angels and all men, and the holy fathers in Limbo, who were all members of the Church, and who were led forth by their Head behind Himself from Limbo, and thereafter placed by Him in glory.[1] The virgin mother of Christ was then in a sense the Church militant in her own person by virtue of her faith and love.[2] Now, she had more worth than all the apostles, and consequently more than all the prelates of to-day, including the Pope.
As for the dictum of the doctor that the Catholic Apostolic Church and the Roman Church are one and the same: if by the “Roman Church” is understood the Church universal of which the apostles form a part, then it is true. If, however, “Roman Church” means in that context Pope along with the cardinals,” then the Roman Church is not identical with the Catholic Apostolic Church, just as no partial Church is the universal Holy Apostolic Church.
I would like the doctors to tell me what the Roman Church stands for in the passage where (Cause 24, question 1, chapter headed “This is the Faith”),[3] on the authority of Jerome, the Holy Roman Church is said to be that which has remained ever immaculate, and in the providence of the Lord and by the help of the blessed apostle Peter will abide for all time unviolated by heretics.[4] For there it cannot
- ↑ The famous mediæval conception of the harrowing of hell.
- ↑ Idea repeated in Responsio ad Stanislai (Mon. i . 285a).
- ↑ Repeated by Hus in his De Eccles. (Mon. i. 207a). In both cases it is taken word for word from Wyclif’s De Eccles. p. 87, who quotes Gratian’s Decretum, ii. C. 24, q. 1, cc. 6 and 14. Hus, in his De Eccles., gives, as often, a wrong reference.
- ↑ Hus, following Wyclif, who borrows from Gratian, who copied “Polycarp,” is wrong in attributing this to Jerome’s Ad Damatum
