A church cannot serve two masters. It cannot peacefully coexist with truths and falsities. To want to live with both and to seek a compromise will cause the church to be laid to waste. The church will perish, and the goods and truths of the Word will be taken away from it.

4477. 'And Hamor came, then Shechem his son, to the gate of their city' means the goods and truths of the Church among the Ancients which lay within their doctrine. This is clear from the representation of 'Hamor' as the good of the Church among the Ancients, dealt with in 4447; from the representation of 'Shechem' as the truth springing from that good, dealt with in 4454; and from the meaning of 'the gate of the city' as the doctrine of truth, dealt with in 2943.