Chapter 35.—Of the Sons of the
Church Who are Hidden Among the Wicked, and of False Christians
Within the Church.
Let these and similar answers (if
any fuller and fitter answers can be found) be given to their
enemies by the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, and by the
pilgrim city of King Christ. But let this city bear in mind, that
among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be
fellow-citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to
bear what they inflict as enemies until they become confessors of
the faith. So, too, as long as she is a stranger in the world,
the city of God has in her communion, and bound to her by the
sacraments, some who shall not eternally dwell in the lot of the
saints. Of these, some are not now recognized; others declare
themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with our
enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they
wear. These men you may to-day see thronging the churches with
us, to-morrow crowding the theatres with the godless. But we have
the less reason to despair of the reclamation even of such persons,
if among our most declared enemies there are now some, unknown to
themselves, who are destined to become our friends. In truth,
these two cities are entangled together in this world, and
intermixed until the last judgment effects their separation. I
now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress,
and end of these two cities; and what I write, I write for the
glory of the city of God, that, being placed in comparison with the
other, it may shine with a brighter lustre.