15. Enarr. CXXXVI, 9.
XVIU INTRODUCTION often heard in the streets; while in more polite circles, as St. Augustine reports, pagans were demanding of Christians: "Tell us the reason for
Christ's coming; tell us what benefit it has been to the human race. Have not matters been worse upon earth since Christ came, and was it not better in the old days than it is now?" ^^
It had been primarily to answer such questions that St. Augustine undertook to write at length concerning 3ie rise and fall of earthly kingdoms. But he wrote also in order to warn his fellow-
Christians not to be misled by the taunts of their enemies into making false claims for Christianity. In letters, sermons, and treatises, he reminded them that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was for the salvation, not of political regimes, but of individual souls; and he especially warned them not to confound the Christian community with Rome or any other worldly state. Nations, St. Augustine asserts, may boast of having Christian political rule, but in fact their
Christianity, Uke their much-vaunted justice, can be at best only nominal, only a handsomelycolored semblance.^® Since Christians cannot, in good faith, constitute a kingdom or polis of their own in this world, they cannot, in good faith, claim to have a politics of their own. The only politics possible on earth is that of coercive power used to restrain coercive power, which has always characterized the civitas terrena.
And the civitas terrena, St. Augustine further insists, has absolutely nothing to fear, in the way of political interference, from the pilgrim Christian fellowship hving in its midst. In one of his
15. Enarr. CXXXVI, 9. 16. Compare De civ., II, 21.