Church Being the Kingdom of God

"And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt."] But He calls Jerusalem Sodom and Egypt, since it had become the heaping up of the persecuting people. Therefore it behooves us diligently, and with the utmost care, to follow the prophetic announcement, and to understand what the Spirit from the Father both announces and anticipates, and how, when He has gone forward to the last times, He again repeats the former ones.

"He shut the door upon him," it is said, that is, he forbade and restrained his seducing those who belong to Christ. Moreover, he put a seal upon him, because it is hidden who belong to the side of the devil, and who to that of Christ. For we know not of those who seem to stand whether they shall not fall, and of those who are down it is uncertain whether they may rise.

Therefore they are not to be heard who assure themselves that there is to be an earthly reign of a thousand years; who think, , with the heretic Cerinthus. For the kingdom of Christ is now eternal in the saints, although the glory of the saints shall be manifested after the resurrection.

These things you do not understand, because, as the prophet said, "Unless you believe, you shall not understand." For you are not instructed in the kingdom of heaven,--that is, in the true Catholic Church of Christ. If you were, you would bring forth from the treasure of the sacred Scriptures things old as well as new.

And what more full of phrensy than this assertion? For, although at times the Church, even that which is at this time, is called the kingdom of heaven; certainly it is so called for this end, because it is being gathered together for a future and eternal life. Although, therefore, it have the promise of the present, and of a future life, yet in all its good works it looks not to "the things that are seen, but to what are not seen.

What then? "And even unto oldness and old age," I will tell forth Thy wonderful works: even until the end of the world here shall be the Church. For if She were not to be here even unto the end of the world; to whom did the Lord say, "Behold, I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the world"? Why was it necessary that these things should be spoken in the Scriptures?

Certainly it is. "How then saith He it 'is not'?" Not because He doth not rule here, but because He hath his empire from above, and because it is not human, but far greater than this and more splendid. "If then it be greater, how was He made captive by the other?"