On the Duties of the Clergy 3.2–3.7

And since we have spoken in the two former books, in which we treated the honourable and the useful, it follows whether we should compare the honourable and the useful with each other and ask which is to be followed. For as above we treated whether a thing was honourable or shameful, and in the second place whether useful or useless, so in this place some think it must be asked whether a thing is honourable or useful. But we are concerned lest we seem to bring these in as fighting with each other, when we have shown above that they are one: that nothing can be honourable unless it is useful, nor useful unless it is honourable; for we do not follow the wisdom of the flesh, with which the usefulness of monetary advantage is held of more value, but the wisdom which is from God, with which the things esteemed great in this world are held as loss. For this κατόρθωμα, which is the perfect and complete duty, proceeds from the true source of virtue. Second to it is the common duty, which by its very name indicates that it is not of arduous and singular virtue, since it can be common to very many. For to seek monetary gain is familiar to many; to delight in a more elegant banquet and sweeter feasts is usual; but to fast and to be continent belongs to few, and not to covet another’s is rare; whereas to want to take from another and not to be content with one’s own—in this one has company with most. Some, then, are first duties, others middle; the first with few, the middle with many. Indeed in the same words there is frequently a distinction. For we call God good in one way, a man in another; we call God just in one way, a man in another. Likewise we call God wise in one way, a man in another. This we are taught in the Gospel too: “Be you therefore perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” I read of Paul himself as perfect and not perfect. For when he had said, “Not that I have already received, or am already perfect; but I follow on, if I may lay hold,” he immediately added: “Let us therefore, as many as are perfect.” For there is a twofold form of perfection: one having the middle numbers, the other the full; one here, the other there; one according to human possibility, the other according to the perfection of the future. But God is just through all things, wise above all things, perfect in all things. Among men themselves there is also a difference. Daniel was wise in one way, of whom it was said: “Who is wiser than Daniel?”; others are wise in another way; Solomon in another, who was filled with wisdom above all the wisdom of the ancients and above the wise men of Egypt. For it is one thing to be wise in the common way, another to be wise perfectly. He who is wise in the common way is wise for temporal things, wise for himself, so as to take something from another and add it to himself. He who is perfectly wise does not know how to look to his own advantage, but with his whole affection aims at that which is eternal, seemly, and honourable, seeking not what is useful to himself but what is useful to all. So let this be the rule, that we may not err between those two, the honourable and the useful: that the just man thinks nothing should be taken from another, and does not wish his own advantage to be increased by another’s disadvantage. The Apostle prescribes this rule to you, saying: “All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient; all things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own, but another’s”; that is, let no one seek his own advantage, but another’s; let no one seek his own honour, but another’s. Hence elsewhere too he says: “Each esteeming the other better than himself, each considering not his own things but those of others.” Let no one seek his own favour, no one his own praise, but another’s. We can notice this plainly declared also in Proverbs, where the Holy Spirit says through Solomon: “Son, if you are wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbours; but if you turn out evil, you alone will draw up evils.” For the wise man consults for others, as the just man does, since each shares the form of the other’s virtue.

If anyone, then, wishes to please all, let him seek in all things not what is useful to himself but to many, as Paul too sought. For this is to be conformed to Christ: not to seek what is another’s, to take nothing from another so as to gain for oneself. For Christ the Lord, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself to take up the form of man, which he enriched with the virtues of his works. Do you, then, strip one whom Christ put on? Do you lay bare one whom Christ clothed? For this is what you do when you seek to increase your advantages by another’s loss. Consider, O man, from where you took your name: from the earth (humus), which snatches nothing from anyone but bestows all things on all and supplies various fruits for the use of all living things. Hence humanity is named, the special and proper virtue of man, which helps its fellow. Let the form of your body and the use of your members teach you. Does one of your members claim for itself the duties of another member, the eye the duty of the mouth, or the mouth that of the eye, or the hand the service of the feet, or the foot that of the hands? Indeed the hands themselves, right and left, have most of their duties divided, so that if you exchanged the use of each it would be against nature; and you would sooner strip off the whole man than convert the services of your members: if you put food to the mouth with the left hand, or performed with the right the service of the left in washing off the remains of food, unless perhaps necessity requires it. Imagine this, and give the eye the power to take sense away from the head, hearing from the ears, thoughts from the mind, smell from the nostrils, taste from the mouth, and to confer them on itself: would it not dissolve the whole state of nature? Hence the Apostle says beautifully: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be?” We are all, then, one body and different members, but all necessary to the body; for a member cannot say of a member, “I have no need of it.” Indeed the very members that seem to be weaker are much more necessary, and generally require greater care in protecting them. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Hence how grave it is that we should take something from one with whom we ought to suffer, and be a fraud and a hurt to one to whom we owe fellowship of service! This certainly is the law of nature, which binds us to all humanity, that we should defer to one another as parts of one body. Nor let us think anything should be taken away, since it is against the law of nature even not to help. For we are so born that members agree with members, one clings to another, and they serve each other by mutual service. But if one fails in its duty, the others are hindered: if the hand tears out the eye, has it not denied itself the use of its own work? If it wounds the foot, how many actions does it begrudge itself? And how much graver is it that a whole man be taken away than one member? If the whole body is violated in one member, certainly in one man the communion of all humanity is dissolved; the nature of the human race is violated, and the congregation of the holy Church, which rises into one body, connected and compacted by the unity of faith and love; Christ the Lord too, who died for all, will grieve that the reward of his blood has been made void. What of the fact that the law of the Lord itself teaches that this form must be kept, that you take nothing from another for the sake of keeping your own advantage, when it says: “Do not remove the landmarks which your fathers set”; when it commands that your brother’s straying calf be brought back; when it orders the thief to die; when it forbids the hired man to be defrauded of his due wage; when it has decreed that money be returned without interest? For to help one who has not belongs to humanity; but to extort more than you have given belongs to harshness. For if he needed your help because he had nothing of his own with which to repay, is it not impious that under the pretence of humanity you should demand more from one who did not have the means to pay less? You absolve, then, the debtor for another so as to condemn him for yourself; and do you call this humanity, where there is an increase of iniquity? In this we excel the other living things, that the other kinds of living things do not know how to contribute anything: wild beasts snatch, men give. Hence the Psalmist too says: “The just man has mercy and gives.” Yet there are some to whom even wild beasts contribute. For they nourish their offspring by sharing, and birds fill their young with their own food; but to man alone it has been granted to feed all as his own. He owes this by the very law of nature. If it is not permitted not to give, how is it permitted to take away? Do not the laws themselves teach us? They order that things taken from someone with injury to his person be restored with an increase of the thing itself, so as to deter the thief from taking either by penalties or to call him back by a fine. Suppose, however, that someone can either not fear the penalty or mock the fine: is it right that some should take from another? This is a servile vice, familiar to the lowest condition; so contrary to nature that want seems rather to extort it than nature to persuade it. Yet the thefts of slaves are hidden, the robberies of the rich public. And what is so contrary to nature as to harm another for one’s own advantage, when natural affection persuades us to keep watch for all, to undergo troubles, to take on labour; and it is counted glorious for each if by his own dangers he seeks the tranquillity of all; and each thinks it much more pleasing to have repelled the destruction of his fatherland than his own dangers, and judges it more excellent to have spent his effort for his fatherland than to have lived, set in leisure, a tranquil life enjoying abundant pleasures?

Hence, then, it is gathered that man, who was formed according to the direction of nature so as to obey it, cannot harm another; that if he harms anyone he violates nature; and that the advantage he thinks he will gain is not as great as the disadvantage that will befall him from it. For what punishment is heavier than the wound of the inner conscience? What judgment is more severe than the domestic one, in which each is his own defendant and accuses himself of having unworthily done injury to his brother? Scripture commends this in no small way, saying: “From the mouth of fools comes the rod of insult.” Folly, then, is condemned because it does insult. Is not this more to be fled than death, than loss, than want, than exile, than the pain of weakness? For who would not think a fault of body or loss of patrimony lighter than a fault of mind and loss of reputation? It is clear, then, that all should look to and hold this, that the advantage of each is the same as that of all, and that nothing should be judged useful except what profits in common. For how can anything profit one alone? What is useless to all harms. It certainly does not seem to me that he who is useless to all can be useful to himself. For if there is one law of nature for all, there is certainly one advantage of all, and we are bound by the law of nature to consult for all. It does not belong, then, to one who wishes another to be consulted for according to nature to harm him against the law of nature. For if those who run in the stadium are said to be so formed and instructed by precepts that each contends by speed, not by fraud, and hastens by running as much as he can to victory, but does not dare to trip another or throw him down with his hand, how much more in this race of our life must victory be won by us without fraud and deception of another? Some ask whether a wise man placed in a shipwreck ought to wrest a plank from a foolish shipwrecked man, if he can. To me indeed, though it may seem more beneficial for common use that a wise man rather than a foolish one escape from the shipwreck, yet it does not seem that a Christian man, just and wise, ought to seek life for himself by another’s death; since even if he falls in with an armed robber, he cannot strike back at the one who strikes him, lest while he defends his safety he defile his piety. On this there is a plain and evident sentence in the books of the Gospel: “Put up your sword; for everyone who strikes with the sword will be struck by the sword.” What robber is more detestable than the persecutor who had come to kill Christ? But Christ did not wish to be defended by wounding his persecutors, he who wished by his own wound to heal all. For why should you judge yourself better than another, when it belongs to a Christian man to prefer another to himself, to claim nothing for himself, to take no honour on himself, not to claim the price of his merit? Then why do you not accustom yourself rather to bear your own disadvantage than to snatch another’s advantage? What is so contrary to nature as not to be content with what you have, to seek what is another’s, and to court it shamefully? For if the honourable is according to nature—for God made all things very good—shamefulness is certainly contrary to it. The honourable, then, and the shameful cannot agree, since they are separated from each other by the law of nature.

But now, so that in this book too we may set the summit, to which, as at the end of our discussion, we direct our judgment, that nothing is to be sought except what is honourable: the wise man does nothing except what is done with sincerity and without fraud; nor does he do anything by which he would bind himself to any crime, even if he could stay hidden. For he is his own defendant before he is anyone else’s; and the public exposure of a crime is not so shameful to him as his conscience. This we can teach not by made-up fables, as the philosophers argued, but by the truest examples of just men. I shall not, then, pretend a chasm in the earth, which split open when loosened by heavy rains, into which Gyges is represented by Plato as having gone down and there found that bronze horse of the fables, which had doors in its sides; when he opened them he noticed a golden ring on the finger of a dead man whose lifeless body lay there, and, greedy for gold, he took the ring. But when he had returned to the king’s shepherds, of whose number he was, by some chance, having turned the bezel of the ring towards his palm, he saw everyone and was seen by no one; then, when he had turned the ring back to its place, he was seen by all. Having learned of this wonder, by means of the ring he seduced the queen, killed the king, and, having slain the others whom he thought should be killed lest they hinder him, obtained the kingdom of Lydia. “Give,” he says, “this ring to a wise man, so that by its help he could stay hidden when he did wrong: he will flee the contagion of sins no less than if he could not stay hidden.” For the wise man’s hope of impunity lies not in hiding but in innocence. Indeed the law was laid down not for the just but for the unjust; for the just man has the law of his own mind and the rule of his own equity and justice; and so he is called back from fault not by fear of punishment but by the rule of the honourable. So, to return to our subject, I shall bring forward not fabulous examples for true ones, but true ones in place of fabulous. For what need have I to invent a chasm in the earth, a bronze horse, and a golden ring found on a dead man’s finger, a ring of such power that whoever wears it appears at his own will when he wishes, and when he does not wish withdraws himself from the sight of those present, so that though present he cannot be seen? Surely the point of it is whether the wise man, even if he used this ring by which he could conceal his crimes and gain a kingdom, would refuse to sin and think the contagion of crime worse than the pains of punishment, or would use the hope of impunity to commit the crime. What need have I, I say, of the fiction of a ring, when I can teach from deeds done that a wise man, though he saw that if he committed a sin he would not only be hidden but would even reign, while on the other hand he saw danger to his life if he avoided the crime, yet chose the danger to his life, so as to be free of the crime, rather than the crime by which he would secure the kingdom? Indeed David, when he was fleeing from the face of King Saul, because the king was seeking him in the desert with three thousand chosen men to put him to death, entered the king’s camp and, finding him asleep, not only did not strike him himself but even protected him, lest he be killed by someone who had come in with him. For when Abishai said to him, “The Lord has shut up your enemy in your hands today, and now I will kill him,” he answered: “Do not destroy him, for who will put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?” And he added: “As the Lord lives, unless the Lord strikes him, or his hour comes to die, or he goes down into battle and is added to the dead, may it not be from the Lord for me to put my hand on the Lord’s anointed.” So he did not allow him to be killed, but took away only the spear that was at his head and the jug. So, while all were sleeping, he went out of the camp, crossed to the top of the mountain, and began to rebuke the king’s guards, and especially Abner, the commander of the army, because he did not keep faithful guard over the king his lord; and he showed where the king’s spear was, and the jug that was at his head. And when the king called to him, he gave back the spear: “And the Lord,” he said, “will repay to each his righteousness and his faithfulness; as the Lord delivered you into my hands, and I would not avenge myself with my hand on the Lord’s anointed.” And though he said this, he still feared his plots and fled, changing his home for exile. Yet he did not prefer safety to innocence, when for the second time the opportunity of killing the king was given him and he would not use the advantage of the occasion, which offered both security of life to one in fear and a kingdom to an exile. Where did John need the ring of Gyges, he who, if he had kept silent, would not have been killed by Herod? His silence could have given him this, to be seen and not killed; but because he not only would not allow himself to sin for the defence of his life, but could not even bear and endure another’s sin, he himself stirred up the cause of his death. Certainly they cannot deny that it could have happened that he kept silent, who deny that it could have happened that Gyges was hidden by the help of a ring. But the fable, though it has not the force of truth, yet has this reasoning, that even if a just man could hide himself, he should avoid sin as though he could not hide; not hiding his person by putting on a ring, but hiding his life by putting on Christ, as the Apostle says: “For our life is hidden with Christ in God.” Let no one, then, seek to shine here, let no one claim anything for himself, let no one boast. Christ did not wish to be known here; he did not wish his name to be proclaimed in the Gospel while he lived on earth; he came to be hidden from this world. Let us too, then, in like manner hide our life after Christ’s example; let us flee boasting and not expect to be proclaimed. It is better to be here in humility, there in glory. “When Christ,” he says, “appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

Let the useful, then, not overcome the honourable, but the honourable the useful—I mean that usefulness which is valued according to common opinion. Let avarice be put to death, let covetousness die. The saint declares that he has not entered into trade; because to seize on increases of prices belongs not to simplicity but to cunning. And another says: “He who seizes on the price of grain is cursed among the people.” The sentence is defined, leaving nothing for disputation, as in the kind of argument that is usually conducted on both sides, when one man alleges that agriculture is held praiseworthy by all, that the fruits of the earth are innocent, that he who has sown more will be more approved, that the richer returns of industry are not fraud, and that it is rather the negligence and carelessness of an uncultivated field that is usually blamed. “I ploughed,” he says, “more zealously, sowed more richly, cultivated more diligently, gathered good harvests, stored them more carefully, kept them faithfully, guarded them with foresight. Now in time of famine I sell, I bring help to the hungry; I sell grain not another’s but my own; not dearer than others, indeed even at a lower price. What fraud is there in this, when many could be in danger if they had nothing to buy? Is industry called into accusation? Is diligence blamed? Is foresight reproached?” Perhaps he says: “Joseph too gathered grain in abundance and sold it in dearth. Is anyone forced to buy dearer? Is force applied to the buyer? The opportunity of buying is offered to all; injury is done to no one.” When these points have been argued as far as each one’s talent carries him, another rises, saying: “Agriculture is indeed good, which supplies fruits to all, which by simple industry increases the fertility of the earth, inserting no deceit, no fraud. Indeed, if there has been any fault, the loss is greater; for if one has sown well, he reaps better; if he has sown pure grain of wheat, he gathers a purer and sincere harvest. The fruitful earth returns multiplied what it has received; a faithful field usually restores its produce with interest. From the returns of a rich soil, then, you ought to expect the reward of your labour, from the fertility of fat ground to hope for just gains. Why do you turn the industry of nature into fraud? Why do you begrudge to the uses of men the common produce? Why do you lessen the abundance for the peoples? Why do you aim at want? Why do you make the poor wish for barrenness? For when they do not feel the benefits of fertility, while you raise the price and store up the grain, they would rather that nothing grew than that you should trade on the public hunger. You court the scarcity of grain and the shortage of food; you groan at the rich produce of the soil, you lament the public fertility, you deplore granaries full of fruits, you watch for when the harvest will be poorer, when the produce thinner. You rejoice that the curse has smiled on your prayers, that nothing should grow for anyone. Then you are glad that your harvest has come; then you heap up wealth for yourself from the misery of all; and you call this industry, you name this diligence, which is the cunning of craft and the astuteness of fraud; and you call this a remedy, which is a device of wickedness. Shall I call this robbery or usury? The times are seized, as by robbers, in which you, a hard waylayer, creep up on men’s very bowels. The price is increased, like a capital heaped with interest, by which danger to life is accumulated. For you the usury of stored grain is multiplied: you hide grain like a usurer, you auction it like a seller. Why do you pray evil on all, that the famine may be greater, as though no fruits would remain, as though a less fruitful year would follow? Your gain is the public loss.” Holy Joseph opened the granaries to all, he did not close them; nor did he seize on the prices of the harvest, but established a lasting help; he acquired nothing for himself, but by provident ordering arranged how famine might be overcome in the future as well. You have read how the Lord Jesus in the Gospel sets forth this seizer of grain prices, whose land brought rich fruits, and he, as though needy, said: “What shall I do? I have nowhere to gather them; I will pull down my barns and make bigger ones,” when he could not know whether his soul would be demanded of him the following night. He did not know what to do; as though food were lacking to him, he hung in doubt. The barns did not hold the harvest, and he thought himself in want. Rightly, then, Solomon says: “He who holds back grain will leave it to the nations, not to his heirs,” since the profit of avarice does not reach the rights of successors. What is not lawfully acquired is scattered, as by winds, by strangers who snatch it away. And he added: “He who seizes on the price of grain is cursed among the people; but blessing is on him who shares it.” You see, then, that it befits one to be a giver of grain, not a seizer of its price. This, then, is not usefulness, because more is taken from the honourable than is added to the useful.

But those too who bar strangers from the city are by no means to be approved: to expel them at the very time when they ought to help, to cut them off from the dealings of their common parent, to deny them the produce poured out for all, to tear up fellowships of life already entered into; with those with whom they have shared common rights, to refuse in time of need to share help. Wild beasts do not expel wild beasts, and man shuts out man. Wild beasts and animals think the food which the earth supplies common to all. They even help those of their own kind; man attacks, he who ought to believe that nothing human is foreign to him. How much more rightly did he act who, when he was already advanced in age and the city was suffering famine, and (as usually happens in such cases) the people commonly demanded that strangers be barred from the city, bearing the charge of the city prefecture, greater than the others, called together the dignitaries and wealthier men and asked them to consult for the common good, saying how monstrous it was that strangers should be cast out, how inhuman that a man should be stripped by man, that food should be denied to one dying. We do not let dogs go unfed before our table, and we shut out men! How useless too that so many peoples perish to the world, whom a dreadful wasting was destroying; how many would perish to their own city, who were wont to be a help either in contributing supplies or in carrying on trade; that another’s hunger helps no one; that it can at most put off the day, not drive away want; indeed, with so many cultivators dead, so many farmers falling, the supplies of grain would fail for ever. “Do we, then, shut out those who have been accustomed to bring us our food? Are we unwilling to feed in time of need those who have fed us at every age? How much is supplied to us by them at this very time! ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ Our household is there; very many of our relatives are there too. Let us return what we have received. But we fear that we shall increase the want. First of all, mercy is never left destitute, but is helped. Then let us buy by a collection the supplies of grain that must be shared with them; let us make it good with gold. If these fail, do we not see that other cultivators will have to be bought for us? How much cheaper it is to feed a cultivator than to buy one! Where too could you replace him, where find one to put in his place? Add that, if you find one, you could substitute someone ignorant and used to other work for the number, not for the cultivation.” In short, gold was collected and grain gathered. So he did not lessen the abundance of the city, and he supplied food to the strangers. How great a commendation this was for the most holy old man before God, how great a glory before men! He was truly proved great, who could truly say to the emperor, pointing to the peoples of the whole province: “All these I have kept for you; these live by the kindness of your senate; these your council has snatched from death.” How much more useful this was than what was done lately at Rome: that those who had already spent most of their lives there were expelled from that great city; that they went away weeping with their children, lamenting that exile ought to have been kept from them as from citizens; that many relationships were broken off and kinships severed! And yet the fruitfulness of the year had smiled; only the city, supplied from outside, lacked grain; it could have been helped if grain had been asked of the Italians, whose sons were being expelled. Nothing is more shameful than this: to shut out a man as a stranger and to demand from him as one’s own. Why do you cast out him who feeds himself from his own? Why do you cast out him who feeds you? You keep the slave and thrust out the parent? You take the grain and do not share your affection? You extort food and do not return gratitude? How ugly this is, how useless! For how can what is not seemly be useful? Of how many supplies from the guilds has Rome long been deprived? It could have both not lost these men and escaped famine, by waiting for favourable winds and the hoped-for supplies of the ships. But how honourable and useful was that former course! For what is so seemly and honourable as that the needy be helped by a collection of the wealthy, that food be supplied to the hungry, that no one lack food? What is so useful as that cultivators be kept for the land, that the country people not perish? What is honourable, then, is also useful, and what is useful is honourable. And on the other hand, what is useless is unseemly; and what is unseemly is also useless.