What excommunication is.

Excommunication (for it is better to express it in poor Latin than to express it poorly) is the power and authority conveyed to the church by God, which bars wicked persons, or those who have a corrupt understanding of our religion and persist in their error, from the reception of the sacraments, and also from the society of Christians, until they recover their senses and give appropriate signs of their salutary opinions, and also submit to ecclesiastical penalties, by which the lust of the flesh is repressed in order that the spirit might be saved.

To whom excommunication is entrusted.

The church has received from Christ the keys in which the power to bind and to loose is contained. And since these things must be approached rightly and in order, just as the administration of the sacraments and the task of preaching from the Holy Scriptures is reserved for certain men, so the power to excommunicate resides in the ministers and governors of the churches, that by the teaching and rule of the Holy Scriptures they may impose discipline in the most sacred supper of the Lord, and determine which persons ought to be excluded from the divine table and which are to be admitted to it; and the following are the moderators and leaders of the churches: the archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deans, and finally whoever have been appointed to this office by the church.

The cases in which excommunication must be applied.

Excommunication must not be used for minor offences, but is to be reserved for the wickedness of horrible crimes, by which the church endures the most grievous disrepute, either because religion is overturned by them or because good morals are perverted. Of this type are those of which Paul says that those who do regnum Dei non introibunt, vel regni Dei non erunt haeredes, vel quod propter haec venit ira Dei in filios incredulos. Haec immania facinora telo debent excommunicationis confringi, ut qui sunt illorum rei, in hoc supplicium incurrant, nisi mature bonam ad frugem se revocaverint, et cum arguuntur, se ab huiusmodi sceleribus quamprimum alienant, ac etiamplene velint omne damnum luere, quod ecclesia in illorum peccatis passa est.