Page:Chelčický, Molnar - The Net of Faith.djvu/106



CHAPTER 31

THE LAW OF MEN AND THE PERFECT LAW OF CHRIST

The Master Adversary speaks in great detail about the division of civil administration into a secular authority and the authority of the gospel of Christ Jesus.

First of all, the contrariness of civil authority to the law of King Jesus – which is his gospel – is revealed in that God had originally established it, but His firstborn Son has introduced (his) authority for his chosen people, rejecting all other authority. On the other hand, pagan administration bases its own authority on a fiction or imagination of blind sinners who invented laws in accordance with earthly wisdom … intending thus, by means of power, to subject many to these laws. God has therefore repudiated such a course as sick, deficient, and even unjust… But He has left that law of blind sinners for the pagans who might thus be somehow enabled to live a physical life, in the way of a sick person who, hardly able to toddle, has to lean on a crutch.

The law of God must be held therefore in great reverence… And every man ought to be satisfied with this law for his conduct in this world, having no need of mixing it with other laws. Neither God nor Christ require of man anything but to do right.[379] Therefore Christ who is both true God and true man, in whom is fullness and perfection,[380] requires nothing of man but love, and the means to attain to it. And the means are powerfully carried by the law of Christ who taught man in the most masterful fashion how to please God in everything he does… And speaking of the perfection of his instruction, man is not only taught fully what to do; Christ’s law will enable him to know even those things which would deviate him from true goodness. For no sin can be committed except when we ask those things which Christ condemned, or when we run away from that which he took upon himself to bear. (And we can see this) because his whole life on earth as man is an example and a lesson for (our own) behavior… Clearly, he taught most powerfully and most fully … how to avoid injustice and do good…  No law can be more perfect than the law of Christ.

Therefore, a faithful Christian who realizes the powerful strength and perfection of the law of God … cannot become a ruler with un-Christian authority which had been culled by blind sinners, in fear lest he defile the rule of God with the rule of blind sinners, a rule by which pagans live their life so laboriously.

CHAPTER 32

THE LAW OF MEN AND THE LAW OF CHRIST (CONTINUED)

Now concerning the second difference between the rule of the law of Christ and the pagan rule, the Master Adversary says[381] that the civil or state law of the pagans is (real) law by virtue of the sinfulness of