[x][1] Up to this point our thesis has been proved by arguments which are mainly based on rational principles; but now it must be proved again from the principles of the Christian faith. For it is those who style themselves ardent defenders of the Christian faith who most of all have ‘raged’ and ‘meditated vain things’ against Roman authority; they have no pity for Christ’s poor, who are not only defrauded of the revenues of the churches, but whose very patrimony is daily stolen; and the Church grows poor while they, making a pretence of justice, shut out the dispenser of justice.

[2] But this impoverishment of the Church does not happen without God’s judgment, since her resources are not used to help the poor (whose patrimony the Church’s wealth is), and since no gratitude is shown for receiving them from the empire which offers them.

[3] Let them return where they came from: they came well, they return badly, since they were given in good faith and badly held. What does this matter to such shepherds? What do they care if the Church’s substance is wasted, as long as the wealth of their own relatives increases? But perhaps it is better to return to our thesis, and wait in reverent silence for help from our Saviour.

[4] I say therefore that if the Roman empire was not based on right, Christ by his birth assented to an injustice; the consequent is false; therefore the contradictory of the antecedent is true. For contradictory statements are mutually exclusive: if one is false, the other must be true.

[5] There is no need to demonstrate to believers that the consequent is false, for if someone is a believer, he allows that this is false; if he does not allow it, he is not a believer, and if he is not a believer, this argument is not for him.

[6] I show the relationship of consequentiality as follows: anyone who of his own free will complies with an edict, acknowledges by his action that the edict is legitimate, and, since actions are more telling than words, as Aristotle says at the end of the Ethics, he does so more effectively than if he gave it his verbal approval. But as his chronicler Luke relates, Christ chose to be born of his Virgin Mother under an edict emanating from Roman authority, so that the Son of God made man might be enrolled as a man in that unique census of the human race; this means that he acknowledged the validity of that edict.

[7] And perhaps it is more holy to believe that the edict came by divine inspiration through Caesar, so that he who had been so long awaited in the society of men might himself be enrolled among mortals.

[8] Therefore Christ acknowledged by his action that the edict of Augustus, who embodied the authority of the Romans, was legitimate. And since someone who issues an edict legitimately must logically have the jurisdiction to do so, it necessarily follows that someone who acknowledges that an edict is legitimate is also acknowledging that the jurisdiction of the authority which promulgated it is legitimate; because if it were not based on right, it would not be legitimate.

[9] And note that our argument, which is based on denying the consequent, although valid in its form by virtue of a common-place, yet reveals its full force as a second figure syllogism, if it is then reduced to the first figure as an argument based on affirming the antecedent.

[10] This reduction runs as follows: all injustice is assented to unjustly; Christ did not assent unjustly; therefore he did not assent to an injustice. Affirming the antecedent, we get: all injustice is assented to unjustly; Christ assented to an injustice; therefore he assented unjustly.