Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/455

123* authority. He does not have so much sense or love as to be willing to be killed by his overlord rather than to commit such an evil thing. An arrogant authority is, indeed, a trap for good Christians; it compels its subjects to go and do every evil it can think of.

But the greatest iniquity and crime which the authority has committed, running into the worst form of pagan hypocrisy is revealed – when already so contrary to Christ as it is – it even kills righteous Christians for their faith, spilling their blood. For the apostles of the Antichrist have wound themselves around the heart of authority and use it now to their own advantage and for their own purposes. They have betrayed true Christianity to the powers-that-be, defaming it with heresy. And authority which of itself does not know what faith is likewise knows not heresy. But spiritual hounds who hate the servants of Christ and of his law whisper their insinuations into the ear of authority, inciting it to exterminate those heresies with a pious ruthlessness. Erasmus of Rotterdam writes similarly in his essay "We war continually, city with city, prince with prince, people with people, yea, and (it that the heathen confess to be a wicked thing) cousin with cousin, alliance with alliance, brother with brother, the son with the father, yea, and that I esteem more cruel than all these things, 4em