Page:Chelčický, Molnar - The Net of Faith.djvu/83



► 	The first group is that of the lords, kings, and princes, who fight, defend, and attack. ► 	The second group is that of spiritual priesthoods who pray. ► 	The third group is the workers in bondage who are supposed to provide for the physical needs of the other two classes.

If the body of Christ is divided by such an order of things, what inequalities are there present! Naturally, this order is agreeable to the first two classes who loaf, gorge, and dissipate themselves. And the burden for this living is shoved onto the shoulders of the third class, which has to pay in suffering[320] for the pleasures of the other two guzzlers – and there are so many of them! When the weather is sultry and hot, pilgrims look for rest under a cool roof, and in the same way they hurry anxiously to become lords. When they cannot be lords, they ask to be at least their lackeys, in order to be, in some way, partakers of their abundant tables and luxuries, getting up and sitting down in emptiness. Yes, the priests too, hurry anxiously to be knighted, and they even like to lackey for the princes because of their overburdened rich tables. It is these two groups of lazy gluttons who, for their own pleasures, drain the working people of their blood, and tread on them contemptuously as if they were dogs.

If this were the true body of Christ or his Church, how improbable the words of Saint Paul would then sound – Saint Paul who speaks of the spiritual body and the different dispositions of its members, a body in which there is no discord and no inequality and in which one member does not oppress another against its will; he says about them:

If one member rejoices, all rejoice together;

If one member suffers, all suffer together.[321]

They love one another; if they have something good, they divide equally; if something bitter befalls them, they drink it together comforting one another. But in that three-cornered body, some are sadly weeping while others make fun of them; some sweat in terrible labors while others loiter in pleasant coolness. All these inequalities, so offensive to truth, have been brought about by the sundered wicked hordes. And they forget especially the words that he spoke preparing himself for death and praying for his disciples so that they might remain faithful and for those chosen for salvation. In that prayer he said:

I do not pray for these only (that is, the disciples), but also for those who are to believe in me through their word, that they might all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.[322]

In that passage it is declared that the people who want to please God and to be saved through the death of Christ – a salvation for which Christ prayed here – must be united in this divine unity and be perfect in it so that all those who believed in him through apostolic preaching until our own day might be one, remaining in the unity in perfection, and in equality. Like members of one body, they, too, must have