Page:Newman - Phases of Faith, 1850.djvu/39

 will in time return to bring to an end these earthly kingdoms: but until then, we claim no superiority over you on earth. As the riches of this world, so the powers of this world, belong to another king: we dare not try to appropriate them in the name of our heavenly King; nay, we should hold it as great a sin to clutch empire for our churches, as to clutch wealth: God forbid that we covet either!—But what then if the enemy had had foresight to reply, O proconsul, this Paul talks finely, and perhaps sincerely: but if so, yet cheat not yourself to think that his followers will tie themselves to his mild equity and disinterestedness. Now indeed they are weak: now they profess unworldliness and unambition: they wish only to be recognized as peace able subjects, as citizens and as equals : but if once they grow strong enough, they will discover that their spears and swords are the symbol of their Lord’s return from heaven; that he now at length commissions them to eject you, as vile infidels, from all seats of power,—to slay you with the sword, if you dare to offer sacrifice to the immortal gods,—to degrade you so, that you shall not only not enter the senate, or the privy council of the prince, or the judgment seat, but not even the jury-box, or a municipal corporation, or the pettiest edileship of Italy; nay, you shall not be lieutenants of armies, or tribunes, or any thing above the lowest centurion. You shall become a plebeian class,—cheap bodies to be exposed in battle or to toil in the field,