4. John xvii. 16, 15.
294 ST. AUGUSTINE deniest such kingly claims, what hast thou done to cause thy being delivered unto me? As if there would be no ground for wonder that one should be delivered up to a judge for punishment, who proclaimed himself a king; but if no such assertion were made, it became needful to inquire of Him, what else, if anything. He had done, that He should thus deserve to be delivered unto the judge.
Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, O circumcision; hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I interfere not with your government in this world, "My kingdom is not of this world." Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of including Christ in the fatal number,^ made more cruel by his fear than by his anger: "My kingdom," He said, "is not of this world." What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world; come, beheving, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear. He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, "Yet have
I been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;" ^ but that hill of Zion is not of this world. For what is His kingdom, save those who beheve in Him, to whom He says, "Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"? And yet He wished them to be in the world: on that very account saying of them to the Father, "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." * Hence also He says not here, "My
2. Matt. ii. 3, 16.