of men"—certainly vainglory! "For they make broad their phylacteries" in bulls distributed throughout the whole world, as if they were pre-eminent in keeping God's law. Here is hypocrisy. They enlarge the fringes with which they cover their asses.[1] They love the chief places at feasts, seeking pleasure and honor of men, and "the chief cathedras—seats—in the synagogues," that is, accumulations of church livings, for this one wants to be a cardinal, this one a patriarch, this one an archbishop. "And they love salutations in the market-places," with genuflexions—that is, in public—"and to be called of men, Rabbin" [Matt. 23 4 sqq.], that is, our Master, and to rule the whole church of Christ.
Therefore, they also call the Roman curia the mistress and teacher of churches. And granting the possibility of this, these persons are seats not of Christ but of Satan, sitting in view of their own life in the cathedra of pestilence. And of this the Psalmist, speaking of Christ, said: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the cathedra of pestilence," Psalm 1:1. Here Augustine says [Com. on Psalms, Nic. Fathers, 8: 1]: "This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord-man, who does not sit in the cathedra of pestilence. He did not desire an earthly kingdom with its pride, which is rightly understood to be the cathedra of pestilence, because there is hardly a single one who is wanting in the love of dominion and does not hanker after glory. The pestilence is a disease widely pervasive and involving all or nearly all people. More amply, however, the cathedra stands for pernicious doctrine whose words work as doth a cancer." Thus much Augustine, who calls the cathedra of pestilence the lust of dominion and pernicious doctrine, a cathedra in which the elders of the church sit, wishing to exercise secular dominion and teaching men to keep their doctrines more carefully than the commandments of God.
- ↑ Quibus operiunt mulas.
