14. So, too, Christians are subjects of two kingdoms--they have
experience of two kinds of life. Here on earth where the world has its
home and its heavenly kingdom, we surely are not citizens. According
to Paul (Phil 3, 20), "our conversation"--our citizenship--"is with
Christ in heaven"; that is, in yonder life, the life we await. As the
Jews hoped to be released from Babylon, we hope to be released from
this present life and to go where we shall be lordly citizens forever.
But being obliged to continue in this wretched state--our Babylon--so
long as God wills, we should do as the Jews were commanded to
do--mingle with other mortals, eat and drink, make homes, till the
soil, fill civil offices and show good will toward our fellows, even
praying for them, until the hour arrives for us to depart unto our
home.
15. He who is guided by these facts, who comprehends the distinction
between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the world, will know
how to resist successfully all classes of fanatics. For these latter
paint this life in a terrible aspect. They want to run out of the
world entirely, and are unwilling to associate with anyone; or they
proceed to disturb civil regulations and to overthrow all order; or
again, as with the Pope, they interfere in secular rule, desiring
temporal authority, wholly under the name and color of Christianity.
Having as Christians forgiveness of sins, and being now people of God,
children of his kingdom, citizens no longer of Babylon but of heaven,
let us know that during the period of our sojourn here among
strangers, it is ours to live righteously, honorably and chastely, to
further civil and domestic peace and to lend counsel and aid to
benefit even the wicked and ungrateful, meanwhile constantly striving
after our inheritance and keeping in mind the kingdom whither we are
bound.
16. In short, a Christian must be one who, as Paul says (1 Cor 7,
29-31), uses this world as not abusing it, who buys and possesses as
though he possessed not, who has wife and children as though he had
them not and who builds as though not building. How is it possible to
reconcile these seeming inconsistencies? By making the Christian faith
distinct from the faith of the Jews and Turks--yes, of the Papists
even: by accepting the fact that the Christian's attitude toward this
earthly life is the attitude of the guest; that in such capacity is he
to build, to buy, to have dealings and hold intercourse with his
fellows, to join them in all temporal affairs--a guest who respects
his host's wishes, the laws of the realm and of the city and the
customs of the inn, but at the same time the Christian refrains from
attesting his satisfaction with this life as if he intended to remain
here and hoped for nothing better. Thus will the Christian pass
through every temporal event in the right way--having every possession
as though not having it, using and yet not cleaving to it; not so
occupied with the temporal as to lose the eternal, but leaving
behind--forgetting--the former while striving after the latter as the
goal set before him.
17. Therefore, they who presume to run out of the world by going into
the desert or the wilderness; who, unwilling to occupy the inn but
finding it indispensable nevertheless, must become their own
hosts--these are great and unreasonable fools. Surely they must eat
and drink and have clothing and shelter. With these things they cannot
dispense, even if they can withdraw from all society. Nor is their
action forsaking and fleeing the world, as they imagine it to be.
Whatever your station and condition, whatever your occupation in life,
of necessity you must be somewhere on earth while mortal life is
yours. Nor has God separated you from men; he has placed you in
society. Each individual is created and born for the sake of other
individuals. But observe, wherever you are and whatever your station,
you are, I say, to flee the world.