On the Duties of the Clergy

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.12 · 1.13–1.20 · 1.21–1.28 · 1.29–1.35 · 1.36–1.46 · 1.47–2.3 · 2.4–2.11 · 2.12–2.21 · 2.22–3.1 · 3.2–3.7 · 3.8–3.16 · 3.17–3.22

1. 1.1Ambrose explains that, made bishop straight from public office, he must learn and teach at once, and offers his teaching to his clergy as to sons.
2. 1.2Ambrose argues from Scripture that the first thing to learn is silence, since speech so easily leads to sin.
3. 1.3Silence is not muteness: the Christian must guard both heart and mouth, keeping speech under the rein of humility and measure.
4. 1.4Guarded speech makes a man gentle and denies the devil the snares he sets through our words.
5. 1.5When provoked, the just man stays silent and conquers by yielding, rather than letting the tempter stir him to retaliate.
6. 1.6David’s silence under Shimei’s curses shows that the righteous are better off despising abuse than resenting it.
7. 1.7Ambrose explains that Psalm 39 moved him to write on duties, following Panaetius and Cicero, for the clergy whom he loves as sons in the Gospel.
8. 1.8Ambrose shows that the word “duty” (officium) is used in Scripture, in Luke’s account of Zechariah, and explains its derivation.
9. 1.9Against the philosophers’ division of duty into the virtuous and the useful, Ambrose measures both by eternal life, so that worldly advantages count rather as losses.
10. 1.10The seemly is taught first in Scripture, and David, earlier than the philosophers, teaches measure in speech, learned like any skill by practice.
11. 1.11Duties are “middle” or “perfect,” as Christ’s answer to the rich young man shows, and mercy to the poor makes the Christian perfect like the Father.
12. 1.12Answering those who doubt God’s justice because the wicked prosper, Ambrose shows from Job that the wicked are wretched within and the just blessed in conscience.
13. 1.13Ambrose refutes the Epicurean and Aristotelian denial that God cares for the world he made.
14. 1.14From Psalm 94 and the Gospels, and by the likeness of the sun’s light and heat, Ambrose shows that nothing is hidden from God.
15. 1.15The parable of the rich man and Lazarus and Paul’s crown show that rewards and punishments are given after death, after the contest of this life.
16. 1.16Rewards come after the contest, as the Beatitudes promise; the prosperity of the wicked only removes their excuse at the judgment, as with Judas.
17. 1.17The duties of youth begin with the fear of God and modesty, shown in Isaac, Joseph, Moses, and Jeremiah.
18. 1.18Modesty governs speech, silence, prayer, gait, and the covering of the body, as Susanna, Mary, the tax collector, and the law of priestly breeches show.
19. 1.19Seemliness requires a consistent order of life and a natural, unaffected bearing, dress, and voice; beauty adds grace but is not virtue.
20. 1.20Clergy should avoid the company of the intemperate, the banquets of outsiders, and needless visits to widows and virgins, and spend free time in reading and prayer.
21. 1.21Anger must be foreseen, restrained, or at least kept from the tongue, after the examples of Jacob, children, Christ, and David.
22. 1.22Thought and appetite must obey reason; speech, whether conversation or teaching, should be calm, measured, and chiefly about the Scriptures.
23. 1.23Clergy should avoid all jesting, which Scripture does not sanction, and use a simple, clear, manly voice.
24. 1.24Right action requires appetite subject to reason, moderation, and fitness of order and time, all shown by Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Job, and David, who had the four cardinal virtues.
25. 1.25Ambrose explains why he teaches by the forefathers’ examples rather than by definitions, and shows the four virtues in Abraham, Jacob, and Noah.
26. 1.26Against the philosophers’ idolatry and idle speculation, Moses shows true wisdom, which seeks God the judge and must issue in deeds.
27. 1.27Prudence, the first source of duty, is bound up with justice, whose order of piety runs to God, country, parents, and all, and the virtues are all akin.
28. 1.28Christian justice rejects the philosophers’ permission to retaliate and their view of private property, teaching mutual help from Scripture, while avarice and ambition destroy justice.
29. 1.29Justice and good faith bind even in war, as Moses, Joshua, and Elisha show, and faith in Christ is the foundation of justice, whose form is the Church.
30. 1.30Beneficence joins good will to giving: it must be honest, unboastful, ordered by need, faith, kinship, and circumstance, after Paul’s teaching on equality in 2 Corinthians 8.
31. 1.31Benefits should be returned more fully than received, like seed from the earth, and Solomon’s banquet is read as the feast of good works and God’s word.
32. 1.32Scripture is a banquet to be repaid in good works; benevolence, which can return gratitude even without means, binds friendship and human life from the family outward.
33. 1.33Benevolence grows within the Church’s fellowship of faith and sacraments and among the like-minded, as with David and Jonathan, but not between unlike characters such as Esau and Jacob.
34. 1.34Benevolence turns away anger, makes friends one, makes rebuke welcome, and can outweigh even kinship.
35. 1.35Fortitude, highest of the virtues, needs justice and prudence, as David showed, and its glory belongs also to the martyrs and Daniel, who conquered by faith.
36. 1.36True fortitude defends the wronged and conquers oneself, despising external goods for the sake of virtue, and the clergy above all must scorn worldly gain and trade.
37. 1.37Fortitude keeps the mind even in grief and success, but must attempt only the possible; so the Lord bids his people flee persecution rather than rush into martyrdom.
38. 1.38The brave man prepares his mind beforehand against dangers and losses, foreseeing what may come, and bears adversity like Job.
39. 1.39Fortitude fights all vices, above all avarice, anger, and love of glory, and Job is its supreme example.
40. 1.40Scripture also has heroes of warlike fortitude: Joshua, Gideon, Jonathan, and the Maccabees, above all Eleazar, who died killing the king’s elephant.
41. 1.41Fortitude shows itself in adversity and martyrdom: Judas and Jonathan Maccabaeus, the seven brothers and their mother, the Innocents, Agnes, and Lawrence with Xystus.
42. 1.42Christians should not provoke the authorities to persecution out of desire for glory, nor be softened by flattery.
43. 1.43Temperance begins with modesty and the company of approved elders, and requires judging what befits each person, time, and age.
44. 1.44Each cleric should know his gifts, and the bishop should assign duties such as reader, cantor, exorcist, or sacristan accordingly; few sons follow fathers into the clergy.
45. 1.45The seemly and the honourable are inseparable, like beauty and health, and Scripture teaches seemliness in God’s works, in worship, and in women’s modest dress at prayer.
46. 1.46Seemliness is general (the consistency of a whole life) and special (in particular acts), and it consists in living according to nature, as in creation and the human body.
47. 1.47Seemliness shines in a consistent life and pleasant speech, and it requires that appetite (Greek hormē) be ruled by reason, especially when anger rises.
48. 1.48Those wronged fall into three classes—the weak who retaliate, the advancing who keep silent, and the perfect who bless—and David under Shimei’s curses reached the third, looking to the perfection of the life to come.
49. 1.49Christians must keep the image of Christ and of the virtues, not the devil’s image of anger and avarice, for riches are vain and strip us of God’s image.
50. 1.50The clergy, like the Levites whose portion is God, must be free of greed, married only once, continent, and guardians of the mysteries, exercising the four virtues and discerning when duties change.
51. 2.1Book 2 opens: the blessed life, which Scripture calls eternal life, lies in the honourable and in seeking reward from God alone, not from human glory.
52. 2.2Against the philosophers’ varied views of happiness, Scripture places eternal life in the knowledge of God and in good works, as David taught long before them.
53. 2.3Scripture holds that only the honourable is good and that virtue is blessed in every state, even in suffering.
54. 2.4Virtue’s blessedness is neither lessened by pain nor increased by pleasure or wealth, as Moses, Aaron, Daniel, Elijah, and the Beatitudes show.
55. 2.5Riches and pleasures hinder blessedness, while virtue alone suffices for it, so that Naboth, the patriarchs, Joseph, David, and Job were blessed in their sufferings.
56. 2.6Ambrose defines the useful not as monetary gain but as piety, so that the useful, the honourable, and the just coincide, as in chastity and widowhood.
57. 2.7Nothing is more useful than to be loved, as the gentleness of Moses and David shows; love and trust, which follow from kindness and faithful friendship, are the first things that commend us.
58. 2.8Love, trust, and admiration win men over, and counsel is sought from one who is both just and prudent, as Solomon’s judgment between the two mothers shows.
59. 2.9Wisdom and justice are inseparable, as Daniel’s judgment shows, though for common understanding the virtues are divided into four.
60. 2.10Counsel is best from one both just and wise, like Solomon, whom the queen of Sheba (a figure of the Church of the nations) came to hear, and like Joseph and Daniel.
61. 2.11Moses, Daniel, and Joseph won admiration and trust as counsellors by their purity, temperance, and justice.
62. 2.12Counsel is sought only from those whose lives are upright and who are approachable, not from the vicious or the inaccessible.
63. 2.13Wisdom is beautiful beyond the sun and, as the Book of Wisdom shows, is joined to all the other virtues.
64. 2.14Prudence joined with justice makes a man fearless and contemptuous of money, and those in high office above all must not serve wealth.
65. 2.15Liberality includes discreet aid to the ashamed poor, ransoming captives, paying debts, caring for orphans and widows, and, for those without money, the gift of counsel and service.
66. 2.16Liberality needs measure against fraudulent beggars and a spur against hoarding, and Joseph, who sold grain and fixed a fifth as tribute, is the model of provident generosity.
67. 2.17A counsellor must be a pattern of virtue, humble and content like Joseph and Paul, free from deceit and greed.
68. 2.18Rehoboam’s harsh answer, following young men’s counsel, cost him ten tribes, showing that injustice destroys authority.
69. 2.19Equity sustains authority; benevolence and sincere, unflattering speech win favour, since God sees what is hidden.
70. 2.20Young men profit from attaching themselves to good elders, as Joshua did to Moses, Elisha to Elijah, and the apostles’ younger companions to them.
71. 2.21Reputation grows by defending the oppressed and by hospitality, as with Abraham and Lot; liberality must be distinguished from prodigality, and the bishop must spend fittingly on churches, the poor, strangers, and clergy.
72. 2.22Feigned mildness and flattery do not last, as Absalom’s courting of the people and his downfall show.
73. 2.23Those bought with money or won by flattery are never faithful.
74. 2.24Ecclesiastical honour should be sought only by good acts; bishop and clergy owe each other fairness and humility, and judgments in the Church must be impartial.
75. 2.25Benefits should go to the poor rather than the rich, for the poor are grateful and make the Lord their debtor, and Peter healed rather than enriched the lame man.
76. 2.26Avarice is an ancient vice, as Achan, Balaam, and Delilah show, and wealth beyond one’s use brings only the burden of guarding it.
77. 2.27Contempt of money is the form of justice; the bishop should treat his clergy as members of his body, cutting off only with grief what cannot be healed.
78. 2.28Ambrose defends his melting down of church vessels to ransom captives, since the Church’s true treasures are the poor, as Lawrence showed, and sets rules for using consecrated vessels.
79. 2.29The Church must guard the deposits of widows and orphans against the powerful, as God defended the temple treasury against Heliodorus and as the bishop of Ticinum did against an imperial order.
80. 2.30Book 2 closes by urging the clergy to shun the wicked and envious, to act with forethought, to burn with zeal for God, and to keep peace and love among themselves.
81. 3.1Book 3 opens: the just man, like Moses, Elijah, and Elisha, is never alone or idle, since he converses with his heart and with God.
82. 3.2The honourable and the useful are one; perfect duty seeks the good of others, and the just never increase their own advantage at another’s loss.
83. 3.3To take from another for one’s own advantage violates the example of Christ, the meaning of “humanity,” the unity of the body, the law of God, and the law of nature.
84. 3.4Harming another wounds one’s own conscience; one’s good is the common good, so a Christian may not save his life at another’s cost, even against a robber.
85. 3.5Against Plato’s fable of Gyges’ ring, true examples show the just man avoiding sin even when he could escape detection: David sparing Saul and John the Baptist refusing to keep silent.
86. 3.6Hoarding grain to raise prices in famine, however defended as industry, is avarice condemned by Scripture; Joseph opened the granaries, and the rich fool’s barns brought him nothing.
87. 3.7Expelling strangers from a city in famine is both shameful and useless, as a recent expulsion from Rome showed, whereas an aged prefect kept the strangers fed by a collection from the wealthy.
88. 3.8Joshua and Caleb chose the honourable over apparent safety and entered the promised land, while those who preferred safety perished in the desert.
89. 3.9Love of the honourable rules out hunting for inheritances and taking sides in money cases; David spared and mourned Saul, Naboth died rather than sell his inheritance, and all fraud is condemned.
90. 3.10Good faith must govern all contracts; Joshua, deceived by the Gibeonites, kept the peace he had sworn and punished their fraud only by servitude.
91. 3.11Ambrose passes over the philosophers’ examples of fraud (the Syracusan fish trick) and shows from Ananias, the Gospel, and Doeg’s betrayal of Ahimelech that Scripture condemns all fraud.
92. 3.12Promises that require a shameful act should not be kept, as Herod’s oath and Jephthah’s vow show; Jephthah’s daughter, keeping faith freely, surpasses the philosophers’ Damon and Phintias.
93. 3.13Judith, risking life and chastity for her people, followed the honourable and so found the useful.
94. 3.14Elisha spared the captured Syrians, John rebuked Herod’s marriage, and Susanna chose death over disgrace: the honourable always proves useful.
95. 3.15As a Roman general refused to win by poison, Moses, gentler still, prayed for Pharaoh when asked; his rod and hand signs prefigure the incarnation and the cross.
96. 3.16Tobit’s burial of the dead and Raguel’s honest warning to Tobias about his daughter surpass the philosophers’ debates about disclosing defects in a sale.
97. 3.17Even in captivity the priests honourably preserved the sacred fire, which Nehemiah found turned to water and rekindled, as 2 Maccabees relates.
98. 3.18The hidden fire that became water is read as a type of the Holy Spirit, who burns away and washes away sins in baptism and penance.
99. 3.19Israel’s war against Benjamin to avenge the outrage at Gibeah shows how highly the forefathers valued chastity and the honourable, even at great cost.
100. 3.20Even the starving lepers of besieged Samaria chose the honourable course and reported the Syrians’ flight, fulfilling Elisha’s prophecy.
101. 3.21Esther risked death for her people and the Persian king punished Haman’s fraud; true friendship, like Jonathan’s and Ahimelech’s, follows the honourable.
102. 3.22The work closes with friendship: it must yield to the honourable and to truth, yet be faithful, frank in reproof, equal, and constant, after the patterns of Scripture and of Christ, who calls his disciples friends.