The Institution of Christian Religion

And what I pray you mean these things that they have presumed to mock withal in their unsavoury gloss?¹ Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute you, bless them that curse you, that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven.² Who can not hear reason with Chrysostom, that by so necessary a cause it plainly appeareth that they are no exhortations but commandments? What remaineth more when we be blotted out of the number of the children of God? But by their opinion, only Monks shall be the children of the heavenly father, they only shall be bold to call upon God their Father: what shall the Church do in the mean season? it shall by like right be sent away to the Gentiles and Publicans.³ For Christ saith: If ye be friendly to your friends, what favour look you for thereby? do not the gentiles and publicans the same? But we shall be in good case forsooth, if the title of Christians be ⟨p. 69⟩left unto us, and the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven taken away from us.⁴ And no less strong is Augustine's argument. When (saith he) the Lord forbiddeth to commit fornication, he no less forbiddeth to touch the wife of thine enemy than of thy friend. When he forbiddeth theft, he giveth leave to steal nothing at all, either from thy friend or from thine enemy. But these two, not to steal, and not to commit fornication,⁵ Paul bringeth within the compass of the rule of love, yea and teacheth that they are contained under this commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self. Therefore, either Paul must have ben a false expositor of the law, or it necessarily followeth hereby, that our enemies ought also to be loved, even by commandment, like as our friends. Therefore they do truly bewray themselves to be the children of Satan, that do so licentiously shake of the common yoke of the children of God. It is to be doubted, whether they have published this doctrine with more gross dullness or shamelessness. For there are none of the old writers that do not pronounce as of a thing certain, that these are mere commandments. And that even in Gregory's age it was not doubted of, appeareth by his own affirmation, for he without controversy taketh them for commandments. And how foolishly do they reason? They say that they are to weighty a burden for Christians.