Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/112



did you fall, even as Simon Magus whom God overthrew, and did strike with a cruel plague; so you, likewise, through your false doctrine, naughtiness, lies, detractions, and wickedness, are come to ruin. And the people shall say unto you, "Go! ye teachers of wickedness, subverters of the truth, brethren of the Shunamite, fathers of heresies, false apostles, who have feigned yourselves to follow the life of the apostles, and yet have not fulfilled it in any part: sons of iniquity! we will not follow the knowledge of your ways, for pride and presumption have deceived you, and insatiable concupiscence hath subverted your erroneous hearts; and when ye would yet ascend higher than was meet or comely for you, by the just judgment of God you are fallen back into perpetual opprobry and shame."

This blessed Hildegard, whose prophecy this is, flourished about the year of our Lord, 1146, as it is written in Martin's Chronicles.

Hugo, also, in his second book of Sacraments, part ii. chapter 3, saith, "The laity, forasmuch as they intermeddle with earthly matters necessary unto an earthly life, they are the left part of the body of Christ. And the clergy, forasmuch as they do dispose those things which pertain unto a spiritual life, are, as it were, the right side of the body of Christ." And, afterwards, interpreting both these parts himself, he saith, "A spiritual man ought to have nothing but such as pertaineth unto God, unto whom it is appointed to be sustained by the tithes and oblations which are offered unto God; but unto the christian and faithful laity the possession of the earth is granted; and unto the clergy the whole charge of spiritual matters is committed, as it was in the Old Testament. And in his seventh chapter he declareth, how that certain things are given unto the church of Christ by the devotion of the faithful, the power and authority of the secular power reserved, lest there might happen any confusion; forasmuch as God himself cannot allow any disordered thing. Whereupon oftentimes the worldly princes do grant the bare use of the church, and oftentimes use power to exercise justice, which the clergy cannot; exercise by any ecclesiastical minister, or any other person of the clergy. Notwithstanding they may have certain lay-persons ministers unto that office; "but in such sort," saith he, "that they do acknowledge the power which they have, to come from the secular prince or ruler, and that they do understand their possessions can never be alienated away from the king's power; but, if necessity or reason do require, the same possessions, in all such case of necessity, do owe him obeisance and service. For, like as the king's power ought not to turn away the defence or safeguard which he oweth unto others, so, likewise, the possessions obtained and possessed by the clergy, according to the duty and homage which are due unto the patronage of the king's power, cannot by right be denied." Thus much writeth Hugo.

Upon this article it is to be noted, that forasmuch as alms is a work of mercy, as St. Augustine, St. Chrysostome, and others do jointly affirm, and mercy, according to Lincolniensis' mind, for the present, is a love or desire to help the