exercise who allege that they can either damn the deserving or loose those who are bound, and they do this because the obedience they falsely demand is refused them or for the sake of the gain they derive. Of such priests the Lord said: "They polluted me among my people for a handful of barley and a piece of bread that they might slay souls, which do not die, and make alive souls, which do not live, lying to my people which believes lies," Ezek. 13:19. On this passage Gregory comments, 11: 3, Plerisque[1] [Friedberg, 1: 667], and says: "Rightly does the prophet say they put souls to death which do not die and make alive souls which do not live. For, indeed, he puts to death one who does not die when he condemns the righteous, and he attempts to make alive him who does not live[2] when he seeks to loose the guilty from the sentence of death." This abuse of power they exercise who sell and buy the sacred orders, episcopates, canonries, and parishes—plebanias. They secure and sell simoniacally who make spoil out of the sacraments, living in pleasure, avarice, and luxury or who, by any other kind of criminality, defile the power of the priesthood. For even if they declare that they know God, they, nevertheless, deny Him by their deeds, Titus 1:16. Consequently, they do not believe in God, and so, as unbelieving children, they have unbelieving thoughts about the seven sacraments of the church and also about the keys, the ministries, censures, the customs, ceremonies, and sacred things of the church and likewise the worship of relics, indulgences, and sacred orders.
This is clear because such despise God's name. Hence it is said in Mal. 1:6, 10: "Unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon my altar. . . . Oh, that there were one among you that would shut the doors and kindle
- ↑ Mistake for plerumque.
- ↑ Vivum, a mistake for victurum.
sumed to say, saying fifteen a day, they would not have gotten through in fifteen years. One of Gregory VII's reform movements was to do away with clerical simony. Dante put simoniacal popes in hell, including Boniface VIII.
