De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. Those who boast and glory in wanting to lead the Christian people into liberty abolish all ecclesiastical laws, all human rights, and all decrees, declaring that those marked by Christ's baptism ought to be bound by no laws except the Gospel. For they say that in this very respect¹ the Christian people surpass other nations: they enjoy the fullest liberty and can be restrained by no human laws.²

But they are, as the saying goes, utterly mistaken, and by this blind glory and ambition of theirs they drag countless others headlong with them into the infernal regions. For if there is one shepherd and governor of the whole Christian commonwealth, to whom the care of all Christ's sheep has been entrusted,³ what reason is there⁴ why he cannot enact laws and statutes for the common utility and benefit of all? Is it not a prince's office to enact and promulgate, as times and the dispositions of people require, laws by which the commonwealth's condition may be preserved in everyone's peace? Remove the laws from a commonwealth, and it must collapse in the shortest time. For even those who form an association for murder, robbery, and the devastation of cities cannot carry out what they have wickedly and ruinously devised, or do so only at the greatest peril and loss to themselves, unless some semblance of law restrains their recklessness.⁵ To establish what serves the commonwealth belongs either to the whole people or to the one who exercises public authority.⁶ Among the Romans, laws serving the common good were generally passed by the consuls and tribunes of the plebs, on the Senate's advice and with the common assent of the tribes. From many histories we can infer that the same practice was followed among the Greek peoples. But when everything came into one man's power, he himself made laws at his own discretion, although, to preserve a certain appearance of liberty, he used the Senate as his counselor in enacting them. What wonder, then, if the supreme Pontiff at any given time, whose divine institution entails the governance of the Christian people's life and conduct, enacts laws, statutes, and ordinances by which peace is maintained in the Christian commonwealth?

2. The Lutherans will say: Let other nations have their own lawmakers to burden, oppress, and stifle them with laws; for us, established under Christian liberty, it is enough to observe with all zeal and diligence the law of our lawgiver and Savior Christ, prescribed in the books of the Gospels. For the Apostle writes thus to the Galatians, chapter V:⁷ If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. He also says in the first epistle to Timothy, chapter I,⁸ that the law is not laid down for the just.⁹ And in his second epistle to the Corinthians, chapter III,¹⁰¹¹ he warns us that liberty exists where the Spirit of the Lord is.¹² If, then, the Christian law is written in the hearts of the faithful and liberty is its inseparable companion, what more than the human laws of Pontiffs and Councils can overthrow the liberty of Christians, laws by which people are consigned to perpetual servitude? b) Add also the judgment of Pope Urban, written in C. XIX, question 2:¹³ “For one who is governed by a private law, he says, no reason requires that he be bound by a public one.”¹⁴ It is admitted that the Christian is governed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is a kind of private law; therefore he ought not to be bound by the public laws of the Pontiffs.

3. But if the Apostle's words are rashly interpreted, as they are by these people, not only the laws of Pontiffs but also the laws of Almighty God must be abrogated and removed from Christian homes. For if no law is laid down for the just; if where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; if those who are led by the Spirit are not under the law—as they display the Apostle's words on their surface—then, since Paul makes no more mention of human than of divine law, we must exclude every law from the just person and even from the Christian people. The result¹⁵ is surely that the just person need obey neither the Gospel nor any other divine law. The words of the Apostle and of the other sacred writings must therefore not be examined only on their surface; they must be scrutinized with the keenest intellect, inwardly, right down to the core.

The chief difference between the old law and the new is this: the old law defined nearly everything that had to be done, leaving only a few matters to human discretion. The new law, however, prescribes and determines only those things that have an everlasting bond with grace and charity. The rest—which, I say, have no connection with grace and are not usually at odds with it—it leaves to the authority¹⁶ of those entrusted with the care of the Christian people. Thus, in a certain sense, the new law can also be called the law of liberty, because it grants this power to establish laws.

Moreover, let the Lutherans say: Are not all the things established by a person acting as a prince's deputy, while exercising his authority, to be referred to the prince's will? If, then, the Roman Pontiff acts on earth as the deputy of our Savior Christ and has been appointed prince of the Lord's flock, on what grounds should the laws he promulgates not be received as Christ's laws? For, as the Lord says, whoever hears you hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me.¹⁷ The Apostle too, writing to the Romans, chapter XIII,¹⁸ says: Whoever resists authority resists God's ordinance.

4. They will perhaps reply that it belongs to the supreme Prince, that is, Christ, to establish laws in the Christian commonwealth; but that it does not belong to the one acting as Christ's vicar to make laws, only to apply wisely and justly the laws issued by Christ. Therefore, if he introduces any ordinances,¹⁹ they should not be called laws but tyrannies, robberies, and oppressions of peoples.

Ceterum, let the Lutherans remember that although it is not within any person's power to make a perpetual law in another's place, it is wholly unreasonable to claim that the person who acts as deputy for a prince who has vanished from our sight cannot make laws according to the conditions of times and places. For how can the needs of times and affairs be met if no one is appointed in the commonwealth who can restrain wicked people by his laws? Just as the care of the Catholic Church is entrusted to the Roman Pontiff, so too he is granted the power to enact laws for the benefit of the Christian commonwealth. Otherwise this kind of office would be pointless, especially since evangelical law has defined few matters concerning human actions and civil life. We must therefore admit outright that the Roman Pontiff, by his authority, may add certain laws to the Gospel as the needs of the time require, provided they do not conflict with the Gospel's own law. Hence Jerome, writing to Lucinius, holds that the precepts of the ancients are to be considered Apostolic laws.²⁰ Paul also admonishes us, Romans chapter XIII,²¹ that every soul should be subject to the higher authorities, because all authority has its origin in God. He writes to the Thessalonians²² as well: Whoever rejects these things rejects not a human being but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit. He likewise instructs the Hebrews²³ to obey and submit to their superiors. But how can we be subject to the higher authorities and obey our superiors if we may reject their commands at our own discretion?

Further, at the first Council of the Apostles,²⁴ as we read in Acts XV,²⁵ it was decreed that those in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia should abstain from pollution by idols, from blood, and from what was strangled. Paul and the other Apostles also issued many other laws, none of which are set down in the Gospels.²⁶ I would add that the laws of Councils, no less than those of Pontiffs, must be held as sacred, so to speak, and received and observed with the greatest reverence. For the Lord says to his disciples: Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.²⁷ Elsewhere too he says: Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.²⁸ If Christ continually dwells with us and is present among those gathered in his name, we must surely believe that nothing can be decreed by that assembly of Fathers which Christ himself does not prompt in his name.

5. I return to Paul, who seems to exclude every law from the just. We should not think that laws, decrees, and ordinances prejudice liberty, except perhaps for someone who turns his mind away from what is right and from what is commanded. For when such a person anticipates the punishment awaiting him if he does not obey, he loathes the precepts of his superiors and pursues them with hatred. As a result, because his mind is pulled in the opposite direction and deterred from fulfilling his desire, he thinks he has gained license and liberty. But a person who does not recoil from the command of the law and is favorably disposed toward what is ordered does not think that the law takes away any of his liberty, because he freely does what the law has established. Therefore when Paul²⁹ says that those who are led by the Spirit are not under the law,³⁰ this is not to be understood as though there were no law to govern the works and actions of the just. Rather, because they observe the law of their own will, they are not compelled against their will to observe the law.³¹ For the inward law—which we have said is the grace of the Holy Spirit—is akin and kindred to the written law; one who is moved by this inward law to do good proceeds to observe the law wholeheartedly, not by force, fear, or any hope of temporal reward,³² but from a desire for what is honorable.

When Paul says that the law is not laid down for the just, this should not be understood to mean that spiritual people are bound by no laws. Rather, the law is enacted and promulgated against those who depart from an upright and virtuous life. Although the just need the divine law—which even the angelic nature cannot exist without—in order to live rightly, they are not compelled to observe it by any force.³³

We interpret the further saying of the same Apostle, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, as follows: those who have the Holy Spirit as the guide and governor of their works are free from any forced observance of the law, since their minds are wholly inclined toward virtue.

6. Finally, Urban's³⁴ words do not conflict with this position at all. Since the Christian law written in the hearts of the faithful is superior to every human law, spiritual people, when they conform their deeds to the law of the Holy Spirit, cannot be bound or constrained by any public law that is contrary to the divine law. Yet we do not declare them absolved from every divine or human law: if they withdrew from the divine law, they certainly would not be just. And if they turned their minds away from a human law enacted on a just basis, they would certainly not obey Peter, who commands that we be subject, for God's sake, to every human creature.³⁵

7. Perhaps the Lord's words could be added to overturn our position, words that moved certain believers at the Church's beginnings to think that they were subject to no human authority. For it is said in John VIII:³⁶ The truth will set you free. And again: If the truth sets you free,³⁷ you will be truly free.

But, as Augustine interprets them,³⁸ these words are to be understood as referring to freedom from sin. What prevents this liberty from requiring us to be subject to the just laws of Pontiffs and Councils? For, as Paul writes to the Romans, chapter VI:³⁹ Freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. They could also appropriately be understood as referring to freedom from observing the old law, in accordance with the Apostle's words to the Romans, chapter VII:⁴⁰ But now we have been released from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.