men and for the purpose of obtaining justice through compulsion, while the law of the holy gospel exists for the (sole) purpose of obtaining spiritual gifts of grace… [ Civil law administers justice through compulsion, while the law of Christ establishes justice through love. ]
[ But while law checks – to a certain degree – injustice within one’s own country, it does nothing when iniquities are committed abroad. ] The straying Christians like to depend on secular power; they even seek it and cherish it since it serves their inclinations… Thus a material-minded people asks to have secular power (over them) because it enables them to rest in peace around fleshpots, under the protection of (state) authority; and if, peradventure, some hardship or threat to life or property should come about, these things will be defended by authority of the king, through war, driving away the disturber, and revenge… [ These Christians who have strayed from the law of Christ and are under the jurisdiction of the civil law are regarded as just and good as long as they live up to the standards of the civil courts and offices. But righteousness by law has nothing in common with righteousness in the eyes of God. ] The truth of Jesus is nothing but foolishness[382] to proud men, an oddity, an offense, a pain, and a shame.
Here it is necessary to ask: in what consists the superiority of the law of Christ over pagan civil laws? In this, that a (Christian) man adjusts his conduct in accordance with his conscience … keeping in mind the grace of God and the reward of salvation … while a subject of the state adjusts his conduct in accordance with the advantageous protection of his temporal legal honor and property. A pagan fights to protect his rights and his property in court or in field; a Christian conducts his life with love, patiently enduring injustice, as he will be rewarded by an eternal gain… He refuses to have any dealings with commercial enterprises and with any profitable speculations, lest he harm his soul… And this is foolishness to the pagan (world).
CHAPTER 33
THE LAW OF MEN AND THE LAW OF CHRIST (CONTINUED)
[ Evil has a tendency to perpetuate itself and to grow. The Christians, having fallen away from the way of perfection, keep on falling deeper and deeper. The government of kings and of civil laws only helps in this falling. For even though the civil law seems to check evil, it encourages a continuing fall of man. ] It still does perpetuate lawsuits, punishments, and revenge; it returns evil for evil, perpetuates falsehoods, taxes patience, … and in all these matters it is an accomplice of the fall, departing farther and farther from the original state of innocence.
[ Speaking of the general state of this ‘fallenness’ Chelčický suggests that there is only one antidote: utter obedience to the law of Christ. ] His law alone can check the fall. The ‘fallenness’ of man is the root of evil death from which all mortal things are growing: addiction to do evil, possessiveness, anger, hatred, and avarice… And knowing that our old self was crucified with our sins[383] … man can be rescued through his obedience to the laws of Christ. [ By persecuting, the evil of the civil law grows; by being persecuted, the innocence of the true Christian grows ] and with it, his life of grace.
