20. De civ., XIX, 17.
XX INTRODUCTION goverament for their own discipline. Obviously, if all human beings were truly Christian, loving God wholeheartedly and their neighbors for God's sake, there would be no need of coercive government. Woridly political regimes, St. Augustine holds emphatically, exist for the mutual restraint of the wicked. The peace they enforce is a genuine good—yet cleariy a good of the sort that results when the violently insane are bound in straitjackets to prevent them from destroying one another. Such peace is to be accounted a true good even if those who bind are neither less demented nor less violent than those who are bound. It suffices only that they be more powerful.
In the spirit of this grim truth, St. Augustine says of the pilgrim portion of the heavenly city that, so long as it "lives like a captive and stranger" in the worid, calling its members out of all nations, it will respect "diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained." For it recognizes that, "however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace." ^o
St. Augustine thus provides us with an explanation, if not a justification, of the fact, noted earlier in this introduction, that descriptions of governmental operations and comparisons of constitutions have httle if any place in his political doctrine. The form of political regime under which Christians are called upon to live is, or ought to be, of little consequence to them. Whether they be "kings, princes, juciges, soldiers, provincials, rich, poor, free, slave, male, or female," he declares unambiguously, "they are bound to toler-
20. De civ., XIX, 17.