c. To the Third Reason

307. The third reason [n.288] either equivocates over ‘power’ or contains a false proposition.

For if ‘power’ be taken simply for some act that, without the power, simply could not be obtained, I deny that character is thus a power; for he who is baptized has power simply for no act for which he did not have power when unbaptized, and this whether speaking of an act for which he has power actively or of an act which he receives in some way from another, for in this way someone not baptized could be anointed with chrism just like someone baptized, and he could thus be washed just like someone baptized.

308. But if we speak of the power of ministry, that is, the power by which he is a suitable minister of some principal agent (and without that power he would not be a suitable minister of that principal agent), there is no need that that power be an absolute form, but it is enough in many cases that it be only a relation of reason.

309. The proof of this is according to them [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.24 q.3 a.2], because they do not say that the episcopacy is an order beyond the priesthood, and yet a bishop has a ministerial power of a sort that a non-bishop does not have. For he is a suitable minister in an act God assists with, as in the act of ordaining, and God would not assist similarly if someone else, a non-bishop, were to carry out a similar act. Likewise, if an appointed judge pass a sentence, the sentence holds; but it would not have held before, because a sentence passed by its non-judge is null.

310. Nor yet does this judge or that bishop have any real absolute form, nor perhaps a relative form, save only one of reason.

311. For by that relation of reason by which he is appointed judge by the prince, the will of the prince ratifies the sentence passed by him, and wills it be observed; but he does not ratify the sentence of another who has not been appointed judge, nor does he will it to be observed. And so the judge, by that relation to the will of the prince, has in respect of the prince (as principal agent) a ministerial power for suitably carrying out some act ministerially that, without such relation, he could not suitably carry out.

312. And much more could a real relation, were it present, be posited to be this sort of power of suitably carrying out some act ministerially. For it is plain that a son, because he is a son, can have some authority for carrying out some act in his father’s house that a non-son does not have, and again a nephew [can have authority] for some act but an inferior one; and this power, in authority this way or that, of prescribing or commanding, is only kinship or sonship.

313. In this way is the response clear to the powers about which in particular the argument is.

For the power of ordaining and confirming, if it is an active power, is only for ministering suitably in such an act for such a lord, so that the lord himself, operating principally, may assist with the ministerial act in the way he would not assist with such ministry shown by another.

Now the baptismal character, if it is posited to be a passive power, is not simply passive, either as being receptive or as being the idea of receiving, for nothing absolutely can the soul of someone baptized receive that the soul of someone not baptized cannot receive; but the character is a certain power, relative by way of congruity, from the principal such agent disposing it to act on a passive subject possessing such form and not on any other passive subject.

314. Now such an idea, relative by way of congruity in respect of some principal agent acting voluntarily, can be a relation alone, just as when someone disposes to do something to someone because he is son or kin, and does not want to cause anything similar to one who does not have such relationship.