CHAPTER XIX
WHEN ECCLESIASTICAL SUPERIORS ARE TO BE OBEYED
It having been stated what the apostolic seat is, it is now to be stated in what cases obedience is to be rendered to this apostolic seat. And the aforesaid doctors say, that "it is to be obeyed by inferiors in all things—when the absolutely good is not forbidden or the absolutely evil is not" commanded [but the intermediate also][1] which in place, way, time or person may be either good or bad.
This they prove by four pertinent witnesses, the Saviour, Bernard, Augustine and Jerome. And because the doctors took the distinction from Bernard, Ep. ad Adam monachum [Migne's ed., 182: 95 sq.], about the absolutely good and the absolutely evil, so it is to be noted that after St. Bernard shows that no one is to be obeyed in that which is evil and concludes, saying: "Therefore, to do evil, even when any one whosoever commands, certainly is not obedience but rather disobedience. This deserves soberly to be said, that some things are absolutely good, some absolutely evil, and in these latter no man owes obedience, just as the former are not to be left undone, even when forbidden. Nor are the latter to be performed, even though they be enjoined. Further, between these two are the things that are intermediate, which may be good or evil according to the place, time, mode or person involved. And in these things the law of obedience is fixed as in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was in the
- ↑ The printed text of the original ed. as well as of the reprint omits the words in brackets and "not" before commanded.
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