'Man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart' (1 Kings xvi. 7). 'From the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,' etc. (Matt. xv. 19).
Application. Turn your thoughts toward eternity, and you will have no difficulty to despise all that is temporal. ' Walk in the Spirit,' i.e., love God, the Supreme Good, ' and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh ' (Gal. V. 16). Happy is he who can truly say: ' My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God' (Ps. lxxxiii. 3).
CHAPTER III.
The Six Commandments of the Church.
1. Are there, besides the Commandments of God, any others which Christians are bound to keep?
Yes, the Commandments of the Church.
2. Whence has the Church a right to give Commandments?
From Jesus Christ Himself, who has commissioned His Church to guide and govern the faithful in His name (pages 142-3, quest. 42-44).
Therefore, to despise the Commandments of the Church is to despise Christ Himself. 'He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me' (Luke x. 16).
3. Has the Church no further right than to give Commandments?
She has also a right to watch over the observance of these Commandments, and to punish those who break them; for instance, to refuse them the Holy Sacraments (Matt, xviii. 18), and finally to exclude them from the Church, and to deprive them of Christian burial when they die (1 Cor. v. 3-5). (See page 133, quest. 10.)
4. Which are the general or chief Commandments of the Church?
