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TWENTY THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY  
Our Lord is set forth in the Gospel of this Sunday as teaching that duties towards the civil power are part of our heavenly citizenship; St. Paul also, in the Epistle, referring to the true Christian life on earth as having already many things in common with the life of heaven.  None ever set a higher example of obedience to the laws than He Who is the Eternal Lawgiver and Ruler: and He inculcates an honest submission to them even in such a case as that on which an appeal was made to Him, where the law was that of a conqueror against whom rebellion seemed to be a duty.  One deduction to be drawn from the words of Christ and of His Apostle is that the Church has little to do with politics or questions of secular government.  The things of Caesar and the things of God were confused together by the Jews, and they ended by rejecting the Lord, and saying, "We have no king but Caesar."  So it has happened at other times, that a want of zeal for God in carefully distinguishing what is His, has led the Church into bondage to civil rulers until its spiritual character has been almost obliterated.  The Church of England has been mercifully guided into a just discrimination of the things of Caesar and the things of God; and while rendering strictest obedience to the Sovereign, has not suffered an excessive loyalty to yield up spiritual rights.  Nor does it ever, in modern days, seek to interfere in matters of civil government.  Such a just consideration of the respective duties which are owing towards Caesar and towards God, and such a persevering determination to render to each their proper dues, is a sure way of promoting both the security and the happy progress of Christ's Church.