On Fleeing the World

We often speak of fleeing this world, and would that the disposition were as careful and anxious as the speaking is easy! But what is worse, the enticement of earthly desires often creeps in, and an outpouring of vanities takes hold of the mind, so that what you are eager to avoid is what you think about and turn over in your mind. This is hard for a man to guard against, and impossible to put off altogether. Indeed the prophet testifies that it is a matter of prayer rather than of accomplishment, when he says: “Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to avarice.” For our heart and our thoughts are not in our power; poured over us unexpectedly, they confuse the mind and spirit and draw them elsewhere than you intended; they call us back to worldly things, insert things of this world, thrust pleasures upon us, weave in enticements; and at the very time when we are preparing to lift up our mind, we are usually cast down to earthly things by the empty thoughts that have been inserted.

But who is so blessed as always to ascend in his heart? And how can this be done without divine help? In no way at all. Indeed the same Scripture says above: “Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; ascent is in his heart.” Blessed indeed is the one whom delight does not call back, whom pleasure does not bend down, who does not look back to lower things, which not even Lot’s wife could escape. Warned by this example, the apostle, forgetting what lay behind and reaching for what lay ahead, hastened to the prize, and he was found worthy to arrive, because he saw Christ before him, by whom he was called to the crown of righteousness. But he arrived because he denied himself to himself in order to gain Christ. Indeed it was not he who lived, but Christ lived in him.

For who, amid so many passions of this body, amid so many enticements of this world, can keep his footstep safe and undefiled? The eye looked back and turned aside the mind’s perception; the ear heard and bent away its attention; a scent breathed upon it and hindered thought; the mouth tasted and brought back a crime; touch made contact and kindled a fire. “Death has come in through the window,” said the prophet. Your window is your eye. If you look at a woman to desire her, death has come in; if you hear the words of harlots, death has come in; if luxury captures your senses, death has entered. And so one who wishes to ascend should follow not the joys of the world, not its pleasant and delightful things, but things full of sorrow and weeping; for “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of joy.” Indeed, Adam would not have come down from paradise had he not been deceived by delight.

Beautifully, then, does David, who had experienced how dangerous even a man’s glances are, call that man blessed whose whole hope is in the name of God. For thus he does not look back on vanities and follies, if he always looks toward Christ and always beholds Christ with the inner eyes. Hence again, turning to him, he says: “Turn away my eyes, lest they see vanity.” The circus is vanity, because it profits nothing; the swiftness of horses is vain, because it is false for safety; the theatre is vanity, every game is vanity. “All things are vanity,” said Ecclesiastes, that are in this world. So one who wishes to be saved should ascend above the world, seek the Word with God, flee this world, leave the earth; for he cannot grasp that which is and always is unless he has first fled from here. Hence the Lord too, wishing to draw near to God the Father, said to the apostles: “Rise, let us go from here.”

The law too teaches you that the world must be fled and God followed. For what else does it teach when it says: “You shall appoint for yourselves cities for refuge, and they shall be refuges for you, to which the slayer may flee, anyone who has struck a life unwillingly,” and further on, and further on: “You shall have six cities for refuges. Three cities you shall give beyond the Jordan, and three cities you shall give in the land of Canaan”? Openly, indeed, refuges are set out for those who flee for the crime of homicide; but let us consider it more deeply. There are four things which warn us that the secrets of this reading must be looked at more profoundly. First, why, out of those cities which fell to the Levites by lot as their portion, six cities were given as refuge to those troubled by the crime of homicide, and why the cities of other tribes were not also assigned to this service. Second, why the number six; for this number, neither more cities nor fewer, does not seem to have been prescribed idly. Third, why three cities beyond the Jordan and three in the region of Canaan were appointed to be a refuge for sinners. Fourth, why a reckoning and fixing of time was included, within which the slayer should live in the city of refuge, until the high priest dies, and after the death of the high priest the slayer should return to the city of his dwelling. We must speak of each, then, and settle the questions in the order in which we have set them out.

First, then, it must be explained why the cities of the Levites were fittingly given for refuge. It is clear that this was suitably provided, because the Levites are fugitives from this world, so that they may please God; they leave country, parents, children, all their kin, to cleave to God alone. Indeed it was said to Abraham too: “Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father’s house.” But perhaps you say: he was not a Levite. But he had Levi in his loins, as we read written in Hebrews. And the Lord speaks to Levites when he speaks to his disciples, that is, the apostles: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”; although it has now been said to all: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for adoption.” The fullness has come; the remnants have ceased. For Christ has called all; the setting-out is open to all, so that all may follow; the kingdom and eternal life are set before all.

So one whose portion is God ought to care for nothing but God, lest he be hindered by the service of some other necessity. For what is given to other duties is taken away from the worship of religion and from this office of ours. For this is the true flight of the priest: the renouncing of his household and a kind of estrangement from those dearest to him, so that one who longs to serve God denies himself to his own. Rightly, then, the decree of the eternal law entrusted fugitives to fugitives, so that those who have forgotten this world might receive those who, condemning their sins, seek even forgetfulness of their former life and desire to blot out the worldly deeds they have done. So the minister of the sacred altar is a fugitive from his own. Hence the Lord, as prince of priests, giving the Levites a pattern in his Gospel, said: “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?” That is: I do not acknowledge a mother, I do not recognize brothers, I do not know kinsmen. “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” So the minister knows only the word of God, since he knows those in whom the word of God works. And therefore he is an exile from the world: a fugitive from the body, a fugitive from the passions, he renounces everything so as to remain alone, as Elijah said: “And I alone am left.” But he was not alone, since Christ was with him. And the Lord himself was left alone, but “I am not alone,” he says, “because the Father is with me.” There is also this reason, that the Levites are ministers of God.

And therefore their cities are assigned by law to fleeing slayers, because it is their right to carry out the divine commands regarding those who have committed a deadly crime. The church does not know how to publish its own laws; it knows that the priest obeys the Lord’s command. Hear a Levite saying: “I have handed such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, struck by the Levitical sword, let the mind of the flesh die in us, so that our soul may live. For unless the mind of the flesh is killed, there can be no fruit of eternal life.

The refuges of the six cities are these: the first city is the knowledge of the Word and a form of life according to his image. For whoever has entered that knowledge is safe from punishment, according to what the Lord too says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” And elsewhere: “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This city is like a metropolis, next to which lie the other five cities of the Levites. The second city is the consideration of the divine working by which the world was created. The third city is the contemplation of royal power and eternal majesty. The fourth city is the beholding of divine propitiation. The fifth city is the contemplation of the divine law, which commands what is to be done. The sixth city too is the part of the law which prescribes what is not to be done. How great the abundance of divine mercy, how great the riches of his love! Considering the efforts of each and the frailties of the human condition, by which we are led into fault even unwilling and resisting, and often, overcome by enticements, commit involuntary offences, he set out various refuges for us, six cities, so that by the same number by which the world was formed, a remedy might be provided against the vices of the world and the shipwrecks of this age!

The first remedy, then: if a fault has crept upon a man of good intention, let him hasten without any delay, if he wishes to have perfect security, to the very citadel of all things, where the Word of God is in that fatherly bosom, that is, in the secret and inmost place of God, where the fountain of wisdom is, so that from it, instead of death, he may draw the immortal drink of eternal life. The second remedy: one who cannot have a foretaste of the knowledge of that good, and is slower either in mind or in grasp of faith (since one strives to the heights of knowledge by swift vigor of mind and keenness of wit), should at least consider the works of the Lord and from the things that have been made contemplate the author of so great a work; for from these good things which are in the constitution of this creation (for they are “very good,” as the Lord said) that supreme and eternal good is grasped. What order of things, what discipline, what grace! Is not even a slow mind provoked by these to love its author? For if we love our parents because they begot us, how much more ought we to love the creator of our parents and our own author! So God’s working power, though it is not seen, is still estimated from his works, and his works reveal the worker, so that he who is not comprehended is understood. Hence the Lord too says: “If you do not believe me, believe at least the works.” Good, then, is this city of refuge too, which testifies to the grace of its builder and stirs our affection to desire him the more who is seen to have bestowed on us such beauty of this fabric. The third order is the contemplation of royal power, so that we submit to the King if we do not defer to him as a Father. For through fear of the ruler, one who is ungrateful for salvation often becomes obedient to authority, so that he who would not and could not recognize the grace of love may recognize the necessity of sober conduct. Necessity therefore corrects one whom love ought to have called forth.

These are the three cities beyond the Jordan given for refuge to more perfect wisdom: first, that we flee fault by shaping our mind in conformity to the image of God. For so we were created, God saying: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” This then is the law of that first city. Next, if through the frailty of the flesh and the enticements of the world we cannot so shape our mind, let us lighten our fault by reverence for our Father’s begetting and by the diligence of a child; for “love covers a multitude of sins.” So one who could not be in the image of God, let him be in the fullness of love. That city shuts out fault; this one dissolves it. This then is the law of the second city: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But if again there are those of narrow and small mind who cannot receive the abundance and grace of love, you have the third city, that fear of the divine power may make you sober and dread may bend you. And this is the third law: “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” These, then, are the chief virtues, and therefore of the few, not of the many, set beyond the Jordan: that you may express the archetype as an image, love the Father as a son, worship the King as a subject.

But those who have crossed the Jordan (and Jordan means “their descent”), those then who have come down from those higher virtues to these lower ones, that is, in whom integrity, love, and humility have wavered, have refuges nearer to man to seek: so that those who are liable to offences and bent by involuntary vices may hope that the Lord can be reconciled to them if they ask pardon, may hope that they can be corrected if they follow the precepts of the heavenly Testaments, by which we are either formed to innocence or called back from fault. These, then, are the following cities on this side of the Jordan: that we make God propitious to us, follow what he commands, avoid what he forbids. Let there be, then, the earnest seeking of the Godhead’s favor, obedience in following the precept, caution against forbidden transgression, by which we may revere God’s propitiatory mercy and his lawgiving providence, either by obedience to what is instituted or by turning aside from what is forbidden.

There remains the fourth question, what it says about the death of the high priest: that “until that time the slayer shall be in the city of refuge, until the high priest dies.” Here, according to the letter, the interpretation sticks. First, the flight itself is determined by chance rather than by the fairness of any examination; then, in equal cases the outcome is unequal; for it could happen that the high priest died the day after the slayer took refuge. What kind of sentence rests on uncertainty? So, because the letter sticks, let us seek spiritual things. Who is this high priest but the Son of God, the Word of God, whom we have as our advocate with the Father, who is free from all voluntary and accidental offences, in whom all things that are on earth and in heaven hold together? For all things are bound together by the bond of the Word and are held by his power and consist in him, since in him they were created and in him all the fullness dwells. And therefore all things abide, because he does not allow to be dissolved what he himself has bound together, since they consist in his will; for he restrains and rules all things by his command as long as he wills, and binds them in natural harmony. So the Word of God lives, and lives especially in the souls of the devout, and the fullness of the Godhead never dies. For the everlasting Godhead and the eternal power of God never die. Yet he dies for us if he is separated from our soul: not that he is corrupted by death, but that our mind is loosed and stripped of its union with him; for the true death is the separation of the Word from the soul. Indeed the soul at once begins to lie open to voluntary sins.

We have these kinds of virtues, not in shadow but expressed, in the apostle, who says: “So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in it,” that is, in the one who has believed. Indeed he added: “from faith to faith, as it is written: but the just lives by faith.” In whom then is the righteousness of God revealed but in one who is conformed to the image of the Son of God? You have the first precept, in the image of God. The second, that “the invisible things of God are understood through the things that have been made,” that is, “his everlasting power and divinity” are known from his works. This is the working power. The third concerns imperial power, because the Word of God is royal and judicial and full of priestly righteousness, reserving the reward of good deeds and the retribution of evil for those who will come to his judgment; of these the apostle says: “We know that the judgment of God is according to truth upon those who do such things.” And so one who has known the truth and righteousness of God ought not to do the things that are worthy of death. Next follows the goodness of God, propitiatory indeed, of which he says: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” That is: it ought to lead you. Because God is good, he calls you to hope for pardon of your sins; for he who is ready to forgive does not wish to punish. He added also the legislation, that is, the nomothetic, so that if anyone is relaxed by the contemplation of divine goodness and provoked to negligence rather than to repentance, he may follow the law; since “all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.”

Now the law is twofold, natural and written: natural in the heart, written on tablets. So all are under law, but natural law; yet it does not belong to all to be each a law to himself. He is a law to himself who does of his own accord the things of the law and shows the work of the law written in his heart. You have the good things of the law, which we ought not only to know or hear superficially but also to do; for “it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.” You have also learned what things are evil. First, nature itself is the teacher of good conduct. You know that one must not steal, and if your slave has stolen from you, you beat him; and if anyone has made advances to your wife, you think he must be prosecuted. What you blame in others, then, you yourself commit: “you who preach that one must not steal, steal; you who say that one must not commit adultery, commit adultery.” There followed also the law that was given through Moses; but “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” You have received also what you should avoid, and you do the things you know to be forbidden. What does the law accomplish but that “the whole world may be made subject to God,” since it was given not only to the Hebrew but also called the stranger, for it did not exclude the proselyte. But because the law could stop the mouths of all but could not convert the mind, therefore the last remedy of that final city was owed, in which there would be a saving refuge, so that the death of the chief of priests might free us from all dread of death and strip away our fear.

Who is he but the one of whom we read: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world”? “Whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness.” And understand that he himself is the great chief of priests. The Father swore concerning him, saying: “You are a priest for ever.” Rightly “for ever,” because all the others were temporary, all under sin, but he has a priesthood that cannot be transgressed. All are under death, but he lives always; for how could he who can save others perish himself? “For such a one,” he says, “was fitting for us.” The expression is correct, since among those who had a feeling for words and expressions such usage is found, someone saying: “a higher place than was fitting for the victors.” I did not pass this over, so that we may know that the apostle uses natural rather than vulgar or artificial words. “Such a one,” he says, “was fitting for us, a prince, a priest, just, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” This then is the Word, who dwelling above the heavens illuminates all things. Hence too he is read to have been anointed by God the Father by nature, because the Word is the light “which enlightened every man coming into this world.” This is the Word of God, in whom is the great priesthood, whose spiritual vestments Moses describes in that garment of the chief of priests; for he clothed the world with his power and, as though wrapped in it, shines in all things. He clothed himself also with kinship with the human race by taking up this body, saying to the Lord … and pouring himself into all with unspeakable love by the Spirit and the fullness of his divinity, of whose fullness we have all received, so that we may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled to all the fullness of God. For Christ is the head of all, from whom the whole body is brought forth and joined together by mutual connection, receiving its growth for the building up of itself in love. This then is the Word, who is preeminent, who says to Moses in the building of the ark of the testimony: “And you shall put into the ark the testimonies which I shall give you, and you shall make the covering of the mercy seat”; and further on: “You shall place the mercy seat on the ark above, and you shall put in the testimonies which I shall give, and I will make myself known to you from there and speak to you from above”; that is: from there, where he is above the heavens, where he is with the Father, from there I will speak to you.

Let us approach, then, relying on the support of faith and lifted by its oars, to that throne of grace, fleeing this world and its contagion. And this is to flee: to abstain from sins, to take on the form of the virtues after the likeness and image of God, to stretch our strength to the imitation of God according to the measure of our ability. For the perfect man is the image and glory of God. Hence the Lord too says: “Be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” This then is to be like God: to have righteousness, to have wisdom, and to be perfect in virtue. For God is without sin, and so one who flees sin is in the image of God. There is no doubt, then, that one who abstains from sin flees. Hence the apostle cries: “Flee sexual immorality.” For the enticements of sins pursue us, lust pursues us; but flee it as a raging mistress, who, if she catches you, lets you rest neither by day nor by night, but harasses, burns, inflames. Flee avarice, lest it seize you within. Flee faithlessness, lest it entangle you in its nets. Hence the Lord too says: “When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. Amen I say to you, you will not finish the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” For although he seems to counsel flight because of the weakness of the flesh, yet he flees better who flees worldly enticement, so as not to be held by care for his riches, by the contemplation of treasure, by desire for this life, but hastens with mind set straight to the glory of the heavenly kingdom, hurries to the crown, and is not called back from the suffering of his body by regard for earthly things.

Flight, then, is death, whether carried out or foreshadowed. And perhaps the cities of lawful refuge figure those heights of virtue to which we are to flee, which he elsewhere distributes as rewards to the good lender, saying: “Because you have been faithful in a little, you shall have authority over ten cities.” The law knows six cities; but because he fulfilled the law who could say, “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” he grants a more perfect number of reward.

Let us not, then, be ashamed to flee; for this flight is glorious, to flee from the face of sin. So Jacob fled at his mother’s urging; for Rebekah said: “Rise and flee to Mesopotamia.” So Moses too fled from the face of King Pharaoh, lest the royal court defile him, lest power ensnare him. Indeed he valued the reproach of Christ as more precious than the riches of Egypt. So David too fled from the face of King Saul, from the face of Absalom. Indeed in fleeing he added increases of devotion: he both spared the one who laid snares for him and asked for the safety of the parricide. So the people of the Hebrews fled, so that their faith and life opened a way for them amid the waves. That flight was a path of innocence, a way of virtue, a taking up of devotion. I dare to say that Jonah too fled thus to Tarshish, not by flight of the body but by ascent of the mind, for he ascended even to the likeness of Christ, so as to become a type of Christ. For “as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so,” he says, “will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” For had he not fled thus, he would never have been heard from the belly of the whale.

But if you doubt, let Rebekah teach you how blessed was the flight that Jacob undertook. Rebekah urged: “Flee,” she said, “to Mesopotamia.” And Isaac says: “Rise, go to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel.” In hymns or oracles, as has been written before us, Bethuel is called wisdom by many, and in Latin interpretation it means “daughter of God.” So Jacob is sent into the house of wisdom and is admonished to take a wife from the daughters of Laban, who lived in Haran, which means “caves,” in which is the image of the senses, which are as it were in the caves of the body: sight in the eyes, hearing in the ears, smell in the nostrils, taste in the mouth. For one who delights in this world and dances in the pleasures of the body is liable to the passions of the senses and lives and lodges in them. Hence Rebekah says he should live with him a few days, not a long time, lest he be colored by bodily pleasures and captured by the enticements of the world.

She persuades him to live there, however, so that as a student of discipline he may learn the powers of the senses and, as it were, certain situations and regions of the flesh, so that he may know himself and recognize the vehemence of the flesh: what was created and for what reason, and how each sense operates. “He who has looked at a woman,” it says, “to desire her.” The eye sees wrongly in that way. Let the eye see, then, and perform its function, but let it not be directed into a fall by the command of a slippery mind, so as to bring back vice instead of duty. A short time, then, is given for knowing, or rather experiencing, the senses, perhaps the first beginnings of tender youth; and at once he is called back, lest he totter longer on slippery ground and the inner footsteps of the soul be submerged in a kind of divided flood of this body and world. But when he has either had experience or has stood on unstable, uncertain, and wet ground, he is called back by his mother, patience or perseverance, who says: “I will send and fetch you from there,” so that even there on slippery ground you may find the safe harbor of wisdom, which will not let you be tossed as in a shipwreck; and having returned, you may know how to persevere in the worship of God and be in the assembly of the nations, signifying by his faith that the church of the nations was to be gathered.

Instructed, then, by these teachings of patience and perseverance, Jacob set out and acquired a wife from wisdom, a partner in his purpose, with a rich dowry of prudence, with whom he might pass the times of life without any stumbling. With the treasure of wisdom added, he formed for himself a flock of varied sheep, but a rational one, shining with the diversity of many virtues. Hence too he cut back the boasting of his flesh, which the numbness of his thigh signifies, without prejudice to the interpretation of the sacred mystery. By these virtues as by steps his mind ascended into heaven and came to know the secrets of God, and he was strengthened and filled, so that Laban, searching his house, found nothing empty in it, nothing void, no idols, no likeness of vanity. For there was in him not an image but truth, not a likeness of sloth but the solid form of righteousness and the spiritual expression of living virtue. And so Laban searched his spiritual house and found no likenesses; for it was full not of figures but of realities.

He could, however, have found the foundations and summits of the virtues had he not brought with him blindness of heart and the darkness of a faithless mind. Indeed the men of Sodom, their minds suffused with the blindness of wickedness, could by no means find the door of holy Lot. For how could an impious mind see either the going out or the coming in of a holy man? The Lord himself also says in the Gospel: “For the prince of this world comes, and in me he finds nothing.” How could he find nothing in him in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt, and dwelt bodily, from whom power went out and healed all? How could he find nothing in the solidity of virtue, the abundance of wisdom, understanding, righteousness? You yourself said, Lord: “I am full”; you yourself said: “Put your hand into my side, and do not be unbelieving but believing.” He who did not believe put in his hand and found you to be Lord and God. So it is not that you were empty, but that blind, empty prince of this world, who knows how to see only his own things, knows how to find only his own, does not know how to recognize the things that are Christ’s.

Or if the reading is as many have it, “he does not find in me nothing,” that is: he will not find malice in me, because malice is nothing; he will not find a dead man, because he is not dead. For how will he find a dead man in him who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were? He will not find sin in me, he says, who have taken away the sin of the world. For how does he have nothing who has all things, and what is more, has all that the Father has, as he himself says: “All that the Father has is mine”?

Let us flee from here, then, where there is nothing, where everything thought magnificent is empty, where even one who thinks himself something is nothing and does not exist at all. “I saw the wicked man,” it says, “exalted beyond measure and lifted up beyond the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not.” Pass by, you too, like David; pass by like the good servant, so that it may be said to you: “Pass by, recline.” Pass by like Moses, so that you may see the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and see the great sight. This is the great sight. But if you wish to see, loose the shoes from your feet, loose every bond of iniquity, loose the chains of the world, leave behind the shoe, which is earthly. Therefore Jesus sent the apostles without shoes, gold, silver, or money, so that they would not carry earthly things with them. For one who seeks the good is praised not for his shoe but for the swiftness and beauty of his feet, as Scripture says: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things!” Loose, then, the shoe from your feet, so that they may be beautiful for preaching the gospel. He said “loose,” not “bind.” Loose, so that you may pass by and find that the wicked man whom you admired on earth is nothing and can do nothing. Pass by, then; that is, flee from the earth, where there is malice, where there is avarice. Therefore David says to you: “Turn aside from evil and do good.” To turn aside is surely to flee; and evil is on earth, good is in heaven. Hence he added: “Seek peace and pursue it”; peace is in heaven. Indeed, coming from heaven, he said: “Peace I give you, my peace I leave you.” Since, then, evils are to be fled and turned from, and evils are on earth, iniquities on earth, let us flee earthly things lest iniquities seize us. They seized even holy David, as he himself testifies, saying: “My iniquities have seized me, and I could not see,” because the eye of the soul is blinded by the smoke of iniquity so as not to see what is bright. So, then, Laban could not see Jacob’s goods, nor the prince of the world the glory of Christ.

But perhaps you say: why then was Jacob sent to Laban, if Laban was blameworthy? If we consider the name, it means in Latin “white.” So Jacob is ordered to go out to more splendid things. But because he was carnal, we better understand the more splendid things of this life. As one not yet perfect, he first goes to him, so that for a time he might exult in his light. But he had worse sons, that is, a name more tolerable than his works. And therefore, by his mother’s counsel, by a divine oracle, and by the will of Jacob himself, a lover of discipline, he is deserted and left behind.

Holy Rachel, that is, the church or prudence, hid the idols, because the church does not know empty ideas and vain figures of idols, but knows the true substance of the Trinity. Indeed it has abolished the shadow and made manifest the splendor of glory. Let us leave the shadow, then, we who seek the sun; let us forsake the smoke, we who follow the light. Smoke is iniquity, because as smoke is to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who use it. Life is a shadow; for this life of ours on earth is a shadow, as Job said. And what is here but temptations? All time is in anxiety, all life in troubles. “You will walk,” it says, “in the midst of snares.” And another complained of snares stretched out for him, but hidden, on the way by which he walked. Lest he be caught and fall, he wished to flee like a sparrow, but the snare was not yet broken. “Flight,” he says, “has perished from me.” He had wings weighed down by that dark water in the clouds of the air, and perhaps he could not fly. Indeed he sought to receive those wings, so that he might fly away and be at rest, as it is written: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” For where there is flight, there is rest. Indeed elsewhere he says: “If you sleep among the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver.”

But perhaps you say: how then does he say here that flight has perished from him, who had said above: “If I take my wings before the dawn”? Is it a contradiction? Not at all. For the contests of the just are many. Does an athlete wrestle only once? How often, after many crowns, is he beaten in another contest! How often does one who has often won sometimes waver and hang in uncertainty! And often it happens that the strong man meets the strong, and greater contests arise where there are greater proofs of strength. So David, when he sought flight to escape the adversary, did not find his wings; he was wavering in a doubtful contest; whereas where he has his wings in his power, the title of the psalm is “To the end,” that is, toward the perfection and completion of victory. Indeed, as a victor, he says: “Lord, you have proved me and known me. You have known my sitting down and my rising up.” Rightly did he have the power of flying who had received the wings of resurrection. But here he is still in the cave, that is, in the flesh, in a kind of cavern of this body, contending with King Saul, the son of hardness, and with the power of that spiritual prince who is not seen but understood. Hence too the title of the psalm is “Understanding,” which David, though placed in the flesh, nevertheless concluded; but he merited to conclude it by praying. Indeed he began with the voice of prayer.

Add this, that that psalm is said to be in the person of the Savior, this one in the person of David, who did not have victory in his power but hoped for it from Christ. And yet he too, after he spread out his hands to God like the wings of his soul, and fled to the Lord, and asked for the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that he might know the way by which he could ascend, saw the heavens bowed so that Christ might descend, and asked that he lift him up with his hand. Or perhaps he no longer sought his own wings because, made more perfect, he desired the hand of Christ.

So let one who wishes to be lifted by Christ’s hand first fly away himself; let him have his own wings (one who flees the world has wings); and if he does not have his own (lest perhaps he alone has his own who has the power of flying), if, I say, he does not have his own, let him receive them from him who has. One who flees the world, then, flies. “Behold,” he says, “I have gone far off in flight and stayed in the wilderness.” David flew away, then, like the night raven in its dwelling, like the solitary sparrow in the house. But if you refer it to Christ, he flew away in the suffering of the body, so that under the shadow of his wings he might protect the peoples of the nations; he flew away in divinity, he remained in body and dwelt in the desert, so that the children of the desolate woman might be more than of her who had a husband. Let us follow that body, then, so that we too may rise; for where the body is, there also the eagles will be.

Let one who cannot fly like an eagle fly like a sparrow; let one who cannot fly to heaven fly to the mountains; let him flee the valleys first, which are quickly corrupted by moisture, and cross over to the mountains. Abraham’s nephew crossed to the mountain of Zoar and was saved; but she who could not ascend, bent back by a woman’s feeling, lost her safety. “Draw near to the everlasting mountains,” the Lord says through the prophet Micah; “rise up from here, for this is no refreshment for you because of uncleanness. You have been corrupted with corruption; you have suffered persecution.” And the Lord says: “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains,” where there is Mount Zion and Jerusalem, the city of peace, built not of earthly but of living stones, and ten thousand angels, the church of the firstborn, the spirits of the perfect, the God of the just, who in his own blood has spoken better than Abel. For Abel cried out for vengeance, he for pardon; Abel accused his brother’s sin, he forgave the sin of the world; Abel revealed a crime, he covered it, according to what is written: “Blessed are those whose sins are covered.”

But let one who flees flee swiftly, so as not to be caught; let him swiftly plunder this world as the Hebrew plundered Egypt. Let one who is in labor give birth, lest with the womb of the mind laden and weighed down with iniquities he be unable to flee; and let him flee not as one carrying a suckling but as one unencumbered, not bearing a little one but presenting someone perfect in Christ; let him flee not as one on holiday on the sabbath but as a worker at his business, not as one barren in the cold but as one rich in the harvest. For this reason it was said: “Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the sabbath.” So flight is fruitful in virtues, not exhausted of merits. This flight knows not the cold of fear, the trembling of death, the cramp of anxiety, the idleness of dissipation, the holidays of wantonness, the torpor of sluggishness; but it requires a tireless traveller of the heavenly life, a vigorous candidate for the kingdom above, a rich farmer, who gathers his fruits and in gathering hurries them away.

For what else is asked of you, O man, but that you fear God, seek him, walk after him, grasp his ways? “With what,” it says, “shall I lay hold of the Lord? Shall I lay hold of him with burnt offerings?” Not with ten thousand kids, not with thousands of rams, not with the fruits of impiety is the Lord reconciled and sins redeemed; but in a good life the grace of the Lord is laid hold of. “It has been declared to you, O man,” it says, “what is good; or what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love mercy and be ready to walk with your Lord?” The Gospel says to you, then: “Rise, let us go from here”; the law says to you: “You shall walk after the Lord your God.” You have learned how to flee from here: why do you delay? The Gospel says to you again: “Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come?” And it says this to those who were coming to the baptism of repentance.

So repentance is a good flight; the grace of God, in which the one who flees is taken up, is a good flight; the desert is a good flight, to which Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist fled. Elijah fled the woman Jezebel, that is, the outpouring of vanity, and fled to Mount Horeb, which means “drying,” so that in it the carnal flux of vanity might be dried up and he might know God more fully. For he was at the brook Cherith, which is “knowledge,” where he might drink the flowing abundance of divine knowledge, so fleeing the world that he did not seek even the food of this body except what the birds brought as his servants, although his food was mostly not earthly. Indeed he walked forty days in the strength of the food he had received. Surely so great a prophet was not fleeing a woman but this world; nor did he fear death, he who had offered himself to the one seeking him and who said to the Lord: “Take my life,” bearing weariness of this life, not desire for it; but he was fleeing worldly enticement, the contagion of a stained way of life, and the sacrileges of an impious and transgressing nation.

Solomon too sets forth the corruption of this world in the figure of that woman and teaches that the arts of a harlot must be avoided. This is the strange and fornicating woman, from whom he urges you to guard yourself and not to turn your heart to the ways of the world, but to place it in the hand of the Lord, in which is the heart of the king. For one who rules himself, which is worth more than commanding others, has his heart in the hand of God, and God turns it where he wills. No wonder if he turns it to good, he who is of perfect goodness. Let us be in the hand of God, then, so that we may seek the good, that incorruptible and unchangeable good, of which the prophet Amos says: “Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord God almighty will be with you, as you have said: We have hated evil and loved good.” Where God is good, therefore, there are good things, which David desired to see and believed he would see, as he himself says: “I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.” For those are good things which remain for ever, which cannot be corrupted by the change of time or age.

He who has sought God and found him is among those good things. For where a man’s heart is, there also is his treasure; for the Lord does not usually deny a good gift to those who pray. Since, then, the Lord is good, and especially good to those who wait for him, let us cleave to him, let us be with him with all our soul, all our heart, all our strength, so that we may be in his light and see his glory and enjoy the grace of heavenly delight. To that good, then, let us lift our minds, and let us be in it and live in it, cleave to it, which is above every mind and every consideration and enjoys everlasting peace and tranquillity; and peace is above every mind and above every sense. This is the good which penetrates all things, and we all live in it and depend on it; but it has nothing above itself, but is divine; for “no one is good but God alone.” So what is good is divine, and what is divine is good. And therefore it is said: “When you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness”; for by the goodness of God all good things are rightly given to us, with which no evil is mixed. These good things Scripture promises to the faithful, saying: “You shall eat the good things of the land.” Let us be like that good, then, so that we may obtain what is good: the good that is without iniquity, without guile, without harshness, with grace, with devotion, with sincerity, benevolence, love, and righteousness. And so goodness embraces all the virtues like a fruitful mother.

There is therefore no small reason why we ought to flee from here: that we may come from evil things to good, from uncertain things to faithful things full of truth, from death to life. The Lord himself too, by saying, “I have set before you good and evil, life and death,” showed that the good is life, but eternal life. For if this life is subject to the world and its malice, surely that life is good which is not corrupted and changed, which degenerates through no vice, which is acquired by virtue. Let us flee, then, the malice of this world, in which, it says, “the days themselves are evil,” and let us flee without sluggishness. And therefore Isaiah cries: “Be strong, you weak hands and feeble knees,” that is, be strong not in the knees of the body but of the soul, so that the footstep of the mind may be lifted straight to the heights of heaven, so that its course may be firmer, life riper, grace fuller, prudence more circumspect.

For this is to flee: to know where you are heading, to lift yourself from the world, to lift yourself from the body, lest anyone exalt himself in vain again, and, being puffed up in the mind of his flesh, not hold fast to the head; and lest it be said of them: “They fled and did not see.” But this is to flee from here: to die to the elements of this world, to hide one’s life in God, to turn from corruptions, not to be defiled by desires, not to know what belongs to this world, which lays various sorrows upon us; it empties when it has filled, and fills when it has emptied. And all these things are empty and void, in which there is no solid fruit. The rich man died and has nothing, because he is not rich toward God; and therefore he is foolish, because wisdom is the worship of God, and to abstain from evil is discipline.

Who, then, would not flee a place of malice, a workshop of wickedness that does not know how to perish? Indeed, not idly was a mark placed upon Cain, lest anyone kill him, to signify that malice is not extinguished and removed from the earth. Cain was afraid of being killed, because he did not know how to flee. For malice is increased and heaped up by its very use, and it is without measure, without end, deciding by guile and fraud; it is betrayed by its own deeds and by the blood of the slain, as Cain too was betrayed. So malice moves about on earth and wanders here; and therefore we pray that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, so that innocence may be here too. And so malice, since it has no place there, goes about here, rages here, and pours itself out, neither drowned by that flood of the world nor burned up by the fire of Sodom. Indeed it later sprouted more grievously in its seedbeds, even laying parricidal and sacrilegious hands upon the very author of the salvation of all. The law condemns the deed; it does not take away malice. The Lord Jesus himself condemned sin but put off its author, so that there might be one through whom the just are proved. For since God did not make evil, and the devil’s wickedness inserted it, God put off vengeance, so that the devil might be conquered by the very ones he had deceived.

So the deceived are put to exercise, so that they may both pay the price of their credulity and take up the pursuit of virtue and the diligence of caution. Hence he says: “Be wise as serpents.” Why as serpents? So that he may be stripped of what is his, and he who wished to strip others may lose what is his own, not his poisons but the good qualities of his nature. Indeed he is cast down when you have ascended. For it is written: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” Not lightning, he says, but like lightning, because he lost the light he had before he wished to take your light from you. But perhaps you will cite what we read of the Savior: “As the lightning flashes from under heaven, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Here too it is well said “like lightning,” because he is above lightning. Indeed lightning is from under heaven, but the true light is above heaven. So Satan is like lightning because he lost what he had; but you have received back what you had lost.

For the sentence was not loosed for him as it was for you; for the grace of Christ, which loosed you, bound him tighter; for the curse directed at the serpent because of your deception remains. For thus it was said to him: “Cursed are you above all the cattle of the earth.” For he is the common enemy of all who was the foe of the good, and he is condemned on behalf of those he had not yet harmed, since he who harmed man, to whom all those things are subject, harmed all. For he broke the common law, since he himself is subject to man along with the others. Therefore his curse is loaded with the common hatred and execration of all. And the kind of condemnation is not death but a lasting punishment. “On your breast and belly,” it says, “you shall go.” For a guilty conscience had to be pressed down and malice trampled, and its deceitful secrecy banished as it were from the face of God; at the same time it is shown that malice is earthly, which bends down to the earth. Indeed he added: “And you shall eat earth all the days of your life.”

In these words the nature of the serpent seems indeed to be described, but much more every vessel of malice is described, every serpent of wickedness, who casts himself on his belly and shuts his poison up within himself and rolls it about inside his breast, slippery in his thoughts and walking upon his frauds, entangling himself in his own deceits, always stirring and agitating his poisons when he thinks, and trampling his belly too, that is, the seedbed of his heart. Hence David says beautifully: “Sinners are estranged from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken falsehood; their fury is after the likeness of a serpent, like a deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers and of the sorcerer who is charmed by the wise.” For this reason too that saying we read in the prophetic book seems beautifully said: “My belly pains me, my belly,” because malice is there where innocence ought to be, and that part labors more which ought to be calmer in us, and it is trampled by the footsteps of wickedness, goaded by its claws, shaken by a certain advance and increase of wickedness, there where is the generative seed of an eternal posterity. This seems indeed to refer to his grief that the sons he had created and received had perished, but much more that he did not have the seedbed of the Word in his belly. Therefore he says “my belly” as most precious. For precious is the womb of the mind, in which a fruitful crop of counsels is wont to sprout from the seed of the Word, and certain members of the whole life, of the virtues and disciplines, are wont to be formed.

But to return to our subject, that God thought malice should for the present be restrained rather than abolished, he says to the serpent: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and the seed of the woman. She shall watch your head, and you her heel.” Where there is enmity, there is discord and the eagerness to harm; where there is eagerness to harm, malice is present. So there is discord between the serpent and the woman. Malice underlies discord; so malice has not been taken away. Indeed it was reserved to the serpent to watch for the heel of the woman and her seed, in order to harm it and pour in its poison. Let us not walk among earthly things, then, and the serpent will be unable to harm us. Let us put on the gospel shoe, by which the serpent’s poison is shut out and its bite blunted, so that we may be shod on our feet for the gospel. And perhaps Moses was told to loose the shoe from his feet so that he might take up the shoe of the gospel; or because the preaching of the gospel was owed not to Moses, that is, not to the prophets, but to the apostles. This is the sentence, which we spoke of above, pronounced against the serpent; let us consider of what kind is the one directed against man.

He is cursed who is the author of the fault, but this one is not cursed who was deceived by another’s fraud. Yet because he did not keep God’s command, he is condemned to the toil of his works (the earth is cursed, to be sure, but in the works of the sinner), and he is cursed until he is dissolved into earth. Therefore Jesus took up flesh, to abolish the curse of sinful flesh, and he became a curse for us, so that blessing might swallow up the curse, integrity sin, pardon the sentence, life death. For he took up death too, so that the sentence might be fulfilled and satisfaction made to what had been judged: a curse on sinful flesh until death. So nothing was done against God’s sentence, since the condition of the divine sentence was fulfilled; for the curse is until death, after death grace. We are dead to the world, then: why do we still make decisions about the world? We have died with Christ: why do we still seek the activities of this life? We carry about the death of Christ in our body, so that the life of Christ too may be manifested in us. So we no longer live that life of ours, but the life of Christ, a life of innocence, of chastity, of simplicity, and of all the virtues. We have risen with Christ; let us live in him, ascend in him, so that the serpent may not find on earth a heel of ours to wound.

Let us flee from here. You can flee in spirit even if you are held back in body. You can both be here and be present with the Lord, if your soul cleaves to him, if you walk after him in your thoughts, if you follow his ways by faith, not by sight, if you take refuge in him. For he is a refuge and strength, to whom David says: “I fled to you and was not deceived.” Since, then, God is a refuge, and God is in heaven and above the heavens, surely we must flee from here to there, where there is peace, where there is rest from works, where we may feast on the great sabbath, as Moses said: “And the sabbaths of the land shall be food for you.” For it is a banquet, full of delight and tranquillity, to rest in God and to see his delight. Shall we, then, who have fled to God return to the world? Shall we who have died to sin seek sins again? Shall we who have renounced the world and its use stick again in its mud? Let us flee from here, because the time is short.

Hear how you are to flee: “And let those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who weep as though not weeping, and those who rejoice as though not rejoicing, and those who buy as though not possessing, and those who use this world as though not using it; for the form of this world is passing away.” Let our works, then, not pass away with the passing form of the world, lest we too pass away; but let us remain in the truth. If we remain in Christ, we remain in the truth, and we shall remain with him and shall not pass away, but we shall say: “The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.” For those who pass by cannot say it, because “those who passed by the way did not say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you,” as the prophet said. And so if we want our works not to pass away, let us not pass by the command of God, let us not pass by diligence in seeking the Lord Jesus and earning his grace. That woman did not pass him by, who went even into the Pharisee’s house, where Christ was reclining, and poured ointment on his feet.

Let us not pass by progress in any discipline, as the young Joseph did not pass it by, for he sought his brothers and hurried to the place where they were pasturing the sheep, and when he learned that they were in Dothan he went there. By the word Dothan is signified a sufficient failing, that is, a failing of vain opinions, not a moderate one but perfect and full, in which there is progress of the soul. For the wise man, when he diminishes, adds; for worldly opinions fail, which are compared to weak women. Hence it is beautifully said, to show that Sarah had come to progress so that she might bring forth laughter and joy: “The ways of women had ceased to be with Sarah.” Good, then, is the failing of desires, the failing of vanity, because it is an addition of truth. Hence the holy man too says: “My soul has failed for your salvation.” For she was about to bear the one whom God had granted and therefore promised, about to bear joy and that sober intoxication of gladness, about to bear by swiftness of mind before the birth was expected, pregnant with wisdom. Indeed of other Hebrew women too you have it that Hebrew women give birth before the midwives come, because the souls of the just do not wait for arts and disciplines for the kinds of discoveries nor seek aids to generation, but bring forth their offspring of their own accord and anticipate expectation.

Jacob was no less quick at finding than at carrying out: when his mother told him to bring food to his father, we see that the kinds of definitions were at his disposal. For he both found quickly and testified that God was the author of his findings, in which both the palm of diligence and the richness of natural talent are signified. The first definition, then, is in finding. What is found is sought, and what is sought belongs to time, and what belongs to time certainly belongs to diligence. But what anticipates the use of time God pours in, God gives; what God gives belongs to nature, not to diligence. Natural talent, then, is of divine gift, and what is of divine gift is of nature. So talent belongs to nature, finding to diligence: the one is without time, the other needs time. And so the one is present without time, the other is searched out in a space of time; the one is above us, the other is referred to us.

When the father was seeking the food of the word (for man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God; such food Isaac sought, such food Peter hungered for when he saw the mysteries of the Gentile people who were to believe), Esau did not have ready the food of a spiritual and quicker mind. While he was hunting and searching and preparing to offer a very hard and rustic speech, Jacob anticipated him with quick finding and a gentle, almost homely answer, providing a pleasant word to soothe and delight him. Hence the father in wonder said: “What is this that you have found so quickly, my son?” Jacob answered: “What the Lord your God delivered into my hands.” The first definition is in the question, the second in the answer. So the father, finding everything complete, whether of talent or of diligence, concluded with the consummation of the definition, saying: “Behold, the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed.” For a field has both a natural talent for fertility and the temporal diligence of cultivation, and rightly there is fullness in that in which neither is lacking. At the same time, by adding “which the Lord has blessed,” he seems to have preferred the grace of nature to the labor of cultivation. And Esau confirmed it, saying: “Rightly was his name called Jacob; for he has supplanted me now twice and taken my birthright.”

But perhaps you say: why did he delay who was sent by his father to hunt? But consider that the father too declared that he could not have ready what was spiritually asked for. And therefore, because he was lacking in talent, he required him to add the support of diligence. He also urges speed when he says: “Take your bow and arrow.” Yet one who recognizes that the gift of talent is higher also receives the fruit of diligence.

Not without reason did he bring homegrown food, he who acquired union with wisdom from the household of his own seed. Good is diligence with wisdom, and finding with natural talent. Indeed holy Isaac, having union with wisdom at hand, walked in the field, or rather withdrew himself. Let us too first be united with wisdom, and so go out into the field, desiring to seek and to find. For many seek badly without wisdom. And so Cain, because he had not received prudence from God, sought badly and went out badly into the field; Abel well, who fulfilled the perfect gift of sacrifice; for the sacrifice of wisdom is good, faith is a good victim, and every virtue. Indeed Wisdom slaughtered her victims and mixed her wine in the mixing bowl. And therefore, to give the drink of faith to the foolish Gentiles, she called them to her bowl, saying: “Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me,” and to those lacking sense she said: “Come and eat of my bread and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.” Plato thought he should transfer this mixing bowl into his books, and to its drink he summoned souls; but he did not know how to fill them, since he served a drink not of faith but of faithlessness. Let us flee from here, then, as holy Jacob fled from his homeland; for he knew that the true homeland is above.

Let us flee like deer to the springs of water: let our soul thirst for what David thirsted for. What is that spring? Hear him saying: “For with you is the spring of life.” Let my soul say to this spring: “When shall I come and appear before your face?” For the spring is God; but let one who desires this spring pour out his soul upon himself, so as to leave nothing to the possession of the flesh, but that the soul may overflow everywhere.

Susanna poured it out beautifully, so that the fires of the body, the fears of death, the desires of life could not burn in her. Her soul poured out upon her quenched every carnal desire and worldly pursuit. It could even have quenched the flames of those monstrous old men and shameless elders, had not a flood of lust overflowed in them. When they pressed their false charge against her if she refused consent to adultery, Susanna groaned and said: “Straits are upon me on every side. For if I do this, I shall perish by eternal death; but if not, I shall not escape your hands.” Yet she judged it better to flee the crime than the danger. So she wept when the crime was charged against her; she wept when adulterers claimed the right to judge a modest and chaste woman, not lamenting death, but she wept at the slander of her chastity, the injury to religion, and poured out upon herself not her body but her soul; for she would have poured out her body had she yielded to carnal men. Indeed, when she was condemned to death, she cried out as though she were the judge of the accused, the arbiter of her slanderers, and with the authority of an innocent conscience she summoned the divine knowledge to judgment for herself, not stirred by fear of death but by the lofty power of a censure that convicts. Susanna, then, fled the world and entrusted herself to God, fleeing to that citadel of the eternal city which embraces the whole world, since all things are within God.

Paul too fled, so as to escape, let down through a window in a basket (for he knew that a threefold cord cannot be broken); but he fled so that he might preach the gospel of the Lord in all the world, and therefore he was caught up into paradise. Let us too flee through the window, listening to the Lord’s commands and keeping them with sober sight and chastity of the eyes.

Let us flee like Lot, fearing the crimes of Sodom more than its punishments. Surely he fled the contagion of crimes more devoutly who shut his house to the Sodomites and, though living among them, did not know those whose disgraceful deeds he was ignorant of and whose shameful acts he turned from; and in fleeing did not look back at those whose way of life he did not desire. He flees like Lot, then, who renounces vices, disowns the customs of the inhabitants, does not look back, enters that higher city by the entrance of his thoughts and does not withdraw from it until the chief of priests dies, who took away the sin of the world. He died indeed once, but he dies for each one who is baptized into the death of Christ, so that we may be buried with him and rise with him and walk in the newness of his life.

You flee well if your heart does not imitate the counsels and thoughts of sinners. You flee well if your eye flees cups and bowls, lest it become livid while it lingers over wine. You flee well if your eye turns aside from a strange woman, so that your tongue may keep the truth. You flee well if you do not answer a fool according to his folly. You flee well if you take the step of your feet away from the mouth of fools. For one goes astray quickly with evil guides; but if you wish to flee well, make your ways far from their words.

The chief of priests has died for you, he was crucified for you, so that you may cling to his nails. For in that flesh he took up you and your sins; the bonds of your offences were fixed to that gibbet, so that you may now owe nothing to the world, which you once renounced. And rightly you owe nothing, you who can say: “For the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” so that you may no longer fear death, if you bear Christ, in whom you can say: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” For when that old man of ours was fixed to the cross, sin was destroyed, the sting blunted, guilt emptied, so that we may cease to serve shameful deeds any longer. For the old man has also gone. Now there is no longer the old man in us, but a new creature having in itself the likeness of Christ; buried with him in the likeness of his death, we have taken on the image of his life, we have received the wings of spiritual grace.

So fly, then, that it may be said of you: “Who are these that fly like a cloud and like doves with their young?” so that your clouds may rain down righteousness and your doves may bring forth simplicity. So sail as those crossing over the world, not wandering about like the ships of Tarshish, so that you may direct your course to spiritual harbors and bring in the riches of the sea. So hasten that it may be said of you: “They have become swifter than eagles.” For you see that one must flee from the wrath to come, which those will be able to escape who through repentance have placed their hope of escape in themselves and have drunk in faith in the reconciliation to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the kingdom from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.