The Present and Future Worlds are Enemies to Each Other.

Chapter VI.—The Present and Future Worlds are Enemies to Each Other.

Now the Lord declares, “No servant can serve two masters.”⁴³⁶⁰  If we desire, then, to serve both God and mammon, it will be unprofitable for us.  “For what will it profit if a man gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”⁴³⁶¹  This world and the next are two enemies.  The one urges⁴³⁶² to adultery and corruption, avarice and deceit; the other bids farewell to these things.  We cannot, therefore, be the friends of both; and it behoves us, by renouncing the one, to make sure⁴³⁶³ of the other.  Let us reckon⁴³⁶⁴ that it is better to hate the things present, since they are trifling, and transient, and corruptible; and to love those [which are to come,] as being good and incorruptible.  For if we do the will of Christ, we shall find rest; otherwise, nothing shall deliver us from eternal punishment, if we disobey His commandments.  For thus also saith the Scripture in Ezekiel, “If Noah, Job, and Daniel should rise up, they should not deliver their children in captivity.”⁴³⁶⁵  Now, if men so eminently righteous are not able by their righteousness to deliver their children, how⁴³⁶⁶ can we hope to enter into the royal residence⁴³⁶⁷ of God unless we keep our baptism holy and undefiled?  Or who shall be our advocate, unless we be found possessed of works of holiness and righteousness?