Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/441

116* practical. That is to say, the confused Christian people have so many imperial, civil and pagan statutes and laws that they have become (saturated) with them as with poison. The true inner life perishes after the use of this poison and strays from God and His grace. They have become accustomed to eat and drink this poison in all human institutions and laws, and having been fattened by this poisonous food of errors, they intend to stick to these laws as if they were just or given by od, and to profit temporal gains in glory. For in doing this they enjoy their freedom of will and body, eschewing the tribulations of the cross of Christ, defending themselves at courts, not abstaining from corpore al goods and being free to mete out revenge and to return evil for evil. He who feeds on this poison enjoys freedom in evil things and can say nothing about such a pagan order except that it is good and just.

It is no wonder that people poisoned by this venomous food defile and reject the gospel of Christ as impractical. An interesting similarity of argument is found in another treatise on passive resistance, Etienne de la Boe̍tie's, publ. by the Columbia University Press in 1942 under the title ; "We learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude. It cannot be denied that nature influential in shaping us to her will and making us reveal our rich or meager endowment; yet it must be admitted that she has less power over us than custom, for the reason that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated unless encouraged Fruit trees retain their own particular quality if permitted to grow undisturbed, but lose it promptly and bear strange fruit not their own when ingrafted." (P.20f).