esses privation,
not reverent expresses negation; and, therefore, irreverence is to
disavow the due submission by a manifest sign. The want of reverence
is to refuse submission as not due. A man can deny or refuse a thing
in a double sense. In one way, the man can deny offending against the
Truth when he abstains from the due confession, and this properly is
to disavow. In another way, the man can deny offending against the
Truth when he does not confess that which is not, and this is proper
negation; even as for the man to deny that he is entirely mortal is to
deny properly speaking. Wherefore, if I deny or refuse reverence due
to the Imperial Authority, I am not irreverent, but I am not reverent;
which is not against reverence, forasmuch as it offends not that
Imperial Authority; even as not to live does not offend Life, but
Death, which is privation of that Life, offends; wherefore, to die is
one thing and not to live is another thing, for not to live is in the
stones. And since Death expresses privation, which cannot be except in
decease of the subject, and the stones are not the subject of Life,
they should not be called dead, but not living. In like manner, I, who
in this case ought not to have reverence to the Imperial Authority, am
not irreverent if I deny or refuse it, but I am not reverent, which is
neither boldness, nor presumption, nor a thing to be blamed. But it
would be presumption to be reverent, if it could be called reverence,
since it would fall into greater and more true irreverence, that is,
into irreverence of Nature and of Truth, as will be seen in the
sequel. Against this error that Master of Philosophers, Aristotle,
guards, in the beginning of the book of Ethics, when he says: "If the
friends are two, and one is the Truth, their one mind is the Truth's."
If I have said that I am not reverent, that is, to deny reverence, or
by a manifest sign to deny or refuse a submission not due. It is to be
seen how this is to deny and not to disavow, that is to say, it
remains to be seen how, in this case, I am not rightfully subject to
the Imperial Majesty. It must be a long argument wherewith I intend to
prove this in the chapter next following.

CHAPTER IX.

To see how in this case, that is, in approving or in not approving the
opinion of the Emperor, I am not held in subjection to him, it is
necessary to recall to mind that which has been argued previously
concerning the Imperial Office, in the