militant is in a sense prior to the binding and loosing of the church triumphant and vice versa.
But God's act of binding or loosing is absolutely first. And it is evident, it would be blasphemy to assert that a man may remit an offense done to so great a Lord, with the Lord himself approving the remission. For by the universal law and practice followed by the Lord, He himself must loose or bind first, if any vicar looses or binds. And for us no article of the faith ought to be more certain than the impossibility of any one of the church militant to absolve or bind except in so far as he is conformed to the head of the church, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hence, the faithful should be on his guard against this form of statement: "If the pope or any other pretends that he binds or looses by a particular sign, then by that very fact the offender is loosed or bound." For by conceding this, they have to concede that the pope is impeccable as is God, for otherwise he is able to err and to misuse the key of Christ. And it is certain that as impossible as it is for the figure of a material key to open anything when the substance is wanting, so impossible is it for Christ's vicar to open or shut except as he conforms himself to the key of Christ which first opens and shuts. For just as Christ the first-born of many brethren and the first-fruits of them that sleep was the first to enter the kingdom, so he alone and above all could have had committed to him the spiritual kingdom[1] which was altogether closed from the time our first parents lied until he himself came. And the same is to be said in regard to any opening or closing whatever which pertains to the heavenly country. And it is plain that every vicar of Christ, so long as he continues to walk in this world, may err, even in those things which concern the faith and the
- ↑ The kingdom of bliss to which the worthies of the Old Testament dispensation were not admitted till they were released from the limbus patrum during the three days after Christ's crucifixion.
