hood and the faithful has been thereby relaxed, and a distance and diffidence has often grown up instead.
Priests are also judges of men. The Jews forbade any man who was not a father to become a judge; for justice must be tempered with compassion. But for the spiritual judge more than natural compassion is needed. The spiritual judge needs the charity of God, of whom all paternity or fatherhood in heaven and earth is named. A judge must needs be just, and justice includes mercy. S. Gregory the Great, in explaining the celestial hierarchy, says that the "thrones" are the just, in whom God dwells and reigns, as in the seat of His sovereignty. Our Divine Master said, "Ye that have followed Me, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."[1] This was spoken to the Apostles and to the Episcopate, which, in their stead, now succeeds to the spiritual judgment of the world. Each Bishop in his throne, surrounded by his priests, judicially binding or loosing the souls of men by the power of the keys, is the judge of arbitration to avert the judgment of the last day.
Lastly, they are physicians. The priests of the
- ↑ S. Matt. xix. 28.
