cover up their iniquities and how to put blame on others, while the innocent ones are then summoned to magistrates and courts where they are examined, fined, tied to whipping-posts, and pilloried. No, those evil-doers deserve to be burned standing before those gods (sic) to whom they ran with their indictments. The best court for brethren would be to dispense justice on the basis of goodness, which alone would advance and improve brotherly consciences in true virtue.[290]
CHAPTER 9
THE PERFECT APOSTOLIC CHURCH (CONTINUED)
Magistrates and courts deal with sins, even though officially with property matters; they add the evil of sins because of the corruption of consciences. For this reason Saint Paul reprimands the early Christians like children in Christ because of their lawsuits (concerning worldly goods only) in courts before infidel pagans. He says,
To have lawsuits at all with one another is sin for you. Why not rather suffer wrong?[291]
He clearly considers as sin lawsuits concerning corporeal goods. Of what use is their faith, then, if they are in sin because of lawsuits? Did they not believe in the Son of God in order to be saved from their sins and from the devil’s power through his death? Why, now because of material gain they jeopardize and lose all that which they had gained through Christ’s death; his death is wasted on them unless they earn their right to it by a new repentance. And they cannot repent from their sins unless they give up their lawsuits. This is to show that man can be Christian only if he commits no wrong and harms no one, and if he meekly suffers the wrongdoing of others, not returning evil for evil in accordance with the commandment of Christ. Neither must he have on his conscience the death of a single person.
We have tarried longer upon these matters in order to show that the apostles, while preaching perfection to the first Christians, could not bring them instantly to that perfection – that is, not all of them – and so they offered them a concession in time, hoping that they would thus bring them eventually
