9 - Of the disposition of ecclesiastical power: and first, whether it be due unto the bishop of Rome

Summary

The most difficult point in politics is that of the Jura Majestatis, and the right disposal of them in a fit subject. And concerning the nature of civil power, the manner of acquiring and disposing of it, I have already spoken; and also of ecclesiastical power and the acquisition thereof. Now it remains, [that] I say something of the manner of disposing the Power of the Keys in the right subjects. This is a matter of great dispute in these our times. Therefore, when I expected to find all clear, because a Jus divinum, grounded on the Scriptures, was pretended on all hands, I found it otherwise. As, when one of our worthies had disemboked the Magellanick Straits, and was entered into that sea, they call Pacificum, he found the word Pacifick really contradicted by violent storms. So it falls out here; I hoped to have landed in a region of perpetual peace, but I was found in a Terra del Fuego, a land of fire and smoke; like unto Palma, one of the seven Canary Islands, where, in September 1646, or thereabouts, a fire first raged fearfully in the bowels of the earth, and at length brake out, and ran in five several fiery, sulphurious streams into the main. In like manner, this Power of the Keys runs in five several channels, but very turbulently and impetuously. For the pope, the prince, the prelate, the presbyter, the plebeian rank, do every one of them severally challenge it; and nothing under a Jus divinum will serve the turn.