[Modus legendi abbreviaturas]

dispensed, otherwise let him consider ij. q.vi. de creto / de maio. et obe. di lecti. Where it is included: You shall not commit theft. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not kill. You shall not receive a false word. Exodus 20 and 23, Deuteronomy 5, etc. With many similar things. This law began from the beginning of the rational creature, nor is it varied by time. But it is immutable, full, and perfect, divine in itself, and di. viij. in the first.

Positive law

But positive law is a constitution of man, variable and imperfect. And it is subdivided into canon and civil law. For just as man is composed of two, namely matter and form. Thus there are two dignities in the militant church, namely pontifical authority and imperial power, as in de maio. obe. ca. solite. From which double laws have proceeded. For the Pope is the creator of canons, and the emperor of laws. From which it is already manifest the efficient cause of either law.

But the material cause of positive law is laws and canons, decrees or decretal epistles. Regarding which all the law itself is concerned. And commonly the material cause coincides with the subject.

Subject of canon law

Whence the subject of canon law is ecclesiastical good, directive of the faithful, containing the honesty of individual affairs, preserving the utility of ecclesiastical things. Or it is a Catholic man, dirigible by canon law

into human good, similarly also divine. For just as one science is supposed by another science. So the subject [is supposed] by the subject. And the subject of moral philosophy, under which the science of both laws is ordered, is human good, therefore, etc.

Subject of civil law

Thus the subject of civil law is a political man, dirigible by legal constitutions simply into human good to preserve the utility of the republic. The final cause is sufficiently manifest from what has been said. For the end of law is to make men good and knowing, not only through the fear of punishments. But also through the exhortation of rewards.

The formal cause, however, is twofold, namely the form of treating, which is the mode of acting, as definitive, divisive, perceptive, prohibitive, and the positing of examples. And the form of the tractate, which consists in the division of total books into partial ones. And partial ones into titles or rubrics. And titles into chapters, laws, paragraphs, or responses, etc.

In which books the parts of canon law have been handed down to us

As will be said below. Thus canon law has been handed down to us in four principal books. The first book is the Decree. The second, the Decretals. The third, the Sixth Book. And the fourth, the Clementines, namely the constitutions.

For which it should be known that it is said, the Decree, the Canon, and the decretal epistle; this difference is noted in di. iij. § porro. Where Gratian says: Of canons, some are decrees of pontiffs, others