Council of Constance, 1414-1418

646. 20. If the pope is wicked and especially if he is foreknown, then as Judas, the Apostle, he is of the devil, a thief, and a son of perdition, and he is not the head of the holy militant Church, since he is not a member of it.

647. 21. The grace of predestination is a chain by which the body of the Church and any member of it are joined insolubly to Christ the Head.

648. 22. The pope or prelate, wicked and foreknown, is equivocally pastor and truly a thief and robber.

649. 23. The pope should not be called "most holy" even according to his office, because otherwise the king ought also to be called "most holy" according to his office, and torturers and heralds should be called holy, indeed even the devil ought to be called holy, since he is an official of God.

650. 24. If the pope lives in a manner contrary to Christ, even if he should ascend through legal and legitimate election according to the common human constitution, yet he would ascend from another place than through Christ, even though it be granted that he entered by an election made principally by God; for Judas Iscariot rightly and legitimately was elected by God, Jesus Christ, to the episcopacy, and yet he ascended from another place to the sheepfold of the sheep.

651. 25. The condemnation of the forty-five articles of John Wycliffe made by the doctors is irrational and wicked and badly made; the cause alleged by them has been feigned, namely, for the reason that "no one of them is a Catholic but anyone of them is either heretical, erroneous, or scandalous."

652. 26. Not for this reason, that the electors, or a greater part of them, agreed by acclamation according to the observance of men upon some person, is that person legitimately elected; nor for this reason is he the true and manifest successor or vicar of the Apostle Peter, or in the ecclesiastical office of another apostle. Therefore, whether electors have chosen well or badly, we ought to believe in the works of the one elected; for, by the very reason that anyone who operates for the advancement of the Church in a manner more fully meritorious, has from God more fully the faculty for this.

653. 27. For there is not a spark of evidence that there should be one head ruling the Church in spiritual affairs, which head always lives and is preserved with the Church militant herself.

654. 28. Christ through His true disciples scattered through the world would rule His Church better without such monstrous heads.

655. 29. The apostles and faithful priests of the Lord strenuously in necessities ruled the Church unto salvation, before the office of the pope was introduced; thus they would be doing even to the day of judgment, were the pope utterly lacking.