On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.1–1.29

Good discourse, full of prudence, is necessary for the training of all, and a mind intent on reason excels in the virtues and restrains the passions; for virtue can be taught. Indeed it is sought by study and learning, and lost by neglect. Otherwise, if good discourse were not necessary for correction, the law would never say: 'You shall not commit adultery.' But since bare discourse is useful for admonishing but weak for persuading, the consideration of right reason must be applied, so that reason, more fully worked out, may persuade us of what good discourse has prescribed. For we are not bound to obey by a slave's necessity; rather, by our will as judge, we either lean toward virtue or incline toward guilt. And so either free affection draws us into error, or the will, following reason, calls us back. The gravest passion of guilt is desire, which reason softens and restrains. For it can soften it, it cannot uproot it, since the soul that is capable of reason is not the master of its passions but their restrainer. For it cannot be that a man quick to anger should not be angry, but that he should temper himself by reason, check his indignation, and hold himself back from punishing, as the prophet too teaches us, saying: 'Be angry, and do not sin.' He allowed what belongs to nature; he forbade what belongs to guilt.

All [right reason], then, … takes its origin from other things, not from itself, and is therefore secondary. For it is taken up either from natural things or from useful things; and so it either tempers natural things or is the champion of what is useful. Indeed it does not cut desire out of the soul, but brings it about that we are not slaves to desire. For who is so great that he can remove bodily motion, except him alone who could say of the unfruitful fig tree, that is, the malice of the Jews: 'Behold, it is three years since I came seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none; cut it down, then.' And the servant answered him: 'Let it alone this year too, until I dig around it and put in a basket of manure; and if it bears fruit, well; but if not, cut it down in the future.' Rightly he referred it to the Lord, because he could not claim for himself the power of cutting out bodily lapses, but reserved it to the Lord.

Indeed, whom among men shall we take who is better and stronger than holy David, who could not remove from himself, but could mitigate, the desire with which he had desired water from the cistern of Bethlehem, cut off by an enemy army? For we do not find that water was lacking to the others, that is, to so large an army, and certainly it could much less be lacking to the king from the other springs; yet, suffering a kind of irrational desire, he longed for that water which was walled in by the encircling enemy, from which it could not easily be brought without the greatest danger. So he says: 'Who will give me a drink from the cistern that is in Bethlehem by the gate?' And when three men were found who cut through the enemy camp and brought the water he had desired with the greatest desire, knowing that the same water had cost others danger, he poured it out to the Lord, so as not to seem to drink the blood of those who had brought it. This shows that desire indeed comes before reason, but reason resists desire. So David suffered something human, in desiring irrationally; but this is praiseworthy, that he cheated irrational desire with a remedy rationally prepared. While I praise the men who were ashamed of their king's desire and preferred to put an end to his embarrassment even at the risk of their own safety, I praise him more, who was ashamed in his desire of another's danger and reckoned water sought at the price of an uncertain fate as equal to blood. At the same time, as a victor over a restrained desire, he poured the water out to the Lord, to show that he quenched his desire by the consolation of the word.

A sober mind, then, can rein in and repress the impulses even of grave passions, cool all the heat of the most burning desire, divert its motions elsewhere, and spit out the passions by the working of right reason. For when God established man and planted in him character and senses, he then set over his motions the royal rule of the mind, so that all the senses and motions of man might be governed by its vigor and power. He added, to the grace of his creation, that he should form the mind itself by divine precepts and furnish it with the disciplines of wisdom, by which it might know what to avoid and recognize what to choose. The mind, then, holding by right reason the discipline of wisdom, so as to know things divine and human, is instructed in the law, through which it learns which passions it must subject to itself.

The natural leaders of the passions, as it were, are pleasure and pain, which the rest follow. For they embrace all of them, and each of them is a passion not only of the body but also of the soul. And since we have said that other passions fall under these: before pleasure comes desire, after pleasure joy; before pain comes fear, after pain sadness; while agitation of mind is a passion common to both pleasure and pain. I will pass over the others, that is, pride, avarice, ambition, contentiousness, envy, which are passions of the soul; I will pass over also the insatiable lust for devouring and the outpouring of luxury and wantonness, vices bound to the body and working through it. And rightly temperance above all quenches the heat of these passions; first it tempers the soul with sobriety and moderation and forms the mind, then by abstinence from delicacies it also tightens the reins on the body's wildness. Therefore the law cut back license in foods and abundance in feasts, not only to cut off luxury but also so that, by the contemplation of the restraining precept, it might open a way for the working of reason, which would cut back the enticements of the palate and the other desires and restrain the bodily passions and motions. Temperance, then, is the forerunner of correction, the teacher of discipline.

Setting out from this, holy Jacob received from his brother the rights of the firstborn that he did not have, and, preferred by his brother's consent, taught for the future that the intemperate are worthless by their own judgment. Setting out from this, Joseph tamed the heat of youth and strengthened his soul, tempted by adulterous enticements, by bringing in right reason. Indeed, though he was strong and vigorous, he preferred to support himself by the working of reason, saying to his master's wife: 'If my master knows nothing in his house because of me, and has given into my hands all that he has, and nothing has been withheld from me except you, because you are his wife, how then shall I do this evil thing and sin before God?' This, then, is the working of right reason, which the Greeks call logismos, by which the mind intent on wisdom is made firm. For his reasoning is fine: that he should not be ungrateful for his master's kindnesses, and that a sin could not be hidden which he would commit with God as witness, from whom it could not be hidden.

Good, then, is reason, which often puts off even hostile feeling and sets aside the pain of injury. Indeed in battle it often calms the victor, holds back the sword of one about to strike, and snatches a suppliant from death, because just reason persuades one to spare the conquered. As for shutting out or mitigating the pain of injury, what better teacher is there than the patriarch Jacob, who, rebuking his own sons Simeon and Levi, said: 'You have made me hateful, so that I seem cruel'? And certainly they had avenged the wrong done to their sister, whose modesty had been violated and defiled contrary to their ancestral customs. Nor could Jacob, the teacher of discipline and guardian of modesty, approve of the sexual crime committed; but he preferred that the insolent be restrained by reason, knowing that reason could temper indignation.

It is temperance, then, that cuts back desires. God commanded the first human beings to hold to it, saying: 'But of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of paradise you shall not eat, nor touch it, lest you die.' And because it was not kept, the transgressors of this excellent virtue became exiles from paradise and lost their share in immortality. This the law teaches and pours into the affections of all.

Scripture testifies that temperance, wisdom, and discipline are taught: temperance in the law, the others in the book of Job, in which it is written: 'Is it not the Lord who teaches understanding and discipline?' And in the gospel the Lord himself says: 'Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.' And elsewhere he says to the disciples: 'Go, teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' Why were they called disciples, or what else did they learn from Christ, if not to carry out the precepts of the virtues? Indeed David says: 'Come, children, hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.' Surely the fear of God is among the virtues, for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; through it the pattern of pious teaching is taken up, of which Paul says: 'But thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin, but have obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching into which you were handed over; and having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.' Teaching, then, enables us to arrive at righteousness. Righteousness, then, can be acquired by learning. Let us therefore apply ourselves with zeal to the pattern of the gospel teaching. Very often the least zeal is held to be the greatest. For everything lies in zeal, through which obedience is applied, which, inclining to one side or the other, adds either guilt or grace. This drew us to death in the first Adam; this called us to life in the second Adam.

There is no reason to ascribe our hardship to anyone but our own will. No one is held to guilt unless he has turned aside by his own will. Things inflicted on the unwilling carry no charge; only voluntary acts are followed by the odium of offenses, which we would shift onto others. Christ chooses a volunteer soldier for himself; the devil buys a volunteer slave at auction. He possesses no one bound by the yoke of slavery unless he has first sold himself to him for the price of sins. Why do we accuse the flesh as weak? Our members are weapons of injustice and weapons of righteousness. You saw a poor man being wronged and protected him: your members are weapons of piety, with which you defended the poor man from wrong. You saw a needy man and gave him gifts: with your right hand you drove death away from your breast. You saw one being led to death and rescued him, for it is written: 'Rescue him who is being led to death': your members are weapons of righteousness if you did not allow a man to perish unjustly. You saw a woman, you chastised your body, you put your lusts to death, you turned away from a harlot's wanton eyes and left: your members are weapons of chastity. But if, on the other hand, your eye has looked on a woman to desire her, you have opened a wound, you have driven a dart into your body: your members are weapons of sin. You saw the property of orphans and drove them from their fathers' homes, you moved the boundaries your fathers set: your members are weapons of iniquity.

It is the affection, then, not the flesh, that is the author of guilt; the flesh is the servant of the will. Let our will, then, not sell us. The apostle cries out: 'Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are the slaves of the one you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?' If, then, we serve either sin or righteousness, let us consider on which side slavery is more bearable and the fruit richer. But what fruit can there be in death? For the wages of sin is death, and therefore there is no fruit in it, but loss of honor, when we blush at what we have done. But to serve righteousness is freedom; for he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave. Each condition is excellent, to be under Christ, under whom slavery is precious and freedom glorious: precious slavery, as bought at the price of such blood; glorious freedom, which no slavery of guilt, no chains of sins bind, no burdens of crimes, no traffic in offenses consign to the bond of a degenerate slavery.

Learn humility, O man; recognize the force of the apostle's teaching. If you call yourself a slave, you are a freedman; if you boast that you are free, you are a slave. For the one who was redeemed as a slave has freedom, and for the one who was called as free it is good to recognize that he is a slave of Christ, under whom slavery is safe and freedom secure. Who will claim that Paul was ignorant, even in law? He knew how to distinguish between a freedman and a freeborn man, and therefore he spoke not carelessly but precisely: 'For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave.' For in truth we are all Christ's freedmen, no one is freeborn; for all were born in slavery. Why do you, in a slave's condition, assume the arrogance of freedom? Why do you lay claim to titles of nobility, you heir of slavery? Do you not know that the guilt of Adam and Eve delivered you into slavery? Do you not know that Christ redeemed you, not bought you? 'You were redeemed from your futile way of life, inherited from your fathers, not with gold and silver but with the precious blood of the Lamb,' cries the apostle Peter. So you have been redeemed by the Lord, and you are a slave because you were created, a slave because you were redeemed, and you owe service both as to a Lord and as to a redeemer. And do not think that the status of a freedman under Christ is inferior to freeborn status. In dignity it is equal, in protection superior, in grace the same, more cautious against falling, better guarded against pride. You have received freedom on condition that you remember your manumitter and know that lawful deference is owed to your patron, lest freedom be revoked from an ungrateful man. Who is more blessed than you, who reign under a Lord and serve under a patron?

What is there that the Lord has not bestowed on you? He gave the law; he added grace. For the law pointed out sin, but in a slippery condition it could not restrain it completely. For I came to know sin, which I did not know; I came to know that desire is sin; and by this occasion of the knowledge of sin the debts were heaped up, because sin, which before seemed dead through my ignorance, came to life again in me, and I died under the wound of sin, because the knowledge of guilt, which seemed likely to help me, did me harm, so that I knew what I could not avoid. For it exposed sin, and through the good of its pointing out it heaped up the odium of sin itself. And so sin became excessive for me, because it was heaped up by the announcement of the commandment; for guilt grows when it is exposed and not guarded against. How, then, is the commandment good, which is death to me? Or how is it not death to me, when sin, in order to be shown through the good of its signifying, worked death in me? For it is certain that death came upon me when I recognize as sin what I do, as the Lord himself says: 'If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.'

Why, then, do you wonder if the law is death to some, when even the saving coming of the Lord, by which we were redeemed, is death to some? For the unbeliever seeks death for himself from grace; but the grace of the commandment remains. For just as the knowledge of poisonous draughts is perfected for the discipline of medicine, so is the divine commandment for eternal life. But just as, for one who misuses harmful potions, the knowledge of them is turned to evil and danger, and the more he knows of poisons the more he understands that he is in danger, so the form of the commandment is the author of death for those who interpret the law wrongly, or who cannot avoid the sins pointed out and forbidden. As, then, an antidote is good even if it is not good for the imprudent or intemperate, so the commandment is good even if it is not good for the intemperate. So the commandment is good, which is death to someone. Take this, then, as the answer to the first proposition: a commandment can be good which is death to me — good by the nature of the saving precept, death through the intemperance of the flesh.

And since we have learned that the commandment is good which is death to me, let us now discuss how what has worked death for me, though through something good, is not death to me. For the apostle put it thus: 'Did what is good, then, become death to me? By no means; but sin, so that it might appear as sin, worked death for me through what is good.' Let us look, then, at each point. The commandment surely belongs to the law, and the law is spiritual; I see its grace, I praise its beauty, I proclaim its form, I admire its precept. But because I am carnal and sold under sin, I am drawn unwillingly into guilt. For guilt rules over me as over a slave. So I hate the crime and do it. The mind hates, the flesh desires; yet I am in both, who with the mind consent to the law and with the flesh do what I do not want. The commandment, then, is good, to which I consent, and the mind is good, which chooses what is good — good for judging, but often weak for resisting, because the body's appetite fights against it and drags it captive into the enticements of error.

In this danger there is one remedy: that the grace of God should free one whom the law could not free. For it is written thus: 'Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' So it comes about that, although sin which was hidden, that is, my desire, which I did not think was sin, worked death for me when it was exposed, and sin itself became excessive — for it was sin even though it was not known, but by knowledge it was heaped up and took on, as it were, an increase of error, and the form of the commandment passed over into the nature of an offense — yet it is not death to me, for whom it is easy to take refuge in Christ, through whom we are freed from every danger of death. The second proposition, then, is also resolved: the commandment of the law is not death to me, even if it works death. That we are troubled belongs to our frailty; that we escape belongs to Christ.

To return, then, to the beginning of this discourse: the mind is good which has the working of reason and attends to the disciplines of wisdom; but it has a heavy struggle with the body of death, and often the enticement of the flesh defeats the reason of the mind. Therefore the Lord first gave the law, to which the mind of man gave itself to obey and began to serve it, so as to be subject; but the flesh was not subject, because the wisdom of the flesh is not subject to the law and fought against its precepts. For given over to desires and entangled in fleshly allurements, it could not obey virtue. Therefore we must labor to hold fast the grace of God. The mind is good, then, if it attends to reason, but scarcely perfect unless it has Christ as its helmsman. For the Lord Jesus came to nail our passions to his cross and to forgive sins. In his death we have been justified, so that the whole world might be cleansed by his blood; indeed we were baptized into his death.

If, then, in his death our sins are forgiven, let the passions of our sins also die in his death and be held fixed by the nails of his cross. If in his death we have died, why are we called back again, as though living, to the things of the world? What have we to do with the elements of the world, with desires, with luxury and wantonness, to which we have died in Christ? But if we have died in Christ, we have risen in Christ; let us then live with Christ, let us seek with Christ the things that are above, not those that are corruptible and earthly. Christ, rising from the dead, left the old man fixed to the cross and raised up the new. Christ died so that we too might die to sin and rise again to God. Our flesh has died; why does it come to life again for sin, why does it obey sin again? Why does sin reign again among the dead, when death is the end of sin? We have died in the flesh, we have been renewed in the Spirit. Let us walk in the Spirit, for we have received the Spirit of Christ. But if Christ is in us, then let the flesh be dead in us because of sin, and the spirit live because of justification.

So what was impossible for the law is resolved, if we walk in the Spirit; so we bury the passions, if we do not undo the cross of this body, if we do not write again the bond of sin which was blotted out on the cross of Christ, if we do not put on the garment of the old man which we have put off. For it is written in the Song: 'I have put off my tunic; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I soil them?' The members of the body, then, have been put to death in us; why do its vices sprout? The law did not prevail because it did not put the flesh to death; it passed away like a shadow because it did not give color; it even overshadowed us from the sun of righteousness, because it heaped up crimes; and so it also did harm. Why, then, was it necessary for the law to be promulgated, if it was not going to help?

We already had the law of nature; each one was a law to himself, having the work of the law written in his heart. That we did not keep; why was another added, by whose works the flesh could not be justified? A bond was added, not a release; the recognition of sins was added, not their remission. We have all sinned, we who could have put forward the excuse of ignorance; every mouth has been stopped.

Yet it helped me. I began to confess what I used to deny, I began to recognize my offense and not to cover my injustice, I began to declare my injustice to the Lord against myself, and you forgave the impieties of my heart. But this too helps me, that we are not justified by the works of the law. I have nothing, then, for which I can glory in my works, nothing for which to boast of myself, and therefore I will glory in Christ. I will not glory because I am righteous, but I will glory because I have been redeemed. I will glory not because I am free of sins, but because my sins have been forgiven. I will not glory because I have been of use or because anyone has been of use to me, but because Christ is my advocate with the Father, because Christ's blood was shed for me. My guilt became for me the price of redemption, through which Christ came to me. For me Christ tasted death. Guilt is more fruitful than innocence: innocence had made me arrogant, guilt made me submissive.

You have, then, the respects in which the giving of the law helped you. But you say that through the law sin abounded. But where sin abounded, grace too abounded. You have died to sin, O man; so the law no longer harms. You rise through grace; so the law helped, because it gained grace. You have also received the pledge of Christ's love, since he who died for you is your advocate and keeps the reward of his blood; and he who reconciled the sinner to the Father much more commends the innocent and protects the submissive, because he has taken him to himself as blameless.

Owing so great a kindness, do you not repay it with obedience? He has made you an heir, he has made you a co-heir, an heir of God, a co-heir of Christ; he has poured into you the Spirit of adoption. Count these things and connect them not so much with the bond of debt as with the keeping of the gift received. You are a co-heir of Christ if you suffer with him, die with him, are buried with Christ. Take up his sufferings, so that you may deserve to be with him above sufferings. See how he forgave you your former sins, so that the fact that you sinned should not harm you at all. See how he exhorts you not to lose what you have received. Short is the goal of this labor, and the crown is of everlasting fruit; the suffering is bearable, the reward beyond price. What, then, distresses you? The humiliation of low birth? But you will have in the future the glorious nobility of devotion and faith. A slender income, a narrow living? But you will have the riches of eternal reward, in which you can lack nothing. The loss of children? You will receive as everlasting those whom you had received as temporal. It will be said of you: 'Blessed is he who has seed in Zion and kinsmen in Jerusalem.' 'The sufferings of this time,' Scripture tells you, 'are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.'

Add that the happy life is not diminished by these adversities of worldly troubles or bodily sufferings, but rather is proved by them. Add that it either does not feel the losses of an estate, or with a brave mind hides the losses of kin and swallows its grief. Add that he does not know shipwreck who is always in the harbor of tranquillity. What of the fact that your labor is shared with all creation, because for your sake the world itself endures the slavery of corruption, and you share with the saints a common fellowship in this labor and expectation? The sun knows its setting, the moon its waning, the lights of the stars their wandering, while the redemption of our whole body is awaited.

But do you fear the uncertain turns of life and the plots of the adversary, when you have the help of God, when you have so great a regard from him that he did not spare his own Son for you? Scripture used a beautiful word to declare the loving purpose of God the Father toward you, who offered his Son to death. And the Son could not feel the bitterness of death, because he was in the Father; he kept nothing back for himself, he offered everything for you, since in the fullness of the Godhead he himself lost nothing and redeemed you. Consider the Father's affection. Out of love he took on, as it were, the danger of a son about to die, he drank, as it were, the grief of bereavement, so that the fruit of redemption might not be lost to you. So great was the Lord's zeal for your salvation that he almost risked what was his own while he was gaining you. He took on our losses for your sake, so as to plant you among divine things and consecrate you to heavenly ones. Wonderfully, too, he added: 'He delivered him up for us all,' to show that he so loves all that he delivered up his most beloved Son for each one. Can it be, then, that for those for whom he gave what is above all things he has not given all things in him? For he who gave up the author of all things excepted nothing.

There is nothing, then, that we should fear may be denied us; nothing in which we ought to distrust the constancy of the divine generosity, whose abundance has been so long-lasting and continuous that first he predestined, then called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. Will he be able to abandon those whom he has followed with such great kindnesses all the way to their reward? Amid so many kindnesses of God, are any plots of the accuser to be feared? But who would dare to accuse those whom he sees chosen by the divine judgment? Can God the Father himself, who bestowed them, revoke his gifts and banish from the grace of his fatherly affection those whom he took up by adoption? But there is a fear that the judge may be too severe: consider whom you have as judge. Surely the Father has given all judgment to Christ. Will he, then, be able to condemn you, whom he redeemed from death, for whom he offered himself, whose life he knows to be the reward of his own death? Will he not say: 'What profit is there in my blood,' if I condemn the one I myself have saved? Then you consider the judge; you do not consider the advocate. Can he bring a harsher sentence who never ceases to intercede, that the grace of reconciliation with the Father may be conferred on us? But even if some grave things threatened, they ought by no means to separate us from Christ.

Why should we not endure even hard and bitter things for him who endured such indignities for us? And therefore love ought to be in us such that we are called away from Christ by no dangers. For it is written: 'Much water cannot shut out love, and rivers will not enclose it,' because the soul of the one who loves passes through the torrent. No storm, no deep danger, no terror of death or punishment diminishes the strength of love; for in these we are proved, in these is the happy life, even if it is flooded by many dangers.

For the wise man is not broken by pains of the body nor troubled by misfortunes, but remains happy even in hardships. Bodily adversities neither diminish the gift of the happy life nor take anything from its sweetness, because the happiness of life lies not in the pleasure of the body but in a conscience pure of every stain of sin, and in the mind of one who knows that what is good delights, even if it is harsh, and that what is unseemly does not please, even if it is sweet. The cause of living well, then, is not bodily pleasure but the prudence of the mind. For it is not the flesh, which is subject to passion, that judges, but the mind; for nothing delights more than honorable counsels and beautiful works; the mind, then, is the interpreter of the happy life. For prudence, or reason, the judge of passion, is better than passion, and what judges is more excellent than what is subject to judgment. Nor can it be that what is irrational is better than reason. He who follows Jesus, then, has his recompense within himself, and in his own disposition his reward and grace. Even if he endures hard things, he is still happy in his character, happy in his very dangers, as the Lord defined it, saying: 'Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake.'

The happy life, then, is among men, but only among those in whom the life is perfect. And the perfect life is not this life of the senses, but that rational life according to the working of reason and the vitality of the mind. In it lies not a part of man but his perfection, which consists not so much in man's condition as in his activity; for this makes him happy. For such a man, then, what is good but himself? What he has, this good is present with him and will be for him the cause of future goods. Of this good Solomon said: 'Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells. Let the waters from your own fountain overflow for you, and let them run in your streets. Let them be established for you alone, and let no stranger share them with you. Let the fountain of your water be your own.'