Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/261

Rh nates against the children of obedience, now in view of promotions and ecclesiastical dignities which he provides for his accomplices. Hence, as the papal office, when it profits the church, is the most deserving, so, when the papal office is perverted in that man who abuses his office, if it do injury to the church, is most undeserving. The evidence of a pope's defect is if he put aside the law and a devout profession of the Gospel and give heed to human tradition." It was on this subject that Bernard was reasoning with Eugenius.

This is the first mark. The second is when the pope and ecclesiastical superiors abandon the manner of life Christ followed and are involved in a secular way in things of the world. The third mark is when the pope advances the traffickers of this world in the ministry of Christ and gives himself up chiefly to the continued pursuit of the secular life so that the poor churches are oppressed. The fourth mark is when, by his own command or through the appointment of incapable persons in the pastoral cure, he deprives souls that are to be saved of the Word of God. Hence he of Lincoln, thinking over this, would not admit one of the pope's relatives to a stall in Lincoln, giving in this matter, among other things, a probable reason [for his conduct]. "After the sin of Lucifer," he said,"—and the case will be the same in the end of time with the son of perdition, antichrist, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth—there is not, neither can there be, another class so adverse to or at variance with the apostolic and evangelical doctrine, so hateful and detestable to the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and so abominated by him and so pernicious to the human family as the class which kills and destroys by depriving and defrauding of pastoral ministries souls which are to be made alive and saved by the office and ministry of the pastoral cure. And this sin they are known from the very clearest testimonies of holy Scripture to commit who, entrusted with the power of the pastoral cure, satisfy their own fleshly pleasuring with the