like Augustine, Enchiridion [Nic. Fathers, 3: 247], say, that free will may be lost through sin and increased through grace. On this account there is in the church great strife about the power of bestowment, withdrawal or restriction. Nevertheless, it is known that when God and reason make it necessary for the profit of the church that a thing should be done by man, then and not otherwise does God give or withdraw or restrict power of this sort.
Hence, when Christ said to Peter: "I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," that is the power of binding and loosing sins, he said in the person of Peter to the whole church militant, that not does any person whatever of the church without distinction hold those keys, but that the whole church, as made up of its individual parts, as far as they are suitable for this, holds the keys. These keys, however, are not material things, but they are spiritual power and acquaintance with evangelical knowledge, and it was on account of this power and knowledge, as we believe, that Christ used the plural "keys." For this reason the Master of Sentences, 12: 18, cap. 2 [Migne's ed., p. 375], says: "He speaks in the plural "keys," for one is not sufficient. These keys are the wisdom of discernment and the power of judging, thereby the ecclesiastical judgeis bound to receive the worthy and exclude the unworthy from the kingdom." And it is to be noted, that to the Trinity alone does it belong to have the chief power of this kind. And the humanity of Christ alone has chief subordinate power from within himself, for Christ is at the same time God and man. Nevertheless, prelates of the church have committed unto them instrumental or ministerial power, which is a judicial power, consisting chiefly of two things, namely, the power of knowing how to discriminate, and the power of judging judicially. The former of these is called in the court of penance the key of the conscience, reasonably disposing the mind to the exercise of the second function, that is, the judicial; for no one legally has
