135. An account of the seven sacraments, written for the Armenians by Pope Eugene IV (1438). II. THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS We have drawn up in the briefest form a statement of the truth concerning the seven sacraments, so that the Armenians, now and in future generations, may more easily be instructed therein. 1 This famous concluding sentence has often been interpreted as a comprehensive claim on the part of the popes to the civil and political headship of the world. Leo X, however, early in the sixteenth cen- tury, declared that " every human being " simply meant " all Christian believers." Thus construed, the proposition loses its political significance and becomes a universally accepted belief among all orthodox Roman Catholics.