5. The Christian precept to love our enemies is merely the enforcement of a natural obligation. The obligation stands almost self-evident as soon as it is cleared of misunderstanding. The love of enemies is not based on the ground of their being hostile and annoying us. It would be highly unnatural to love them on that score. Nor are we in duty bound to show to one who hates us special offices of friendship, except we find him in extreme need, _e.g._, dying in a ditch, as the Good Samaritan found the Jew: otherwise it is enough that we be animated towards him with that common charity, which we bear to other men who are not further off from us than he is. If Lucius offend Titius, there being no other tie between them than the tie of friendship, Titius may, where the offence is very outrageous, henceforth treat Lucius as a stranger. The question of scandal has sometimes to be regarded, but that is an extrinsic circumstance to our present subject. Nor are we concerned to say what is the better thing for Titius to do, but to say all that he is bound to do. He is bound to render himself as void of wilful malice, and as full of ordinary courtesy and good feeling towards Lucius, as he is in the case of Sempronius, a man whom he never heard of till this day. But if there be some other antecedent tie between them besides the tie of friendship,--for instance, if Titius and Lucius are two monks of the same convent, two officers in the same regiment, two partners of one firm,--Titius is no longer justified in treating Lucius as a stranger. He must regard him with _ordinary_ charity; now ordinary charity between two brother-officers, or two fellow-monks, is not the same as between men who have no such tie one with another. This is why we laid it down that we must be animated towards him who has offended us "with that common charity, which we bear to other men _who are not further off_ from us than he is."