A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

3. You ascribe unto your Popes an universal Dominion even in Civil things over all Christian Kings and their subjects. In the explanation of this Dominion, I confess you somewhat vary among your selves; but the thing it self is generally asserted by you, and made a foundation of practice. Some of you maintain that the Pope by Divine right and Constitution hath an absolute supreme Dominion over the whole world. This opinion, Bellarmine Lib. 5. de Pont. cap. 1. confesseth to be maintained by Augustinus Triumphus, Alvarus, Pelagius, Hostiensis, and Panoruitanus. And himself in the next words condemns the opinion of them who deny the Pope to have any such temporal power, as that he may command secular Princes, and deprive them of the ⟨p. 418⟩Kingdoms and Principalities, not only as false but as down right Heresy. And why doth he name the first opinion as that of four or five Doctors, when it is the Common opinion of your Church, as Baronius sufficiently manifests in the life of Gregory the seventh? That great preserver of your Pontificial omnipotency in his Bull against Henry the German Emperor, affirms that he hath power to take away Empires, Kingdoms and Principalities, or what •ver a mortal man may have, as Platina records it in his life. As also Pope Nicholas the second in his Epistle ad Mediolanens▪ asserts, that the rights both of the heavenly and earthly Empires are committed unto him. And he that hath but looked on the Dictates of the forenamed Gregory confirmed in a Council at Rome, and defended by Baronius, or into their Decretals, knows that you give both swords to the Pope, and that over and over. Whence Carerius, Lib. 1. c. 9. affirms that it is the Common opinion of the School Divines that the Pope hath plenissimam Potestatem, plenary power over the whole world, both in Ecclesiastical and Temporal matters; and you know the old comparison made by the Canonists cap. de Major. & Obed. between the Pope and the Emperor, namely that he is as the Sun, the Emperor as the Moon, which borrows all its light from the other. Bellarmine and those few whom he follows, or that follow him, maintain that the Pope hath this Power only indirectly and in order unto spiritual things;

3. You ascribe unto your Popes an universal Dominion even in Civil things over all Christian Kings and their subjects. In the explanation of this Dominion, I confess you somewhat vary among your selves; but the thing it self is generally asserted by you, and made a foundation of practice. Some of you maintain that the Pope by Divine right and Constitution hath an absolute supream Dominion over the whole world. This opinion, Bellarmine Lib. 5. de Pont. cap. 1. confesseth to be maintained by Augustinus Triumphus, Alvarus, Pelagius, Hostiensis, and Panoruitanus. And himself in the next words condemns the opinion of them who deny the Pope to have any such temporal power, as that he may command secular Princes, and deprive them of the