On Jacob and the Happy Life

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.'

Use, then, your inner good. The greatest testimony to this good is that one who has it does not seek other things. For what would he seek who despises lower things and clings to the most excellent, as it is written: 'Let the stag of friendship and the foal of graces converse with you'? Let friendship go before you and be with you at all times; for good is the friendship of the virtues and the love of the highest good. So the perfect man seeks nothing else but the one and glorious good. Hence he also says: 'One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and see the delight of the Lord.' And do not disdain him as narrow and needy because he is content with the solitary company, as it were, of one good. Surrounded by its friendship he will be very rich. For it is abundant for such a man, for happiness and for the possession of the good, and therefore he desires nothing else. For he who has everything seeks nothing as new. There is no good that he does not have; nor does he delight in superfluities, but in necessities, and in that very necessity which is necessary not for himself but for the flesh that clings to him; and he allows only what does not disagree with the purpose of the inner man, so that he may make both one and reconcile to God both the inner and the outer man together, so that there may be one spirit in both.

A man of this purpose, then, is not diminished by losses, not broken by adversities, not hindered by barriers, not saddened by the loss of his own. For his instruction the apostle says: 'We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who sleep, so that you may not be sad, as the others who have no hope.' For he consoles himself with faith in the resurrection and the grace of future reward, and does not admit sadness into the mind with which he clings to God, but rejoices in the delight of the divine presence. But one who is saddened by these things is not saddened according to God, and what is not according to God is full of folly. The sadness of this world, then, which is not according to God, is far from the perfect man, and so is every anxiety over bodily hardship. For with such a disposition of mind and substance the condition of the body and a certain use of outward nature are not counted, since the unconquered soul must keep an even constancy against the delights of the body and the very frailty of nature, against bereavements, losses, insults; so that whoever desires to hold the palm of happiness should, as it were, cut himself off from the body and strip off the senses of the flesh, a happiness whose fruit lies not in the portion of one virtue but in the fellowship of many, and, if possible, of all.

The perfect man, then, does not know the inconveniences of this body or the adversities of the world, nor does he feel them, since he bears a soul free of the fear that they may happen. For a life is not defined as more perfect if it lacks these things, but if it despises them. For if it were defined so that the happy life were one that could be found free and empty of such mishaps, then surely, when these things happened, no one could be defined as happy. These things, then, have been set aside, and this alone has been required in the estimation of the happy life: that its definition be held to lie not in other things but in the possession of the true and the good, since he who has that spits out the rest and does not seek it.

I now ask whether the wise man takes pleasure in health of body. We cannot deny that he takes pleasure in it according to nature and would rather not be in pain than be in pain, except perhaps for Christ, for whom, if the cause demands, he would readily accept even weakness of body and offer his whole body to death. Yet the same man, even apart from the cause of faith and righteousness, if health is lacking, is not afflicted in soul nor broken by pain of body, since he can console himself with the perfection of the virtues.

I also ask whether he takes pleasure in his children. Who would deny it? For it is not a hard and iron man that is sought, but a perfect one. Yet even if he loses his children, he is not on that account less happy, since he is not on that account less perfect; for what is perfect is happy. Indeed such a man is usually thought more perfect if he endures adversity than if he abounds in prosperity, although nothing is usually taken from or added to virtue whether outward advantages or bodily joys are absent or present; but for many it has been as much a praise to have endured adversity bravely as not to have met it. But these things are judged by appearance, not by weight:

the deeper truth is that the just man wills nothing but that one glorious good, intends it alone, counts it alone among goods, desires not something else along with it but always it alone, and delights in it. If something else is added that delights him, such as the sweetness of children, that good is not lost, but this is added. For accidents do not diminish happiness, since they cannot increase it, because that remains full and inviolable which the soul has put on and into which it has inserted and poured itself. Perfect virtue remains always amid adversities and delights; adversities take nothing from its perfection, nor do delights add to it. For how should one who has ascended to the summit feel either loss or gain from perishable things?

Nor will he think himself wretched — what most people regard as the gravest thing — if he himself or his children fall into captivity; for he will not find intolerable what nature holds or what seems good to the Lord. Indeed the just man said: 'Good is the word which the Lord has spoken,' and he said: 'Let there be peace and faithfulness in my days.' Certainly that just man Hezekiah did not rejoice that the hardship of captivity had been turned onto his sons, but he could not oppose the will of the Lord, and therefore he received his commands calmly, like a humble servant. Add to this that he could reckon that the merit of virtue can stand out even in captivity. For Jeremiah was not less happy in captivity, nor Daniel, nor Ezra, nor were Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael less happy than if they had not fallen into captivity, since they were led into captivity in order to bring the people both present comfort in captivity and the hope of escaping captivity. For it belongs to the perfect man to bear the common lot of nature with strength of soul and lead it toward better things, and not to succumb to what seems terrible and fearful to most, but, like a brave soldier, to sustain the assaults of the gravest misfortunes and undergo the conflicts, and, like a provident helmsman, to steer the ship in a storm and, by meeting the rising waves, to avoid shipwreck by cutting through the waves rather than by turning aside. Such a man is not fearful in persecution, not softer under torture so as not to provoke the torturer, but like a strong athlete who strikes back at the one beating him, if not with the scourge of a blow, at least with the scourge of speech, who despises the tortures many fear, saying: 'Their wounds have become the arrows of children'; who, though he wrestles with the gravest pain, does not show himself pitiable, but shows, like a light in a lantern, that even amid harsh storms and the fiercest blasts the virtue of his soul shines and cannot be extinguished. He is not soft when his own are wronged, nor anxious about the burial of his body, knowing that heaven is owed him; nor more downcast in the captivity of his fellow citizens, but like a stern judge condemning the faithlessness and errors of unbelievers, like Daniel, who exposed the thefts of the priests and refuted their superstitions, showing that they rested on no truth but were disguised by frauds. Such, finally, is the perfect man: he wishes all to do well and nothing evil to happen to anyone; and if something happens against his will, he himself still loses nothing of his own happiness.

But perhaps someone may think that sickness and weakness of body are a hindrance to fulfilling the task of perfection, because no works of the hands or deeds can go forward. But the just man will not feel these things as a hindrance; rather he will rebuke the one who weeps over them pitiably, and reproach him as cowardly, because he places more in the use of the body than in the virtue of the soul; because he longs for things he serves, when he has what he could rather command others; because he groans in poverty, when he could be above the wealth of the world — for to the faithful the whole world is full of riches; because he weeps over low birth, when he ought to despise royal powers and command the rich and powerful. For this is the life of the just man: he ought to regard even the resources he has as common, indeed to divide them with the needy, distribute them to the poor, cut back his own pleasures, reduce expense, practice the thrift of temperance, keep sobriety in prosperity, patience in adversity, endurance in pain, greatness of soul in dangers; not to know prayers for perpetual health; not to be shaken by the terror of impending death; nor to think that man more excellent who abounds, according to nature, in children, kin, health, joy, and plenty than one who lacks them, nor to weigh merits by the outward things of the world but by the inward things of virtue.

Who would deny that this too is the pattern of the just man: that he fears nothing, dreads nothing except the loss of virtue, and quells the vain fears of others that they have from anxiety over dangers, fear of death, and weakness of body; that he teaches that to be dissolved from the body and to be with Christ is far better; that he shows that activities are not hindered by weaknesses of body but increased? He is commended not by the splendor of his family or the support of kin or by wealth, but by good disposition. For Elijah was not less happy than Moses, though the one, needy of food, in a cheap sheepskin, without sons, without means, without companion, and the other, leader of peoples, glad in offspring, girded with power, founded equal merit in different ways, as was declared in the gospel when they shone with the Lord Jesus in the glory of the resurrection; for he seems to have given them an equal reward, as equal witnesses of his glory. Nor was Elisha less happy than David, though the one was subject to kings and the other endowed with royal power; they obtained no unequal grace of prophetic holiness. For what is lacking to one who possesses that good and has virtue always as his companion and partner? In what state is he not most powerful? In what poverty not rich? In what lowness of birth not illustrious? In what leisure not laboring? In what weakness not vigorous? In what infirmity not strong? In what quiet of sleep not on holiday, he whom his own virtue does not leave even at rest? In what solitude not surrounded, he whom the happy life encircles, whom grace clothes, whom the garment of glory illumines? For he is no less happy at leisure than when working, and no less glorious asleep than awake, because he is no less safe and sound asleep than when he is awake. When can he seem to be on holiday whose mind is always working? When alone, who is always with that good of which the prophet says: 'We shall be filled with the good things of your house'? When downcast, whose citizenship is in heaven? When not comely, who conforms himself to the likeness of that beauty and of the only good, who, even if he is loosened in his limbs, raises himself up in mind? And just as one accustomed to play the cithara, if he sees it broken, its strings loosened, smashed, and its use interrupted, throws it away and does not seek its measures but soothes himself with his own voice, so this man will let the cithara of his body lie idle, will delight himself in his heart, soothe himself with the memory of a good conscience, lift himself up with the divine oracles and the prophetic writings, holding in his soul and embracing in his mind that sweet and pleasant good, to which nothing sad can happen, since the grace of the divine presence always breathes upon him and he is present to himself, filled with the highest tranquillity of soul.

In the previous book we discussed the precepts of the virtues; in the following one let us use the examples of famous men who, placed in the greatest dangers, did not lose the happiness of life but rather gained it. Was not Jacob happy even when he left his homeland? Indeed plainly happy, for he took on the hardships of exile to soften his brother's anger. For if he is happy who avoids sin, surely he cannot be denied to be happy who relieves another's guilt and turns aside a crime. So by voluntary exile he avoided the fratricide that had been prepared, and by this act he sought safety for himself and gave innocence to his brother. Rightly, then, divine grace accompanied him everywhere, so that even while he slept he gained the gift of the happy life. For he saw the mysteries of things to come and heard divine oracles. A good worker in his sleep and rich in poverty, by the service of a hired man's life he obtained both an estate and a marriage by the same labor. He also, an excellent reconciler of brotherly affection, strove with gifts and deference to shut out all indignation and turn aside the pain of offense, showing that he had not been made less by exile, since he could bestow what he had not received.

But I am hurrying too fast to later things and passing over useful ones, since I must first define what a happy man is. For it is written: 'Happy is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence.' By this Scripture signifies that he is happy who has kept away from the company of the faithless — for it is ungodliness not to acknowledge the author of life and, as it were, the parent of salvation — or has not remained in sin, or has not persisted in luxury and wantonness. And that he, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, will be like a tree that will give its fruit in its season. The former are merits deserving reward; this is the reward of merits.

Which of the things that pertain to the merits of happiness was lacking to holy Jacob? He was so far from the company of the ungodly that the faithful people took its name from him and was called Israel, because he beheld God with the eyes of the inner mind, abstaining from sin, sober from every drunkenness of luxury, so that he drank in the hardships of labors and disregarded the security of ease. Is it not finely and truly said of him that he too will give fruit in his season, of whom it is written: 'Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field'? For he was perfect in every flower of the virtues and was fragrant with the grace of the sacred blessing and of heavenly happiness. For he is the field which the Lord has blessed — not this earthly field, bristling with woods or roaring with torrents, or marshy with sluggish waters, or barren of grain, or useless for vines, still stony with unfruitful gravel, or cracked and dry with drought, or soaked with blood, or untilled with brambles and thorns — but that field of which the church speaks in the Song: 'I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and strengths of the field.' For this is the field of which the Lord also says: 'And the beauty of the field is with me.' In this field is found that grape which, pressed, poured out blood and washed the world; in this field is that fig tree under which the saints will rest, refreshed by the sweetness of spiritual grace; in this field is that fruitful olive, flowing with the ointment of the Lord's peace; in this field bloom the pomegranates, which cover very many fruits with one protection of faith and warm them, as it were, with the embrace of love.

These fruits, then, Jacob breathed forth, who followed God through dangers and believed himself safe everywhere under his guidance. For though the smell of a field is sweet and pleasant, because it is the smell of nature, yet in the holy patriarch the grace of the virtues breathed. How continent he was in frugality, who did not demand the food prepared for himself, but gave it without delay to his brother when he asked, and received from him the primacy of the blessing! How dutiful toward his parents, so that he deserved to be preferred to his older brother by his mother's affection and to be consecrated by the gift of his father's blessing! How scrupulous, that he refused to harm his brother! How modest, that he feared to deceive his father! How respectful, that he could not refuse his mother what he was told!

But we must not leave the parents without excuse for preferring the younger son to the elder. At the same time we must take care lest anyone, looking to their example, judge unfairly among his sons, thinking one should be loved and the other set aside. For from this are stirred up brotherly hatreds, and fratricide is plotted for the sake of a petty increase of money. Let the same measure of affection nurture the offspring. Granted that affection may seize somewhat more toward a more winning or more similar child, the pattern of justice ought to be equal toward all. More is given to the beloved child when his brothers' love is sought for him; but more is taken from him if he is burdened with resentment at an unjust preference. Esau threatened that he would kill his brother; neither brotherhood nor reverence for his parents called him back from fratricidal fury, and he grieved that the blessing had been snatched from him, of which he ought to have proved himself worthy by gentleness, not by crime.

But Rebecca too preferred not a son to a son, but a just son to an unjust one. Indeed with that devout mother the mystery outweighed her offspring: she did not so much prefer him to his brother as offer him to the Lord, knowing that he could keep the gift bestowed on him. In this she also took counsel for the other, whom she withdrew from God's displeasure, lest he be entangled in graver guilt if he lost the grace of a blessing once received. But note the good contest between the parents: let the mother contribute affection, the father judgment.

Let the mother lean toward the younger with tender affection; let the father keep the honor of nature toward the elder. Let him honor more, her love more. While each cherishes one, let them not both conspire in favor of one and cheat the other. Let there be equality amid different contests, and by unequal pursuits let equal favor be bestowed on both with equal parental love. Let one make up what the other has lessened. So with loving affection the patriarch Isaac and holy Rebecca strove, so as to make neither inferior, but both equal.

Yet he prevailed who was preferred by the oracle: energy overcame slowness, gentleness harshness. While the one sought wild prey in the rough hunt, the other served his devoted father with the food of mild manners, with homely grace, with sweet dishes of tender gentleness and piety. In souls, whatever is at hand pleases more than whatever you thought should be brought with effort. Jacob went to the sheep and brought the offspring of innocence, or the gifts of sacred prophecy, because he believed that no food was sweeter to the patriarch than Christ, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter and like a lamb to the sacrifice. He judged this food useful both for his own parent and for the people whose type he bore, since through it there was to be the remission of sins.

Therefore he received his brother's robe, because he excelled in the wisdom of age; therefore the younger brother stripped the elder, because he shone with the dignity of faith. Rebecca brought out this robe as a type of the church and gave the younger son the robe of the Old Testament, the prophetic and priestly robe, that royal robe of David, the robe of Solomon, of the kings Hezekiah and Josiah; and she gave it to the Christian people, who would know how to use the garment they received, since the people of the Jews had it without using it and did not know its proper adornments. This robe lay in shadow, cast aside and neglected; for it was darkened by the gloomy mist of impiety and could not be unfolded more widely in the narrow heart of that people. The Christian people put it on, and it shone. They lit it up with the brightness of their faith and the light of devout deeds. Isaac recognized the familiar smell of his race, he recognized the robe of the old Scripture, but he did not recognize the voice of the old people, and therefore he knew it had been changed. For the same robe remains even today, but the confession of a more devoted people has begun to ring out; and rightly he said: 'The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.' 'And he smelled the smell of his garments.' And perhaps this is because we are justified not by works but by faith, since the weakness of the flesh is a hindrance to works, but the brightness of faith, which merits pardon for offenses, overshadows the error of deeds.

After the blessing had been given, the elder brother arrived. By this it is declared that the kingdom was bestowed on the church before the synagogue in predestination, but that the synagogue came in alongside, so that sin might abound and, when sin had abounded, grace might abound too; and at the same time it would be clear that a candidate for the kingdom of heaven must be energetic, to snatch the blessing beforehand and lay claim to the prerogative of his commendation. Hence the younger son was not blamed by his father but praised, for Isaac says: 'Your brother came with guile and received your blessing.' For guile is good where the seizing is blameless; and the seizing of piety is blameless, because from the days of John the kingdom of heaven is taken by force and those who use force seize it. For the fathers celebrated the Passover in haste; they ate the lamb in haste, not delaying; and holy Joseph summoned his brother Benjamin and kept him by the device of a pious deceit.

Yet he too, by pressing, drew out and obtained a blessing, but one that agreed and was consistent with the earlier one, that he should serve his brother. For one who could not command and rule another had to serve, so as to be ruled by the more prudent. For it was not the holy patriarch's purpose to consign his own son to the ignoble condition of slavery; but as a good father with two sons, one intemperate, the other prudent and sober, to provide for both he set the sober over the intemperate and appointed that the foolish obey the prudent, because the foolish man cannot be a willing disciple of virtue or persevere in his pursuit, since the fool changes like the moon; and rightly he denied him the freedom of his own choice, lest he drift like a ship on the waves without a helmsman. But he subjected him to his brother, according to what is written: 'The imprudent serves the prudent.' Rightly, then, he subjected him, so that he might improve his disposition under the rule of one governing him. And therefore he says: 'By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother'; for piety is mistress of cruelty, and gentleness is superior to harsh impulses.

Everyone is a slave who lacks the authority of a pure conscience; whoever is broken by fear, or ensnared by pleasure, or led by desires, or provoked by indignation, or cast down by grief is a slave. For every passion is servile, since 'whoever commits sin is a slave of sin,' and, what is worse, one who is subject to vices is the slave of many. He has made himself over to many masters, so that he is scarcely allowed to go out from slavery. But he who is judge of his own will, arbiter of his counsel, interpreter of his decision, who restrains the appetite of bodily passion, who does well what he does — and doing well he acts rightly, and acting rightly he acts blamelessly and irreproachably, having power over his acts — he is truly free. For he alone is free who does everything prudently and as he wills. It is not the condition of fortune that makes a slave, but shameful folly. Indeed, a prudent servant rules foolish masters, and slaves will lend to their own masters. What will they lend? Not money, surely, but wisdom, as the law too says: 'You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.' For the Jew lent the oracles of the divine law to the proselyte; but since he himself could not see the mysteries of the law and did not know the oracles he had, he who lent the letter to the nations now borrows from them the grace of spiritual teaching, and rightly he has been made subject to slavery, since the borrower is a slave, consigned as it were to the creditor's interest; but he who imparts the interest of pious teaching is a ruler, as the law says: 'You shall be ruler of many nations, but rulers shall not be over you from among them.' For he is a ruler who governs and holds the rule of wisdom. The people of the Jews had it; but since it could not keep what it taught, it must learn what it did not know how to teach.

This, then, is what the patriarch Isaac says: 'You shall serve your brother; but it will be that when you put off and loosen his yoke from your neck,' signifying that there would be two peoples, one the son of the slave woman, the other of the free — for the letter is a slave, grace is free — and that the people which attends to the letter will be a slave so long as it must follow the interpreter of spiritual teaching. Then too there will come to pass what the apostle says: 'that a remnant may be saved according to the election of grace.' 'You shall serve your brother,' then, but you will feel the benefit of servitude when you begin to obey your brother willingly rather than under compulsion.

From this arose envy, and Esau threatened that after his father's death he would kill his brother. But if this happens, let us learn from Rebecca how we must take precautions so that envy does not arouse anger and anger rush into fratricide. Let Rebecca come, that is, let patience be put on, the good guardian of innocence; let her persuade us to give place to wrath. Let us go away somewhat farther, until indignation is softened by time and forgetfulness of the offense steals in. So patience does not dread even exile but takes it up readily, not so much to avoid a danger to one's life as to avoid an incitement to crime. The devoted mother too endures the absence of her most beloved son, in order to do more for the one who had been harmed, yet taking counsel for both, so as to keep the one free from fratricide and the other safe from crime.

We have heard what intemperance, drunk with bodily desires, has said; let us consider what true virtue does. It seeks nothing but the grace of God; it follows that one and highest good alone; it is content with him alone, from whom we receive everything, while we confer nothing on him, because he needs nothing. As David says: 'I said to my Lord: You are my Lord, since you have no need of my goods.' For what does he need who abounds in all things and bestows everything on us, supplying all things without failing? 'And Jacob set out and slept' — a sign of a quiet mind — 'and

he saw the angels of God ascending and descending'; that is, he foresaw Christ on earth, to whom the band of angels descended and ascended to render to their own Lord the homage of devoted service.

And he came to a well, to drink from his own vessels and from the springs of his own wells, and that the waters from his own fountain might overflow for him; for the fountain of life is in the hands of the just.

And he came to Laban and pastured his sheep. Iniquity sits idle and unaccompanied; wisdom does not neglect its duty of governing. It does not know how to be idle even among strangers; it does not know how to be an exile among foreigners. For how could it be, which keeps its own right everywhere and has within itself what it possesses?

The just man enters as a hired man and is the ruler; he gathered for himself, by the ministry of gospel preaching, a flock shining with the splendor of many excellent virtues, so that he set before the sheep that were about to drink rods of storax, walnut, and plane, peeled in streaks, so that, desiring the foreshadowed mysteries of the most blessed Trinity, they might form by the conception of a devout mind offspring in no way discolored. Good sheep, which brought forth offspring of good works not unworthy of the sacred faith. By the storax is signified the incense and evening sacrifice which is offered to God the Father in the psalm. By the walnut rod the priestly office is offered to Christ; for this is the rod of Aaron, which, laid up, blossomed, by which the grace of priestly sanctification shone forth. By the plane is signified the richness of spiritual fruit, because the vine is joined to this tree, so that, glad in its company, it pours itself out into rich offspring; for the grace of the Spirit joined to them is wont to foster the gifts of the Lord's passion and the remission of all sins.

By these things, as Scripture says, he became very rich, nourishing a good flock for Christ, which he ennobled with the title of faith and the variety of virtues, the marks of a glorious name. And so he did not seem to himself narrow in means, being rich in the wealth of faith, and he was called in envy by Laban's sons a most wealthy man, who had increased his flock by adding another's flock. And God said to him: 'Return to the land of your father and to your kindred, and I will be with you,' showing that nothing was lacking to him who had the fullness of all things present; that to the perfect man this alone is abundant, in this all things consist and all things are referred to it, nothing is new to him, nothing superfluous is necessary, since he had a faithful peace at hand, by which he might reconcile what had at first been at variance. Nor is it any wonder if he had peace who had set up a pillar and anointed it for God, which is the church. For it is called the pillar and foundation of the truth. He anoints it who pours out the ointment of faith on Christ and of mercy on the poor.

Now let us consider what the just man ought to be like if envy has arisen. First, that he avoid it; for it is better to go away without a quarrel than to sit on with strife. Then, that he possess such things as he can take with him, so that he can be held liable to his adversary in nothing, but may say: 'See if anything of yours is with me.' And Laban searched and found nothing of his with Jacob. A great man and truly happy, who could lose nothing of his own and have nothing of another's, that is, have nothing too little and nothing superfluous. So he is perfect who lacks nothing, just who has nothing in excess; for this is to keep the measure of justice. How great a virtue, whose fellowship brought gain and inflicted no loss! This is to be perfect: to give very much advantage to those who cling to one, and to bring them no disadvantage.

Indeed, he who wished to harm him could not send him away empty. For the wise man is never empty, always having within himself the garment of prudence, who can say: 'I put on righteousness and clothed myself with judgment,' as Job said. For these are the inner coverings of the mind, which no one else can take away, unless someone strips himself by his own fault. Indeed Adam, stripped in this way, was found naked; but Joseph, even when his outer garment had been thrown off, was not naked, since he kept the garments of virtue intact. The wise man, then, is never empty. For how is he empty who has received from the fullness of Christ and keeps what he received? How empty, whose soul is filled, which guards the garments of the grace received? What must be feared is that someone lose the covering of innocence, and that the ungodly, by the attack of sacrilegious persecution, overstep the bounds of justice and snatch away the garment of soul and mind. This does not easily happen unless the voice of his own iniquity has first stripped a man. Hence David too says: 'If there is iniquity in my hands, let me deservedly fall empty before my enemies; let the enemy pursue my soul and seize it.'

No enemy, then, can seize your soul unless it has first been made empty. Do not fear, then, those who can plunder treasures of gold and silver. They take nothing from you. For they take what you did not have, they take what you could not possess, they take what did not adorn your soul but burdened it, they take what did not enrich your heart but rather weighed it down; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, as you heard read today. Many shut up their gold with the bolts of their doors, but they do not trust even their bars and locks; many employ watchmen, but they usually fear the guards themselves more; many brood over buried gold: their gold is under the earth and their heart is under the earth. Beware, then, lest you too bury your heart alive in the earth. The thieves of this gold, then, are not to be feared; that moneylender must be guarded against, who searches the substance of your soul to see whether you have contracted any debts of graver sin, who shuts your heart in the soil, who buries your soul under the same turf with which you covered your gold, who bends your mind under the interest of hundredths and buries it in a heavy tomb from which no one rises. Follow holy Jacob, who had nothing of others' vices and was not empty and void of his own virtues, who was filled with the fruit of righteousness.

But these are moral matters; this is the mystical one: that Laban, that is, 'whitened,' came to him, because Satan too disguises himself as an angel of light, and began to demand his own from him. Jacob answered him: 'See if anything of yours is with me,' that is: I have nothing of yours. Search, if you recognize any of your vices and crimes. I have taken nothing of your frauds with me, I have no fellowship with your guile; I have fled all that is yours as a contagion. And Laban searched and found nothing of his own. How happy the man in whom the enemy found nothing he could call his own, in whom the devil came upon nothing he could recognize as his! This seemed impossible in a man, but he bore the type of him who said in the gospel: 'The prince of this world will come and will find nothing in me.' For whatever belongs to the devil is nothing, since it can have no permanence or substance.

It is the Lord Jesus himself who was foreshadowed in Jacob, a man of two marriages, that is, a partner, as it were, of law and grace. He loved the virgin Rachel first and loved her with devoted affection as destined for him in marriage. But since Leah, like the law, came in alongside and crept in with weaker eyes, like the synagogue, which by blindness of mind could not see Christ, the grace of holy Rachel abounded more, who was sought beyond that first marriage, who already then signified by the meaning of her name the future primacy of the church. Blessed Rachel, who took away her reproach by her childbearing! Blessed Rachel, who hid the worship and errors of the gentiles and declared that their idols were full of uncleanness! Let no one think that the reverence of filial duty was violated because she sat while her father stood, since it is written: 'Whoever puts father or mother before me is not worthy of me.' Where the cause of religion was at stake, faith had to hold the judge's seat and faithlessness had to stand as a defendant. These things were proved to the point that the angels of God met holy Jacob as he set out.

Then he saw the camp of God drawing near and said: 'This is the camp of God'; for divine protection is wont to be present to the perfect and faithful. And being perfect, he was thinking about reconciliation with his brother, so as to invite him by humility, win him by services, and he thought he might even buy him with gifts. So he went to meet his brother with his wives and children, so that even if he was angry with him, he might be moved by the deference of kinship.

'And he bowed down seven times to the ground.' What does this mean? The law says: 'You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'; and here he bows down to an intemperate, angry man, threatening the crime of fratricide. Or did he bow down to that earth, clotted with human blood, soaked with the poisons of serpents, or barren with wretched gravel, or bristling with hard and rough rocks? What, too, does it mean that he bowed down seven times? The solution would stick, did not this occur to us: that when Peter asked in the gospel, 'If my brother sins against me, how often shall I forgive him? Up to seven times?' the Lord Jesus answered: 'Not only seven times, but seventy times seven.' This, then, the holy patriarch signifies by the prophetic Spirit, looking to him who was to come, who would command that pardon be granted to a brother not only seven times but seventy times seven, so that Esau, moved by the sight of this, might forgive his brother the wrong he thought he had received and, though hurt, return to favor; for the Lord Jesus was to take on flesh and come to earth for this purpose, to give us manifold pardon for our offenses.

Then, about to seek concord from his brother, he slept in the camp. Perfect virtue has tranquillity and the stability of rest; therefore the Lord reserved this gift for the more perfect, saying: 'My peace I leave you, my peace I give you.' For it belongs to the perfect not to be easily moved by worldly things, not to be troubled by fear, not to be harried by suspicion, not shaken by terror, not vexed by pain, but, as on a very safe shore, to calm the mind, immovable at its faithful station, against the rising waves of worldly storms. This firmness Christ brought into Christian minds, bringing inner peace into the souls of the approved, so that our heart may not be troubled nor our soul harried. The apostle, the teacher, declared that this peace is above every mind, saying: 'And the peace of God, which surpasses every mind, will guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus.' The fruit of peace, then, is not to be disturbed in heart. Indeed the life of the just is quiet, but the unjust man is full of restlessness and disturbance. And so the ungodly man is more afflicted by his own suspicions than most are by others' blows, and the welts of the wounds are greater in his soul than in the bodies of those who are beaten by others.

It is a great thing for someone to be tranquil within himself and at one with himself. Outward peace is sought either by the anxious foresight of an emperor or by the hand of soldiers, or it comes from the favorable outcome of wars or from some slaughter of barbarians if they turn their arms against one another in hostile commotion. In that peace there is no virtue of ours, only an outcome. Certainly the glory of that peace is credited to the emperor; the fruit of this peace, which is in minds and held in the affections of individuals, is in us. The fruit of this peace is greater, by which the temptations of spiritual wickedness are repelled, than that by which enemy arms are repelled. This peace, which shuts out the enticements of bodily passions and calms disturbances, is loftier than that which quiets the incursions of barbarians; for it is more to resist an enemy shut up within you than one far away.

And so Jacob, who had cleansed his heart of all ill will and bore a peaceable disposition, after he had sent away all his possessions, remained alone and wrestled with God. For whoever disregards worldly things comes nearer to the image and likeness of God. For what is it to wrestle with God but to take up the contest of virtue, to grapple with one who is higher, and to become an imitator of God better than the rest? And because his faith and devotion were unconquerable, the Lord revealed hidden mysteries to him by touching the breadth of his thigh, because from his descent the Lord Jesus was to be born of a virgin, who would be neither unlike nor unequal to God. His cross was signified by the breadth of the numbed thigh, because, by the remission of sin spread through the whole world, he would be the bringer of salvation to all, who by the numbness and sleep of his body would grant the resurrection of the dead. Hence not without reason the sun rose upon holy Jacob, upon whose race the saving cross of the Lord shone; and at the same time because the sun of righteousness rises for one who sees God, for he himself is the eternal light.

And Jacob limped on his thigh. Because of this the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew even today. Would that they had eaten and believed! But since they were not going to do the will of God, therefore they did not eat. There are also some who take it this way: that Jacob limped on one thigh because, of the two peoples flowing from his descent, the numbness of one toward the grace of faith was already then declared to be coming. That, then, is the people which limped with the numbness of faithlessness.

Then, not long after a revelation of this kind, when Dinah, Jacob's daughter, had been violated by the son of a foreigner and the modesty of her virginity defiled, her brothers, who did not understand the mystery, out of zeal for vengeance slew the foreigners, who were offering fellowship in faith through the joining of their race; but Jacob, who by moral gentleness loved clemency, or by the mystical spirit foresaw the sacrament of the church to be gathered from the nations, received that scene of exacted vengeance unwillingly and with grief. Hence a divine answer was given to him as he prophesied the coming of the Lord Jesus: 'Rise and go up to the place Bethel,' that is, to the house of bread, where Christ was born, as the prophet Micah testifies, saying: 'And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come forth a ruler in Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.' Truly a house of bread, which is the house of Christ, who came to us from heaven as the bread of salvation, so that now no one hungers who gains for himself the food of immortality. There the patriarch is commanded to dwell, there to make an altar to God who appeared to him. There he received the foreign gods and hid them under the terebinth; there too Rachel was buried 'on the way,' it says, 'to Ephrathah; this is Bethlehem.' There too Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. What great mysteries, since there is the church of God, in which God appears and speaks with his servants!

There the idols of the gentiles are seized and hidden; for the faith of the church has abolished every observance of paganism. But I ask why he hid them under the mastic tree. Certainly that kind of tree is unfruitful. There, then, are the gods of the gentiles, where there is no fruit. There the earrings of the gentiles are buried, which they gave to Jacob, so that they may now become accustomed to hear a new tongue, may not know the old sleep of faithlessness, may have their ears deafened to sacrilege and be cleansed for grace. Not without reason did holy Daniel detect there the false testimony against Susanna. For faithlessness wished still to plant its roots there, but it could not hide, because it was detected by the prophetic Spirit. And the elder's error matched the true confession, that he should say chastity had been defiled there where the idols of the gentiles were buried; but the truth of the church did not cover faithlessness but hid it, and stopped the ears of paganism.

Fittingly too holy Rachel was buried there, because all who are baptized in Christ are buried with him. For so we are taught by the apostle, who says: 'For we were buried with him through baptism into death,' so that as he rose from death, raised by his own power, so we too may rise by his grace. Then truly every error of the gentiles is hidden, when someone has been washed from his vices, because our old man, nailed to the cross, no longer knows how to serve the old sin. Fittingly too a pillar is set up over Rachel's tomb, because the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

Jacob grew old, and he had already grown old in character before; but in him the tireless vigor of youth and the tranquillity of old age competed. For there is both an old age green with grace and a youth gray with counsels, of which Scripture says: 'For venerable old age and the age of old age is a spotless life.' Of this life was Jacob, who by good works anticipated the time of long old age, so that he both picked its fruit before the time and did not fear its last days when they came. Happy indeed is the young man who lives well, but happy too the old man who has lived well. For what the young man hopes for the older has obtained; what the old man has been, the young man wishes to be. Certainly the one, with a longer course still before him on a restless sea, is tossed by the waves; but the old man is in the haven of old age as in a harbor. Such was Jacob, who held the goods hardly to be hoped for by the young safe and secure, already shut and sealed with the key of grace. And to possess is better than still to hope. Jacob, then, was the old man to whom the young, struck by the storm of some time of adversity, betook themselves as to a harbor; while he himself, set as it were on a watchtower of this life, kept watch with anxious affection and foresaw remedies long before in doubtful matters. Indeed there was famine in all the land: whether the old man, laid aside, was the first to hear what the eager young men did not know

… I shall see. Meanwhile he was the first to advise his sons that grain abounded in Egypt and that they must go there to buy what they needed for their use. He also willingly gave way to the young men's counsel, so as to send his youngest son with them. And when they reported that his son Joseph was alive, he, though weakened in body yet vigorous in strength of soul, did not wait for his son to come to him, but went instead to his son; for with filial love the measure of rank does not weigh more. So he felt none of the hindrances of weary old age as he went; for love lightened the labor. But when he had enjoyed the fruit of his recovered son for some time, namely seventeen years, which in view of the patriarch's long life is a small portion of time, he knew that the end of his life was drawing near; he called his son Joseph and bound him by the future heir of his line not to bury him in Egypt; and having received his pledge, when a little later he fell ill and his son Joseph came to him, as though his strength had returned he sat up on his bed and blessed the twelve patriarchs and prophesied.

Let some now say that Jacob was not happy when he was in the very days of his death, he who mingled almost more conversation with God than with men; not happy when his eyes were heavy with age and he could not see — for to some blindness seems a grievous hardship of misfortune. But even then Jacob was happy, because he discerned in the Spirit those whom he could not discern with his eyes and sight. He saw things to come, who was thought not to see things present. Indeed Joseph himself erred: when he had placed his elder son at Jacob's right hand and his younger son at his left, so that the order of age might keep the order of blessing, Jacob stretched out his right hand over the younger grandson and his left over the elder; and when his son wished to move his father's right hand onto Manasseh, the elder, he answered: 'I know, my son, I know; this one too will become a people and will be exalted; but his younger brother will be greater than he.' And he added the reason for the preference, saying: 'His seed will be a multitude of nations.' So much better did he see, though his bodily sight was impaired, that he taught the one who saw that he had erred. For who sees better than one who sees Christ? Or who can call him impaired in his eyes who saw the church shining in Christ? Is it not clear, then, that weakness cannot hinder happiness? He, impaired in the gift of his eyes, he, with the strength of his body worn out, leaving his body on the bed as in a tomb, rose up within himself, and, gathering himself far from others and within himself, had withdrawn from present things and mingled with the coming age of the last days. For so it is written: 'I will announce to you,' he says, 'what will befall you in the last days.'

What, then, did he lack, with whom God was present, who had said to him as he was setting out: 'I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will lead you forever'? Nor was God lacking when the Holy Spirit spoke in him. Who is as powerful in his own home as he was in another's? Who as abundant in plenty as he in famine? Who as strong in youth as he in old age? Who as active in business as he at rest? Who as swift in the race as he on his bed? Who as glad in the flower of youth as he at the border of death? Who as rich in a kingdom as he in a foreign land? Indeed he blessed kings. And rightly he was not poor, who lacked nothing; he was not poor, who did not think himself poor. And who would call him poor, of whose company the world was not worthy, and therefore his citizenship was in heaven? He was very rich in the riches of simplicity and sincerity, comely with a greater beauty of soul than of body, which knows no withering, unflagging in age, free to leave this bodily hovel when he wished and to penetrate the heights of paradise by the vigor of his mind, exulting in spirit when he gave directions for the last rites of burial. For he did not presume that he would be shut in an earthly tomb, but received into a heavenly dwelling. And therefore he gave directions about the tomb as if for another; secure for himself, he thought that death to be immortality. He seemed entangled in the hindrance of the body, and with watchful affection he ran ahead into future times, saying of the persecutors of the Lord, the authors of wickedness who were to come forth from the tribe of Simeon and Levi: 'Let my soul not come into their counsel, and let my inward parts not strive to meet them.' Who is as strong in might as he was strong in weakness, who said: 'Cursed be their fury, for it was proud and rash, and their wrath, for it was hardened; I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel'?

Who is as melodious in songs as he was in his words, who was heard throughout the world, who is heard through all peoples and all ages? Who, rendering in sweet measures the seven differences of notes, ever rang out as he did with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit? Though his limbs were loosened, yet lifting himself up in soul and raising himself in spirit, he did not seek the harmony of his body, like a cithara destroyed when the frame of its members was broken up, but, despising it with lofty mind, let it lie idle on the ground, while he soothed himself with inner song and delighted himself with prophetic melody, saying: 'Judah, may your brothers praise you; your hands are on the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion's whelp; from a shoot you went up, my son; lying down you slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who shall rouse him?' And further on: 'He will wash his robe in wine and his garment in the blood of the grape. His eyes are glad with wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.' What song is sweeter, what sound more pleasant than the remission of sins and the resurrection of the dead? This song holy David, that instrument of the divine voice and interpreter of the Lord's word, sang on the spiritual cithara. With these melodies of grace he soothed that lofty soul and mind; with this song he softened the harshness of this world, with this sound he softened the hardness of the age, with this psaltery he broke the terror of death, with this sweetness of strings he trampled down hell.

But let us hear also the other things that the holy patriarch Jacob sounded forth on that wonderful instrument of his mind: 'Naphtali is a vine let loose, putting forth beauty in its shoot. My son Joseph is increased, my son increased, my son sought with jealousy, my youngest son, return to me.' And further on: 'He has prevailed above the blessings of the abiding mountains and the desires of the everlasting hills.' What is sweeter than blessing, what more pleasing than eternity? The very words are a song, and in the words are great rewards of prayers and the heights of merits. What is sweeter than holy Joseph, who freed us from reproach by the mystery of the Lord's cross?

For just as Christ became a curse to undo the curse of the law, and became sin to take away the sin of the world, so he became a reproach to remove the reproach of the gentiles; but that reproach of Christ was reckoned more precious than the treasures of Egypt. And therefore Moses left the palace of King Pharaoh and chose the reproach of faith, and the seas were divided for that reproach. He himself, then, is Naphtali, the vine let loose through the whole world, to pour into all peoples the richness of the spiritual cup; he is the one increased, having the name above every name, who, since he offered himself to death for all, therefore hears from the Father: 'Return to me.' Jacob spoke and God was heard; he blessed, and the Lord resounded, saying to the Son: 'Return to me,' that is, return after the passion. Return to your throne, return with the trophy, return to me, so that the dead may follow you as you rise and may rise by your power and example alike, so that you may become the firstborn from the dead and sit at the right hand of the Father. Hence the Son too said: 'Hereafter you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power.'

Will anyone deny that Jacob was happy at the very last moment of death, when he was pouring out divine oracles? Deny that Joseph was happy in prison, where by the spirit of wisdom he interpreted the truth of the dreams he had heard and revealed the course of the future? Deny that Isaiah was happy when he was sawn in two, Jeremiah when he was sunk in the mire, holy Daniel when he stood unafraid among the lions and the prophet, snatched up by an angel, brought him his dinner? Not, surely, happy because he dined on another's dinner, but because by his merits he shut the unfed mouths of the lions. And who would not call happy the mother of the Maccabees, who added herself as an eighth to the deaths of her seven sons for the glory of the heavenly triumph?

Nor will I pass over you, Eleazar, a priest as I am a priest, but one to be helped by your prayers: a priest by descent, learned in the law, ripe in years, when you were brought before Antiochus the persecutor, you could neither be caught by temptations, nor swayed by rewards, nor broken by the bitterness of tortures. Indeed he began with flatteries, because he judged that his tortures could be overcome. 'I blush,' he said, 'at your gray hair, I revere your old age, I admire your prudence: why do you think you must abstain from good food that nature bestows? Relax this obstinacy, wake up at last, while I still prefer to persuade you rather than force you, lest, overcome by torments, you do what you refuse when invited by reason.' To this the old man answered: 'We, Antiochus, are not led by stubbornness, but held by reverence for the law, which has commanded us to abstain from pork. You judge it a very fine creature; yet you cannot deny that temperance is better than pleasure, obedience to the law better than transgression. But if you think it a light thing that we should eat pork, how will one who despises the law in the least things keep it in great ones? Or if a creature of that kind is precious, you are avenged in that we are cheated of what is finest. Our abstinence is a training in chastity. For we learn to cut back luxury, overcome desires, shut out lust, resist the pleasures of the body. It is also an exercise of fortitude not to yield to punishments for the law, and a mark of justice and prudence too, to keep in the fear of God, with death set before us, what we have chosen to follow. Who would command free men's food? And who would offer himself to be laughed at by being a slave in this? But you will not laugh. I am not so old that my strength of soul does not grow young.'

So when he was hung up and beaten severely from this side and that, and his aged limbs could no longer bear the punishment of the blows, the executioners and the rackers grew tired; bent to the ground, he kept an unbending mind. And someone, whether pitying his great age or wishing to trap him by temptation, said: 'Just answer that you will eat; we will keep you free of that food.' But he cried out: 'Far be it from me to become, as an old man, an incentive to the error of the young, I who until now was a saving pattern of our way of life. Shall I gain a little more life by these mockeries and sell the labors of my whole life for the brief provision of old age? Old age ought to be the harbor, not the shipwreck, of the former life. I will not deny you, law of our fathers; I will not abjure you, holy institutions of our ancestors; I will not discolor you, priestly fillets; I will not openly defile you, gray hair, with the dust of faithlessness.' Why say more? By dying under torture he became for the rest a teacher of perseverance, who had been chosen as an example of weakness. Happy, then, the man in whom torments could not overcome reason. Is he not happy who could be victor over punishments by strength of soul and, with the oarage of piety, keep his suffering intact amid such waves?

After him seven boys were set up with their mother. One may mock the tyrant, who, thinking it clever to begin with the old man, chose a teacher to make his disciples braver. He tried to lure their boyish age, as it were, into guilt with rewards and to drive them into fear with terrors. But they, not unworthy of so great a leader, answered: 'Why do you despise <us> or trick us as boys? But our faith is gray-haired, our discipline strong. Try it, at least: subject our boyish bodies to whatever punishments you please; you will not find boyish hearts, nor will the engines of torture be more powerful than the watch we keep over the observance of the law. Childhood, rivaling old age, will overcome the man whom old age has defeated. We sons follow our father, we disciples our teacher. Gather the instruments of punishment you have set out: by being seen they bring us a meditation on patience, not the terror of ignorance.'

He ordered the eldest to be chosen. But he said, laughing: 'You rightly keep the order of nature. But why do you think the law of God should be violated? For piety indeed we are all eldest; but I rejoice that it begins with me. What do you seek, tyrant? I confess that we serve the most high God. And you teach us what we ought to do: if you want to wring the truth from us with such persistence, why should we not think we must hold it with all our strength?' Why say more? Punishments of various kinds were applied. But piety conquered the fury of savagery: the soul was driven out, not religion.

The second came forward and, not unworthy of his brother, fulfilled the duties of a pious confession. And when the skin of his head was being torn off, he answered: 'You take away the skin, but I have a spiritual helmet which you cannot take away.' And truly no one can take away this helmet, as the apostle afterward taught in the church of the Lord: that Christ is the head of the man and we are his members. Rightly the boy foresaw this apostolic teaching by the divine Spirit. The savage beasts stripped the crown of his head and raged with leopard-like ferocity. But he, failing, said: 'How sweet it is <to die for religion>, how pleasant every bitterness of death for piety, because the reward of these labors remains! Yours, king, are the heavier torments; you are tortured more severely by hidden punishments, because you see yourself conquered in your power.'

When he too had died, he ordered the third to be set before him. And when he tried partly to trap him by snares and partly wished to strike him with terror, the boy answered him: 'I will not do your will nor yield to your command. By that blessed passion and nobility of my brothers I will not deny our devoted brotherhood. Apply whatever punishments you like; by pressing harder you will gain only this by the harshness of your punishments, that you receive greater testimonies of our brotherhood.' So he ordered his tongue to be cut out. But he cried out: 'You are conquered, Antiochus, you who order the instrument of the voice to be cut off. You have confessed that you cannot answer reason, and you show that the scourges of our tongue are greater than your lashes. For we do not fear your lashes; you cannot bear the scourges of our voice. But these are the scourges of piety, yours the scourges of faithlessness. Yet even when the tongue is removed, it will scourge you more heavily with its murmur as it falls. Do you think you escape, Antiochus, if you snatch away the voice? God hears even the silent, and hears them more. Behold, I have opened my mouth, I have loosed my tongue. Cut off the tongue, but you will not cut off constancy, you will not take away virtue, you will not blot out reason, you will not snatch away the testimony of truth, you will not snatch away the cry of the heart. If the tongue is cut off, the blood will cry out, and it will be said to you: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me. For he hears the voice of blood who hears inner thoughts — though darkness may cover them and the enclosure of walls surround them, let the ungodly say that no witness stands by him — God searches all things, sees all things, and there is no crime that can be hidden from the judge of all, who knows all things before they happen. Why do we give words? Wounds are more eloquent: even if wounds are covered, even if the scar is hidden, faith is not hidden. Yet do not applaud yourself that by taking away the tongue you snatch away the confession of praise. We have praised God enough with speech; now let us praise him with suffering.'

When he too had been killed, he ordered the fourth to be bound to the wheel, so that by its turning he might be loosened in all his limbs. But he, as he was savagely tortured, said: 'You loosen the members of the body, but you add grace to the passion and do not snatch away the comfort of death. For the voice of thunder is in the wheel, because in the good and unhindered course of this life the heavenly oracle resounds, as it resounded in John and James, the sons of thunder. So now I recognize more clearly what I have read, that a wheel runs within a wheel and is not hindered. For a well-rounded life turns in any suffering without any stumbling, and within these things too the wheel runs. The law runs within grace, and the observance of the law is within the course of divine mercy; for the more it is rolled, the more it is proved. It is better here to endure adversity from the ungodly, so that there we may find consolation from the Lord.' And he too, finishing his course, broke off his breath and, as victor, poured out his soul.

When the fifth was set before him, he ordered that after he had first been beaten, fire should be brought to him and flames placed beneath him. Gore flowed from his wounds, and the blood poured out from his dug-out sores put out the very balls of flame; but amid the crackling of the fire he was heard saying: 'Thanks be to you, Lord, that you have given us to say: We have passed through fire, as your same prophet says elsewhere: You have tested us with fire, as silver is tested with fire. I shall stand before you like gold purified by the fire, and if there was any guilt, the fire has burned it away.' And so he too, transformed from corruption to incorruption, breathed out his life.

Tortures were applied to the sixth as well. But he said: 'Do not err in vain and ascribe it to your own power that you exercise these things against us. This is the price of our offenses, that we are punished as sinners; and thanks be to the Lord, that here a double penalty is exacted from us for sins, so that there consolation may be granted us. And thanks to you too, that you are so hard and pitiless, so that by such punishments of ours the Lord, against whom we have sinned, may become propitious to our nation. We too lighten the hardship while we delight in the sufferings of faith.' And he too, torn apart by hard and harsh punishments, was gathered to his brothers.

The youngest of the brothers remained, and Antiochus was now ashamed to have been made such a laughingstock by an unripe age. So, wishing to trap him by trickery, he promised honors, riches, his friendship, a share in his secrets. But the devout mother admonished her son, saying to him as to the others: 'I do not know how you came into my womb; I did not give you breath nor form your limbs, but these are gifts of almighty God.' Antiochus, seeing the mother anxious, thought she feared for his safety, and began to urge her too to call her son back from his purpose. But she said to her son in their native tongue: 'You alone, my son, remain, the sum of my prayers; you last closed my childbearing, you last complete my joys. Have pity on me, who carried you in my womb through so many courses of months; do not in one moment put my old age to shame, do not discolor the trophies of so many brothers of yours, do not leave their sacred company, do not desert their fellowship. These triumphs still await you. Look to heaven, from where you drew your breath, to the Father of all; look to the earth, which first supplied you with nourishment; look to your brothers, who seek their colleague; look to your mother, who gave you milk. Repay the reward of devoted blood: do not be torn from your brothers, do not be torn from your mother. Temporal are the riches Antiochus promises, temporal the honors; everlasting is the crown bestowed by almighty God. The Lord gave you to me as the lights of seven days; I have already closed the sixth day, and all their works very good. You owe it to me, my son, that as I labored in those six, I may rest in you in the seventh, as one already on holiday from the works of the world.' So the young man, rushing forward, said: 'What are you waiting for?' And crying out many things — that he could by no means be torn from the fellowship of his brothers, whose deaths were far more blessed than the commands of the king — while he pressed the king with reproaches, he too, tortured by bitter kinds of torments, completed the task of this life.

Last of all the mother was offered to death. Who would deny that she was happy, who, as though walled in by seven walls, <stood> among the bodies of her sons, feeling no assault of death? Who, I say, would doubt her happiness, who, surrounded by seven towers, lifted up her head into the seat of paradise; who, girded by seven sons, brought to the heavenly altars a choir most holy to God, melodious not only with voices but also with sufferings, to sing together the praises of the Lord? How good a birth of faith, how safe this harbor of piety, how splendid a lamp of the church, shining with sevenfold light and from an eighth womb supplying oil to all the lights! Of them it is beautifully said: 'Give a portion to those seven, and also to those eight,' because in both numbers they attain the fellowship of grace, nourished in the law, crowned through grace: seven as in the sabbath, eight as in the gospel, the devout mother being added as the completion of the passion, she who in such sons conceived and brought forth the whole pattern of piety.

The words of the holy woman come back to memory, saying to her sons: 'I bore you, I poured the juice of milk into you: do not lose your nobility.' So other mothers usually call their sons back from martyrdom, not call them to it. But she placed her motherly affection in this: to persuade her sons of an everlasting rather than a temporal life. So the devout mother watched her sons' contests, and though she was shaken by the compassion of a mother's heart, she pressed down her grief with zeal for piety; and when Antiochus offered it, though she could have chosen the safety of her sons, she preferred danger, and, suppressing the groans of nature, she wished the punishment of her sons to be increased, so that death might come more quickly. We see a mother's prayers turned toward her sons, not that she might leave any of them surviving, but gain them all as devout co-heirs of death.

But the sons were not unworthy of such a parent; they exhorted one another and said with one zeal and, as it were, one battle line of souls: 'Let us trample on the assault of hostile death. For then we shall live, when we have died. Let no one desert the ranks of piety, let no one withdraw from the triumphal battle. Not to a man but to almighty God have we vowed our souls; not for a man but for the author of all do we fight. Such is this battle that he has conquered more gloriously who has been more cruelly killed.' So no one feared, no one trembled, none of so many brothers was slower toward death; but all ran to death through bitter punishments as on the road to immortality. And the mother, seeing the harmonious ranks of her sons, offered, like a devout soul, the members of her own body in her sons, and seemed to herself to undergo the tortures she had vowed in her own limbs.

The sons fell, ulcerated by torments; the dead were rolled upon the dead, bodies tumbled upon bodies, heads were cut off upon heads; the place was filled with the corpses of her sons. The mother did not weep, did not lament, did not close the eyes or mouth of any dying son, did not wash their wounds, knowing they were more glorious if they were seen disemboweled and clotted with dust and blood alike, as victors usually return from war, as they bring back trophies from the enemy. She did not think coverings should be thrown over them, or funeral rites performed, except with the company of her own death too. What cithara could give forth sweeter songs than her sons gave forth, admonishing one another amid such grave punishments? For the groan of nature burst forth even from the unwilling. You would have seen the corpses of the slain in order, like the threads of strings; you would have heard a seven-stringed psaltery resounding with triumphal groans. Not so, as they say, would the seductive songs of the Sirens draw a hearer; for they drew to shipwreck, these to the victory of sacrifice. Nor would the songs of swans so soothe the ears and soul; for swans die by the lot of nature, these died for love of piety. Not so do the hoarse murmurs of doves resound in a secret grove as the last words of the dying resounded with the highest sweetness. Nor does the moon so shine among the stars as the mother shone among her sons, both when she led them to martyrdom to illumine them and when she lay embracing the victors in the midst of her sons.

O mother, truly stronger than adamant, sweeter than honey, more fragrant than a flower! O indissoluble bond of piety! O love truly strong as death, zeal of devotion and faith hard as hell! No floods of such great sufferings could shut out your love, no rivers of such bitterness overflow it. Just as the ark in that flood of the world was borne unharmed over the spaces of the whole earth, so you too, immovable in piety, stood firm against the waves of such grievous sufferings, and when you could have chosen your sons' safety, you would not. With what affection shall I follow you, devoted children of a holy mother? With what brush of speech shall I paint the likeness of your form and souls? You stood among the royal armies to which the whole world had been subjected, which even India avoided by fleeing into the secret places of the farthest sea, and you alone carried off victory over a proud king without armed conflict. In you the arms of piety alone conquered; the tyrant paid the penalty both because he could not conquer you and because he perished by a dreadful death.