Chapter XII: Christ in being born proved that the authority of the Roman Empire was just.

And especially those who call themselves zealots for the Christian faith have “raged” and “imagined vain things” against Roman dominion; they have no pity for the poor of Christ, but defraud them in the church revenues, even stealing their patrimony daily, and render the Church destitute; pretending to Justice, they yet permit no executor of Justice to do his duty.

Nor is this impoverishment accomplished without the judgment of God, for the church revenues are neither given to relieve the poor whose patrimony they are, nor are held with gratitude to the Empire which bestowed them. Let them return whence they came. They came justly, they return unjustly, for though they were rightly given, they are wrongfully held. What should be said of such shepherds? What, if with the depletion of the Church’s substance the estates of relatives wax great? Belike it were better to follow out the argument and await our Saviour’s aid in pious silence.

I affirm, therefore, that if the Roman Empire did not come to be with Right, Christ in His birth authorized an injustice. This consequent is false; therefore the contradictory of the antecedent is true, since contradictory propositions are of such a nature that the falseness of a statement argues for the truth of its opposite.

The falsity of this consequent need not be proved to those of the faith; for he who is of the faith will concede its falsity; if he does not do so, he is not of the faith; and if he is not of the faith, this argument concerns him not.

I demonstrate the consequent thus: Whoever of his own free will fulfills an edict urges its justice by so doing; and since deeds are more persuasive than words, as the Philosopher states in his last book to Nicomachus, he is more convincing than if his approbation were verbal. Now Christ willed to be born of a Virgin Mother under an edict of Roman authority, according to the testimony of Luke, his scribe, in order that the Son of Man, made man, might be numbered as a man in that unique census. This fulfilled the edict. It were perhaps more reverent to believe that the Divine Will caused the edict to go forth through Caesar, in order that God might number Himself among the society of mortals who had so many ages awaited His coming.

So Christ in His action established as just the edict of Augustus, exerciser of Roman authority. Since to decree justly presupposes jurisdictional power, whoever confirms the justice of an edict confirms also the jurisdictional power whence it issued. Did this power not exist by Right, it would be unjust.

And observe that the argument employed to disprove the consequent, though it holds to a certain degree, nevertheless, if reduced, shows its force in the second figure, just as the argument based on the assumption of the antecedent shows its force in the first figure. The reduction is made as follows: Every unjust thing is established unjustly; Christ established nothing unjustly; therefore Christ established no unjust thing. And thus by the assumption of the antecedent: Every unjust thing is established unjustly; Christ established an unjust thing; therefore Christ established things unjustly.