1. What Could be Established by Statute

228. About the first [n.227] I say that if the law of ‘an eye for an eye’ were established in all these cases, it would be just, because it is not easy for an equal recompense for such a loss inflicted on a man to be made by goods of fortune, because they are not equivalent.

229. And if the objection be made that therefore the judicial Law of Moses would remain in effect, and then it would be licit under the Law of the Gospel to Judaize in judicial matters - I reply that a law can get its force as from the legislator in the community where it is established, and then, wherever the reason for establishing it is taken from, the statute does not get its force as it is established by someone else, though it be made by someone else, but as from that legislator. And in this way could judicial elements of the Mosaic Law be established by the Pope and the Emperor for observance by Christians, and these elements would not be observed as established by the Mosaic Law or by Moses, but as by a Gospel Legislator. Nor would this be to Judaize, for the judicial law is not observed because it is Mosaic, but because the same thing is established by the prince who has power to establish laws in the Christian Church.

230. Proof of this:

First in fact, because many such things from the judicial elements of the Mosaic Law are accepted in the Decretals, as is plain from Gregory IX, Decretals V tit.36 chs.1-6, ‘Of Injuries and Loss Inflicted’, chapter 1 and the 5 chapters following, all of which are taken from Exodus 21.18-19, 33-36, 22.5-6, and they are kept today as canon laws, but not because they are in the Mosaic Law.

231. This is plain from four examples:

When a community sees another community ordered well in its laws, it can take up the laws that it judges to be reasonable and useful, so that he who has authority in making laws in this community may establish them to be here observed; and then they will be observed here, not because they are the laws of that other community, but because they are established by the legislator in this community.

232. The thing is plain also in cities where the governing is through a power presiding within it: one city accepts the laws of another and ordains them to be kept in this city.

233. The thing is also plain in kingdoms, as the laws of England could be received by another king and established by him to be kept in his kingdom.

234. The thing is also plain in religions, because when the Constitutions and Ordinances of one Religion [sc. Religious Order] are seen by another Religion to be honorable and very suited for observance of regular life, that other Religion could establish that they be observed in that Religion. Nor would they then bind the Order of Preachers because they are the ordinances of the Friars Minor, but because they are approved by the General Chapter of the Order of Preachers.

235. Thus it is in the issue at hand about the judgments of the Mosaic Law, indeed by reading the imperial laws of the Codex [of Justinian] - many things are found sufficiently consonant with many judicial elements of the Mosaic Law; and no wonder, because God was not foolish so as to give the laws against reason; and though he gave some very hard ones, which it is not necessary to observe in the Gospel, yet he gave many very reasonable ones, even for any state at all in this mortal life; and therefore if they are established by a legislator to be observed for any time at all, they are justly set up.

236. And in this way, if it were established by someone that a blasphemer, adulterer, idolater should be killed, much more justly would it be ordained than that a thief should be hung, as will be plain later [n.242]. But it is plain now what princes look to instead, that they look to temporal advantage more than God’s honor, and thereby do they punish, and want to repress, sins against one’s neighbor more than sins against God.