that it is of no advantage to obey any one except in so far as such obedience is obedience to our God.
Wherefore, as to that saying of the doctors, "that obedience is due to the apostolic see of the Roman church and to prelates by inferiors in all things," etc. [we proceed as follows]:
As for obedience, this is to be said: It is to be noted that obedience first is to be understood by analogy or in a very general sense, as is the loyalty of any created thing whatsoever, in respect to the divine will which all created things obey, without resistance—repugnantia—even as a stone obeys by falling or tending downwards, or fire by rising and the sun by illuminating, and so in regard to all other created things. Or else obedience is rendered with resistance, as the devil or a damned man who obeys by suffering because he must. And in this way the saints speak when they say that all things obey their Creator, and man alone, the sinner, does not obey; that is, the sinner does not submit to the rule of the Creator without resistance on the part of his will. But obedience, so far as it is an act of virtue or is virtue, is thus described by some, namely, obedience is the subjection of our own will to the will and judgment of superior in things lawful and honest— or obedience is the disposition to follow voluntarily a superior's command in things lawful and honest.
The first kind is exhibited in acts, the second in the disposition. And from these definitions, it follows that there is no such thing as obedience in the case of things unlawful. And so obedience is correlated to that which is good, disobedience to that which is evil. But the first definition seems to me to be wanting in this, that obedience is a more general thing than submission, since obedience is becoming in God and submission is not, for God obeyed a man's voice, for it is said, Joshua 10:14: "There was no day like to it before or after, that God hearkened unto the voice of a man
