Annotation XXXVI

”Seek first the kingdom of God.” — Matthew 6:33

Whether it is lawful for preachers to preach the Gospel for the sake of a livelihood.

Augustine, in the second book On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, chapters 24 and 25, pursues this passage in a lengthy exposition; from which the Master of the Sentences [Peter Lombard], seizing a handle for disputation, maintains that it is not lawful for evangelical preachers to set themselves two ends of preaching — one primary, for the kingdom of God, the other secondary, for bodily sustenance. This patchwork of him [Augustine] is gathered in the second book of the Sentences, distinction 38, thus: “We ought not to preach the Gospel in order to eat, but to eat in order to preach the Gospel — so that food is not the good which is sought, but the necessary [thing] which is added, that this may be fulfilled: ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.’ He did not say, ‘First seek the kingdom of God, and then seek these things, although they too are necessary,’ but he says, ‘All these things shall be added to you’ — that is, these will follow, if you seek those; [take heed] lest, while seeking these, you be turned away from thence; or lest you set up two ends, so as to desire both the kingdom of God for its own sake and these necessary things for its sake. Therefore we ought to do all things only for the sake of the kingdom of God — not, even along with the kingdom of God, to have in view a bodily reward.” — Thus far Augustine’s words; by which the Master shows that preachers are not absolutely forbidden to set themselves two ends, but only [forbidden to set] two ends tending in different directions, of which the one is not referred to the other. But if they desire the kingdom of God first, and for its own sake, and then, in the second place, seek food, clothing, and lodging for the sake of that same kingdom — they in no way stray from the evangelical scope, because they subordinate all ends to one only end, which is God.