4. Only God has power and authority over souls.
spiritual tyrants. Hence God also perverts their minds, so that they rush on in their senselessness and would establish a spiritual rule over souls, as the others would establish a temporal rule. All this in order to contentedly burden themselves with alien sins, and with God's and all men's hate, until they go under with bishops, priests and monks — one knave with the other. Then they lay all the blame on the Gospel. Instead of doing penance, they blaspheme God, and say that it is our preaching which has brought this about, when it is only what their perverse wickedness has merited, and still unceasingly merits, as with the Romans when they were destroyed.1 Here then you have God's decree regarding the high and mighty. But they are not to believe it, lest this severe decree of God be hindered by their repentance.2
4. Only God has power and authority over souls.
You reply, But Paul said in Rom 13:1, "Every soul shall be subject to power and authority," and Peter says, "We should be subject to every ordinance of man." (1Pet 2:13) I answer, That is just what I want! These sayings are in my favor. St. Paul speaks of authority and power.
Now, you have just heard that no one but God can have authority over souls. Hence Paul cannot be speaking of any obedience except where there can be corresponding authority.
From this it follows that he does not speak of faith, and does not say that secular authority should have the right to command faith; but he is speaking of external goods, and that these are to be set in order and controlled on earth. His words also clearly indicate this, when he prescribes the limits to both authority and obedience, and says, "Render to everyone his dues, tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom; honor to whom honor; fear to whom fear." (Rom 13:7) You see, temporal obedience and power apply only externally to tribute, custom, honor and fear. Likewise when he says, "The power is not a terror to good, but to evil works," (Rom 13:4) he again limits the power, so that it is to have mastery not over faith or the Word of God, but over evil works.
This is what St. Peter also desires, when he says, "Ordinance of man." (1Pet 2:13) Human ordinance cannot possibly extend its authority to heaven and over souls; it belongs only to earth, to the external intercourse of men with each other, where men can see, know, judge, sentence, punish and acquit. Christ Himself made this nice distinction and summed it all up briefly when He said, "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mat 22:21) If, then, imperial power extended to God's kingdom and power, and were not something by itself, He would not thus have made it a separate thing. For, as was said, the soul is not under Caesar's power; he can neither teach nor guide it, neither kill it nor make it alive, neither bind it nor loose it, neither judge it nor condemn it, neither hold it nor release it, which he must do if he had power to command it and impose laws upon it; but he indeed has this right over life, goods, and honor; for such things are under his authority.
David, too, stated this long ago when he says in Psa 115:16, "The heavens he has given to the Lord of heaven; but the earth he has given to the children of men." That is, over what is on earth and belongs to the temporal, earthly kingdom, man has authority from God; but that which belongs to the heavenly eternal kingdom is entirely under the heavenly Lord. Nor does
Moses forget this when he says in Gen 1:26, "God said, Let us make man to rule over the beasts of the earth, over the fish in the waters, over the birds in the air." Only external rule is ascribed there to men. In short, this is the meaning, as St. Peter says in Acts 5:29, "We must obey God rather than men." Thereby he clearly sets a limit to worldly government; for if we
1 Augustine wrote his City of God to prove that the fall of Rome in 410 was not due to Christianity.
2 Joh 12:40 "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, Lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them."