of the predestinating decree only through the empirical Church with its Sacraments. But Augustine himself did not assert that; and although in the time that came after, this mode of adjusting things came to be very much in favour, yet, as there was no allowing the doctrine of predestination to drop out, there was involved in this doctrine an element that threatened, like an overhanging mass of rock, to destroy the existence of the structure beneath. Finally, Augustine had no doubt carried on a victorious conflict with Donatism; but there was still one point at which it was not easy to deny entirely the correctness of the Donatist thesis, and that was the sacrament of penance. It could certainly be made credible that baptism, the Lord's supper, confirmation, ordination were valid, even when an unworthy priest dispensed them; but how was such a man to be able to sit in judgment upon the holy and the unholy, to apply the law of Christ, to bind and loose, if the load rested on himself of ignorance of sin? It was surely more than paradoxical, it was an inconceivable thought, that the blind should be able to judge aright as to light and darkness. Was excommunication by such a man to be held valid before God? Was his absolution to have force? There was no doubt an escape sought for here, also, by saying that it is Christ who binds and looses, not the priest, who is only a minister; but when flagrant unrighteousness was practised by the priest, when such cases increased in number, what was then to be done?1

1 Let it be distinctly noted here that it was just the strict papal system that had widely given rise in the period of the great conflicts (eleventh and twelfth centuries) to the greatest uncertainty about ordinations, seeing that the Popes cancelled without hesitation "simonistic" orders, and likewise orders of the imperial bishops, nay, even ordinations at which a single simonist had been present. Innocent II., indeed, at the second Lateran Council, pronounced invalid all ordinations of the schismatics, i.e., of the bishops who adhered to Pope Anaclete II. ("From him whom he hath ordained we take away the orders" [evacuamus et irritas esse consemus]; the curialist theologians are disposed to see in this only a suspension of the exercise of office; Hefele, Concil. Gesch. V.2, p. 438 f., leaves the passage unexplained; Friedrich [in his edition of Janus, 2 Aufl., pp. 143, 456] holds to the cancelling of the orders.) Thus it was the Popes who were the instructors of those sects that spread the greatest uncertainty as to the most important Catholic question, the question regarding the validity of orders. At the time of the Schism it was laid down by the papal Secretary, Coluccio Salutato, that as all Church power emanates from the Pope, and as a wrongly elected Pope has himself no power, such an one can

In a way indicating the greatest acuteness, Thomas combined the predestinarian (spiritual) and the hierarchical conceptions of the Church, and tried to eliminate the points from which a "heretical" conception could develop itself; but it is apparent from what has been stated that one could accept substantially the Augustinian-Thomist notion of the Church with its premises (doctrines of salvation and the Sacraments), and yet, when tested by the claims which the Medieval Church set up at the time of its greatest power, could become "heretical," in the event, namely, of his either (1) contesting the hierarchical gradation of the priestly order; or (2) giving to the religious idea of the Church implied in the thought of predestination a place superior to the conception of the empirical Church; or (3) applying to the priests, and thereby to the authorities of the Church, the test of the law of God, before admitting their right to exercise, as holding the keys, the power of binding and loosing.

Certainly during the whole of the Middle Ages there were sects who attacked the Catholic notion of the Church at the root; but however important they may be for the history of culture, they play no part in the history of dogma; for as their opposition, as a rule, developed itself from dualistic or pantheistic premises (surviving effects of old Gnostic or Manichæan views), they stood outside of ordinary Christendom, and, while no doubt affecting many individual members within it, had no influence on Church doctrine.1 On the other hand, it may be asserted that all the movements which are described as "reformations anticipating the Reformation," and which for a time resisted not unsuccessfully the introduction of the Romish give none; consequently the bishops and priests ordained since the death of Gregory XI. were incompetent to dispense the Sacraments. If, accordingly, says Coluccio, a believer adores the Eucharist that has been consecrated by a bishop ordained in the Schism, he worships an idol (in a letter to Jost of Moravia in Martene, Thes. Anecd. II., p. 1159, quoted by Janus, p. 318).

1 There are referred to here sects like the Catharists and Albigenses, "Patarenes," "Bulgarians," as also the adherents of Amalrich of Bena, the Ortliebists (allied to the Waldensians), the sect of the New Spirit, the sect of the Free Spirit, and many similar movements; see Hahn, Gesch. der Ketzer im Mittelalter, 3 Bdd., Reuter, *Aufklärung Bd. II., the different works of Ch. Schmidt, Jundt, Preger, Haupt; Staude, Urspr. d. Katharer (Ztschr. f. K.-Gesch. V. 1); Döllinger, Beiträge z, Sectengesch. des Mittelalters, 1890.

conception of the Church, set out from the Augustinian conception of the Church, but took exception to the development of this conception, from the three points that have been defined above. Now whether we look at the Waldensian, the Lombard, the Apocalyptico-Joachimic, the Franciscan opposition to the new conception of the Church, whether at that of the Empire or the Councils, of Wyclif or Huss, or even, indeed, at the humanist, we have always the same spectacle. On the first view the opposition seems radical, nay, expressly antagonistic. Angry curses-Anti-Christ, Babylon, Church of the devil, priests of the devil, etc.-catch the ear everywhere. But if we look a little more closely, the opposition is really much tamer. That fundamental Catholic conception of the Church, as a sacramental institution, is not objected to, because the fundamental conception of salvation and of blessedness remains unassailed. Although all hierarchical gradation may be rejected, the conception of the hierarchical priesthood is allowed to stand; although the Church may be conceived of as the community of the predestinated, every Christian must place himself under the influence of the Sacraments dispensed by the Church, and must use them most diligently, for by means of these his election is effected; although the sacramental acts of unworthy priests may be invalid, still priests are needed, but they must live according to the law of Christ; although the Church as the community of the predestinated may be known only to God, yet the empirical Church is the true Church, if the apostolic life prevails in it, and a true empirical Church of the kind is absolutely necessary, and can be restored by reforms; although, finally, all secular rights may have to be denied to the Pope and the priesthood, yet secular right in general is something that has gradually to disappear. The criticism of the Romish conception of the Church is therefore entirely a criticism from within.

The criticism must not on that account be under-estimated ; it certainly accomplished great things; in it the spiritual and moral gained supremacy over the legal and empirical, and Luther was fortunate when he came to know Huss's doctrine of the Church. Yet we must not be deceived by this as to the

fact that the conception of the Church held by all the opposing parties was only a form of the Augustinian conception of the Church, modified by the Waldensian-Franciscan ideal of the apostolic life (according to the law of Christ). The ways in which the elements were mingled in the programmes of the opposition parties were very different; at one time the predestinarian element preponderated, at another time an apocalyptic-legal, at another the Franciscan, at another the biblical (the lex Christi), at another they were all present in equipoise. Especially on the ground that these opposition parties, starting from the doctrine of predestination, enforced the conception of the "invisible Church," and applied the standard of Scripture to everything, they are praised as evangelical. But attention has very rightly been drawn of late to the fact that they by no means renounced the conception of an empirical, true Church, a conception to which they were driven by individual uncertainty about election, and that their standpoint on the ground of Scripture is the Catholic-legal, as it had been adopted by Augustine, Bernard, and Francis.

Under such circumstances it is enough to delineate in a few of their features the conceptions of the Church held by the several parties. The Waldensians contested neither the Catholic cultus nor the Sacraments and the hierarchical constitution in themselves, but they protested (1) as against a mortal sin, against the Catholic clergy exercising the rights of the successors of the Apostles without adopting the apostolic life; and (2) against the comprehensive power of government on the part of the Pope and the bishops, hence against the Romish hierarchy with its graded ranks. But the French Waldensians did not, nevertheless, contest the validity of the Sacraments dispensed by unworthy priests, though this certainly was done by those of Lombardy. Among the Waldensians, then, the conception of the law of Christ, as set forth in Scripture and as prescribing to the priests the apostolic life, rises above all other marks of the Church (among those in Italy the Donatist

1 See Gottschick in the dissertation cited above and K. Muller, Bericht, etc., p. 37 f.

2 See above, p. 90, and Müller, Waldesier, p. 93 ff. and passim.

element developed itself from this). The same applies to a part of the Franciscans, who passed over to the opposition. In the sharp polemic against Rome on the part of the Joachimites, the apocalyptic element takes its place side by side with the legal clergy and hierarchy are judged from the standpoint of emancipated monachism and of the approaching end of time.1 No wonder that just this view gained favour with not a few Franciscans, that it extended itself to far in the North among all sections of the people,2 and that it came to take up a friendly (Ghibelline) attitude towards the State. As thus modified it freed itself up to a certain point from the wild apocalyptic elements, and passed over to be merged in the imperialist opposition. Here also they were again Franciscans who passed over also, and to some extent, indeed, conducted the resistance to the papal power (Occam). In this opposition the dispute was by no means about the Church as a sacramental institution and as a priesthood, but simply about the legitimacy of the hierarchical gradation of rank (including the Pope, whose divine appointment Occam contested), and about the governing powers of the hierarchy, which were denied. But these powers were denied on the ground of the Franciscan view, that the Church admits of no secular constitution, and that the hierarchy must be poor and without rights. The assigning of the entire legal sphere to the State was at bottom an expression of contempt for that sphere, not indeed on the part of all literary opponents of the papacy in the fourteenth century, but yet on the part of not a few of them.3 The imperialist opposition was

1 See Reuter., 1.c. II., p. 191 ff., and Archiv. f. Litt.-und K.-Gesch. des Mittelalters I., p. 105 ff.

2 In greater numbers than before protocols of processes against heretics have been published in recent years; see Wattenbach in the Sitzungsberichten der Berliner Academie, 1886, IV., and Döllinger, 1.c., Bd. 2. We can very easily understand how, above all, the charge was brought against the heretics that they did away with the Sacraments.

3 Besides Occam, Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun are specially to be named here; cf. Riezler, Die lit. Widersacher der Päpste z. Z. Ludwig's des Bayern, 1874, K. Müller, der Kampf Ludwig's d. B. mit der röm. Curie, 2 Bdd., 1879 f., Friedberg, Die Grenzen zwischen Staat und Kirche, 1882, the same author, Die mittelalterlichen Lehren über d. Verh. v. St. u. K., 1874; Dorner, Das Verhältniss von