Dr. Newman's treatment of the Sentence (24) which condemns those who say that the Church has not the right to employ force, is very instructive. First, he says (p. 89), "Employing force is not the Pope's phrase, but Professor Nuytz's." And what then? Is this phrase, "It is an error to say the Church has not a right to employ force" Professor Nuytz's or the Pope's? Next Dr. Newman says that what the Pope means is, "It is an error to say with Professor Nuytz that what he calls employing force is not allowable to the Church." And what then? What does Professor Nuytz call force but force? Schrader translates it "outward force." Dr. Newman does not venture so far as to translate it "spiritual coercion." The whole sentence is about temporal power and the use of force--_Vis inferendae--potestatem temporalem_; it never glances at spiritual censures in the popular sense.
At the next step, Dr. Newman professes to "set down what the received doctrine of the Church is on ecclesiastical punishments" (p. 89). Does he do so, or make any straightforward attempt to do it? Not by any means. "Ecclesiastical punishments" is a term of wide extension, embracing great varieties of penalty, from the deposition of an Emperor to the paltry penance of a nun. In all this range of inflictions, the single point touched by Dr. Newman is that of corporal punishment. The selection of this one point proves that he was perfectly aware that both Nuytz and the Pope meant force when they said force; and this fact reduces the talk about Nuytz's sense of that term to what it is.
But having selected corporal punishment as the whole of ecclesiastical punishment, how does Dr. Newman set down the received doctrine regarding it? By quoting a passage which, under the appearance of surrendering something, really claims something additional, according to a common usage with Papal writers (p. 89). Cardinal Soglia, as quoted by Dr. Newman, makes a merit of giving up on behalf of the Church "the corporal sword by which the body is destroyed, or blood is shed." This, however, the Church _formerly_ never claimed to hold _in her hand_, but _only in her power_ and _at her beck_, in the hand of the temporal ruler. But, in giving up the corporal sword, Soglia is not contented to claim for the Church in her own hand what the bull _Unam Sanctam_ claims; that is, the spiritual sword. He does of course claim that, but he further claims that the same hand should have and hold also the corporal instalments "of lighter punishments," such as imprisonment, flogging, and beating with sticks--anything "short of effusion of blood." The last penalty is the stroke of the corporal sword, and is left to the temporal arm. The Church did not in past time claim two swords in her own hand, the spiritual one and the corporal. She only claimed a spiritual sword according to Boniface VIII; and according to Dr. Newman she claims also a cat, a cudgel, and a rack.