 According to Paul, “there is no power but from God”  (Romans 13:1),  and according to a gloss on a canon from the Decretum, the emperor’s power is “from God alone” (D. 96 c. 11, s.v. “divinitus”). Ockham quotes these texts, and says that although the secular ruler’s power is “from the people”, yet it is also “from God alone”, and not only indirectly (i.e., from God as ultimate cause) but directly, “without intermediary”. These propositions are not obviously reconcilable. In a work apparently not circulated during the middle ages, the Breviloquium, Ockham tries to reconcile them: political power comes from God, but God confers it on the ruler selected the community; once rulership has been conferred, the ruler is subject to God alone—regularly, though on occasion a community can correct or depose its ruler (Breviloquium 4.2–8; Short Discourse: 110–21; Potestà 1986).