On the Duties of the Clergy

I do not think I shall seem arrogant if, among my sons, I take up the desire to teach, since the very master of humility said: “Come, children, hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” In this one may see both the modesty of his humility and his grace. For in saying “the fear of the Lord,” which seems to be common to all, he expressed a mark of modesty. And yet, since this fear is itself the beginning of wisdom and the producer of blessedness (for those who fear God are blessed), he plainly showed himself to be a teacher of wisdom that must be learned and a guide to blessedness that must be gained. We too, then, eager to imitate his modesty, and not usurping to ourselves the grace he conferred, hand on to you as to our children the things of wisdom that the Spirit poured into him, things made known to us through him and learned by sight and example; for we can no longer escape the duty of teaching, which the obligation of the priesthood laid upon us when we shrank from it: “For God gave some to be apostles, some prophets, others evangelists, and others pastors and teachers.” I do not, then, claim for myself the glory of the apostles. For who could claim it, except those whom the Son of God himself chose? Not the grace of the prophets, not the power of the evangelists, not the watchfulness of the pastors; I desire only to attain the attention and diligence about the divine Scriptures which the Apostle placed last among the offices of the saints, and this very thing I desire, that by the effort of teaching I may be able to learn. For there is one true Master, who alone did not learn what he taught to all; but men first learn what they are to teach, and receive from him what they hand on to others. Not even this has happened to me. For I was snatched from the courts and the insignia of public office into the priesthood, and I began to teach you what I myself had not learned. So it came about that I began to teach before I began to learn. I must therefore learn and teach at the same time, since I had no leisure to learn beforehand.

What ought we to learn before everything else but to be silent, so that we may be able to speak, lest my own voice condemn me before another’s acquits me? For it is written: “By your words you will be condemned.” What need is there, then, to hurry into the danger of condemnation by speaking, when by keeping silent you can be safer? I have seen very many fall into sin by speaking, hardly anyone by keeping silent; and so to know how to be silent is harder than to know how to speak. I know that most people speak because they do not know how to be silent. It is rare for anyone to be silent, even when speaking does him no good. He is wise, then, who knows how to be silent. Indeed the Wisdom of God said: “The Lord has given me a tongue of learning, to know when I ought to speak a word.” Rightly, then, is he wise who receives from the Lord the knowledge of when he should speak. Hence Scripture says well: “A wise man will keep silent until the right time.” So the Lord’s saints, knowing that a man’s voice is often the herald of sin, and that a man’s speech is the beginning of human error, loved to be silent. Indeed the Lord’s saint says: “I said, I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue.” For he knew and had read that it is a sign of divine protection that a man is hidden from the scourge of his own tongue and from the witness of his own conscience. For we are scourged by the silent reproach of our thought and by the judgment of conscience; we are scourged also by the lash of our own voice, when we say things by whose sound our soul is struck and our mind wounded. But who is there that has a heart clean of the filth of sins, or does not sin with his tongue? And so, because he saw that no one could keep his mouth holy from impurity of speech, he imposed on himself by silence a law of innocence, so that by keeping silent he might avoid the fault which he could scarcely escape by speaking. Let us hear, then, the master of caution: “I said, I will guard my ways”; that is, “I said to myself”: by a silent command of thought I charged myself to guard my ways. There are some ways we ought to follow, others we ought to guard: we ought to follow the ways of the Lord and guard our own, lest they lead into guilt. And you can guard them if you do not speak hastily. The Law says: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God.” It did not say “Speak,” but “Hear.” Eve fell because she said to her husband what she had not heard from the Lord her God. The first word of God says to you: “Hear.” If you hear, you guard your ways; and if you have slipped, you quickly correct it. For “wherein does a young man correct his way, but in keeping the words of the Lord?” Be silent first, then, and listen, that you may not sin with your tongue. It is a grievous evil for anyone to be condemned by his own mouth. For if everyone will render an account for an idle word, how much more for a word of impurity and shamelessness! Words of rashness are more serious than idle ones. So if an account is demanded for an idle word, how much more will punishment be exacted for a word of impiety!

What then? Ought we to be mute? Not at all. For “there is a time to keep silent and a time to speak.” Further, if we render an account for an idle word, let us take care that we do not also render one for an idle silence. For there is also an active silence, such as Susanna’s, who accomplished more by keeping silent than if she had spoken. For by keeping silent before men she spoke to God, and she found no greater proof of her chastity than silence. Her conscience spoke where her voice was not heard; she did not seek men’s judgment on her behalf, since she had the Lord’s testimony. By him, then, she wished to be acquitted, whom she knew could in no way be deceived. The Lord himself in the Gospel worked the salvation of men while keeping silent. Rightly, then, David imposed on himself not perpetual silence but a guard. Let us, then, guard our heart; let us guard our mouth; for both are written: here, that we should guard our mouth; elsewhere it is said to you: “Keep your heart with all watchfulness.” If David kept guard, will you not? If Isaiah had unclean lips, who said: “O wretched I, for I am pricked to the heart, because I am a man and have unclean lips”; if the Lord’s prophet had unclean lips, how do we have clean ones? And to whom but to each of us is it written: “Hedge your possession with thorns … and bind your silver and your gold, and make a door and a bar for your mouth, and a yoke and a balance for your words”? Your possession is your mind; your gold is your heart; your silver is your speech: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried in the fire.” A good mind, too, is a good possession. Indeed a pure man is a precious possession. Hedge, then, this possession, wall it round with thoughts, fortify it with thorns, that is, with cares, lest the irrational passions of the body rush in upon it and lead it captive, lest violent impulses attack it, lest those who pass along the way plunder its vintage. Guard your inner man. Do not neglect or despise him as worthless, for he is a precious possession. And rightly precious, since his fruit is not perishable and temporal but belongs to a stable and eternal salvation. Cultivate, then, your possession, that you may have fields. Bind your speech, lest it run riot and grow wanton and by much talking gather sins to itself. Let it be more restrained and kept within its banks. A river that overflows quickly gathers mud. Bind your sense; let it not be slack and loose, lest it be said of you: “There is no plaster to put on, nor oil, nor bandage.” The sobriety of the mind has its reins, by which it is ruled and governed. Let there be a door to your mouth, that it may be shut when it should be, and let it be barred carefully, lest anyone rouse your voice to anger and you repay insult with insult. You heard read today: “Be angry and do not sin.” So even if we are angry, since this is a movement of nature and not in our power, let us not bring an evil word out of our mouth, lest we fall into guilt; but let there be a yoke and a balance for your words, that is, humility and measure, so that your tongue may be subject to your mind. Let it be held back by the bonds of the rein, let it have its own bridle by which it can be recalled to measure; let it bring out words weighed on the scale of justice, so that there may be gravity in the thought, weight in the speech, and measure in the words.

If anyone keeps these rules, he becomes gentle, meek, and modest. For by guarding his mouth and restraining his tongue, and by not speaking before he has questioned, weighed, and examined his words—whether this should be said, whether it should be said against this man, whether this is the time for this speech—he truly practises modesty, meekness, and patience, so that he does not burst into speech from indignation and anger, gives no sign of any passion in his words, does not show the flame of lust burning in his speech or the goads of anger in what he says; so that speech, which ought to commend what is within, does not in the end lay bare and betray some vice in his character. For the adversary lies in wait most of all when he sees passions arising in us: then he stirs the tinder, then he sets snares. Hence not without reason, as you heard read today, the Prophet says: “For he himself has delivered me from the snare of the hunters and from the harsh word.” Symmachus rendered it “a word of provocation,” others “of disturbance.” Our speech is the adversary’s snare, but it is itself no less our adversary. We often say what the enemy seizes on, and he wounds us, as it were, with our own sword. How much more tolerable it is to perish by another’s sword than by our own! So the adversary examines our weapons and brandishes his own darts. If he sees me moved, he plants his stings, to stir up the seeds of quarrels. If I let slip an unseemly word, he draws his snare tight. Sometimes he puts before me the possibility of revenge as a kind of bait, so that while I long to avenge myself, I thrust myself into the snare and tighten the noose of death upon myself. So if anyone feels this adversary to be present, he ought then to set a stronger guard on his mouth, so as not to give place to the adversary; but not many see him.

But that one too must be guarded against who can be seen: whoever provokes, whoever incites, whoever exasperates, whoever suggests incentives to luxury or lust. So when anyone reviles us, harasses us, provokes us to violence, or calls us to a quarrel, then let us practise silence, then let us not blush to become mute. For he who provokes us and does us injury is a sinner, and wants us to become like him. Indeed, if you are silent, if you pretend not to notice, he usually says: “Why are you silent? Speak, if you dare. But you do not dare; you are dumb; I have left you speechless.” So if you are silent, he bursts with rage all the more: he thinks himself beaten, mocked, slighted, and made a fool of. If you answer, he thinks he has come off the better, because he has found an equal. For if you are silent, people will say: “That man reviled him; this one despised him.” If you return the insult, they will say: “Both reviled each other.” Both are condemned; neither is acquitted. So his aim is to provoke, so that I may say and do things like his; but it belongs to the just man to pretend not to notice, to say nothing, to hold fast the fruit of a good conscience, to entrust himself more to the judgment of the good than to the insolence of the slanderer, and to be content with the gravity of his own character. For this is “to keep silent even from good things,” because one who is conscious of doing well ought not to be moved by false charges, nor think there is more weight in another’s abuse than in his own testimony. So it comes about that he also keeps humility. But if he does not want to seem the lesser, he turns such things over and says within himself: “Is this man to despise me and say such things against me to my face, as if I could not open my mouth against him? Why should I not also say things that can grieve him? Is this man to wrong me as if I were not a man, as if I could not avenge myself? Is this man to accuse me, as if I could not put together worse charges against him?” He who says such things is not meek and humble, is not free from temptation. The tempter stirs him up; he himself plants such thoughts in him. Often the evil spirit employs a man and sets him up to say these things to him; but you, keep your foot fixed on the rock. Even if a slave speaks abuse, the just man is silent; even if a weak man insults him, the just man is silent; even if a poor man accuses him, the just man does not answer. These are the arms of the just man: to conquer by yielding, as those skilled in throwing the javelin often conquer by yielding and, in flight, wound their pursuer with heavier blows.

For what need is there to be moved when we hear abuse? Why do we not imitate him who says: “I was dumb and was humbled, and kept silent even from good things”? Or did David only say this and not also do it? No, he also did it. For when Shimei the son of Jemini reviled him, David was silent; and though surrounded by armed men, he did not return the abuse or seek revenge, so much so that when the son of Zeruiah told him he wanted to take vengeance on the man, he did not allow it. He went on, then, as one dumb and humbled; he went on in silence and was not moved when he was called a man of blood, for he was conscious of his own gentleness. He was not moved by abuse, then, because he had in abundance the consciousness of good works. So he who is quickly moved by an injury makes himself seem to deserve the insult, while he wants to be proved not to deserve it. Better, then, is he who despises an injury than he who grieves over it; for he who despises it looks down on it as if he did not feel it, while he who grieves is tormented as if he had felt it.

Not without forethought, in writing to you, my sons, have I used the opening of this psalm. This psalm the prophet David gave to holy Idithun to sing; I urge you to hold fast to it, for I am delighted by its deep meaning and the force of its sentences. For we notice from the parts we have briefly touched on that this psalm teaches the patience of keeping silent and the right moment for speaking, and, in what follows, contempt of riches, which are the chief foundations of the virtues. While I was considering this psalm, then, it came into my mind to write on duties. Although some devoted to philosophy have written about them, such as Panaetius and his son among the Greeks and Tully among the Latins, I did not think it foreign to our office that I too should write. And as Tully wrote to instruct his son, so I too write to form you, my sons; for I love you whom I begot in the Gospel no less than if I had had you in marriage. For nature is not stronger in loving than grace. Certainly we ought to love more those whom we think will be with us for ever than those who are born only for this world, who are often degenerate and disgrace their father. You we chose first, so that we might love you. So they are loved out of necessity, which is not a sufficiently fit or lasting teacher of loving perpetually; you are loved by judgment, by which a great weight of love is added to the force of loving: to approve those you love and to love those you have chosen.

Since, then, the persons are suited to it, let us see whether the subject itself is suited to it, namely to write on duties, and whether this word belongs only to the school of the philosophers or is also found in the divine Scriptures. Beautifully, then, while we were reading the Gospel today, the Holy Spirit, as though urging us to write, offered us a passage by which we might be assured that among us too one can speak of “duty.” For when Zechariah the priest had become dumb in the temple and could not speak, “It came to pass,” it says, “when the days of his duty were completed, that he went away to his house.” We read, then, that “duty” can be spoken of by us. Nor is reason itself against it, since we think that officium (duty) is so called from efficere (to accomplish), as if it were efficium, but with one letter changed for the sake of euphony it is called officium; or at any rate it is so called because you are to do the things that harm (officiant) no one and benefit all.

They thought that duties are derived from the virtuous and the useful, and that one must choose which of the two is preferable; then, that it may happen that two virtuous things or two useful things come into conflict, and the question is asked which is more virtuous and which more useful. First, then, duty is divided into three parts: the virtuous, the useful, and which is preferable. Then they divided these three into five kinds: two virtuous, two useful, and the judgment of choice. The first, they say, belong to the seemliness and virtue of life, the second to the advantages of life—resources, wealth, means—and over the choice among these the judgment presides. So they. But we measure nothing at all as seemly and virtuous except by the standard of things to come rather than of things present; and we define nothing as useful except what profits towards the grace of that eternal life, not what serves the enjoyment of the present. Nor do we place any advantages in means and abundance of wealth; rather we think them disadvantages if they are not cast off, and think that they should be reckoned a burden while they are kept rather than a loss when they are paid out. Our work of writing, then, is not superfluous, because we judge duty by a different rule from theirs. They count the advantages of this world among goods; we count them even among losses, since he who receives good things here, like that rich man, is tormented there, and Lazarus, who endured evils here, found consolation there. Further, those who do not read their books will read ours if they wish: those who seek not the furniture of words or the art of speaking but the simple grace of the matter itself.

We are instructed and taught that what is seemly (in Greek it is called πρέπον) holds the first place in our Scriptures, when we read: “Praise befits you, O God, in Zion,” or in Greek: Σοὶ πρέπει ὕμνος, ὁ θεός, ἐν Σιών. And the Apostle says: “Speak the things that befit sound doctrine.” And elsewhere: “For it befitted him, for whom and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the leader of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Was Panaetius earlier, was Aristotle, who also discussed duty, earlier than David? when even Pythagoras, who is recorded to be older than Socrates, followed the prophet David in giving his disciples a law of silence? But he did so to forbid his disciples the use of speech for five years; David, not to diminish a gift of nature, but to teach watchfulness in uttering speech. Pythagoras did so to teach speaking by not speaking; David, so that by speaking we might learn the better how to speak. For how is there teaching without practice, or progress without use? He who wants to master the discipline of war exercises daily with arms, and as though drawn up for battle he rehearses the fight and takes aim as though the enemy stood before him; and for skill and strength in throwing the javelin he either tests his own arms or dodges his adversaries’ blows and escapes them with a watchful eye. He who is eager to steer a ship at sea with the rudder or to drive it with oars first practises on a river. Those who aim at sweetness in singing and excellence of voice first rouse the voice gradually by singing. And those who seek a crown by bodily strength and the lawful contest of wrestling harden their limbs by daily use of the wrestling-school, nourish endurance, and accustom themselves to toil. Nature herself teaches us this in little children, who first practise the sounds of speech so that they may learn to speak. So sound is a kind of exercise and wrestling-school of the voice. So, then, let those who wish to learn caution in speaking not deny what belongs to nature, but practise what belongs to watchfulness, as those who are on a watchtower stay alert by watching, not by sleeping. For everything grows by its own proper and familiar exercises. David, then, was silent not always but at the right time; not continually nor to everyone; but he did not answer the adversary who provoked him or the sinner who challenged him. And, as he says elsewhere, he did not hear, as though deaf, those who spoke vanity and devised deceit, and as one dumb he did not open his mouth to them; for elsewhere too you have: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him.” The first duty, then, is measure in speaking. By this the sacrifice of praise is paid to God, by this reverence is shown when the divine Scriptures are read, by this parents are honoured. I know that most people speak because they do not know how to be silent. It is rare for anyone to be silent even when speaking does him no good. The wise man, before he speaks, first considers many things: what he is to say, to whom, in what place, and at what time. There is, then, a measure both in keeping silent and in speaking; there is also a measure in action. It is a fine thing, then, to keep the measure of duty.

Every duty is either “middle” or “perfect,” which we can likewise prove by the authority of the Scriptures. For we have in the Gospel that the Lord said: “If you wish to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments.” He said: “Which?” And Jesus said to him: “You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; honour father and mother; and, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” These are the middle duties, which lack something. Then the young man says to him: “All these I have kept from my youth; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all your goods and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” And earlier it is written, where he says that we must love our enemies, pray for those who slander and persecute us, and bless those who curse us, that we ought to do this if we wish to be perfect like our Father who is in heaven, who bids the sun pour its rays over the good and the evil, and makes the lands of all grow rich with rain and dew without any distinction. This, then, is the perfect duty, which the Greeks called κατόρθωμα (right action), by which all things are set right that could have any lapses. Mercy too is good, and it also makes men perfect, because it imitates the perfect Father. Nothing so commends a Christian soul as mercy: first towards the poor, so that you judge the produce of nature to be common, since nature brings forth the fruits of the earth for the use of all; so that you give to the poor man what you have and help your fellow, who shares your form. You give a coin; he receives life. You give money; he reckons it his whole substance. Your denarius is his fortune. Besides, he gives more to you, since he is your debtor for salvation. If you clothe the naked, you clothe yourself with righteousness. If you bring the stranger under your roof, if you take in the needy, he gains for you the friendship of the saints and eternal dwellings. That is no small grace. You sow bodily things and reap spiritual ones. Do you wonder at the Lord’s judgment on holy Job? Wonder at the virtue of the man who could say: “I was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame. I was the father of the weak; their shoulders were warmed by the fleeces of my lambs. The stranger did not lodge outside, but my door was open to everyone who came.” Blessed indeed is he from whose house a poor man never went away with an empty lap; for no one is more blessed than he who considers the need of the poor and the hardship of the weak and needy. In the day of judgment he will have salvation from the Lord, whom he will have as debtor for his mercy.

But many are drawn back from the duty of dispensing mercy, because they think that the Lord does not care about men’s actions, or does not know what we do in secret and what our conscience holds; or that his judgment does not seem just at all, when they see sinners abounding in riches, rejoicing in honours, health, and children, while the just live in poverty, without honour, without children, weak in body, in frequent mourning. Nor is this a small question, since those three kings, Job’s friends, pronounced him a sinner because they saw him made poor from rich, bereaved of children after being a fruitful parent, covered with sores, rough with weals, and furrowed with wounds from head to foot. To them holy Job puts this statement: “If I suffer these things because of my sins, why do the wicked live? They have grown old, and their seed is in riches according to their will, their children before their eyes, their houses abound; there is no fear anywhere, and the scourge from the Lord is not upon them.” Seeing these things, the weak in heart is agitated and turns his zeal away. Before he was to speak this man’s words, holy Job first said: “Bear with me, and I will speak; then laugh at me. For even if I am rebuked, I am rebuked as a man. Bear, then, the burden of my words.” For I am about to say what I do not approve, but I shall bring forward unjust words to refute you. Or certainly, because the verse runs thus: “What then? Am I rebuked by a man?” That is, a man cannot refute me on the ground that I have sinned, even if I deserve to be rebuked; for you rebuke me not from evident guilt, but judge the merit of my offences from my injuries. Seeing, then, the unjust abounding in prosperous successes and himself crushed, the weak man says to the Lord: “Depart from me; I do not want to know your ways. What profit is it that we have served him, or what use that we have come before him? In their hands are all good things, but he does not look upon the works of the wicked.” Plato is praised because in his Republic he made the one who had taken the part of arguing against justice ask pardon for words he did not approve, and say that he had taken that role on himself for the sake of finding the truth and examining the argument. Tully approved this so far that he himself, in the books he wrote On the Republic, thought it should be argued on that side. How much older than they was Job, who first found this out and thought it should be set forth first, not to adorn eloquence but to prove the truth? And at once he himself untied the knot of the question, adding that the lamp of the wicked is put out and that their overthrow is to come; that God, the guide of wisdom and discipline, is not deceived, but is the judge of truth; and that therefore the blessedness of each is to be judged not by outward abundance but by the inner conscience, which distinguishes the merits of the innocent and the wicked, the true and incorrupt arbiter of punishments and rewards. The innocent man dies in the strength of his simplicity, in the abundance of his own will, bearing a soul as though filled with fat. But the sinner, though he abounds outwardly, wallows in delights, and is fragrant with perfumes, spends his life in bitterness of soul and closes his last day bringing back nothing good of all he feasted on, taking away with him nothing but the wages of his crimes. Thinking on this, deny if you can that divine judgment gives recompense. The one is blessed in his own feeling, the other wretched; the one acquitted by his own judgment, the other guilty; the one glad at his departure, the other mourning. How can he be acquitted who is not innocent even to himself? “Tell me,” he says, “where is the protection of his tents? Its sign will not be found.” For the life of the wicked is like a dream. He opened his eyes: his rest passed away, his delight vanished—though the very rest of the wicked, which seems to be rest while they live, is in hell; for they go down alive into hell. You see the sinner’s banquet: question his conscience. Does it not stink worse than any tomb? You look at his gladness and admire the health of his body, his children, and his abundance of wealth: look into the sores and weals of his soul and the grief of his heart. As for his riches, what shall I say, since you have read: “For his life is not in abundance”? since you know that though he seems rich to you, he is poor to himself, and his own judgment refutes yours? As for the number of his children and his freedom from pain, what shall I say, since he mourns over himself and judges that he will be without an heir, since he does not want his imitators to be his successors? For the sinner has no inheritance. So the wicked man is his own punishment, but the just man is his own grace; and to each the reward of good or evil works is paid out of himself.

But let us return to our subject, lest we seem to have passed over the division we made, since we met the opinion of those who, seeing all sorts of wicked men rich, safe, honoured, and powerful, while many of the just are in want and weak, think either that God does not care about us at all, as the Epicureans say, or that he does not know men’s actions, as the wicked think, or, if he knows everything, that he is an unjust judge, since he lets the good be in want and the wicked abound. Nor was it a superfluous digression, as it were, that the feelings of the very men whom they judge blessed, though these think themselves wretched, should answer an opinion of this kind. For I thought they would believe themselves more readily than us. This done, I think it easy to refute the rest. And first the assertion of those who think that God has no care at all for the world, as Aristotle asserts that his providence comes down only as far as the moon. And what workman neglects the care of his work? Who abandons and forsakes what he himself thought fit to make? If it is an indignity to rule, is it not a greater indignity to have made? For while not to have made something is no injustice, not to care for what you have made is the height of unkindness. But if they either deny God their creator or reckon themselves to be counted among wild beasts and cattle, what shall we say of those who condemn themselves with such an insult? They themselves assert that God goes through all things and that all things subsist in his power, that his force and majesty penetrate through all the elements, earth, heaven, and seas; and do they think it an indignity to him if he penetrates the mind of man, than which he has given us nothing more excellent, and enters it with the knowledge of the divine majesty? But do not the philosophers themselves, who are thought sober, mock the master of these men as a drunkard and the patron of pleasure? As for Aristotle’s opinion, what shall I say? He thinks that God is content with his own bounds and lives within the prescribed limit of his kingdom, as the fables of the poets say, who relate that the world was divided among three, so that by lot one received heaven to rule, another the sea, another the underworld, and that they take care not to stir up war among themselves by usurping concern for others’ parts. In the same way, then, he asserts that God has no care for the earth, just as he has none for the sea or the underworld. And how do they shut out the poets whom they themselves follow?

There follows the answer to the question whether God, if he has not neglected the care of his work, lacks knowledge of it. Does he, then, who planted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see, not consider? This vain opinion did not escape the holy prophets. David introduces such men speaking, whom he declares puffed up with pride. For what is so proud as when men who are themselves under sin resent that other sinners live, saying: “How long, O Lord, how long shall sinners boast?” And below: “And they said: The Lord will not see, nor will the God of Jacob understand.” To them the prophet answers, saying: “Understand now, you senseless among the people, and you fools, be wise at last. He who planted the ear, does he not hear? And he who formed the eye, does he not consider? He who chastises the nations, will he not rebuke, he who teaches man knowledge? The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain.” He who detects whatever is vain, does he not know what is holy, and is he ignorant of what he himself made? Can a craftsman be ignorant of his own work? Man is only man, and he detects what lies hidden in his work; and does God not know his own work? Is there, then, a greater depth in the work than in its maker? And did he make something that would be above himself, whose worth its maker would not know, whose disposition its judge would not know? So much for them. For us, however, the testimony of him who says is enough: “I am he who searches hearts and reins.” And in the Gospel the Lord Jesus says: “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” For he knew that they were thinking evil. Indeed the Evangelist testifies, saying: “For Jesus knew their thoughts.” Their opinion will not be able to move us much if we consider their deeds. They do not want a judge above them whom nothing escapes; they do not want to grant knowledge of hidden things to him, because they fear that their own hidden things will be exposed. But the Lord, knowing their works, has given them over to darkness. “In the night,” it says, “the thief will be about, and the eye of the adulterer will watch for darkness, saying: No eye will see me; and he has put a covering on his face.” For everyone who flees the light loves darkness, seeking to hide, though he cannot hide from God, who knows, within the depth of the abyss and within the minds of men, not only what has been considered but also what is yet to be pondered. Indeed, he too who says in Ecclesiasticus: “Who sees me? Darkness covers me, and the walls; whom do I fear?”—though he thinks these things lying on his bed, is caught where he did not expect. “And it will be a disgrace,” it says, “because he did not understand the fear of God.” And what is so stupid as to think that anything escapes God, when the sun, which is a minister of light, penetrates even hidden places, and the force of its heat breaks into the foundations of a house or into secret rooms? Who denies that the inner parts of the earth, which winter ice had bound, are warmed by the mildness of spring? The hidden parts of trees know the force of heat and cold, so much so that the roots of trees are either burned by cold or grow green by the warmth of the sun. Indeed, when the mildness of the sky has smiled, the earth pours itself out in various fruits. If, then, the ray of the sun pours its light over all the earth and thrusts itself into closed places, and is not hindered from penetrating by iron bars or the bolts of heavy doors, how can the intelligible splendour of God not thrust itself into the thoughts of men and into the hearts which he himself created? Or does he not see the things he made, and has he made the things that were made better and more powerful than himself who made them, so that they can, when they wish, hide from the knowledge of their maker? Has he put such virtue and power into our minds that he himself cannot comprehend it when he wishes?

We have dealt with two questions, and, as we think, this discussion has fallen out not unfittingly for us. A third kind of question remains: why sinners abound in wealth and riches and feast continually without sorrow or mourning, while the just are in want and are afflicted by the loss of wives or of children. That parable of the Gospel ought to have satisfied them: the rich man was clothed in fine linen and purple and laid out lavish banquets every day, while the poor man, full of sores, gathered the scraps from his table. But after the death of both, the poor man was in Abraham’s bosom, at rest, the rich man in torments. Is it not evident that rewards or punishments for merits remain after death? And rightly, for in the contest there is toil, and after the contest victory for some, disgrace for others. Is the palm given or the crown awarded to anyone before the race is finished? Rightly Paul says: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the just judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to those who love his coming.” “On that day,” he says, he will give it, not here. But here, in labours, in dangers, in shipwrecks, he contended like a good athlete, because he knew that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. So no one can receive the prize unless he has competed lawfully; nor is a victory glorious unless the contests have been laborious.

Is he not unjust who gives the prize before the contest is finished? And so the Lord says in the Gospel: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He did not say, “Blessed are the rich,” but “the poor.” Blessedness by God’s judgment begins where human judgment reckons hardship. “Blessed are those who hunger, for they shall be filled. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall have consolation. Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they curse you and persecute you and say every evil against you for righteousness’ sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is abundant in heaven.” He promised that the reward would be paid in the future, not the present; in heaven, not on earth. Why do you demand in one place what is owed in another? Why do you claim the crown too early, before you have won? Why do you long to wipe off the dust, to rest? Why are you eager to feast before the race is over? The people are still watching, the athletes are still in the arena, and you already seek leisure. But perhaps you say: “Why do the wicked rejoice? Why do they live in luxury? Why do they too not toil with me?” Because those who have not entered their names for the crown are not bound to the toil of the contest; those who have not gone down into the stadium do not pour oil on themselves or smear themselves with dust. Those whom glory awaits, hardship awaits. The perfumed are accustomed to watch, not to compete, not to endure sun, heat, dust, and rain. Let the athletes, then, say to them: “Come, toil with us.” But the spectators will answer: “We sit here meanwhile to judge you; but you, if you win, will claim the glory of the crown without us.” So those who have set their aims on delights, luxury, plunder, gain, and honours are spectators rather than fighters. They have the gain of toil, but not the fruit of virtue. They cherish their ease; by cunning and wickedness they heap up piles of riches; but they will pay the penalty of their wickedness, late though it be. Their rest is in hell, but yours in heaven; their house in the tomb, yours in paradise. Hence Job said beautifully that they keep watch in the tomb, because they cannot have the sleep of rest which he slept who rose again. Do not, then, as a little child, think, speak, reason, or claim things that belong to a later age. The crown belongs to the perfect. Wait until what is perfect comes, when you will be able to know, not through a likeness in a riddle but face to face, the very form of the uncovered truth. Then it will be revealed why that man was rich who was wicked and a robber of others’ goods, why another was powerful, why one abounded in children, another was propped up by honours. Perhaps it is so that it may be said to the robber: “You were rich; why did you rob others? Want did not compel you, poverty did not drive you. Did I not make you rich precisely so that you could have no excuse?” Let it also be said to the powerful man: “Why did you not help the widow, and the orphans too, when they suffered wrong? Were you weak? Could you not help? I made you powerful so that you would not inflict violence but repel it. Is it not written for you: Rescue the one who suffers wrong? Is it not written for you: Deliver the poor and needy from the hand of the sinner?” Let it also be said to the one who had abundance: “I heaped children and honours on you, I granted you health of body; why did you not follow my commands? My servant, what have I done to you, or how have I grieved you? Did I not give you children, confer honours, grant you health? Why did you deny me? Why did you think that what you did would not come to my knowledge? Why did you keep my gifts and despise my commandments?” Indeed one may gather this from Judas the traitor, who was both chosen an apostle among the twelve and had the purse of money entrusted to him to pay out to the poor, so that he might not seem to have betrayed the Lord as one unhonoured or as one in need. And so, that the Lord might be justified in his case, he conferred these things on him, so that he might be liable to the greater offence, not as one embittered by injury but as one who betrayed grace.

Since, then, it has become clear enough that there will be punishment for wickedness and a reward for virtue, let us go on to speak of the duties that we must look to from youth, so that they may grow together with our age. It belongs, then, to good youths to have the fear of God, to defer to parents, to show honour to elders, to guard chastity, not to despise humility, to love gentleness and modesty, which are an ornament to the younger age. For as gravity is commended in the old and alertness in young men, so modesty is commended in youths as a kind of dowry of nature. Isaac feared the Lord, as befitted the offspring of Abraham, and deferred to his father so far that he did not refuse even death against his father’s will. Joseph too, though he had dreamed that the sun and moon and stars worshipped him, nevertheless deferred to his father with diligent obedience: chaste, so that he would not even hear any speech that was not pure; humble to the point of slavery, modest to the point of flight, patient to the point of prison, forgiving of injury to the point of repaying it with good. His modesty was so great that when he was seized by the woman he preferred to flee and leave his garment in her hands rather than lay aside his modesty. Moses also and Jeremiah, chosen by the Lord to preach God’s oracles to the people, declined out of modesty what they were able to do by grace.

Fine, then, is the virtue of modesty and sweet its grace, which is seen not only in deeds but also in our very words, so that you do not go beyond the measure in speaking and your speech does not sound anything unseemly. For the mirror of the mind generally shines out in words. Modesty weighs the very sound of the voice, so that no over-loud voice offends anyone’s ear. Indeed in singing itself the first discipline is modesty, and indeed in every use of speech, so that one begins gradually to chant psalms, or to sing, or finally to speak, and modest beginnings commend what follows. Silence too, in which the other virtues are at rest, is the greatest act of modesty. Indeed, if it is thought to come from childishness or pride, it is held a reproach; if from modesty, it is counted praise. Susanna was silent in danger and thought the loss of modesty more grievous than the loss of life, and she did not think her safety should be protected at the risk of her chastity. She spoke to God alone, to whom she could speak with chaste modesty; she shrank from looking at the faces of men; for there is modesty in the eyes too, so that a woman wishes neither to see men nor to be seen by them. Let no one think that this praise belongs to chastity alone. For modesty is the companion of purity, and in its company chastity itself is safer. Shame is a good companion for guiding chastity: if it puts itself forward against what first threatens danger, it does not allow purity to be violated. This is what, at the very first entrance of our knowledge of her, commends the Lord’s mother to readers and, like a trustworthy witness, declares her worthy to be chosen for such an office: that in her chamber, alone, greeted by the angel, she is silent and was disturbed at his entrance, that the Virgin’s gaze is troubled at the unfamiliar appearance of a male form. So, though she was humble, out of modesty she did not return the greeting of the one who greeted her, and gave no answer at all until she learned that she was to conceive the Lord; and then in order to learn the manner of its accomplishment, not to make conversation. In our prayer too modesty pleases greatly and wins much grace with our God. Was it not this that preferred the tax collector and commended him who did not dare even to lift his eyes to heaven? Therefore he is justified by the Lord’s judgment rather than that Pharisee whom presumption disfigured. So let us pray “in the incorruption of a quiet and modest spirit, which is rich before God,” as Peter says. Great, then, is modesty, which, even yielding its own rights, usurping nothing, claiming nothing, and in a way drawn in within its own strength, is rich before God, with whom no one is rich. Modesty is rich, because it is God’s portion. Paul too commanded prayer to be offered with modesty and sobriety. He wants this to come first and, as it were, to lead the way for the prayer to come, so that the prayer of sinners may not boast, but, as though covered with the colour of shame, may merit the more abundant grace the more modesty it shows in remembering its offence. Modesty must be kept also in movement, gesture, and gait. For the condition of the mind is seen in the bearing of the body. Hence the hidden man of our heart is judged to be either rather light, or boastful, or turbulent, or on the contrary more grave, steady, pure, and mature. So the movement of the body is a kind of voice of the soul. You remember, my sons, that a certain friend, though he seemed to commend himself by diligent services, was nevertheless not received by me into the clergy for this one reason, that his gestures were most unseemly; and that another, whom I had found in the clergy, I ordered never to walk in front of me, because he struck my eyes as with the lash of an insolent gait. And I said so when he was being restored to his ministry after an offence. This alone I excepted, and my judgment did not deceive me: both left the Church, so that the faithlessness of their minds was shown to be such as their gait had betrayed. For the one deserted the faith at the time of the Arian attack; the other, through love of money, denied that he was ours, so as not to undergo the judgment of the priests. In their gait there shone an image of levity, the look of buffoons running about. There are also some who, walking slowly, imitate the gestures of actors, like litters in processions and the movements of nodding statues, so that whenever they move a step they seem to keep a kind of rhythm. Nor do I think it becoming to walk hurriedly, unless the cause of some danger or a just necessity requires it. For we often see people in a hurry panting and twisting their faces; and if they have no cause for necessary haste, it is a blemish that gives just offence. But I do not speak of those in whom rare haste arises from a cause, but of those in whom it is constant and continual and has turned into nature. I do not approve in the one the likenesses of statues, nor in the other the tumbling of men thrown off. There is also an acceptable gait, in which there is the look of authority, the weight of gravity, the trace of tranquillity; provided, however, that there is no striving or affectation, but the movement is pure and simple; for nothing painted pleases. Let nature shape the movement. If there is indeed any fault in nature, let effort correct it; so that art may be lacking, but correction not lacking. And if even these things are looked into so closely, how much more must we take care that nothing shameful come out of the mouth! For this seriously defiles a man. For it is not food that defiles, but unjust disparagement and obscenity of words. These things are shameful even to the common people. But in our office let no word fall that is unseemly or strikes at modesty. And not only should we ourselves say nothing unseemly, but we should not even lend an ear to such words: as Joseph, so as not to hear what was unfitting to his modesty, fled and left his garment; for he who likes to hear provokes another to speak. Even to understand what is shameful is a matter of the greatest shame. And to see anything of that kind, if it happens by chance, how dreadful that is! What displeases in others, then, can it please in oneself? Does not nature herself teach us? She has fashioned all the parts of our body perfectly, so as both to provide for necessity and to adorn grace. Yet the parts that were seemly to look on, in which the crown of beauty is placed as in a citadel, and the sweetness of the figure and the beauty of the face shine out, and the use for working is readier, she left exposed and open. But those in which the service of natural necessity lay, so that they might not present an ugly sight, she partly removed and hid within the body itself, and partly taught and persuaded us to cover. Is not nature herself, then, the teacher of modesty? Following her example, human modesty (which I think is named from modus, the measure of knowing what is fitting) has covered and veiled what it found hidden in this structure of our body; like the door that righteous Noah was told to make in the side of the ark, in which there is a figure either of the Church or of our body: the door through which the remains of food are passed out. So the maker of nature was so careful of our modesty, so guarded that seemliness and decency in our body, that he placed certain ducts and the outlets of our passages behind our back and turned them away from our sight, so that the purging of the belly should not offend the eye. Of this the Apostle says beautifully: “The members of the body that seem to be weaker are more necessary; and those members of the body that we think less honourable, we surround with more abundant honour; and our unpresentable parts have more abundant presentability.” For by imitating nature, diligence has increased grace. This we have interpreted elsewhere in a higher sense, so that we not only hide from the eyes, but also think it unseemly to call by their own names the signs and uses of the members we have received to be hidden. Indeed, if these parts are uncovered by chance, modesty is confounded; if on purpose, it is reckoned shamelessness. Hence Noah’s son Ham incurred offence, because he laughed when he saw his father naked; but those who covered their father received the grace of a blessing. Hence there was an old custom both in the city of Rome and in most cities that grown sons did not bathe with their parents, nor sons-in-law with their fathers-in-law, lest the authority of paternal reverence be lessened; though most cover themselves even in the bath as much as they can, so that even there, where the whole body is naked, that part may not be uncovered. The priests too, by ancient custom, as we read in Exodus, received breeches, as it was said to Moses by the Lord: “And you shall make them linen breeches to cover the shame of their nakedness. They shall reach from the loins to the thighs, and Aaron and his sons shall have them when they enter the tabernacle of witness, and when they approach to offer sacrifice at the altar of the sanctuary, and they shall not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die.” Some of ours are said still to observe this; most think it was said, in a spiritual interpretation, for the guarding of modesty and the keeping of chastity.

It has pleased me to linger rather long over the parts of modesty, because I was speaking to you, who either recognize its goods from your own experience or do not know its losses. Though it is fitting for all ages, persons, times, and places, it most becomes the years of youth and young manhood. But at every age one must take care that what you do is becoming and fitting, and that the order of your life is consistent with itself. Hence Tully too thinks that order must be kept in that seemliness, and says that it consists in beauty, order, and adornment suited to action; which, he says, can hardly be explained in words, and so it is enough that they be understood. Why he included beauty I do not well understand, though he also praises bodily strength. We certainly do not place virtue in beauty of body; yet we do not exclude grace, because modesty is wont to suffuse the very face with a blush and make it more graceful. For as a craftsman usually works better in more suitable material, so modesty stands out more in the very comeliness of the body too; provided, however, that the comeliness of the body itself is not affected, but natural, simple, neglected rather than sought, not helped by costly and brilliant white garments but by ordinary ones; so that nothing is lacking to decency or necessity, and nothing is added for elegance. The voice itself should not be languid, not broken, sounding nothing womanish, such as many are accustomed to feign under the appearance of gravity, but keeping a certain form and rule and a manly vigour. For this is to keep the beauty of living: to render what befits each sex and person. This is the best order of conduct, this the adornment suited to every action. But as I do not approve a soft and broken sound of voice or gesture of body, neither do I approve a boorish and rustic one. Let us imitate nature: her likeness is the pattern of discipline, the form of virtue.

Modesty has its own rocks, not ones it brings in itself, but ones it often runs into, if we fall into the company of intemperate men who, under the appearance of pleasantness, pour poison into the good. If such men are constantly present, especially at a banquet, in play and jest, they weaken that manly gravity. Let us beware, then, lest while we wish to relax the mind we dissolve all harmony, the concord, as it were, of good works; for habit quickly bends nature. Hence I think that what you prudently do befits churchmen, and especially the duties of ministers: to decline the banquets of outsiders, either so that you yourselves may be hospitable to travellers, or so that by this caution there may be no room for reproach. For the banquets of outsiders bring distractions, and also betray a desire for feasting. Stories about the world and its pleasures also often creep in: you cannot close your ears, and to forbid them is thought pride. Cups also creep in against your will. It is better to excuse yourself once to your own house than often to another’s; and even if you yourself rise sober, your presence ought not to be condemned for another’s insolence. There is no need for the younger clergy to go to the houses of widows and virgins except to visit them, and then with the elders, that is, either with the bishop or, if the cause is more serious, with the presbyters. Why must we give worldly people occasion to disparage? Why must those frequent visits also gain weight? What if one of those women should happen to fall? Why should you bear the odium of another’s fall? How many even strong men has enticement deceived! How many have given no room to sin and yet have given it to suspicion! Why do you not spend in reading the times when you are free from church duties? Why do you not visit Christ again, speak with Christ, hear Christ? We speak with him when we pray; we hear him when we read the divine oracles. What have we to do with other people’s houses? There is one house that holds all. Let those who want us come rather to us. What have we to do with stories? We have received a ministry to be rendered to the altars of Christ, not a service to be paid to men. It becomes us to be humble, meek, gentle, grave, patient, and to keep measure in all things, so that neither our silent face nor our speech may announce any vice in our character.

Let anger be guarded against, or, if it cannot be guarded against beforehand, restrained; for indignation is an evil enticer to sin, which so disturbs the mind that it leaves no room for reason. The first thing, then, if it can be done, is that tranquillity of character be turned into nature by a kind of habit, affection, and purpose. Then, since this impulse is usually so fixed in nature and character that it cannot be torn out or avoided, let it be checked by reason, if it can be foreseen. Or if the mind has been seized by indignation before it could be foreseen and provided against by counsel, so as not to be seized, consider how to conquer the impulse of your mind and temper your anger. Resist anger if you can; give way if you cannot; for it is written: “Give place to wrath.” Jacob dutifully gave way to his angry brother, and, instructed by the counsel of Rebecca, that is, of patience, he preferred to go away and live abroad rather than inflame his brother’s indignation, and to return when he thought his brother appeased. And so he found such great grace with God. Then with what courtesies, with what great gifts, did he reconcile his brother to himself, so that his brother did not remember the blessing snatched from him but remembered the satisfaction offered! So if anger has forestalled and seized your mind and risen up against you, do not leave your place. Your place is patience, your place is wisdom, your place is reason, your place is the calming of indignation. Or if the obstinacy of someone answering back has moved you and his perversity has driven you to indignation, if you cannot calm your mind, restrain your tongue. For thus it is written: “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.” Then: “Seek peace and pursue it.” See that peace of holy Jacob: first calm your mind; if you do not succeed, put a bridle on your tongue; then do not neglect the effort at reconciliation. The orators of the world took these things from ours and put them in their books; but the thought belongs to him who said it first. Let us, then, avoid anger or temper it, lest it make an exception in our praises or an aggravation in our faults. It is no small thing to calm anger; it is not less than not to be moved at all. The one is our doing, the other nature’s. Indeed, impulses in children are harmless and have more charm than bitterness. And if children are quickly moved against one another, they are easily calmed and run back to one another with greater sweetness. They do not know how to deal with one another craftily and artfully. Do not despise these children, of whom the Lord says: “Unless you are converted and become like this child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So the Lord himself, that is, the power of God, like a child, when he was reviled did not revile in return, when he was struck did not strike back. Prepare yourself, then, so that like a child you do not hold on to an injury, do not practise malice: let everything proceed from you innocently. Do not consider what comes back to you from others. Keep your place; guard the simplicity and purity of your heart. Do not answer an angry man according to his anger, or a fool according to his folly. One fault quickly strikes out another. If you rub stones together, does not fire break out? Let the pagans, who usually exaggerate everything in words, extol the saying of the philosopher Archytas of Tarentum, which he said to his bailiff: “O wretch, how I would punish you, if I were not angry!” But David had already restrained his armed right hand in his indignation. And how much more is it not to revile in return than not to take vengeance? And Abigail by her entreaty had called back the warriors ready for vengeance against Nabal. From this we notice that we ought not only to yield to timely intercessions but even to be delighted by them. He was so delighted that he blessed her who intervened, because he had been called back from his eagerness for vengeance. He had already said of his enemies: “For they turned iniquity upon me, and in anger they were troublesome to me.” Let us hear what he said when troubled in anger: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” They provoked him to anger; he chose tranquillity. He had already said: “Be angry and do not sin.” The moral teacher, who knew that a natural affection should be bent by the reason of teaching rather than rooted out, teaches morals; that is: be angry where there is a fault at which you ought to be angry. For it cannot be that we are not moved by the unworthiness of things; otherwise it would be judged not virtue but sluggishness and slackness. Be angry, then, in such a way that you abstain from fault. Or thus: if you are angry, do not sin, but conquer anger by reason. Or certainly thus: if you are angry, be angry with yourselves, because you have been moved, and you will not sin. For he who is angry with himself because he was quickly moved ceases to be angry with another; but he who wants to prove his anger just is inflamed the more and quickly falls into fault. Better, according to Solomon, is he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city; for anger deceives even the brave. We ought, then, to take care not to fall into disturbances before reason has composed our minds; for anger or grief or fear of death often unnerves the mind and strikes it with an unforeseen blow. Therefore it is fine to forestall them by reflection, which exercises the mind by turning things over, so that it may not be roused by sudden emotions but grow gentle, bound by a kind of yoke and reins of reason.

There are two kinds of impulses, that is, of thoughts and of appetite: the one belongs to thoughts, the other to appetite; not confused, but distinct and unlike. Thoughts have the task of seeking out the truth and, as it were, grinding it out; appetite drives and rouses to doing something. So, by the very kind of their nature, thoughts pour in the tranquillity of calm, and appetite stirs up the impulse to act. Let us, then, be so formed that the thought of good things may enter the mind and appetite obey reason (if we truly wish to direct our mind to keeping that seemliness), lest the desire for anything shut out reason; but let reason examine what befits virtue. And since we have said that it belongs to the preservation of seemliness that we know what measure there is in deeds and words, and the order of speaking comes before that of doing, speech is divided into two: familiar conversation, and the treatment and discussion of faith and justice. In both one must take care that there is no disturbance; but let speech be conducted gently and calmly, full of kindness and grace, without any insult. Let obstinate contention be absent from familiar conversation; for it tends to stir up empty questions rather than to bring anything useful. Let there be discussion without anger, pleasantness without bitterness, admonition without harshness, exhortation without offence. And as in every act of life we ought to beware lest an excessive movement of the mind shut out reason, but should keep a place for counsel, so also in speech it is fitting to keep that rule, so that neither anger nor hatred is roused, nor do we show any signs of our desire or our sloth. Let such speech, then, be chiefly about the Scriptures. For what ought we to speak of more than of the best manner of life, exhortation to observance, and the keeping of discipline? Let its beginning have reason and its end measure. For tedious speech rouses anger. And how unseemly it is that, while all conversation usually brings an increase of grace, it should have the blemish of offence! The treatment of the teaching of the faith, of instruction in self-control, of the discussion of justice, of exhortation to diligence, should not always be one and the same; but as the reading has offered it, it must be taken up by us and, as far as we can, pursued: neither too long nor too quickly broken off, lest it leave weariness behind or betray and incur sloth. Let the discourse be pure, simple, clear, and plain, full of gravity and weight; without affected elegance, yet not lacking in grace.

Besides, secular men give many precepts about the method of speaking, which I think we should pass over, such as the discipline of jesting. For although jokes are sometimes decent and pleasant, they are foreign to the rule of the Church; for how can we take up what we do not find in the holy Scriptures? We must take care even in stories, lest they bend the gravity of a stricter purpose. “Woe to you who laugh, for you will weep!” says the Lord; and do we seek matter for laughter, so that, laughing here, we may weep there? I think that not only excessive jokes but all jokes are to be avoided; unless perhaps it is not unseemly for speech to be full of sweetness and grace. As for the voice, what shall I say? I think it enough that it be simple and pure; to be musical belongs to nature, not to effort. Let it, indeed, be distinct in the manner of its pronunciation and full of manly vigour, so that it avoids a boorish and rustic sound; not so as to affect a theatrical rhythm, but so as to keep a sacred one.

Enough has been said, I think, about the method of speaking; now let us consider what befits the conduct of life. We see three things to be regarded in this kind. First, that appetite should not struggle against reason; for only so can our duties agree with that seemliness. For if appetite obeys reason, what is becoming can easily be preserved in all duties. Second, that we may not seem, by a zeal greater or less than the matter undertaken requires, either to have taken up a small matter with great display or to have abandoned a great one with lesser effort. Third, I think I must not pass over the moderation of our pursuits and works, and also the order of things and the fitness of times. But the first is, as it were, the foundation of all, that appetite obey reason; the second and third are the same, that is, moderation in both. For with us the consideration of a liberal appearance, which is held to be beauty, and of dignity, has no place. There follows the order of things and the fitness of times. And so there are three things, and let us see whether we can show them perfected in any of the saints. First, father Abraham himself, who was formed and instructed for teaching the generations to come, when he was commanded to go out from his country and his kindred and his father’s house, did he not, though bound by the affection of manifold ties, nevertheless show an appetite obedient to reason? For whom would the charm of his own land, his kindred, and his own house not delight? This man too, then, was soothed by the sweetness of his own people, but the consideration of the heavenly command and of an eternal reward moved him more. Did he not consider that his wife, weak for labours, tender to injuries, beautiful enough to rouse the incitements of insolent men, could not be taken along without the greatest danger? And yet he judged it wiser to undergo everything than to excuse himself. Then, when he went down into Egypt, he advised her to say that she was his sister, not his wife. Notice how great his appetites were. He feared for his wife’s chastity, he feared for his own safety, he suspected the lusts of the Egyptians; and yet the reasoning of carrying out his devotion prevailed with him. For he considered that by God’s favour he could be safe everywhere, but that if the Lord were offended he could not remain unharmed even at home. Reason, then, conquered appetite and made it obedient to itself. When his nephew was captured, not terrified nor disturbed by the peoples of so many kings, he renewed the war; when he had won the victory, he refused his share of the spoil, of which he himself was the winner. When a son was promised to him, though he considered the spent strength of his own body, already as good as dead, the barrenness of his wife, and his extreme old age, he believed God even against the course of nature. Notice how all things agree. Appetite was not lacking, but it was held down; his mind was equal to the things to be done, treating neither great things as cheap nor lesser things as great; there was moderation in his affairs, order in things, fitness of times, measure of words. First in faith, outstanding in justice, vigorous in battle, not greedy in victory, hospitable at home, attentive to his wife. His holy grandson Jacob too delighted to live safe at home; but his mother wanted him to go abroad, to give place to his brother’s anger. The soundness of counsel conquered appetite. An exile from home, a fugitive from his parents, he everywhere kept a fitting measure in his affairs and preserved fitness in times. He was so accepted at home by his parents that the one, moved by the ripeness of his obedience, gave him the blessing, and the other inclined to him with dutiful love. He was preferred even by his brother’s judgment, when he thought he should yield his food to his brother: he certainly enjoyed food according to nature, but according to dutiful love he gave it up when asked. A faithful shepherd to the master of the flock, a diligent son-in-law to his father-in-law, tireless in work, sparing at table, first in making amends, generous in repaying. So he calmed his brother’s anger, so that he gained the favour of the one whose enmity he feared. What shall I say of Joseph, who certainly had a desire for freedom and yet bore the necessity of slavery? How submissive in servitude, how constant in virtue, how kind in prison, wise in interpretation, moderate in power, provident in plenty, just in famine, adding the order of praise to things and fitness to times, dispensing equity to the peoples by the moderation of his office! Job too, blameless in prosperity and adversity alike, patient, pleasing and acceptable to God, was racked with pains but consoled himself. David too, brave in war, patient in adversity, peaceable in Jerusalem, gentle in victory, grieving in sin, provident in old age, kept the measures of things and the turns of times through the notes of each age, so that he seems to me to have poured forth to God, no less by his manner of life than by the sweetness of his singing, a most sweet and immortal song of his merit. What duty of the principal virtues was lacking to these men? Of these they placed first prudence, which is occupied in investigating the truth and instils the desire for fuller knowledge; second justice, which gives to each his own, does not claim another’s, and neglects its own advantage to guard common equity; third fortitude, which stands out both in war by loftiness of mind and at home, and excels in bodily strength; fourth temperance, which keeps measure and order in all that we judge must be done or said.

Perhaps someone may say that these things ought to have been put first, since the kinds of duties arise from these four virtues. But it belongs to art first to define duty and then to divide it into definite kinds. We avoid art, as foreign to us; we set forth the examples of our forefathers, which bring neither obscurity to understanding nor trickery to treatment. Let the life of our forefathers, then, be for us a mirror of discipline, not a commentary of cunning; a reverence for imitating, not an astuteness in disputing. In holy Abraham, then, there was first prudence, of whom Scripture says: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” For no one is prudent who does not know God. Indeed, “the fool said there is no God”; for a wise man would not say it. For how is he wise who does not seek his maker, who says to a stone: “You are my father”? who says to the devil, as the Manichaean does: “You are my maker”? How is the Arian wise, who prefers to have an imperfect and degenerate maker rather than a true and perfect one? How are Marcion and Eunomius wise, who prefer to have an evil God rather than a good one? How is he wise who does not fear his God? For “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And elsewhere you have: “The wise do not turn aside from the mouth of the Lord, but discuss it in their confessions.” At the same time, when Scripture says, “It was reckoned to him for righteousness,” it conferred on him the grace of another virtue. Our people, then, were the first to define prudence as consisting in the knowledge of the truth. For which of the philosophers was before Abraham, David, and Solomon? Then they defined justice as looking to the fellowship of the human race. Indeed David says: “He has scattered, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.” “The just man is merciful, the just man lends.” To the wise and just man the whole world is full of riches. The just man counts common things as his own and his own as common. The just man accuses himself before others. For he is just who does not spare himself and does not allow his hidden things to lie hidden. See how just Abraham was. In old age he had received a son through the promise; when the Lord asked him back for sacrifice, he did not think he should refuse him, though he was his only son. Notice here all four virtues in one deed. It was of wisdom to believe God and not to put the love of a son before the command of the Maker; it was of justice to give back what had been received; it was of fortitude to restrain appetite by reason. The father led the victim, the son asked questions; the father’s affection was tried but not conquered. The son repeated the name of father; he pierced his father’s heart, but did not lessen his devotion. The fourth virtue, temperance, is added too. The just man kept the measure of piety and the order of carrying it out. Indeed, while he carries what is needed for the sacrifice, while he kindles the fire, while he binds his son, while he draws the sword, by this order of sacrificing he merited to keep his son. What is wiser than holy Jacob, who saw God face to face and merited the blessing? What more just than he who divided what he had acquired with his brother by offering gifts? What braver than he who wrestled with God? What more modest than he who so deferred to modesty in places and times that he preferred to cover his daughter’s wrong with marriage rather than avenge it, because, being placed among strangers, he judged that one should consult for love rather than gather hatreds? How wise was Noah, who built so great an ark! How just, who, kept as the seed of all, alone of all became both the survivor of the past generation and the author of the future, born for the world and for all rather than for himself! How brave, to overcome the flood! How temperate, to endure the flood! When he should enter, with what moderation he should live, when he should send out the raven, when the dove, when he should take them back as they returned, when he should seize the opportunity of going out—he knew.

So they hold that in investigating truth that seemliness must be kept: that we seek with the greatest zeal what is true, not take false things for true, not wrap true things in obscurity, and not occupy the mind with superfluous or tangled and ambiguous matters. What is so unseemly as to worship wood, which they themselves do? What is so obscure as to treat of astronomy and geometry, which they approve, and to measure the spaces of the deep air, and to enclose heaven and sea too in numbers; to leave aside the causes of salvation and seek out errors? But Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, did not approve these things; he judged that wisdom loss and folly, and turning away from it he sought God with the deepest affection; and so he saw him, questioned him, and heard him speaking. Who is wiser than he whom God taught, who by the power of his work made void all the wisdom of the Egyptians and all the powers of their arts? He did not hold unknown things for known and rashly assent to them. Let those learn that these two faults are to be avoided in this most natural and honourable matter who judge it neither against nature nor shameful to adore stones and to seek help from images that feel nothing. The more excellent a virtue wisdom is, the more I think we must strive to attain it. So, that we may think nothing against nature, nothing shameful and unseemly, we ought to devote these two things, time and diligence, to the consideration of things for the sake of examining them. For there is nothing by which man excels the other living things more than that he shares in reason, seeks the causes of things, and thinks he should search out the author of his race, in whose power lies the power of our life and death, who rules this world by his nod, to whom we know an account of our actions must be rendered. For nothing profits more for an honourable life than to believe that he will be our judge whom hidden things do not deceive, whom unseemly things offend, and whom honourable things delight. It is in all men, then, according to human nature, to investigate the truth, which draws us to the pursuit of knowledge and learning and pours in the desire of inquiry. To excel all in this seems fine, but it belongs to few to attain it, who, by turning over thoughts and examining counsels, spend no small labour so that they may come to that blessed and honourable living and draw near to it by works. “For not everyone,” he says, “who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the things I say.” For as to pursuits of knowledge without deeds, I am not sure that they do not entangle one even more.

The first source of duty, then, is prudence. For what is so full of duty as to give zeal and reverence to the Creator? Yet this source flows also into the other virtues; for justice cannot exist without prudence, since to examine what is just or unjust belongs to no small prudence; the error either way is very great. For he who judges the just unjust, or the unjust just, is accursed before God. “Why does justice abound for the imprudent?” Solomon says. Nor again is there prudence without justice; for “piety towards God is the beginning of understanding.” From this we notice that the saying that piety is the foundation of all the virtues was borrowed rather than discovered by the wise men of this world. But the piety of justice is first towards God, second towards the fatherland, third towards parents, then towards all; and this too is according to the teaching of nature. For from the beginning of life, as soon as understanding begins to be poured in, we love life as God’s gift, we love our fatherland and parents, then our equals with whom we wish to be associated. From this arises love, which prefers others to itself, not seeking its own, and in which justice has its chief place. It is also inborn in all living things first to protect their safety, to avoid what harms, to seek what helps, such as food and hiding places with which to defend themselves from danger, rain, and sun, which belongs to prudence. It follows too that all kinds of living things are by nature sociable, first with those who share their kind and form, then also with others; as we see oxen delight in herds, horses in droves, and especially like in like; deer too with deer, and often joining themselves to men. And what shall I say of their eagerness to beget and of their offspring, or of the love of parents, in which there is a chief form of justice? It is clear, then, that these and the remaining virtues are akin to one another. For fortitude, which either protects the fatherland from barbarians in war or defends the weak at home or companions from robbers, is full of justice; and to know with what counsel to defend and help, and to seize the fitness of times and places, belongs to prudence and modesty; and temperance itself cannot know measure without prudence; to know fitness and to render according to measure belongs to justice; and in all these greatness of soul is necessary, and a certain fortitude of mind, and often of body, so that one may be able to fulfil what one wills.

Justice, then, relates to the fellowship of the human race and to community. For the principle of fellowship is divided into two parts, justice and beneficence, which they also call liberality and kindness. Justice seems to me loftier, liberality more pleasing; the one holds judgment, the other goodness. But the very thing the philosophers think is the first office of justice is excluded among us. For they say that the first form of justice is that one harm no one unless provoked by injury; this is made void by the authority of the Gospel; for Scripture wishes that there be in us the spirit of the Son of Man, who came to confer grace, not to inflict injury. Then they thought it a form of justice that one should treat common, that is, public things as public, and private things as one’s own. Not even this is according to nature; for nature has poured out all things for all in common. For God commanded all things to be produced so that there should be food in common for all and the earth should be a kind of common possession of all. Nature, then, produced common right; usurpation made private right. On this point they say the Stoics held that all things produced on earth are created for the use of men, but that men were born for the sake of men, so that they might be of use to one another. Where did they get this if not from our Scriptures? For Moses wrote that God said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness, and let him have power over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the cattle, and all creeping things upon the earth.” And David says: “You have put all things under his feet, sheep and all oxen, and the beasts of the field besides, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.” So they learned from ours that all things are subject to man, and therefore think they were produced for man’s sake. That man too was produced for man’s sake we find in the books of Moses, where the Lord says: “It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helper like himself.” So woman was given to man as a help, to bear children, so that man might be a help to man. Indeed, before the woman was formed, it was said of Adam: “There was not found a helper like him”; for man could have help only from man. Of all living things, then, no animal was like him, and, to speak absolutely, no helper of man was found: a helper of the female sex was awaited. So, according to God’s will and the bond of nature, we ought to help one another, to vie in services, to put all advantages, as it were, in the middle, and, to use the word of Scripture, to bring help one to another, by zeal, by service, by money, by works, or in any way, so that the grace of fellowship may increase among us. Nor let anyone be called back from duty even by fear of danger, but let him count everything, adverse or prosperous, as his own. Indeed holy Moses did not shrink from undertaking grievous wars for the people of his fatherland, nor did he tremble at the arms of a most powerful king, nor fear the ferocity of barbarian savagery; but he cast aside his own safety to restore liberty to the people. Great, then, is the splendour of justice, which, born for others rather than for itself, helps our community and fellowship; it holds a lofty place, so as to have all things subject to its judgment, to bring aid to others, to give money, not to refuse services, to undertake others’ dangers. Who would not desire to hold this citadel of virtue, if avarice did not first weaken and bend the vigour of so great a virtue? For while we desire to increase our wealth, to amass money, to occupy lands with possessions, to excel in riches, we put off the form of justice and lose common beneficence. For how can he be just who strives to snatch from another what he seeks for himself? The desire for power too makes the manly form of justice effeminate. For how can he intervene for others who tries to subject others to himself, and how can he bring help to the weak against the powerful who himself aims at a power burdensome to liberty?

How great justice is can be understood from this, that it is not excepted by places, persons, or times; it is kept even towards enemies, so that if a place or day has been agreed with the enemy for battle, it is thought against justice to forestall him in place or time. For it makes a difference whether someone is taken in a battle and heavy conflict, or by superior favour or some chance. Indeed, against fiercer and faithless enemies, and those who have done more harm, a fiercer vengeance is returned; as with the Midianites, who through their women had made many of the Jewish people sin, whence also the anger of God was poured out upon the people; and so it came about that Moses as victor allowed none to survive. But the Gibeonites, who had tried the people of the fathers by fraud rather than by war, Joshua did not destroy, but punished with the hardship of the condition imposed on them. And Elisha would not consent to the king of Israel’s wish to strike the Syrians, whom, while they were besieging him, he had led into the city struck with momentary blindness so that they could not see where they were going; he said: “You shall not strike those whom you have not taken captive with your spear and your sword; set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and let them be sent away and go to their master,” so that, provoked by kindness, they might return the favour. Indeed afterwards the raiders of Syria ceased to come into the land of Israel. If, then, justice holds even in war, how much more must it be kept in peace? And the prophet showed this favour to those who had come to seize him. For we read that the king of Syria had sent his army to besiege him, having learned that it was Elisha who was countering all his plans and contrivances. Seeing the army, Gehazi, the prophet’s servant, began to tremble for the danger to their lives. The prophet said to him: “Do not fear, for more are with us than with them.” And when the prophet prayed that his servant’s eyes might be opened, they were opened. And Gehazi saw the whole mountain filled with horses and chariots round about Elisha. As they came down, the prophet said: “Strike, O God, the army of Syria with blindness.” When this was granted, he said to the Syrians: “Come after me, and I will lead you to the man you seek.” And they saw Elisha, whom they were eager to seize, and seeing him they could not hold him. It is clear, then, that faith and justice must be kept even in war, and that nothing can be seemly if faith is violated. Indeed the ancients called even their adversaries by a mild name, calling them strangers; for by ancient custom enemies were called strangers. This too we can say was taken from ours; for the Hebrews called their adversaries Allophyli, that is, in a Latin word, foreigners. Indeed in the first book of Kingdoms we read thus: “And it came to pass in those days that the foreigners gathered to battle against Israel.” Faith, then, is the foundation of justice; for “the hearts of the just meditate faith”; and the just man who accuses himself places justice upon faith, for his justice appears when he confesses the truth. Indeed the Lord too says through Isaiah: “Behold, I lay a stone for a foundation in Zion,” that is, Christ as the foundation of the Church. For Christ is the faith of all; and the Church is a kind of form of justice. She is the common right of all: she prays in common, works in common, is tempted in common. Indeed he who denies himself to himself is himself just, himself worthy of Christ. Therefore Paul too laid Christ as the foundation, that we might place the works of justice upon him; for faith is the foundation, and in works, if evil, there is iniquity, if good, justice.

But now let us speak of beneficence, which itself is divided into benevolence and liberality. Beneficence, then, consists of these two, so as to be perfect. For it is not enough to wish well, but one must also do well; nor again is it enough to do well unless it proceeds from a good source, that is, from a good will: “For God loves a cheerful giver.” For if you do it unwillingly, what reward have you? Hence the Apostle says generally: “If I do this willingly, I have a reward; if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me.” In the Gospel too we have received many lessons of just liberality. It is fine, then, to wish well and to give with the purpose of benefiting, not of harming. For if you think you should give to a profligate for the outpouring of his profligacy, or to an adulterer for the price of adultery, that is not beneficence, where there is no benevolence. For that is to harm another, not to benefit him, if you give to one who conspires against his fatherland, who wants to gather desperate men at your expense to attack the Church. That is not approvable liberality, if you help one who wages a grievous lawsuit against a widow and orphans or tries to snatch their possessions by some force. Largess is not approved if one extorts from one person what is given to another; if one gains unjustly and thinks it should be dispensed justly; unless perhaps, like Zacchaeus, you first restore fourfold to the one you have defrauded and make up for the vices of paganism by zeal of faith and the work of a believer. Let your liberality, then, have a foundation. This is asked first: that you give in good faith and commit no fraud in your offerings; that you do not say you give more and give less. For what need is there to say it? A fraud in a promise is a fraud; it is in your power to give what you wish. Fraud dissolves the foundation, and the work collapses. Did Peter boil with such indignation that he wanted Ananias or his wife to be destroyed? No; but he did not want the rest to perish by their example. Nor is liberality perfect if you give for boasting rather than for mercy. Your disposition gives its name to your work: as it proceeds from you, so it is valued. You see what a moral judge you have. He consults you on how to receive your work; he first questions your mind. “Let not your left hand know,” he says, “what your right hand does.” He is not speaking of the body; but let not even one of one mind with you, your brother, know what you do, lest while you seek here the reward of boasting you lose there the fruit of recompense. But that liberality is perfect where one covers one’s work in silence and secretly helps the needs of each; whom the mouth of the poor praises, and not his own lips. Then perfect liberality is commended by faith, cause, place, and time; so that you work first for those of the household of faith. It is a great fault if, with your knowledge, a believer is in want; if you know that he is without means, that he bears hunger and suffers hardship, especially one who is ashamed to be in want; if he has fallen into trouble through the captivity of his kin or through false accusation, and you do not help; if he is in prison and, a just man, is tormented by penalties and punishments for some debt (for though mercy is owed to all, yet more to the just); if in the time of his affliction he obtains nothing from you; if in the time of danger, when he is being dragged to death, your money weighs more with you than the life of one about to die. Of this Job said beautifully: “Let the blessing of him who was about to perish come upon me.” God indeed is no respecter of persons, for he knows all things. We owe mercy to all; but because many seek it by fraud and feign hardship, therefore where the cause is manifest, the person is known, and the time presses, mercy ought to pour itself out more generously. For the Lord is not avaricious, to seek the most. Blessed indeed is he who leaves all and follows him; but blessed too is he who does what he can with what he has, from his heart. Indeed he preferred the two mites of that widow to the gifts of the rich, because she gave all she had, while they gave a small part of their abundance. It is the disposition, then, that makes your gift rich or poor and sets the price on things. But the Lord does not want wealth poured out all at once, but dispensed; unless perhaps, as Elisha killed his oxen and fed the poor with what he had, so as to be held by no household care and, leaving all, to give himself to the prophetic discipline. That liberality also must be approved, that you do not despise your next of kin if you know them to be in want. For it is better that you yourself help your own, who are ashamed to ask means from others or to seek help for their need from anyone; yet not so that they wish to become richer by what you can give to the needy; for the cause takes precedence, not favour. For you have not dedicated yourself to the Lord in order to make your own rich, but to gain for yourself eternal life by the fruit of good work and to redeem your sins by the price of mercy. Do they think they ask little? They seek your price; they strive to take away the fruit of your life, and they think they act justly. And one accuses you because you have not made him rich, when he wants to cheat you of the reward of eternal life. We have put forward advice; let us seek authority. First, no one ought to be ashamed if he becomes poor from rich while giving to the poor; for Christ became poor though he was rich, that he might enrich all by his poverty. He gave a rule for us to follow, so that there is a good account of an emptied patrimony if one has driven away the hunger of the poor and relieved their need. Hence the Apostle says: “And in this I give advice; for this is useful for you,” that you imitate Christ. Advice is given to the good; reproof restrains the erring. Indeed he speaks as to the good: “Since you began a year ago not only to do but also to will.” Both belong to the perfect, not a part. So he teaches that neither liberality without benevolence nor benevolence without liberality is perfect. Hence he urges them to perfection, saying: “Now therefore complete the doing also, so that as there is readiness in you to will it, so there may be also to complete it out of what you have. For if the will is ready, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. For it is not that others should have relief and you distress, but by equality at this time your abundance should supply their want, so that their abundance may also supply your want, that there may be equality; as it is written: He who had much did not have too much, and he who had little did not have too little.” We notice how he included benevolence, liberality, measure, fruit, and persons. He gave measure, because he was giving advice to the imperfect; for only the imperfect suffer distress. But if someone set in some priesthood or ministry, not wishing to burden the Church, does not give all he has, but does with honour as much as suffices for his office, he does not seem to me imperfect. And I think that here he spoke of distress not of mind but of household property. Of persons I think it is said: “that your abundance may supply their want, and their abundance your want”; that is, that the people’s abundance in good works may relieve the others’ want of sustenance, and their spiritual abundance may help the want of spiritual merit in the people and confer grace on it. Hence he set out a most excellent example: “He who had much did not have too much, and he who had little did not have too little.” This example rightly urges all men to the duty of mercy; for he who possesses very much gold does not have too much, because whatever is in this world is nothing; and he who has little does not have too little, because what he loses is nothing. That is a matter without loss which is wholly loss. There is also this good understanding: he who has very much, if he does not give, does not have abundance; for however much he acquires, he who covets more is always in want; and he who has little does not have too little, because it is not much that feeds a poor man. Likewise, then, that poor man too who gives spiritual things in return for money, even if he has very much grace, does not have too much; for grace does not burden the mind but lightens it. It can also be understood thus: you do not have too much, O man. For how much is it that you have received, even if it is much to you? John, than whom no one is greater among those born of women, was yet less than he who is least in the kingdom of heaven. Or thus: the grace of God does not abound bodily, because it is spiritual. Who can comprehend its greatness or breadth, which he does not see? Faith, if it is like a grain of mustard seed, can move mountains, and it is not given to you beyond a grain of mustard seed. If grace abounds in you, is it not to be feared that your mind may begin to be exalted by so great a gift? For there are many who have fallen more grievously from the height of their heart than if they had had no grace from the Lord at all. And he who has little does not have too little, because it is not bodily, so as to be divided; and what seems little to its possessor is very much to one who lacks nothing. In giving we must also consider age and weakness, sometimes also the bashfulness that betrays noble birth; so that you give more to the old, who can no longer earn their living by labour. Likewise bodily weakness too must be helped more readily. Then, if someone has fallen from riches into want, especially if he has lost what he had not by his own fault but by robbery, proscription, or false accusations. But perhaps someone will say: “A blind man sits in one place and is passed by, while a strong young man often receives.” True, because he creeps in by importunity. That is not judgment but weariness. For the Lord too says in the Gospel of one who had already shut his door, that if someone knocks at his door rather boldly, he rises and gives to him because of his importunity.

It is fine also to have a readier regard for one who has conferred some benefit or gift on you, if he himself has fallen into need. For what is so contrary to duty as not to return what you have received? Nor do I think it should be returned in equal measure but in a fuller one, and that the use of the benefit should be weighed, so that you help him as far as you can drive away his hardship. For not to be superior in returning a benefit to the one who conferred it is to be inferior; since he who gave first is superior in time and first in kindness. Hence in this too we must imitate the nature of the earth, which usually returns the seed it has received in greater number than it received. Therefore it is written for you: “A foolish man is like a farm, and a man lacking sense like a vineyard; if you leave him, he will be made desolate.” The wise man, then, is like a farm too, so that he restores the seeds received in greater measure, as though lent at interest. The earth, then, either brings forth fruits of its own accord or pours back and returns what was entrusted to it in a richer heap. You owe both, as by a kind of inherited use of a parent’s estate, so that you may not be left like an unfruitful field. Granted that someone could excuse himself for not giving, how can he excuse himself for not returning? Not to give to anyone is scarcely permitted; not to return is not permitted at all. Therefore Solomon says beautifully: “If you sit to dine at the table of a powerful man, understand wisely what is set before you, and put out your hand, knowing that you must prepare such things in return. But if you are insatiable, do not desire his food; for these things belong to a deceitful life.” We have written this desiring to imitate these sayings. To confer a favour is good; but he who does not know how to return one is most hard. The earth itself suggests an example of kindness. It supplies of its own accord fruits you did not sow; it returns multiplied what it has received. You may not deny money counted out to you; how may you not return a favour received? In Proverbs too you have that this returning of a favour is so greatly valued before God that even in the day of ruin it finds grace, when sins may outweigh. And why should I use other examples, when the Lord himself in the Gospel promises a richer reward to the merits of the saints and exhorts us to do good work, saying: “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, running over, will they give into your lap”? So that banquet of Solomon too is not about food but about good works. For with what do minds feast better than with good deeds? Or what else can so easily fill the minds of the just as the consciousness of good work? And what food is more pleasant than to do the will of God? The Lord said that this food alone was abundant for him, as it is written in the Gospel: “My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Let us delight in this food, of which the Prophet says: “Delight in the Lord.” In this food those delight who have grasped the higher delights with wonderful insight, who can know what that pure and intelligible delight is. Let us eat, then, the bread of wisdom and be filled with the word of God; for the life of man, made in the image of God, is not in bread alone but in every word of God. Of the cup, holy Job says expressly: “As the earth waits for rain, so did these for my words.”

It is fine, then, that we be moistened by the converse of the divine Scriptures, and that the words of God descend on us like dew. When, then, you sit at that table of the powerful one, understand who that powerful one is; and, placed in the paradise of delight and set at the banquet of wisdom, consider what is set before you. Divine Scripture is the banquet of wisdom; the individual books are individual dishes. First understand what fare the dishes hold, and then put out your hand, so that you carry out in works what you read or receive from the Lord your God and show forth in duties the grace conferred on you; like Peter and Paul, who by preaching the Gospel made a kind of return to the giver of the gift, so that each could say: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not needy; but I laboured more abundantly than all of them.” One, then, repays the fruit of a benefit received, as gold for gold, silver for silver; another repays labour; another, perhaps even more richly, returns only affection. For what if there is no means of returning? In returning a benefit the mind does more than the means, and benevolence weighs more than the ability to return the gift. For gratitude is returned in the very fact that it is felt. Great, then, is benevolence, which even if it gives nothing shows more; and though it has nothing in its patrimony, it gives to more people; and it does so without any loss to itself and with gain to all. And so benevolence stands above liberality itself. The one is richer in character than the other in gifts; for there are more who need a benefit than who abound. Benevolence is both joined to liberality, from which liberality itself proceeds, when the practice of giving follows the disposition to generosity; and it is also separate and distinct. For where liberality is lacking, benevolence remains, a kind of common parent of all, which binds and joins friendship: faithful in counsel, glad in prosperity, sad in sorrow; so that each trusts the counsel of a benevolent man more than that of a wise one; as David, though he was more prudent, yet acquiesced in the counsels of the younger Jonathan. Take benevolence away from human life, and it will be as though you took the sun from the world; for without it human life cannot exist: showing the way to a traveller, calling back one who has strayed, offering hospitality (no small virtue, of which Job boasted, saying: “The stranger did not lodge outside; my door was open to everyone who came”), giving water from flowing water, lighting a lamp from a lamp. Benevolence is in all these, like a fountain of water refreshing the thirsty, and like a light that shines also in others and does not fail those who have lit a light for others from their own. That too is the liberality of benevolence: if you hold a debtor’s bond, to tear it up and give it back without having received anything of the debt. Holy Job admonishes us by his own example that we ought to do this. For he who has does not borrow; he who has not does not free the bond. Why, then, even if you do not exact it yourself, do you keep for avaricious heirs what you can render now with the praise of benevolence and without loss of money? And to discuss it more fully: benevolence, starting first from the persons of the household, that is, from children, parents, and brothers, reaches by the degrees of relationship the circuit of cities, and, going out from paradise, has filled the world. Indeed, when God had placed a benevolent affection in man and woman, he said: “The two shall be in one flesh,” and in one spirit. Hence Eve trusted the serpent; for she who had received benevolence did not suppose that malevolence existed.

Benevolence is increased by the assembly of the Church, the fellowship of faith, the companionship of initiation, the bond of receiving grace, and the communion of the mysteries. For these too claim for themselves the names of kinship: the reverence of sons, the authority and devotion of fathers, the brotherhood of brothers. The bond of grace, then, contributes much to the increase of benevolence. Pursuits of equal virtues also help, since benevolence also produces likeness of character. Indeed Jonathan, the king’s son, imitated the gentleness of holy David, for which reason he loved him. Hence that saying too, “With the holy you will be holy,” seems to apply not only to conduct but also to benevolence. For the sons of Noah certainly lived together, and there was no harmony of character among them. Esau and Jacob too lived in their father’s house, but they disagreed. For there was no benevolence between them to make one prefer the other to himself, but rather contention to snatch the blessing first. For since the one was very hard and the other gentle, there could be no benevolence between unlike characters and conflicting pursuits. Add that holy Jacob could not put a degenerate son of his father’s house before virtue. Nothing is so sociable as justice joined with equity, which, as the equal partner and companion of benevolence, makes us love those whom we believe equal to us. Benevolence also has fortitude in itself; for since friendship proceeds from the fount of benevolence, it does not hesitate to undergo grave dangers to life for a friend: “And if evils befall me through him,” it says, “I bear them.”

Benevolence is also wont to wrest away the sword of anger. Benevolence makes the wounds of a friend more useful than the willing kisses of an enemy. Benevolence makes one out of many; for if there are many friends, they become one, in whom there is one spirit and one mind. At the same time we notice that rebukes too are welcome in friendship; they have stings but no pain. For we are pricked by censorious words, but delighted by the diligence of benevolence. In sum, the same duties are not always owed to all, nor are persons always preferred, but often causes and times are, so that one may sometimes help a neighbour more than a brother. For Solomon too says: “Better is a neighbour near than a brother living far away.” And so each often entrusts himself to the benevolence of a friend rather than to the bond of a brother. Benevolence is so strong that it often overcomes the ties of nature.

We have treated fully enough the nature and force of the honourable under the head of justice. Now let us treat of fortitude, which, as being loftier than the others, is divided into warlike and domestic matters. But the pursuit of warlike affairs seems by now foreign to our office, because we attend to the duty of the soul rather than of the body, and our practice no longer looks to arms but to the business of peace. But our forefathers, such as Joshua son of Nun, Jerubbaal, Samson, and David, won the highest glory in warlike affairs too. Fortitude, then, is indeed loftier than the others, but it is never an unaccompanied virtue; for it does not entrust itself to itself alone; otherwise fortitude without justice is the material of iniquity. For the stronger it is, the readier it is to oppress the weaker; and in warlike affairs themselves one must consider whether wars are just or unjust. David never made war unless provoked. So he had prudence as the companion of fortitude in battle. For when about to fight in single combat against Goliath, a man of huge bodily bulk, he rejected the armour with which he was to be loaded; for virtue relies on its own arms rather than on another’s coverings. Then from a distance, to strike more heavily, he killed the enemy with the blow of a stone. Afterwards he never began a war without consulting the Lord. So he was victor in all battles, ready of hand to extreme old age; and when war was undertaken against the Titans, he mixed as a warrior with the fierce ranks, eager for glory, careless of safety. But this is not the only splendid fortitude; we also count glorious the fortitude of those who through faith, by greatness of soul, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, and out of weakness were made strong; who, not girt with retinue and legions to share a common victory with many, but striving with naked virtue, won a singular triumph over the faithless. How unconquerable was Daniel, who did not fear the lions roaring at his sides! The beasts roared, and he feasted.

So the glory of fortitude lies not only in strength of body and arms, but rather in virtue of mind; and the law of virtue consists not in inflicting injury but in repelling it. For he who does not repel injury from a companion, if he can, is as much at fault as he who does it. Hence holy Moses began his trials of warlike fortitude from this point. For when he saw a Hebrew receiving injury from an Egyptian, he defended him, so that he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Solomon too says: “Rescue him who is being led to death.” It is clear to all, then, from where Tully, or even Panaetius, or Aristotle himself took this. Yet even Job, older than these two, said: “I saved the poor from the hand of the powerful, and I helped the orphan who had no helper. Let the blessing of him who was about to perish come upon me.” Is not this man most brave, who bore so bravely the attacks of the devil and conquered him by the virtue of his mind? Nor should one doubt the fortitude of him to whom the Lord says: “Gird your loins like a man; take up loftiness and power; and humble every wrongdoer.” The Apostle too says: “You have the strongest consolation.” He is brave, then, who consoles himself in some grief. And truly that is rightly called fortitude when each man conquers himself, restrains his anger, is softened and bent by no allurements, is not disturbed by adversity nor lifted up by prosperity, and is not carried round, as by a wind, by the change of various things. And what is loftier and more magnificent than to exercise the mind, to afflict the flesh and bring it into servitude, so that it obeys command, complies with counsel, and in undertaking labours tirelessly carries out the purpose and will of the mind? This, then, is the first force of fortitude; for fortitude of mind is seen in two kinds: first, that it holds the external things of the body as of least account and thinks them superfluous, to be despised rather than sought; second, that it pursues with a splendid intention of mind, to the point of affection, the highest things, all those things in which virtue and that πρέπον (the seemly) are discerned. For what is so splendid as to form your mind so that you place neither riches nor pleasures nor honours among the greatest things, nor wear out all your zeal on them? When you are so disposed in mind, you must think that the honourable and seemly is to be preferred, and so direct your mind to it that whatever happens by which minds are usually broken—loss of patrimony, diminution of honour, the disparagement of unbelievers—you do not feel it, as being above it. Then, that the dangers to life itself, undertaken for justice, do not move you. This is true fortitude, which Christ’s athlete has, who is not crowned unless he has competed lawfully. Or does the precept of fortitude seem small to you: “Tribulation works patience, patience proof, and proof hope”? See how many contests, and one crown! That precept is given only by one who was strengthened in Christ Jesus, whose flesh had no rest: affliction on every side, fights without, fears within. And though he was placed in dangers, in very many labours, in prisons, in deaths, yet he was not broken in mind but fought on, so that he became more powerful through his weaknesses. Consider, then, how he teaches that those who come to the offices of the Church ought to have contempt for human things: “If, then, you have died with Christ from the elements of this world, why do you still, as though living, make decrees about this world? Do not touch, do not handle, do not taste—things which all perish in the very using.” And below: “If, then, you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, not those on earth.” And again: “Put to death, then, your members which are on earth.” And these things are still for all the faithful; but to you, son, he urges contempt of riches and the avoiding of profane and old wives’ tales, permitting nothing but what exercises you in piety; for bodily exercise is of no use for anything, but piety is useful for all things. Let piety, then, exercise you in justice, continence, and meekness, so that you flee youthful works and, strengthened and rooted in grace, undergo the good fight of faith; do not entangle yourself in secular business, since you serve as a soldier of God. For if he who serves the emperor as a soldier is forbidden by human laws from taking up lawsuits, from conducting legal business, and from selling merchandise, how much more ought he who serves in the warfare of faith to abstain from all practice of trade, content with the produce of his little field, if he has one; if he has not, with the produce of his stipend! For he is a good witness who says: “I was young, and I have grown old, and I have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread.” For that is tranquillity and temperance of mind which is neither seized by the zeal of acquiring nor tormented by the fear of want.

It is that too which is called freedom of the mind from anxieties, so that we are neither softer in griefs nor more elated in prosperity. And if those who urge some men to take up public affairs give these precepts, how much more ought we, who are called to the office of the Church, to do such things as please God, so that the power of Christ may shine forth in us and we may so be approved by our emperor that our members may be arms of justice: not carnal arms in which sin reigns, but arms strong for God by which sin is destroyed; let our flesh die, that in it all fault may die; and, as living from the dead, let us rise to new works and character! These are the services of fortitude, full of honourable and seemly duty. But since in all we do we seek not only what is honourable but also what is possible, lest we attempt something we cannot carry out—hence the Lord wants us in time of persecution to withdraw from city to city, or rather, to use his very word, to flee; lest someone, while desiring the glory of martyrdom, rashly offer himself to dangers which perhaps a weaker flesh or a slacker mind could not bear and endure.

Nor again ought anyone through cowardice to yield and desert the faith from fear of danger. For this reason the mind must be prepared, the understanding exercised and steadied to constancy, so that the mind cannot be disturbed by any terrors, broken by any troubles, or made to yield by any tortures. These are indeed hard to bear; but since all tortures are overcome by the fear of greater tortures, if you strengthen your mind by counsel and think you must not depart from reason, and set before yourself the fear of divine judgment and the torments of perpetual punishment, you can take on endurance of mind. This, then, belongs to diligence, that one so prepare oneself; and that belongs to natural talent, if one can by vigour of mind foresee what is to come, place before one’s eyes, as it were, what may happen, and determine what one ought to do if it should so happen; and sometimes turn over two or three things at once in one’s mind, which one conjectures may happen singly or together, and arrange for each or for them combined the actions one understands will be useful. It belongs, then, to a brave man not to pretend not to see when something threatens, but to look ahead, to explore as from a watchtower of the mind, and to meet future things with provident thought, lest he say afterwards: “I fell into these things because I did not think they could happen.” Indeed, unless adversities are explored beforehand, they quickly seize us. As in war an unexpected enemy is hardly withstood, and if he finds men unprepared he easily overwhelms them, so unexplored evils break the mind more. In these two things, then, lies that excellence of mind: first, that your mind, exercised by good thoughts, may see with a pure heart what is true and honourable—“for blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”—and judge that only what is honourable is good; then, that it be disturbed by no occupations and tossed by no desires. Nor does anyone do this easily. For what is so difficult as to look down, as from a citadel of wisdom, on riches and all the other things that seem great and lofty to most people? Then to confirm your judgment by steady reason, and to despise as of no profit what you have judged light? Then, if anything adverse happens, and it is thought grievous and bitter, to bear it so as to think nothing has happened contrary to nature, since you read: “Naked I was born, naked I shall go out. What the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away”—and he had lost both his children and his means. And keep in all things the character of the wise and just man, as he kept it who said: “As it pleased the Lord, so it was done; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And below: “You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not bear evil things?”

Fortitude of mind, then, is not a small thing nor separated from the others, since it wages war together with the virtues; rather it alone defends the ornaments of all the virtues and guards their judgments, and it contends in implacable battle against all vices: unconquered against labours, brave against dangers, stiffer against pleasures, hard against allurements, to which it does not know how to lend an ear nor (as the saying is) to bid good day; it neglects money and flees avarice as a kind of stain that makes virtue effeminate. For nothing is so contrary to fortitude as to be conquered by gain. Often, when the enemy has been beaten and the adversaries’ line turned to flight, the fighter, while he is caught by the spoils of the slain, has fallen pitiably among the very men he laid low; and legions, cast down from their triumphs while they are busy with the spoils, have called back upon themselves the enemy who had fled. Let fortitude, then, repel and crush so monstrous a plague, and let it not be tempted by desires nor broken by fear; for virtue is consistent with itself, so as to pursue bravely all vices as the poisons of virtue: let it drive off anger as if with weapons, since anger takes away counsel, and shun it like a sickness. Let it also beware of the appetite for glory, which has often done harm when sought too immoderately, and always when seized. Which of these things was lacking to holy Job in virtue, or crept in upon him as a vice? How he bore the hardship of sickness, cold, and hunger! How he despised the danger to his life! Were his riches, from which so much flowed to the needy, heaped up by plunder? Did his wealth stir up avarice, or the pursuits and desires of pleasure? Did the injurious contention of the three kings, or the insults of the slaves, drive him to anger? Did glory exalt him like a light man, he who called down grievous things on himself if he had ever concealed even an involuntary fault, or had feared the multitude of the people so as not to declare it in the sight of all? For the virtues do not agree with the vices, but are consistent with themselves. Who, then, is as brave as holy Job? Who can be judged second to him, who scarcely finds an equal?

But perhaps warlike glory holds some so fixed that they think fortitude is only that of battle, and that I have turned aside to these things because that was lacking to our people. How brave was Joshua son of Nun, who in one battle laid low five captured kings with their peoples! Then, when battle was rising against the Gibeonites and he feared that night would hinder the victory, by greatness of mind and faith he cried out: “Let the sun stand still”; and it stood still until the victory was complete. Gideon with three hundred men brought back a triumph over a huge people and a fierce enemy. Jonathan as a youth did valiantly in a great battle. What shall I say of the Maccabees? But first I shall speak of the people of the fathers, who, though they were ready to fight for the temple of God and for their lawful rights, when they were attacked by the enemy’s guile on the sabbath day, preferred to offer their naked bodies to wounds rather than fight back, so as not to violate the sabbath. So they all offered themselves gladly to death. But the Maccabees, considering that by this example the whole nation could perish, avenged the slaughter of their innocent brothers even on the sabbath, when they themselves were challenged to war. Hence afterwards King Antiochus, provoked, kindled war through his generals Lysias, Nicanor, and Gorgias, and was so crushed with his Eastern and Assyrian forces that forty-eight thousand were laid low in the middle of the plain by three thousand. Consider the valour of the leader Judas Maccabaeus from one of his soldiers. For Eleazar, seeing an elephant towering above the others and clad in royal armour, thought that the king was on it; he ran swiftly into the middle of the legion, threw away his shield, and cut his way with both hands until he reached the beast, went in under it, and with his sword thrust upward killed it. So the beast in falling crushed Eleazar, and thus he died. How great, then, was his courage! First, that he did not fear death; then, that surrounded by the legions of the enemy he rushed into the packed foe, pierced the middle of the column, and, fiercer for despising death, threw away his shield and with both hands went under the bulk of the wounded beast and bore it; then went beneath it to strike a fuller blow; and, enclosed rather than crushed by its fall, he was buried in his own triumph. Nor was the man deceived in his judgment, though the royal trappings deceived him; for the enemy, transfixed by so great a spectacle of courage, did not dare to rush upon him, unarmed and engaged as he was, and after the fall of the beast they were so terrified that they all thought themselves unequal to the courage of one man. Indeed King Antiochus, son of Lysias, who had come with a hundred and twenty thousand armed men and thirty-two elephants, so that from the rising of the sun the splendour of arms flashed from each beast, like mountains, as if with burning torches, was terrified by the fortitude of one man and asked for peace. So Eleazar left peace as the heir of his courage. But let these things belong to triumphs.

But since fortitude is proved not only in prosperity but also in adversity, let us now look at the death of Judas Maccabaeus. After defeating Nicanor, the general of King Demetrius, and growing more secure, he engaged in war against twenty thousand of the king’s army with nine hundred men; and when they wanted to withdraw so as not to be overwhelmed by numbers, he urged a glorious death rather than a shameful flight: “Let us not leave,” he said, “a charge against our glory.” So when battle was joined and they fought from the first dawn of day to evening, he attacked the right wing, where he had noticed the strongest band of the enemy, and easily routed it. But while he pursued the fugitives, he exposed himself to a wound from behind; and so he found a place of death more glorious than triumphs. Why should I add his brother Jonathan, who, fighting with a small band against the royal armies, deserted by his own men and left with only two, renewed the battle, turned back the enemy, and called back his fleeing men to share in the triumph? You have warlike fortitude, in which there is no small form of the honourable and seemly, in that it prefers death to slavery and disgrace. But what shall I say of the sufferings of the martyrs? Not to wander too far: the Maccabean boys won no smaller triumphs over the proud King Antiochus than their own fathers. For those conquered armed, these without arms. The band of seven boys stood unconquered, girt about with royal legions: tortures failed, torturers yielded, the martyrs did not fail. One, stripped of the skin of his head, had changed his appearance but increased his courage. Another, commanded to put out his tongue to be cut off, answered: “The Lord does not hear only those who speak, he who heard Moses when he was silent. He hears the silent thoughts of his own more than the voices of all. Do you fear the scourge of the tongue, and not fear the scourge of blood? Blood too has its voice, by which it cries to God, as it cried in Abel.” What shall I say of the mother, who gladly watched the deaths of her sons as so many trophies, and was delighted by the voices of the dying as by the songs of psalm-singers, seeing in her sons the most beautiful harp of her womb, and a harmony of devotion sweeter than any measure of the lyre? What shall I say of the two-year-olds, who received the palm of victory before they received the sense of nature? What of holy Agnes, who, placed in danger of the two greatest things, chastity and life, protected her chastity and exchanged life for immortality? Let us not pass over holy Lawrence either, who, when he saw his bishop Xystus being led to martyrdom, began to weep, not for his passion but for his own being left behind. So he began to address him in these words: “Where are you going without your son, father? Where are you hastening, holy priest, without your deacon? You never used to offer sacrifice without a minister. What then has displeased you in me, father? Have you found me degenerate? Test, then, whether you have chosen a fit minister. Do you refuse a share in your blood to him to whom you entrusted the consecration of the Lord’s blood and fellowship in completing the sacraments? Take care lest your judgment be endangered while your fortitude is praised. The rejection of the disciple is a loss to the master. What of the fact that illustrious and outstanding men conquer in the contests of their disciples rather than in their own? Indeed Abraham offered his son, Peter sent Stephen before him. You too, father, show your virtue in your son; offer him whom you have taught, so that, secure in your judgment, you may come to the crown in noble company.” Then Xystus said: “I am not leaving or deserting you, son; but greater contests are owed to you. We, as old men, take on the course of an easier fight; a more glorious triumph over the tyrant awaits you as a young man. Soon you will come; stop weeping; after three days you will follow me. This interval befits a priest and a Levite. It was not for you to conquer under your master, as though you sought a helper. Why do you seek to share my passion? I leave you its whole inheritance. Why do you seek my presence? Let weak disciples go before their master; let strong ones follow, so that they may conquer without a master, since they no longer need a master. So Elijah too left Elisha. To you, then, I commit the succession of our virtue.” Such was the contest, worthy indeed for a priest and a minister to contend over: which should suffer first for the name of Christ. In tragic plays, they say, great applause was roused in the theatre when Pylades said he was Orestes, and Orestes, as he was, asserted that he was Orestes: the one so as to be killed for Orestes, Orestes so as not to let Pylades be killed for him. But they were not allowed to live, because each was guilty of parricide: one as the doer, the other as helper. Here no one urged holy Lawrence to this but the love of devotion; yet he too, after three days, when, having mocked the tyrant, he was placed on the gridiron and was being burned, said: “It is roasted; turn it and eat.” So by the virtue of his mind he conquered the nature of fire.

I think one must also take care lest some, led by too great a desire for glory, behave too insolently toward the authorities, and so stir up the minds of the pagans, already turned against us, to the pursuit of persecution, and inflame them to anger. Even if they themselves can persevere and overcome the tortures, how many do they cause to perish? We must also take care not to open our ear to flatterers; for to be softened by flattery seems not only to be no part of fortitude but even to belong to cowardice.

Since we have spoken of three virtues, it remains to speak of the fourth, which is called temperance and modesty, in which above all tranquillity of mind, the pursuit of gentleness, the grace of moderation, care for the honourable, and regard for the seemly are seen and sought. A certain order of life, then, must be kept by us, so that the first foundations are laid from modesty, which is the companion and friend of placidity of mind; it shuns wantonness, is foreign to all luxury, loves sobriety, fosters virtue, and seeks that seemliness. Let the choice of company follow, so that we attach ourselves to all the most approved elders. For as the company of equals is sweeter, so that of elders is safer, which by a kind of teaching and guidance of life colours the character of youths and dyes it, as it were, with the purple of integrity. For if those who do not know the country are eager to begin a journey with men skilled in the roads, how much more ought youths to undertake the new journey of life with old men, so that they may be less able to go astray and turn aside from the true path of virtue! For nothing is finer than to have the same men as teachers and witnesses of one’s life. In every act one must also ask what befits persons, times, and ages, and what suits the talents of each. For often what becomes one does not become another. One thing is fit for a young man, another for an old; one thing in dangers, another in prosperity. David danced before the ark of the Lord; Samuel did not dance; nor was the former blamed for it, but the latter was rather praised. David changed his countenance before the king whose name was Achish; but if he had done this when free from fear of being recognized, he could not have escaped the reproach of levity. Saul too, surrounded by a band of prophets, himself prophesied too; and of him alone, as unworthy, it was recorded: “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

Let each one, then, know his own talent and apply himself to what he has chosen as suited to him. So let him first consider what he should follow. Let him know his good qualities but also recognize his faults, and show himself an impartial judge of himself, so that he may attend to the good and avoid the faults. One is more fit for distinct reading, another more pleasing in the psalm, another more careful in exorcizing those who suffer from an evil spirit, another is thought more suitable for the sacristy. Let the priest consider all these things and assign to each the duty that suits him. For what each one’s talent leads him to, or what duty becomes him, is fulfilled with greater grace. But while this is difficult in all of life, it is most difficult in our calling. For each likes to follow the life of his parents. Indeed most are drawn to military service whose parents served, others to various other occupations. But in the ecclesiastical office you will find nothing rarer than one who follows his father’s calling; either because its heavy conduct deters, or because abstinence is harder at a slippery age, or because the life seems too obscure to eager youth; and so they turn to pursuits they think will win more applause. For most prefer present things to future. They serve present things; we serve as soldiers for the future. Hence the more excellent the cause, the more attentive must be the care.

Let us, then, keep modesty, and that moderation which raises the adornment of the whole of life. For it is no small thing to keep measure in each thing and to assign order, in which that which is called the seemly truly shines forth; and it is so joined with the honourable that it cannot be separated. For what is seemly is honourable, and what is honourable is seemly; so that there is rather a distinction in speech than a difference in virtue. That they differ can be understood, but cannot be explained. And to try to draw out some distinction: the honourable is like good health and a kind of soundness of body, while the seemly is like comeliness and beauty. As, then, beauty seems to excel above soundness and health, and yet cannot exist without them nor be separated from them in any way—since unless there is good health there cannot be beauty and comeliness—so the honourable contains that seemliness in itself, so that the seemly seems to proceed from it and cannot exist without it. The honourable, then, is like the soundness of our whole work and action, and the seemly is like its appearance, which, mingled with the honourable, is distinguished only in thought. For though it seems to excel in something, yet it is in the root of the honourable, though as its chief flower, so that without it it withers, and in it it flowers. For what is the honourable but that which flees shame as death? And what is dishonourable but what brings dryness and death? So when the substance of virtue is green, that seemliness springs forth like a flower, because the root is sound; but from a faulty root of our purpose nothing sprouts. You have this somewhat more expressly in our writings. For David says: “The Lord has reigned, he has put on comeliness.” And the Apostle says: “As in the day, walk becomingly.” What the Greeks say, εὐσχημόνως, properly means “in good bearing, in good appearance.” So God, when he made the first man, formed him with a good condition and a good arrangement of members and gave him the best appearance. He had not given remission of sins; but afterwards he who had come in the form of a servant and in the likeness of man renewed him by the Spirit, poured grace into him, and took on the comeliness of human redemption. And so the Prophet said: “The Lord has reigned, he has put on comeliness.” Then elsewhere he says: “Praise befits you, O God, in Zion”; that is to say: it is honourable that we fear you, love you, pray to you, honour you; for it is written: “Let all your things be done becomingly.” But we can also fear, love, entreat, and honour a man; a hymn is said specially to God. This, as more excellent than the rest, is to be believed seemly, which we offer to God. It is fitting, too, for a woman to pray in becoming dress; but it especially becomes her to pray veiled, and to pray promising chastity with good conduct.

The seemly, then, which stands out, has a twofold division. For there is a seemliness that is, as it were, general, which is spread through the whole of the honourable and is seen, as it were, in the whole body; and there is also a special one, which shines out in some part. The general is such as if one had an even form and the whole of the honourable harmonizing in all one’s action, when all one’s life agrees with itself and is discordant in nothing; the special, when one has some act standing out among one’s virtues. At the same time notice that it is seemly to live according to nature, to pass one’s life according to nature, and that what is contrary to nature is shameful. For the Apostle says, as though asking: “Is it seemly for a woman to pray to God unveiled? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him?” since it is contrary to nature. And again he says: “But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her.” For it is according to nature, since the hair is given for a veil; for this is a natural veil. Nature itself, then, dispenses to us our character and appearance, which we ought to keep. Would that we could also guard its innocence, and not change by our wickedness what we have received! You have this general seemliness, because God made the beauty of this world. You have it also in its parts, because when God made light and distinguished day from night, when he founded heaven, when he separated land and seas, when he set the sun and moon and stars to shine upon the earth, he approved each one. So this seemliness, which shone in each part of the world, shone forth in the whole, as Wisdom proves, saying: “I was the one in whom he delighted, when he rejoiced at the completion of the world.” Likewise, then, in the structure of the human body the part of each member is pleasing; but the fit arrangement of the members together delights more, because they seem so to suit and agree with one another.

If anyone, then, keeps the evenness of his whole life and the measures of individual actions, and keeps order too, consistency of words and deeds, and moderation, in his life that seemliness excels and shines as in a kind of mirror. Let pleasant speech be added, however, so as to win the goodwill of hearers, and let him show himself agreeable to friends, to fellow citizens, or, if possible, to all. Let him show himself neither a flatterer nor one to be flattered by anyone; for the one belongs to cunning, the other to vanity. Let him not despise what each person, and especially the best man, thinks of him; for in this way he learns to show reverence to the good. For to neglect the judgments of the good belongs either to arrogance or to dissoluteness, of which the one is ascribed to pride, the other to negligence. Let him also beware of the movements of his own mind; for he must observe and watch himself, and as he must be on guard against himself, so he must also protect himself. For there are movements in which there is that appetite which bursts forth as with a kind of impulse; hence in Greek it is called ὁρμή, because it suddenly carries one away with a kind of force. There is no small force of mind and nature in these. Yet this force is twofold: one placed in appetite, the other in reason, which reins in appetite, makes it obedient to itself, leads it where it wishes, and, as by diligent teaching, instructs it what should be done and what avoided, so that it obeys a good tamer. For we must be careful not to do anything rashly or carelessly, or anything at all for which we cannot give a probable reason. For the reason for our action, even if it is not given to all, is examined by all. Nor do we have anything by which we can excuse ourselves. For though there is a certain force of nature in every appetite, yet the same appetite is subject to reason by the law of nature itself and obeys it. Hence it belongs to a good watchman so to look ahead in his mind that appetite neither runs ahead of reason nor forsakes it; lest by running ahead it disturb and shut it out, and by forsaking it abandon it. Disturbance takes away constancy; abandonment betrays cowardice and accuses sloth. For when the mind is disturbed, appetite spreads itself wider and further and, as with a wild impulse, does not accept the reins of reason nor feel any guidance of the charioteer by which it could be turned back. Hence often not only is the mind agitated and reason lost, but the face too is inflamed with anger or lust; it grows pale with fear, cannot contain itself for pleasure, and exults with excessive joy. When these things happen, that natural censorship and gravity of character is cast off; nor can that constancy be kept which alone, in conducting affairs and counsels, can keep its authority and hold to what is seemly. A graver appetite arises from excessive indignation, which the pain of an injury received usually kindles. On this the precepts of the psalm which we set in our preface instruct us sufficiently. And it happened beautifully that, as we were about to write on duties, we used in our preface a statement that itself belongs to the teaching of duty. But since above, as was fitting, we touched only briefly on how each one can take care not to be roused by an injury received, fearing that the preface would become too long, I think we must now discuss it more fully. For the place is fitting to speak, among the parts of temperance, of how anger is to be repressed.

We wish to show from the divine Scriptures, if we can, that there are three kinds of men who receive injury. One is of those whom the sinner insults, reviles, and tramples upon. Because justice is lacking in them, shame grows and pain increases. Very many of my own order, of my own number, are like these. For if anyone does me injury, weak as I am, perhaps, weak though I am, I forgive the injury done me. If he brings a charge against me, I am not so great as to be content with my conscience, even though I know myself free of what he alleges; but, as a weak man, I want to wash off the mark on my honest name. So I demand eye for eye and tooth for tooth, and repay abuse with abuse. But if I am one who is making progress, though not yet perfect, I do not return the insult; even if he pours in abuse and floods my ears with insults, I am silent and answer nothing. But if I am perfect (I speak for the sake of example, for in truth I am weak), if, then, I am perfect, I bless the one who curses me, as Paul too blessed, who says: “We are cursed, and we bless.” For he had heard the one who said: “Love your enemies, pray for those who slander and persecute you.” So Paul suffered persecution and endured it, because he conquered and softened human feeling for the sake of the reward set before him, that he might become a son if he loved his enemy. Yet we can show that holy David too was not unequal to Paul in this kind of virtue. First, when Shimei cursed him and brought charges against him, he was silent and humbled himself, and kept silent from his goods, that is, from the consciousness of his good works; then he even sought to be cursed, because by that cursing he gained divine mercy. See how he kept humility, justice, and prudence for earning grace from the Lord. First he said: “He curses me because the Lord told him to curse.” You have humility; for he thought that what is commanded by God should be borne calmly, like a little slave. Second, he said: “See, my son, who came out of my body, seeks my life.” You have justice; for if we suffer worse things from our own, why do we take it ill when things are inflicted by strangers? Third, he says: “Let him alone, that he may curse; for the Lord has told him, that he may see my humiliation, and the Lord may repay me for this cursing.” And not only did he bear him when he reviled, but he also left him unharmed when he threw stones and followed him; indeed after the victory he gladly pardoned him when he asked pardon. I have inserted this to teach that holy David, in the spirit of the Gospel, was not only not offended at the one who reviled him but even grateful to him, and delighted rather than exasperated by the injuries, for which he thought a reward would be paid to him. Yet though perfect, he still sought more perfect things. He grew hot with the pain of injury, as a man; but he conquered as a good soldier, he endured as a strong athlete. The end of patience is the expectation of the promises, and so he said: “Make known to me, Lord, my end and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what is lacking to me.” He seeks that end of the heavenly promises, or that time when each will rise in his own order: “Christ the firstfruits, then those who are Christ’s, who believed in his coming, then the end.” For when the kingdom has been handed over to God and the Father, and all powers abolished, as the Apostle said, perfection begins. Here, then, is hindrance, here is weakness even of the perfect; there, full perfection. And so he asks for those days of eternal life which are, not those which pass away, that he may know what is lacking to him, what is the land of promise bearing perpetual fruits, what the first mansion with the Father, what the second, what the third, in which each will rest according to the measure of his merits. Those things, then, are to be sought by us in which there is perfection, in which there is truth. Here is the shadow, here the image, there the truth: the shadow in the Law, the image in the Gospel, the truth in heavenly things. Formerly a lamb was offered, a calf was offered; now Christ is offered; but he is offered as man, as receiving suffering; and he offers himself as priest, to forgive our sins: here in an image, there in truth, where he intercedes for us with the Father as an advocate. Here, then, we walk in an image, we see in an image; there face to face, where there is full perfection; for all perfection is in the truth.

So while we are here, let us keep the image, that there we may come to the truth. Let there be in us the image of justice, the image of wisdom; for we shall come to that day and shall be judged according to the image. Let the adversary not find in you his image, not rage, not fury; for in these is the image of wickedness. For the adversary, the devil, like a roaring lion, seeks whom he may kill, whom he may devour. Let him not find greed for gold, nor heaps of silver, nor the idols of vices, lest he take from you the voice of freedom. For that is the voice of freedom, that you say: “The prince of this world will come, and in me he will find nothing.” So if you are sure that he will find nothing in you when he comes to search, you will say what the patriarch Jacob said to Laban: “Recognize whether anything of yours is with me.” Rightly blessed was Jacob, with whom Laban could find nothing of his own! For Rachel had hidden his golden and silver images of gods. So if wisdom, if faith, if contempt of the world, if your grace hides all faithlessness, you will be blessed; because you do not look to vanities and false follies. Is it a small thing to take away the adversary’s voice, so that he cannot have the authority to accuse you? So he who does not look to vanities is not troubled; but he who looks to them is troubled, and most vainly. For what is gathering riches but vain, since seeking perishable things is vain enough? And when you have gathered them, how do you know whether you will be allowed to possess them? Is it not vain that a merchant should travel night and day to amass heaps of treasure, gather goods, be troubled about the price lest perhaps he sell for less than he bought, hunt out the prices of places, and suddenly either rouse robbers against himself by the envy of his famous trade, or, not waiting for calmer winds, impatient of delay while he seeks gain, fall into shipwreck? Or is not he too troubled in vain who amasses with the greatest labour what he does not know to which heir he will leave? Often what the miser gathered with the greatest anxiety a luxurious heir tears apart with headlong squandering; and a shameful glutton, blind to the present, improvident of the future, swallows up as in a whirlpool what was long sought. Often too the hoped-for successor incurs envy for the inheritance won and, by a swift death, passes on to strangers the gains of the succession he entered. Why, then, do you weave in vain a spider’s web, which is empty and fruitless, and hang up like nets the useless abundance of riches? Even if they flow in, they profit nothing; rather they strip you of the image of God and clothe you with the image of the earthly. If anyone has the image of a tyrant, is he not liable to condemnation? You lay aside the image of the eternal emperor and set up in yourself the image of death. Cast out rather from the city of your soul the image of the devil, and raise up the image of Christ. Let this shine in you, in your city, that is, let it shine forth in your soul, which blots out the images of vices. Of these David says: “Lord, in your city you will bring their images to nothing.” For when the Lord has painted Jerusalem after his own image, then every image of the adversaries is destroyed.

But if by the Lord’s Gospel even the people itself has been formed and instructed to despise riches, how much more ought you Levites not to be held by earthly desires, whose portion is God? For when the earthly possession was being divided by Moses among the people of the fathers, the Lord excepted the Levites from sharing in the earthly possession, because he himself would be the measuring-line of their inheritance. Hence David says: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.” Indeed “Levite” means “he is mine” or “he is for me.” Great, then, is his office, that the Lord says of him: “He is mine”; or as he said to Peter about the stater found in the fish’s mouth: “You shall give it to them for me and for you.” Hence the Apostle too, having said that a bishop ought to be sober, chaste, orderly, hospitable, apt to teach, not avaricious, not quarrelsome, ruling his house well, added: “Deacons likewise must be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not pursuing shameful gain, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let them also be proved first, and so let them minister, having no charge against them.” We notice how much is required in us: that the minister of the Lord abstain from wine, that he be supported by the good testimony not only of the faithful but also of those outside. For it is fitting that public opinion be the witness of our acts and works, lest the office be disparaged; so that he who sees a minister of the altar adorned with fitting virtues may praise their author and revere the Lord who has such servants. For the praise of the Lord is where there is a clean possession and a blameless discipline of the household. As for chastity, what shall I say, when only one union, and not a repeated one, is permitted? So in marriage itself the law is not to repeat marriage, nor to enter into union with a second wife. Many think it strange that a marriage repeated even before baptism should create impediments to election to office and to the privilege of ordination, when even sins are not usually a hindrance if they have been remitted by the sacrament of the washing. But we must understand that by baptism guilt can be remitted, but law cannot be abolished. In marriage there is not guilt but law. What belongs to guilt, then, is released in baptism; what belongs to law in marriage is not dissolved. And how can one be an exhorter to widowhood who has himself frequented marriages? And you know that the ministry must be kept unoffending and unspotted and not violated by any conjugal intercourse, you who have received the grace of the sacred ministry whole in body, of uncorrupted modesty, strangers even to conjugal union itself? I have not passed this over, because in many more out-of-the-way places men have begotten children while they exercised the ministry or even the priesthood; and they defend it as by ancient custom, when the sacrifice was offered at intervals of days; and yet even the people was purified for two or three days, that it might come pure to the sacrifice, as we read in the Old Testament; and they washed their garments. If there was such observance in the figure, how much in the truth? Learn, priest and Levite, what it is to wash your garments, so that you may present a clean body for celebrating the sacraments. If the people was forbidden to approach its victim without washing its garments, do you, unwashed in mind and body alike, dare to make supplication for others, dare to minister to others? The duty of the Levites is no small one, of whom the Lord says: “Behold, I choose the Levites from the midst of the sons of Israel in place of every firstborn that opens the womb among the sons of Israel; these shall be their ransom, and the Levites shall be mine. For I sanctified to myself the firstborn in the land of Egypt.” We know that the Levites are not counted among the rest but are preferred to all, being chosen out of all and sanctified, like the firstborn of fruits and the firstfruits that are assigned to the Lord, in which is the paying of vows and the redemption of sins. “You shall not take them,” he says, “among the sons of Israel; but you shall appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of witness, to stand over all its vessels and over whatever is in it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its vessels, and they shall minister in it, and they shall pitch their camp around the tabernacle; and when it moves, the Levites shall take down the tabernacle, and when the camp is pitched, they shall set up the tabernacle again. Any foreigner who approaches shall die.” You, then, have been chosen out of the whole number of the sons of Israel, reckoned among the sacred fruits as a firstborn, set over the tabernacle, to stand guard in the camp of holiness and faith—if a foreigner approaches it, he shall die—and placed to cover the ark of the covenant. For not all see the depths of the mysteries, because they are covered by the Levites, lest those see who ought not to see, and those take them who cannot keep them. Moses indeed saw spiritual circumcision, but covered it, so as to prescribe circumcision in a sign. He saw the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity, he saw the Lord’s passion; he covered the unleavened bread of truth with bodily unleavened bread, he covered the Lord’s passion with the sacrifice of a lamb or a calf. And good Levites have kept the mystery under the covering of their faith; and do you think small what has been entrusted to you? First, that you see the deep things of God, which belongs to wisdom; then, that you keep watch for the people, which belongs to justice; that you defend the camp and guard the tabernacle, which belongs to fortitude; that you show yourself continent and sober, which belongs to temperance. Even those outside have set down these as the principal kinds of virtues, but they judged the order of community higher than that of wisdom, though wisdom is the foundation, and justice the work, which cannot stand unless it has a foundation. And the foundation is Christ. First, then, is faith, which belongs to wisdom, as Solomon says, following his father: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” And the law says: “You shall love the Lord your God; you shall love your neighbour.” For it is fine that you bring your grace and duties into the fellowship of the human race. But this is the first seemliness, that you assign to God what you have most precious, that is, your mind, than which you have nothing more excellent. When you have paid your debt to your Maker, you may bring your works to beneficence and to the help of men, and bring aid to their needs, either by money or by service or by any office whatever, which lies wide open in your ministry: by money, to help; by paying a debt, to free one who is bound; by service, to undertake to keep what someone who entrusted it fears to lose. It is a duty, then, to keep and return a deposit. But sometimes a change happens, through time or necessity, so that it is not a duty to return what you have received: as if someone, an open enemy, bringing aid to the barbarians against his fatherland, demands back his money; or if you return it to one when there is someone present to extort it; if you restore it to a madman, when he cannot keep it; if you do not deny a deposited sword to a lunatic, with which he may kill himself, is it not against duty to have paid it back? If you knowingly receive things gained by theft, so that the one who lost them is defrauded, is it not against duty? It is also sometimes against duty to fulfil a promise, to keep an oath; like Herod, who swore that he would give the daughter of Herodias whatever she asked, and carried out the killing of John so as not to break his promise. And what shall I say of Jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter, who had met him first as victor, to fulfil the vow he had made, that he would offer to God whatever met him first? It would have been better to promise nothing of the kind than to fulfil the promise by parricide. How much counsel it takes to foresee these things, you are not unaware. And so a Levite is chosen to guard the sanctuary, so that he may not be deceived in counsel, not desert the faith, not fear death, not act intemperately, so that he may show gravity in his very appearance: one who should have not only a continent mind but also continent eyes, lest even a chance meeting violate the brow of sobriety; for “He who looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her in his heart.” So adultery is committed not only by the defilement of the deed but also by the intention of the look. These things seem great to us and too severe, but in a great office they are not superfluous; since so great is the grace of the Levites that Moses said of them in the blessings: “Give to Levi his men, give to Levi his manifest ones, give to Levi the lot of his choice, and his truth to the holy man, whom they tempted in temptations, they cursed at the water of contradiction. He who says to his father and mother, I do not know you, and did not acknowledge his brothers, and disowned his sons: he kept your words and observed your covenant.” They, then, are his men and his manifest ones, who have no guile in their heart and hide no fraud, but keep his words and ponder them in their heart, as Mary too pondered; who know that their parents are not to be preferred to their duty, who hate violators of chastity, avenge the wrong done to purity, know the times of duties—what is greater, what lesser, what suits which time—and follow only what is honourable; and indeed where there are two honourable things, think that the more honourable is to be preferred: these are rightly blessed. If anyone, then, makes known the justices of God, let him put on the incense: “Bless, Lord, his strength; accept the works of his hands,” that he may find the grace of the prophetic blessing with him who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

In the former book we treated of the duties that we judged befitting the honourable, in which no one has doubted that the blessed life lies, which Scripture calls eternal life. For so great is the splendour of the honourable that tranquillity of conscience and security of innocence make life blessed. And so, as the rising sun hides the globe of the moon and the other lights of the stars, so the brightness of the honourable, where it flashes with true and incorrupt beauty, overshadows the other things that are thought good according to bodily pleasure, or famous and illustrious according to the world. Blessed indeed is that life which is valued not by the judgments of others but is perceived by one’s own inner senses, as its own judge. For it does not seek popular opinion as any reward, nor fear it as any punishment. So the less it pursues glory, the more it rises above it. For to those who seek glory, glory is their reward in the present and a shadow of the future, which hinders eternal life; as is written in the Gospel: “Truly I say to you, they have received their reward”; of those, that is, who, as if with a trumpet sounding, are eager to publish the liberality they show the poor. Likewise of fasting done for show: “They have,” he says, “their reward.” It belongs to the honourable, then, to do mercy and to keep a fast in secret, that you may be seen to seek a reward from your God alone, not also from men. For he who seeks it from men has his reward; but he who seeks it from God has eternal life, which none can grant but the author of eternity, as in that saying: “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Hence Scripture more expressly called the blessed life eternal life, so that it should not be left to be valued by men’s opinions but be committed to divine judgment.

So among the philosophers, some placed the blessed life in freedom from pain, like Hieronymus; others in knowledge of things, like Herillus, who, hearing knowledge of things wonderfully praised by Aristotle and Theophrastus, set it alone up as the highest good, though they had praised it as a good, not as the only good. Others said pleasure, like Epicurus; others, like Callipho and after him Diodorus, interpreted it so that the one joined to pleasure, the other to freedom from pain, the fellowship of the honourable, because without it there cannot be a blessed life. Zeno the Stoic held that the honourable is the only and highest good; but Aristotle or Theophrastus and the other Peripatetics asserted that the blessed life lies in virtue, that is, in the honourable, but that its blessedness is completed also by goods of the body and external goods. But divine Scripture placed eternal life in the knowledge of the Godhead and in the fruit of good work. Indeed the Gospel supplies testimony for both assertions. For of knowledge the Lord Jesus said: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” And of works he answered thus: “Everyone who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life.” But lest this be thought recent, and treated by the philosophers before it was preached in the Gospel (for the philosophers, that is, Aristotle and Theophrastus, or Zeno and Hieronymus, were earlier than the Gospel but later than the prophets), let them learn how long before the name of philosophers was heard both things were plainly expressed by the mouth of holy David. For it is written: “Blessed is he whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law.” We have also elsewhere: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord; he will delight greatly in his commandments.” We have shown this concerning knowledge, whose reward the Prophet said is the fruit of eternity, adding that in the house of this man who fears the Lord, or is instructed in the Law and delights in the divine commandments, are “glory and riches, and his righteousness endures for ever and ever.” Of works too he added in the same psalm that the reward of eternal life is ready for the just man. For he says: “Blessed is the man who is merciful and lends; he will order his words in judgment; for he will not be moved for ever. The just man will be in everlasting remembrance.” And below: “He has scattered, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.” Faith, then, has eternal life, because it is a good foundation; and good deeds have it, because the just man is proved by words and deeds. For if he is practised in words and idle in works, he refutes his prudence by his deeds; and it is graver to know what you should do and not to have done what you knew should be done. On the other hand, to be vigorous in works but unfaithful in disposition is as if you wished to raise the beautiful pinnacles of a roof on a faulty foundation: the more you build, the more falls; for without the protection of faith good works cannot remain. An unsafe anchorage in port holes the ship, and sandy soil quickly gives way and cannot bear the weight of a building set on it. There, then, is the fullness of reward, where there is perfection of virtues and a certain equality of sobriety in deeds and words.

And since knowledge of things alone has been rejected, either as empty, according to the superfluous disputations of philosophy, or as a half-complete opinion, let us consider how plain a judgment divine Scripture gives on a matter about which we see the questions of philosophy to be so manifold, tangled, and confused. For Scripture asserts that nothing is good except what is honourable, and judges virtue blessed in every state of things, neither increased by bodily or external goods nor diminished by adversity; and that nothing is so blessed as what is foreign to sin, full of innocence, filled with the grace of God. For it is written: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence; but his will was in the law of the Lord.” And elsewhere: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” Innocence and knowledge, then, make one blessed. We noticed above, too, that the blessedness of eternal life is the reward of good work. It remains, then, that, setting aside the advocacy of pleasure or the fear of pain (the one of which it spurns as broken and soft, the other as unmanly and weak), it should show that the blessed life stands out in pains themselves. This can easily be taught, since we read: “Blessed are you when they curse you and persecute you and say every evil against you for righteousness’ sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is abundant in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” And elsewhere: “Whoever wishes to come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.”

There is, then, blessedness even in pains, which virtue, full of sweetness, holds down and restrains, abounding in its own resources, whether for conscience or for grace. For Moses was not a little blessed when, hemmed in by the peoples of the Egyptians and shut in by the sea, he had found by his holy merits a path on foot through the waves for himself and the people of the fathers. When was he braver than then, when, surrounded by extreme dangers, he did not despair of safety but demanded triumph? What of Aaron? When did he believe himself more blessed than when he stood between the living and the dead and by putting himself in the way halted death, so that it might not pass from the corpses of the dead to the ranks of the living? What shall I say of the boy Daniel, who was so wise that among lions exasperated by hunger he was not broken by any fear of beastly savagery: so free of fear that he could feast, and did not fear that by his example he might provoke the beasts to feed? There is, then, virtue even in pain, which shows itself the sweetness of a good conscience; and so it is a sign that pain does not lessen the pleasure of virtue. As, then, there is no loss of blessedness to virtue through pain, so there is no gain through bodily pleasure or the favour of advantages. Of these the Apostle says beautifully: “What were gains to me, these I counted losses for Christ.” And he added: “For whom I counted all things loss, and I reckon them as dung, that I may gain Christ.” Indeed Moses thought the treasures of the Egyptians his loss, and preferred the reproach of the Lord’s cross; he was not rich then when he abounded in money, nor poor afterwards when he lacked food; unless perhaps he seemed to someone less blessed then, when daily nourishment was lacking to himself and his people in the desert. But—what no one would dare to deny belongs to the highest good and blessedness—manna, that is, the bread of angels, was ministered to him from heaven; and a daily rain of flesh too overflowed for the meals of the whole people. Holy Elijah too would have lacked bread for food, if it had been sought; but it did not seem lacking, because it was not sought. So by the daily service of ravens bread was brought to him in the morning, flesh in the evening. Was he less blessed because he was poor for himself? Not at all. Rather, he was the more blessed, because he was rich toward God. For it is better to be rich for others than for oneself, as he was, who in time of famine asked a widow for food, intending to give her in return that the jar of meal should not fail for three years and six months, and that the vessel of oil should suffice and serve the daily uses of the poor widow. Rightly Peter wished to be there where he saw them. Rightly they appeared with Christ in glory on the mountain; for he too became poor though he was rich. Riches, then, give no support to the blessed life. The Lord clearly showed this in the Gospel, saying: “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst now, for they shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” So it has been most clearly declared that poverty, hunger, and pain, which are thought evils, are not only no hindrance to the blessed life but even a help.

But it is clear from the Lord’s judgment that those things too which seem good—riches, fullness, joy free from pain—are a loss to the fruit of blessedness, when it is said: “Woe to you rich, for you have your consolation! Woe to you who are filled, for you will hunger!” And to those who laugh, that they will mourn. So bodily or external goods are not only no support to the blessed life but even a loss. Hence Naboth was blessed even when he was stoned by a rich man, because, poor and weak against royal wealth, he was rich only in affection and religion, so that he would not exchange the inheritance of his father’s vineyard for royal money; and he was perfect in this, that he defended the rights of his forefathers with his own blood. Hence too Ahab was wretched even by his own judgment, because he had had a poor man killed in order to possess his vineyard. It is certain that virtue is the only and highest good, and that it alone suffices abundantly for the fruit of the blessed life; and that the blessed life is granted not by external or bodily goods but by virtue alone, through which eternal life is acquired. For the blessed life is the fruit of present things; eternal life the hope of things to come. Yet there are some who think the blessed life impossible in this body, so weak and so fragile, in which one must be anxious, grieve, lament, and fall sick: as if I were to say that the blessed life consists in the exultation of the body and not in the height of wisdom, the sweetness of conscience, and the sublimity of virtue. For it is blessed not to be in suffering, but to be victor over suffering, and not to be broken by the movement of temporal pain. Suppose those things happen which are reckoned grievous in the force of their pain: blindness, exile, hunger, the violation of a daughter, the loss of children. Who would deny that Isaac was blessed, who did not see in old age, and conferred blessedness by his blessings? Was not Jacob blessed, who, a fugitive from his father’s house, endured exile as a hired shepherd, groaned that his daughter’s chastity had been violated, and bore famine? Are they not blessed by whose faith God receives testimony, when it is said: “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob”? Slavery is wretched, but Joseph was not wretched; rather plainly blessed, when, placed in slavery, he restrained the lusts of his mistress. What shall I say of holy David, who lamented the death of three sons and, harder than this, his daughter’s incest? How was he not blessed, from whose line was born the author of blessedness, who has made very many blessed? For “blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” They too felt weakness, but out of weakness they were made strong. What was more laborious than holy Job’s lot, in the burning of his house, the sudden death of his ten children, and his bodily pains? Was he less blessed than if he had not suffered those things in which he was the more proved? Granted, however, that there was some bitterness in them, a pain which the virtue of his mind did not hide. For I would not deny that the sea is deep because the shores are shallow, nor that the sky is clear because it is sometimes covered with clouds, nor that the earth is fruitful because in some places it is barren gravel, nor that the crops are glad because they usually have barren wild oats mixed in. Likewise suppose that the harvest of a blessed conscience is interrupted by some bitterness of pain. Is not whatever adversity and bitterness may happen hidden among the sheaves of the whole blessed life, like barren wild oats, or covered, like the bitterness of darnel, by the sweetness of the wheat? But now let us proceed to what we proposed.

In the former book we made the division so that the honourable and seemly, from which duties are derived, came first, and what is useful in second place. And as in the first we said that there is a certain distinction between the honourable and the seemly, which can be understood rather than explained, so too, when we treat the useful, it seems we must consider what is more useful. But we reckon usefulness not by the estimate of monetary gain but by the acquisition of piety; as the Apostle says: “But piety is useful for all things, having the promise of the present life and of the future.” So in the divine Scriptures, if we search diligently, we often find that what is honourable is called useful: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are useful.” Just before, he was speaking of vices. He says, then: it is possible to sin, but it is not seemly. Sins are in our power, but they are not honourable. To live in luxury is easy, but not just. For food is gathered not for God but for the belly. So since what is useful is also just, it is just that we serve Christ who redeemed us; therefore those are just who offered themselves to death for his name, and those unjust who declined it, of whom he says: “What profit is there in my blood?” that is, what advance of my justice? Hence also those men said: “Let us bind the just man, for he is useless to us,” that is, unjust, because he rebukes, condemns, and reproves us. This can also be applied to the avarice of ungodly men, which is near to faithlessness; as we read of Judas the traitor, who through zeal for avarice and desire for money ran into and fell into the snare of betrayal. We must treat, then, of that usefulness which is full of the honourable, as the Apostle defined it in these very words: “This I say for your usefulness, not to cast a snare upon you, but for what is honourable.” It is clear, then, that what is honourable is useful, and what is useful honourable; and what is useful just, and what just useful. For I speak not to merchants greedy with desire for gain, but to sons; and I speak of duties, which I long to impress on and pour into you whom I have chosen for the ministry of the Lord, so that what has been implanted and impressed on your minds and characters by habit and training may also be opened up by word and teaching. So, as I am about to speak of the useful, I shall use that prophetic verse: “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to avarice”; lest the sound of “usefulness” rouse the desire for money. Indeed some have: “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to usefulness”; that is, that usefulness which hunts the markets of gain, that usefulness bent and diverted by human usage to the pursuit of money. For commonly people call only that useful which is profitable; but we treat of that usefulness which is sought by losses, that we may gain Christ, whose gain is piety with sufficiency. Great indeed is the gain by which we acquire piety, which is rich before God, not in perishable resources but in eternal gifts, in which there is not slippery temptation but constant and perpetual grace. There is, then, one usefulness of the body and another of piety, as the Apostle divided them: “For bodily exercise is useful for a little; but piety is useful for all things.” And what is so honourable as integrity? What so seemly as to keep the body spotless, and modesty inviolate and undefiled? What, too, so seemly as that a widow keep faith with her dead husband? What more useful than that by which the kingdom of heaven is acquired? For there are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.

There is, then, not only a close companionship between the honourable and the useful, but the useful is the same as the honourable. And so he who wished to open the kingdom of heaven to all sought not what was useful to himself but what was useful to all. Hence we must make a kind of order and step, from these usual and common things up to those that are pre-eminent, so that from many examples we may gather the advance of usefulness. And first let us know that nothing is so useful as to be loved, nothing so useless as not to be loved; for to be hated I think deadly and utterly fatal. So let us strive with all diligence to commend our reputation and good name, and first let us flow into men’s affections by calmness of mind and kindness of spirit. For goodness is popular and pleasing to all, and there is nothing that slips so easily into human feelings. If it is helped by gentleness of character and easiness, and also by moderation in command, affability of speech, respectful words, patience in taking turns in conversation, and the grace of modesty, it is incredible how far it goes towards a store of love. For we read not only of private persons but even of kings how much the easiness of a pleasant affability has profited, or how much pride and swollen words have harmed, so as to shake kingdoms themselves and dissolve power. Again, if anyone wins popular favour by counsel, practice, service, and good offices, or if anyone offers his own danger for the whole people, there is no doubt that so much love is poured back on him by the people that the people prefers his safety and favour to its own. How many insults heaped on him by the people did Moses absorb! And when the Lord wished to take vengeance on the insolent, he often offered himself for the people, to withdraw the people from the divine indignation. With what gentle speech after injuries did he address the people, console them in their labours, soothe them with oracles, and cherish them with works! And though he spoke constantly with God, he used to address men in a humble and pleasing manner. Rightly he was esteemed above men, so that they could not gaze at his face, and they believed his tomb was not found; for he had so bound to himself the minds of the whole people that they loved him more for his gentleness than they admired him for his deeds. What of his imitator holy David, chosen out of all to rule the people: how gentle and pleasant, humble in spirit, diligent in heart, easy in disposition! Before his reign he offered himself for all; as king he shared military service equally with all and divided the toil: brave in battle, gentle in command, patient under abuse, readier to bear injuries than to return them. So dear was he to all that as a young man he was sought for the kingship even against his will and was compelled when he resisted; as an old man he was begged by his own people not to take part in battle, because all preferred to be in danger for him rather than he for all. So he had bound the people to himself by pleasing services: first, that in the discords of the people he preferred to be an exile in Hebron rather than to reign in Jerusalem; then, that he loved virtue even in an enemy; that he thought justice was to be shown to those who had borne arms against him as to himself and his own; finally, he admired Abner, the bravest champion of the opposing side, while he was a general and waging war, and did not spurn him when he asked for the favour of peace, but honoured him with a banquet; when he was killed by treachery, David grieved and wept for him and honoured him by following his funeral; he gave proof of his good conscience by avenging his death, which he passed on to his son among his hereditary charges, more anxious not to leave the death of an innocent man unavenged than to lament his own death. It is no small thing, especially in a king, so to carry out the duties of humility as to show himself on a level even with the lowest: not to seek food at another’s peril, to refuse drink, to confess sin, and to offer himself to death for the people, so that the divine indignation might be turned upon him, when, offering himself to the striking angel, he said: “Here I am; I have sinned, and I the shepherd have done evil; and this flock, what has it done? Let your hand be upon me.” Why should I say other things: that he did not open his mouth to those who plotted deceit, and, as though not hearing, thought no word should be returned; that he did not answer abuse; that when he was disparaged, he prayed; when he was cursed, he blessed? He walked in simplicity, shunned the proud, followed the spotless; he mixed ashes with his food when he lamented his own sins, and mingled his drink with weeping. Rightly he was so sought by the whole people that all the tribes of Israel came to him, saying: “Behold, we are your bone and your flesh; yesterday and the day before, when Saul was alive and reigned over us, you were the one who led Israel out and brought it in. And the Lord said to you: You shall shepherd my people.” And why should I say more of him, of whom such a judgment of God went forth that he said of him: “I have found David after my heart”? For who walked like him in holiness of heart and justice, to fulfil the will of God; for whose sake pardon was given to his descendants when they sinned, and a privilege was reserved to his heirs? Who, then, would not love him, seeing him so dear to his friends, so that, because he himself loved his friends sincerely, he thought he was equally loved by his friends? Indeed parents preferred him to their own sons, and sons to their parents. Hence Saul, greatly angered, wanted to strike his son Jonathan with a spear, because he judged that David’s friendship counted for more with him than either filial duty or paternal authority. For it helps very much towards kindling common love if one returns love to those who love, and shows that he loves in return no less than he is loved, and makes this plain by the proofs of faithful friendship. For what is so popular as gratitude? What is so implanted in nature as to love one who loves you? What is so ingrained and impressed on human feelings as to bring yourself to love one by whom you wish to be loved? Rightly the wise man says: “Lose money for the sake of a brother and friend.” And elsewhere: “I will not be ashamed to greet a friend, and I will not hide myself from his face.” For the word of Ecclesiasticus testifies that the medicine of life and immortality is in a friend; and no one will doubt that the highest protection lies in love, since the Apostle says: “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; love never fails.” Therefore David did not fall, because he was dear to all and preferred to be loved by his subjects rather than feared. For fear keeps the watches of a temporary protection; it does not know how to guard for long. So when fear has departed, boldness creeps in; for fear does not compel faith; affection displays it. The first thing, then, to commend us is love. It is good, then, to have the testimony of the love of many. From this faith is born, so that even strangers are not afraid to entrust themselves to your affection when they have noticed that you are dear to many. Likewise one comes through faith to love; so that he who has kept faith with one or two flows, as it were, into the minds of all and gains the favour of all.

These two, then, love and faith, do most to commend us; and a third, if you have something that most people think worthy of admiration and judge rightly to be honoured. And since the giving of counsel most of all wins men over, prudence and justice are looked for in each one and expected by many, so that trust may be placed in him in whom they are found, because he can give useful and faithful counsel to one who wants it. For who would entrust himself to one whom he does not think wiser than he himself who seeks counsel? It is necessary, then, that he from whom counsel is sought be more outstanding than he who seeks it. For why would you consult a man whom you do not think able to find something better than you yourself understand? But if you find one who excels in liveliness of talent, vigour of mind, and authority, and to this is added that he is readier by example and practice, so as to resolve present dangers, foresee future ones, announce those imminent, clear up a question, bring a remedy in time, and be ready not only to counsel but also to help, such a man is so trusted that he who seeks counsel says: “And if evils befall me through him, I bear them.” To such a man, then, we entrust our safety and reputation, who is, as we said above, just and prudent. For justice brings it about that there is no fear of fraud, and prudence that there is no suspicion of error. Yet we entrust ourselves more readily to a just man than to a prudent one, to speak according to common usage. But by the definition of the wise, where there is one virtue the others concur, and prudence cannot exist without justice. This we find also in our own writings; for David says: “The just man is merciful and lends.” What the just man lends, he says elsewhere: “Pleasant is the man who is merciful and lends; he will order his words in judgment.” That famous judgment of Solomon itself, is it not full of wisdom and justice? Let us see, then, whether it is so. “Two women,” it says, “stood before King Solomon, and one said to him: Hear me, my lord. This woman and I, living in one room, each bore a son, with three days between the births, and we were together; there was no witness in the house, nor any other woman with us, but we two alone; and her son died in the night, because she lay on him; and she arose at midnight, took my son from my bosom and laid him in her lap, and laid her dead son in my bosom. And I arose in the morning to nurse my child, and found him dead. And I looked at him at dawn, and he was not my son. And the other answered: No, but my son is the living one; yours is the dead one.” This was the dispute, since each claimed the surviving son as her own and denied that the dead one was hers. Then the king ordered a sword to be brought and the infant divided, and the parts given to each: half to one and half to the other. The woman who was moved by true affection cried out: “No, my lord, do not divide the infant; let him rather be given to her and live, and do not kill him.” But the other answered: “Let the infant be neither mine nor hers; divide him.” And the king decided that the infant be given to the woman who had said, “Do not kill him”: “Give him to that woman,” he said, “for her bowels were moved over her son.” So not without reason was the understanding of God thought to be in him; for what is hidden from God? And what is more hidden than the testimony of the inner bowels, into which the understanding of the wise man descended like a judge of devotion, and drew out, as it were, the voice of the womb that bore the child? For the mother’s affection was revealed, which chose that her son should live even with another woman rather than be killed before his mother’s eyes. It belonged to wisdom, then, to distinguish hidden consciences, to draw out the truth from secret things, and as with a kind of sword to pierce with the sword of the Spirit not only the bowels of the womb but also those of the soul and mind; and it belonged to justice, that she who had killed her own should not take another’s, but the true mother should receive her own. Indeed Scripture too declared this: “All Israel heard this judgment which the king had judged, and they feared before the king, because the understanding of God was in him to do justice.” Indeed Solomon himself asked for wisdom thus, that he might be given a prudent heart to hear and judge with justice.

It is clear, then, according to divine Scripture too, which is older, that wisdom cannot exist without justice; for where one of these virtues is, both are. Daniel too: how wisely by deep questioning he detected the lie of a fraudulent accusation, so that the answers of the slanderers did not agree with each other! It belonged to prudence, then, to expose the guilty by the testimony of their own voice; and to justice, to give the guilty to punishment and rescue the innocent. There is, then, an indivisible companionship of wisdom and justice; but in common usage the one form of the virtues is divided, so that temperance lies in despising pleasures, fortitude is seen in labours and dangers, prudence in the choice of goods, knowing how to distinguish advantages and adversities, and justice is a good guardian of another’s right and protector of property, preserving to each his own. Let this fourfold division, then, be made for us for the sake of common opinion, so that, drawing back our foot from that subtle disputation of philosophical wisdom which is dug out as from a kind of inner sanctum for the sake of refining the truth, we may follow the usage of public life and popular understanding. Keeping this division, then, let us return to our subject.

We entrust our cause to all the most prudent, and seek counsel from them more readily than from others. Yet the faithful counsel of a just man is better, and often outweighs the talent of the wisest. For “more useful are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of others.” Then, it belongs to the just man to judge, but to the wise man to argue: in the one is the strictness of judgment, in the other the cleverness of invention. But if you join both, there will be great soundness of counsel, which all regard with admiration for its wisdom and love for its justice; so that all seek to hear the wisdom of that man in whom there is the union of both virtues: as all the kings of the earth sought to see the face of Solomon and hear his wisdom, so that the queen of Sheba too came to him and tested him with questions: “And she came and spoke all that she had in her heart, and heard all the wisdom of Solomon, and no word escaped her.” Who she is whom nothing escapes, and to whom there is nothing that the true Solomon did not declare, learn, O man, from what you hear her saying: “True is the report which I heard in my land about your words and your prudence; and I did not believe those who told me, until I came and my eyes saw; and now it is not even half of what they told me. You have added good things beyond all I heard in my land. Blessed are your women, and blessed your servants who stand before you, who hear all your prudence.” Understand the banquet of the true Solomon and what is set out at that banquet; understand wisely, and consider in what land the congregation of the nations has heard the fame of true wisdom and justice, and with what eyes it has seen him: eyes, surely, that contemplate the things which are not seen. “For the things which are seen are temporal, but those which are not seen are eternal.” Who are the blessed women, but those of whom it is said that many hear the word of God and bring it forth? And elsewhere: “For whoever does the word of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Who too are your blessed servants who stand by, but Paul, who said, “To this day I stand, testifying to small and great,” and Simeon, who waited in the temple to see the consolation of Israel? For how would he have asked to be let go, unless, standing beside the Lord, he could not have the power to depart without having obtained the Lord’s will? Solomon has been set before us as an example, from whom men eagerly asked to hear his wisdom. Joseph too, even in prison, was not left idle from being consulted about uncertain things. His counsel benefited all Egypt, so that it did not feel the barrenness of seven years, and relieved other peoples from the hunger of wretched famine. Daniel, from among the captives made judge of the royal counsellors, by his counsels corrected present things and announced future ones. For since by the things he had often interpreted he had shown himself a true herald, trust was given him in all things.

But the third point too, about those thought worthy of admiration, seems to have been covered by the example of Joseph, Solomon, and Daniel. For what shall I say of Moses, whose counsels all Israel awaited daily, whose life gave credit to his prudence and increased admiration for him? Who would not entrust himself to the counsel of Moses, to whom the elders reserved for decision whatever they thought beyond their own understanding and power? Who would shun the counsel of Daniel, of whom God himself said: “Are you wiser than Daniel?” Or how could men doubt the minds of those on whom God conferred such grace? By Moses’ counsel wars were brought to an end; by Moses’ merits food flowed from heaven, and drink from the rock. How pure was Daniel’s mind, that it softened barbarous characters and tamed lions! What temperance in him! What continence of mind and body! Not undeservedly was he made wonderful to all, since (what men greatly wonder at) though supported by royal friendships he did not seek gold, nor did he value the honour conferred on him more than his faith. Rather he preferred to be in danger for the law of the Lord than to be bent for the favour of man. And of holy Joseph (whom I had almost passed over), what shall I say of his chastity and justice? The one rejected the allurements of his master’s house and refused rewards; the other despised death, repelled fear, and chose prison. Who would not judge him fit to give counsel in a private cause, whose fruitful mind and fertile heart made the barrenness of the time fruitful by a kind of richness of counsel and of heart?

We notice, then, that in gaining a hearing for counsel much is added by uprightness of life, the pre-eminence of the virtues, the habit of benevolence, and the grace of easiness. For who would look for a spring in the mud? Who would seek a drink from muddy water? So where there is luxury, where there is intemperance, where there is a confusion of vices, who would think anything should be drawn from there for himself? Who would not despise a sewer of morals? Who would judge useful for another’s cause one whom he sees useless for his own life? Who again would not flee a wicked, malevolent, insulting man ready to harm; who would not shun him with all zeal? And who would court one who, though equipped to give the help of counsel, is yet difficult of access, as if someone shut up a spring of water? For what profit is it to have wisdom if you deny counsel? If you shut off the opportunity of consulting, you have closed the spring, so that it neither flows to others nor profits you. It fits well also the man who, having prudence, stains it with the filth of vices, because he pollutes the outflow of the water. Life convicts degenerate minds. For how can you judge him superior in counsel whom you see inferior in character? He to whom I prepare to entrust myself ought to be above me. Or shall I think him fit to give me counsel who does not give it to himself, and believe he has leisure for me who has none for himself, whose mind pleasures occupy, lust conquers, avarice subjugates, desire disturbs, and fear shakes? How is there place for counsel here, where there is none for quiet? Admirable to me and worthy of reverence is the counsellor whom the Lord gave to the fathers when he was gracious and took away when he was offended. He who can give counsel ought to be his imitator and keep his prudence free from vices, since nothing defiled enters into it.

Who, then, would display the appearance of beauty in his face, so to speak, and disgrace the grace of his upper form with the hindquarters of a beast and wild claws, when the form of the virtues is so admirable and splendid, and especially the beauty of wisdom, as the course of Scripture shows? For she is more beautiful than the sun, and, compared with light, she is found to surpass every arrangement of the stars. For night succeeds this light, but malice does not conquer wisdom. We have spoken of her beauty and proved it by the testimony of Scripture; it remains to teach by the authority of Scripture that she has no companionship with vices, but an undivided union with the other virtues: “whose spirit is eloquent, undefiled, sure, holy, loving the good, keen, forbidding nothing in doing good, kind, steadfast, secure, having all virtue, seeing all things.” And below: “She teaches sobriety and justice and virtue.”

We do all things, then, with prudence, since it has fellowship with all good things. For how can one give useful counsel unless he has justice, so as to put on constancy, not to fear death, to be called back by no terror and no fear, to think that he must not be turned from the truth by any flattery; not to flee exile, since he knows that for the wise man the world is his fatherland; not to fear want, since he knows that nothing is lacking to the wise man, to whom the whole world is full of riches? For what is loftier than the man who does not know how to be moved by gold, holds money in contempt, and looks down as from a citadel on the desires of men? Men think that one who does this is above man: “Who is he,” it says, “and we will praise him? For he has done wonderful things in his life.” For how is he not to be admired who spurns riches, which most have preferred to their own salvation? The strictness of frugality, then, and the authority of continence become all, and especially him who is pre-eminent in honour, so that his treasures may not possess the pre-eminent man, and he who is set over free men may not serve money. It is more fitting that he be above treasure in mind and beneath his friend in service. For humility increases grace. This is full of praise and worthy of a leading man: not to share with Tyrian traders and Gileadite merchants the desire for shameful gain, nor to place all good in money, and, as in a hireling’s work, to count daily gains and reckon profits.

But if it is praiseworthy to keep a sober mind with respect to these things, how much more excellent if you win the love of the multitude by liberality, neither lavish towards the importunate nor restricted towards the needy! There are very many kinds of liberality: not only to arrange and dispense nourishment by daily outlay to the needy, so that they can sustain their life, but also to consult for and help those who are ashamed to be in want publicly, so far as the common nourishment of the needy is not exhausted. For I am speaking of one who is in charge of some office, as when he holds the office of priest or of steward, that he should report such people to the bishop, and not keep silent if he knows of anyone placed in some need, or cast down from wealth and reduced to the necessity of want; especially if he has fallen into this hardship not through the extravagance of youth but through someone’s plunder and the loss of his patrimony, so that he cannot meet his daily expenses. The highest liberality, too, is to redeem captives, to snatch men from the hands of enemies, to rescue men from death and especially women from shame, to restore children to parents and parents to children, and citizens to their fatherland. These things are only too well known from the devastation of Illyricum and Thrace: how many captives were for sale everywhere throughout the world! If you called them back, they could not make up the number of a single province. Yet there were some who wished to bring back into slavery those whom the churches had redeemed, men harsher than captivity itself, who envied another’s mercy. If they themselves had fallen into captivity, they would serve, though freeborn; if they had been sold, they would not refuse the service of slavery; and they want to rescind another’s freedom, who could not rescind their own slavery, unless perhaps it pleased the buyer to receive his price back; and in that case slavery is not rescinded but redeemed. The chief liberality, then, is to redeem captives, especially from a barbarian enemy, who shows no humanity for mercy except what avarice has reserved for ransom; to take on another’s debt, if the debtor cannot pay and is pressed for a payment that is lawfully owed and he is destitute through want; to bring up little children and to protect orphans. There are also those who give in marriage virgins bereaved of their parents, to protect their chastity, and help not only with zeal but also with expense. There is also that kind of liberality which the Apostle teaches: “If any believer has widows, let him provide for them, so that the Church may not be burdened, that it may suffice for those who are truly widows.” Such liberality, then, is useful, but not open to all. For there are very many, even good men, who are of slender means, content with little for their own use but not able to help relieve another’s poverty; yet another kind of beneficence is available by which they can help someone lower. For liberality is twofold: one that helps by means of property, that is, by the use of money; the other that is spent in the contribution of works, often far more splendid and distinguished. How much more illustrious it was that Abraham recovered his captured nephew by victorious arms than if he had ransomed him! How much more usefully did holy Joseph help King Pharaoh by the counsel of providence than if he had given money! For money did not buy back the plenty of a single city; foresight kept the famine from all Egypt for five years. Money is easily used up; counsels do not know how to be exhausted. These grow with use; money is lessened and quickly fails and abandons kindness itself, so that the more people you wish to give to, the fewer you help, and often you lack what you thought you should give to others. But the contribution of counsel and work, the more widely it is spread among many, the more abundant it remains, and it runs back to its own source. For the abundance of prudence flows back into itself, and the more it has flowed out to many, the more exercised is all that remains.

It is clear, then, that there must be a measure in liberality, lest largess become useless. Sobriety must be kept, especially by priests, so that they dispense not for display but for justice. For nowhere is there greater greed in begging. Strong men come, men come who have no reason but their wandering, and they want to drain the help of the poor and empty the funds; not content with little, they seek more, angling for support for their request by their dress, and bidding up their gains by pretending to noble birth. If anyone readily believes them, he quickly exhausts the resources meant for the nourishment of the poor. Let there be a measure in giving, so that neither do these go away empty, nor is the living of the poor turned into the spoils of the fraudulent. Let the measure, then, be such that humanity is not deserted, nor necessity left destitute. Many pretend debts: let the truth be examined. They lament that they have been stripped by robbers: let the injury itself, or knowledge of the person, give credence, so that they may be helped the more readily. Those banished from the Church should be given support if they lack means of subsistence. So he who keeps measure is mean to none but generous to all; for we ought to offer not only our ears to hear the voices of those who beg, but also our eyes to consider their needs. Weakness cries louder to a good worker than the voice of the poor man. It cannot be that the importunity of those who shout does not extort more; but there should not always be room for impudence. He must be seen who does not see you; he must be sought who blushes to be seen. Let him too who is shut up in prison come before you; let him who is afflicted with sickness sound in your mind, since he cannot sound in your ears. The more the people sees you working, the more it will love you. I know many priests who, the more they gave, the more they abounded; for whoever sees a good worker gives him what he may dispense in his office, secure that his own mercy will reach the poor man; for no one wants his contribution to benefit anyone but a poor man. For if he sees a dispenser either immoderate or too tight-fisted, he will despise both: if he squanders the fruits of another’s labour by superfluous outlays, or if he hoards them in bags. As, then, measure must be kept in liberality, so often a spur seems needed. Measure for this reason, that what you do well you may be able to do every day, lest you take from necessity what you have granted to extravagance; a spur, because money does better work in the poor man’s food than in the rich man’s purse. Beware lest you shut up the salvation of the needy in your coffers and bury the life of the poor as in tombs. Joseph could have given away all the wealth of Egypt and poured out the royal treasures; yet he did not wish to seem lavish with another’s property; he preferred to sell the grain rather than give it to the hungry; because if he had given it to a few, it would have failed the many. He approved that liberality by which there would be enough for all. He opened the granaries so that all might buy their supply of grain, lest by receiving it free they abandon the cultivation of their lands; for he who uses another’s neglects his own. So first of all he gathered money, then the other means, and finally acquired the rights to the lands for the king, not to strip all of their own, but to support them; he established a public tribute, by which they could hold their own more securely. This was so pleasing to all whose lands he had taken that they thought it not the sale of their right but the redemption of their safety. Indeed they said: “You have saved us; we have found favour in the sight of our lord.” For those who received the right back had lost nothing of their property, and those who had acquired permanence had lost nothing of advantage. O great man, who did not seek the temporary glory of superfluous largess, but established the perpetual benefit of providence! For he brought it about that the people helped themselves by their own tributes, and in a time of need did not want for help. For it was better to contribute something from the produce than to lose the whole right. He fixed a fifth part as the contribution, and was both more far-sighted in providing and more liberal in the tribute. Indeed Egypt never afterwards suffered such a famine. How splendidly he gathered the future! First, how acutely, as interpreter of the king’s dream, he expressed its truth! The king’s first dream was this: “Seven heifers came up from the river, fine to look at and fat in body, and they fed on the bank of the river. Other calves too, ugly to look at and lean in body, came up from the river after those heifers, and fed beside them on the very couch of the banks; and these thin and lean calves were seen to devour those that excelled in form and grace.” And the second dream was this: “Seven ears of grain, fat, choice and good, rose from the ground; and after them seven ears, thin, blighted by the wind and withered, tried to come up after them; and it was seen that the barren and thin ears devoured the fruitful and rich ears.” This dream holy Joseph explained thus: the seven heifers were seven years, and the seven ears likewise seven years, interpreting times from offspring and fruit. For the offspring of heifers marks a year, and the fruit of the crop completes a whole year. And they came up from the river because days, years, and times pass by like rivers and glide swiftly. So he declares that the first seven years of rich land will be fertile and fruitful, but the other seven years after them barren and unfruitful, and their barrenness would consume the plenty of the former. For this reason he advised providing that in the richer years a supply of grain be gathered which could sustain the want of the coming barrenness. What shall I admire first? The insight by which he descended into the very chamber of truth? Or the counsel by which he provided for so grave and long a need? Or the vigilance and justice, of which the one, when so great an office was laid on him, gathered such manifold supplies, and the other kept equality for all? And what shall I say of his magnanimity, that, sold into slavery by his brothers, he did not return the injury but drove away their famine? What of his sweetness, by which he sought the presence of his beloved brother by a loving deceit, making him guilty of robbery by a cleverly feigned theft, so that he might keep him as a hostage of affection? Hence rightly it is said to him by his father: “My son Joseph is increased, my son is increased, my zealous younger son… My God has helped you and blessed you with the blessing of heaven above and the blessing of the earth, of the earth that has all things, for the blessings of your father and mother. It has prevailed over the blessings of the abiding mountains and the desires of the eternal hills.” And in Deuteronomy: “You who were seen in the bush,” it says, “come upon the head of Joseph and upon his crown. Honourable among his brothers; the firstborn of the bull is his glory, his horns are the horns of the unicorn. With his horn he will toss the nations together to the end of the earth. His are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and his the thousands of Manasseh.”

Such, then, ought he to be who gives counsel to another: that he offers himself to others as a pattern of good works, in teaching, in integrity, in gravity; that his speech may be sound and irreproachable, his counsel useful, his life honourable, his judgment seemly. Such was Paul, who gave counsel to virgins and instruction to priests, so as first to offer himself as a pattern for us to imitate. So he knew how to be humbled, as Joseph too knew, who, born of the highest race of patriarchs, did not disdain a degrading slavery but adorned it with obedience and made it illustrious with virtues. He knew how to be humbled, who suffered both a seller and a buyer and called the latter master. Hear him humbling himself: “If my master, because of me, knows nothing in his house, 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 shall I do this evil thing and sin before the Lord?” A voice full of humility, full of chastity: of humility, because he deferred to his master; of honour, because he returned gratitude; full of chastity too, because he thought it a grave sin to be defiled by a shameful crime. Such, then, ought the counsellor to be: having nothing cloudy, nothing deceitful, nothing feigned to refute his life and character; nothing wicked and malevolent to turn away those who consult him. For some things are fled, others despised. We flee those things that can harm, that can creep maliciously into hurt; as when he who is consulted is of doubtful faith and greedy for money, so that he can be changed by a price; if he is injurious, he is fled and shunned. But he who is a lover of pleasure and intemperate, even if free from fraud, yet avaricious and greedy for shameful gain, is despised. For what proof of industry, what fruit of labour can he show, how can he take on care and anxiety in his mind, who has given himself to torpor and sloth? So the man of good counsel says: “For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.” For he knew that avarice is the root of all evils, and so he was content with his own and did not seek another’s. It is enough for me, he says, what I have; whether I have little or much, to me it is very much. It seems something should be said more expressly. He used a marked word: “I am sufficient,” he says, “in what I am”; that is, there is neither lack nor excess. No lack, because I seek nothing more; no excess, because I have not for myself alone but for many. This concerning money. But of all things it can be said that present things sufficed him; that is, he did not desire greater honour or richer service; he was not immoderately greedy for glory, nor did he seek favour undeservedly; but, patient of labour and secure of his merit, he awaited the end of the contest that was due. “I know,” he says, “how to be humbled.” So it is not untaught humility that is praised, but humility that has its modesty and knowledge. For there is a humility of fear, and there is one of inexperience and ignorance; and so Scripture says: “And he will save the humble in spirit.” Excellently, then, he said: “I know how to be humbled”; that is, in what place, with what moderation, to what end, in what duty, in what office. The Pharisee did not know how to be humbled, and so he was cast down; the tax collector knew, and so he was justified. Paul knew also how to abound, because he had a rich mind, though he did not have a rich man’s treasure. He knew how to abound, who did not seek a gift in money but sought fruit in grace. We can also understand it thus, that he knew how to abound who could say: “Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged.” In all things he was instructed, both to be filled and to hunger. Blessed is he who knew how to be filled in Christ. That is not a bodily but a spiritual fullness, which knowledge brings about. And rightly knowledge is needed; for man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God. So he who knew thus how to be filled and thus to hunger knew how always to seek new things, to hunger for God, to thirst for the Lord. He knew how to hunger who knew that the hungry will eat; he knew and was able to abound, who had nothing and possessed all things.

Justice, then, excellently commends men who preside over any office; iniquity, on the contrary, abandons and assails them. Scripture gives us an example, which says that when the people of Israel, after Solomon’s death, had asked his son Rehoboam to relieve their necks from hard servitude and to temper the severity of his father’s rule, he, despising the counsel of the elders, at the suggestion of the young men gave an answer of this kind: that he would add a burden to his father’s yoke and change light punishments for heavier ones. Exasperated by this answer, the people replied: “We have no portion in David, nor inheritance in the sons of Jesse. Return each to your tents, Israel”; for this man will be to us neither prince nor leader. So, deserted and abandoned by the people, he could scarcely keep the fellowship of two tribes, for David’s sake.

It is clear, then, that equity strengthens rule and injustice dissolves it. For how can wickedness possess a kingdom, when it cannot rule even one private household? The greatest kindness, then, is needed, so that we may protect not only the public helm but also private rights. Benevolence helps very much, which strives to embrace all with benefits, to bind them with services, and to pledge them with gratitude. We said too that affability of speech is very effective for winning favour. But we want this to be sincere and sober, without any flattery, lest flattery in speech mar the simplicity and purity of address; for we ought to be a pattern to others not only in work but also in speech, in chastity and in faith. Let us be such as we wish to be thought, and let us show such affection as we have. Nor let us say in our heart a wicked word which we think hidden by silence; for he hears words spoken in secret who made secret things, and he knows the secrets of the inward parts who poured feeling into the inward parts. So, as if set under the eyes of the judge, let us think that whatever we do is placed in the light, to be made manifest to all.

It is very profitable, then, for everyone to be joined to good men. It is useful for young men too to follow distinguished and wise men; for he who keeps company with the wise is wise, but he who clings to the imprudent is recognized as imprudent. So it helps very much both for instruction and as a testimony to integrity. For young men show that they are imitators of those to whom they cling; and the opinion grows strong that they have received a likeness of life from those with whom they have drunk in the desire of conversing. Hence the greatness of Joshua son of Nun: his union with Moses not only educated him in knowledge of the Law but also sanctified him for grace. Indeed, when in his tabernacle the majesty of the Lord was seen to shine with divine presence, Joshua son of Nun alone was in the tabernacle. When Moses spoke with God, Joshua likewise was covered with the sacred cloud. The elders and the people stood below; Joshua went up with Moses to receive the Law. All the people were within the camp; Joshua was outside the camp in the tabernacle of witness. When the pillar of cloud came down and spoke with Moses, he stood by as a faithful minister; nor did the young man go out of the tabernacle, while the elders, placed far off, trembled at the divine wonders. Everywhere, then, among admirable works and venerable secrets, he clung inseparably to holy Moses. Hence it came about that he who had been the companion of his life became the successor of his power. Rightly such a man came to stop the course of rivers, to say, “Let the sun stand still,” and the sun stood still, as if, a spectator of his victory, it put off the night and prolonged the day; why, he alone was chosen (what was denied to Moses) to lead the people into the land of promise. A great man in the miracles of faith, great in triumphs. The works of the one were more august, those of the other more prosperous. Both, then, supported by divine grace, went beyond the human condition: the one commanded the sea, the other the sky. Fine, then, is the union of elders and young men: the one gives testimony, the other comfort; the one teaching, the other delight. I pass over that the young Lot clung to Abraham even as he set out, lest this perhaps be thought rather a matter of kinship, of a necessary rather than a voluntary association. What shall we say of Elijah and Elisha? Though Scripture did not expressly indicate that Elisha was young, yet we notice and gather that he was the younger. In the Acts of the Apostles Barnabas took Mark, Paul took Silas, Paul Timothy, Paul Titus. But in those just mentioned we see the duties divided, so that the elders excelled in counsel, the younger in service. Often too men equal in virtues but unequal in age delight in union with each other, as Peter and John delighted. For we read in the Gospel, and in his own words, that John was a young man, though in merits and wisdom he was second to none of the elders; for there was in him a venerable old age of character and a hoary prudence. For a spotless life is the wage of a good old age.

This too helps towards the growth of a good reputation, if you snatch the needy from the hands of the powerful and rescue the condemned from death, so far as it can be done without disturbance; lest we seem to do it for display rather than for mercy, and inflict graver wounds while we wish to heal lighter ones. Again, if you free one oppressed by the wealth and faction of a powerful man rather than weighed down by the price of his own crime, the testimony of a good opinion grows remarkably strong. Hospitality too commends many. For it is a public mark of humanity that the stranger should not lack hospitality, should be received dutifully, and that the door should be open to the newcomer. It is very becoming in the estimation of the whole world that strangers be received with honour, that the grace of hospitality not be lacking at the table, that one go to meet guests with the services of liberality and watch for their coming. This was counted to Abraham’s praise, who watched before his door lest perhaps some stranger pass by; and he diligently kept watch, to go to meet, to anticipate, to ask that the guest not pass by, saying: “Lord, if I have found favour before you, do not pass by your servant.” And so, as the reward of hospitality, he received the fruit of posterity. Lot too, his nephew, near to him not only in kin but also in virtue, turned aside the punishments of Sodom from himself and his own because of his love of hospitality. It is fitting, then, to be hospitable, kind, just, not covetous of another’s; rather to yield something of one’s own right, if provoked, than to attack the rights of others; to shun lawsuits, to abhor quarrels, to buy concord and the grace of tranquillity. For a good man’s relaxing something of his own right belongs not only to liberality but often also to advantage. First, it is no small gain to be free of the cost of a lawsuit; then it adds to the fruit that friendship is increased, from which arise very many advantages, which will afterwards bear fruit for one who despises some things for a time. In the duties of hospitality, humanity is to be shown to all; but more abundant honour is to be paid to the just; for “whoever receives a just man in the name of a just man will receive a just man’s reward,” as the Lord declared. So great is the grace of hospitality with God that not even a drink of cold water is left without the rewards of recompense. You see that Abraham received God as his guest while he looked for guests? You see that Lot received angels? How do you know that you too, when you receive a man, do not receive Christ? Christ may be in the guest; for Christ is in the poor man, as he himself says: “I was in prison and you came to me; I was naked and you covered me.” It is sweet, then, to be eager not for money but for grace. But this evil has long since flowed into human minds, that money is held in honour and the minds of men are captured by admiration of riches. Hence avarice has sunk in, like a kind of drought of good duties, so that men think whatever is spent beyond custom a loss. But in this too venerable Scripture has provided against avarice, lest it bring any hindrance, saying: “Better is hospitality with herbs.” And below: “Better is bread in sweetness with peace.” For Scripture teaches us to be not prodigal but liberal. For there are two kinds of largess: one of liberality, the other of prodigal pouring out. It is liberal to receive in hospitality, to clothe the naked, to redeem captives, to help those without means; it is prodigal to overflow with costly banquets and much wine; whence you have read: “Wine is prodigal, and drunkenness insolent.” It is prodigal to empty one’s own wealth for the sake of popular favour, as those do who squander their patrimony on games, on theatrical shows and gladiatorial displays, or even on wild-beast hunts, in order to outdo the celebrity of their predecessors, when all that they do is empty. Indeed it is not fitting to be immoderate even in the expense of good works. It is fine liberality, even towards the poor themselves, to keep measure, so that you may have enough for more, and not to overflow beyond measure for the sake of winning favour. Whatever is brought forth from a pure and sincere disposition, this is seemly: not to undertake superfluous buildings, nor to neglect necessary ones. And this especially befits a priest: to adorn God’s temple with fitting beauty, so that by this care too the Lord’s court may shine; to make frequent the expenses fitting for mercy; to give strangers as much as is right: not superfluous things but suitable ones, not overflowing but fitting to humanity; lest he seek for himself another’s favour at the expense of the poor; and not to show himself either too restricted or too indulgent towards the clergy. For the one is inhuman, the other prodigal: if either the means are lacking for the needs of those whom you ought to draw back from the sordid pursuits of trade, or they overflow for pleasure.

It is fitting too that there be a measure in our words themselves and in our commands, lest there seem to be either too much laxity or too much severity. For many prefer to be more lax, so as to seem good; but it is certain that nothing feigned and false belongs to true virtue; indeed it is not usually lasting. In the beginning it blooms; in its course, like a little flower, it scatters and dissolves; but what is true and sincere is founded on a deep root. And to prove our assertions by examples—since what is feigned cannot last but, flourishing for a time, quickly falls—let us bring forward one example of feigning and fraud from that family from which we have drawn very many examples for progress in virtue. Absalom was the son of King David, distinguished in comeliness, outstanding in form, excelling in youth, so that no such man was found in Israel, spotless from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. He made himself chariots and horses and fifty men to run before him. He rose at dawn and stood before the gate on the road, and if he noticed anyone seeking the king’s judgment, he would go up to him, saying: “From what city are you?” He would answer: “Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.” Absalom would reply: “Your words are good and right, but there is no one given you by the king to hear you. Who will make me judge, so that I may do justice to whoever comes to me, whoever needs judgment?” With such words he charmed each one. And when they came near to bow to him, stretching out his hands, he would take hold of them and kiss them. Thus he turned the hearts of all to himself, for flatteries of this kind touch the feeling of the inmost heart. But these soft and ambitious men chose what was honourable, pleasing, and agreeable for the moment; and when a little delay came, which the prophet, most prudent of all, thought should be interposed by yielding for a while, they could not tolerate and bear it. Indeed David, not doubting the victory, commended his son to those about to fight, that they should spare him. And so he would not even take part in the battle, lest he seem to bear arms against one who, though a parricide, was still his son. It is clear, then, that those things are lasting and solid which are true and which are gathered sincerely rather than by guile; but those which are acquired by feigning and flattery cannot last long.

Who, then, would think faithful to himself either those who are bought to obedience with money or those who are enticed by flattery? For the former often want to sell themselves, and the latter cannot bear hard commands. They are easily caught by a little flattery; if you graze them with a word, they murmur, desert, go off hostile, leave in indignation; they prefer to command rather than obey; as if they had put you in their debt by a favour, they think that those whom they ought to have set over them ought to be subject to them. Who, then, would think faithful to himself those whom he believed he must bind to himself by money or by flattery? For he who has received money judges himself cheap and despised unless he is often bought again. So he often waits for his price; and he who seems to have been courted by entreaty always wants to be asked.

I think, then, that one must strive for honour, and especially for ecclesiastical honour, by good acts and sincere purpose, so that there is neither supine arrogance nor slack negligence, nor shameful affectation and unseemly ambition. A straightforward simplicity of mind suffices for all things and commends itself enough. In the office itself it is fitting that there be neither harsh severity nor excessive laxity, lest we seem either to be exercising power or not to be fulfilling the office we have undertaken. We must strive also to bind very many to us by benefits and services, and to preserve the favour conferred, lest those who grieve that they have been seriously wronged rightly forget the benefit. For it often happens that those whom you have cherished with favour or raised to some higher rank you alienate, if you judge someone unworthy fit to be put above them. But it is fitting that the bishop show favour in his benefits and judgments so as to keep equity, and defer to a presbyter or a minister as to a parent. Nor should these be arrogant because they have once been approved, but rather, as mindful of the favour, keep humility; nor should the bishop be offended if a presbyter or minister or anyone of the clergy increases his own esteem by mercy, by fasting, by integrity, or by teaching and reading. For the grace of the Church is the praise of the teacher. It is good that someone’s work be praised, provided it is done with no zeal for display. Let the lips of his neighbours praise each one, and not his own mouth; and let his works commend him, not his pursuits. But if anyone does not obey the bishop and desires to exalt and raise himself, to overshadow the bishop’s merits by a feigned affectation of learning or humility or mercy, he, straying from the truth, is proud; since this is the rule of truth, that you do nothing to commend yourself by which another is made less, and if you have some good, you do not use it to disfigure and blame another. Do not defend a wicked man, and do not think holy things should be entrusted to an unworthy man; nor again press and attack one whose crime you have not detected. For while injustice quickly offends in all things, it does so most of all in the Church, where there ought to be equity, where it is fitting that there be equality; so that the more powerful claims nothing more for himself, and the richer usurps nothing more. For whether poor or rich, they are one in Christ. Let the holier claim nothing more for himself; for it is right that he be the more humble. But neither let us respect anyone’s person in judgment: let favour be absent, let the merits of the cause decide. Nothing so burdens reputation, indeed faith, as if in judging you give the cause of the lower to the more powerful, or accuse the innocent poor man and excuse the rich man guilty of fault. Mankind is indeed prone to favour those more honoured, lest they think themselves injured, lest they grieve at being beaten. But first, if you fear giving offence, do not undertake judgment; if you are a priest, or anyone else, do not press it. You may keep silent, at least in a money matter, though it belongs to constancy to stand by equity. But in the cause of God, where there is danger to communion, even to pretend not to see is no light sin.

And what profit is it to you to favour the rich man? Is it because he repays one who loves him more quickly? For we favour more often those from whom we hope for a return of favour. But we ought rather to be eager for the weak and needy, because for him who has nothing we hope for a reward from the Lord Jesus, who, under the image of a banquet, set forth a general pattern of the virtues: that we should confer our benefits rather on those who cannot repay them to us, teaching that not the rich but the poor should be invited to a banquet and feast. For the rich seem to be invited so that they too may return a banquet to us; the poor, because they have nothing to give back when they have received, make the Lord our rewarder, who offered himself to be bound in place of the poor man. Even for the very practice of the world a benefit conferred on the poor rather than on the wealthy helps more; for the rich man disdains a benefit and is ashamed to be a debtor for a favour. Indeed he claims for his own merits what has been conferred on him, as if he had received it as a debt, or as if it was given because the giver reckoned that the rich man would return it more abundantly. So in receiving a benefit, by the very fact that they have received it, the rich think they have given rather than received; but the poor man, even if he has nothing with which to repay money, returns gratitude. In this it is certain that he returns more than he received; for money is paid with coin, but gratitude is never exhausted. Money is emptied by repaying; but gratitude is both paid by having it and kept by paying it. Further, what the rich man shuns, the poor man acknowledges, that he is bound by a debt; and he thinks he has been helped, not that honour has been paid to him; he thinks his children given back to him, his life restored, his family saved. How much better, then, to place a benefit with the good than with the ungrateful! Hence the Lord said to the disciples: “Do not possess gold or silver or money”; for as with a sickle he cuts down the avarice that sprouts in human breasts. Peter too said to the lame man who had been carried from his mother’s womb: “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.” So he did not give money; he gave health. How much better it is to have health without money than money without health! The lame man rose, which he did not hope for; he did not receive money, which he did hope for. But these things are scarcely found even among the saints of the Lord, that riches are held in contempt.

But the characters of men have so bent to the admiration of riches that no one but the rich is thought worthy of honour. Nor is this a recent practice; rather, what is worse, this vice has long since grown into human minds. For when the great city of Jericho had fallen at the sound of the priestly trumpets, and Joshua son of Nun had won the victory, he learned that the strength of the people had been weakened by avarice and the desire for gold. For when Achan had taken from the spoils of the burned city a golden garment, two hundred didrachms of silver, and a golden tongue, brought before the Lord he could not deny it, but disclosed the theft. Avarice, then, is old and ancient: it began with the very oracles of the divine law; indeed the law was given to restrain it. Because of avarice Balak thought that Balaam could be tempted by rewards to curse the people of the fathers; and avarice would have won if the Lord had not commanded him to abstain from cursing. Because of avarice Achan, cast down, had led the whole people of the fathers to ruin. So Joshua son of Nun, who could make the sun stand still so that it did not go on, could not stop the avarice of men from creeping on. At his voice the sun stood still; avarice did not stand still. With the sun standing still Joshua completed his triumph; but with avarice advancing he nearly lost the victory. What of Samson, the bravest of all: did not the avarice of the woman Delilah deceive him? He who tore apart a roaring lion with his hands, who, bound and handed over to foreigners, with no helper, alone broke his bonds and killed a thousand of them, who broke ropes woven of sinews as if they were soft threads of broom—he, with his neck bent on a woman’s knees, was shorn of the ornament of his unconquered hair, the prerogative of his strength. Money flowed into the woman’s lap, and grace departed from the man. Deadly, then, is avarice, alluring is money, which defiles those who have it and does not help those who have not. Granted that money sometimes helps, it helps only the poorer man, and him only if he desires it. What is it to him who does not desire it, who does not seek it, who does not need its help, who is not bent by zeal for it? What is it to others if he who has it is wealthier? Is he therefore more honourable because he has that by which honour is usually lost, because he has what he must guard rather than possess? For we possess what we use; but what is beyond use certainly has not the fruit of possession, but the danger of guarding.

In sum, we know that contempt of money is the form of justice; and so we ought to avoid avarice and strive with all zeal never to do anything against justice, but to keep it in all our deeds and works. If we wish to commend ourselves to God, let us have love, be of one mind, and follow humility, each esteeming the other better than himself. For this is humility: if one claims nothing for oneself and thinks oneself lower. Let the bishop use the clergy as his members, and especially the ministers, who are truly his sons; and let him assign to each the office he sees him fit for. Even a part of the body that has rotted is cut off with pain, and it is treated for a long time, if it can be healed with medicines; if it cannot, then it is cut off by a good physician. So it is the disposition of a good bishop to wish to heal the sick, to remove spreading ulcers, to cauterize some things, not to cut off; and finally to cut off with pain what cannot be healed. Hence that most beautiful precept stands out the more, that we think not of our own things but of others’. For in this way there will be nothing in which we either indulge our feelings when angry or, when favouring, grant something more than is just to our own will.

This is the greatest incentive to mercy, that we suffer with the calamities of others and help the needs of others as far as we can, and sometimes more than we can. For it is better to supply grounds for mercy, or to suffer odium, than to show unkindness; as we once fell into odium because we broke up the mystic vessels to redeem captives, which could have displeased the Arians; and it was not so much the deed that displeased them as that there was something in us to blame. But who is so hard, so cruel, so iron-hearted as to be displeased that a man is redeemed from death, a woman from the impurities of barbarians, which are worse than death, and young girls or little boys or infants from the defilements of idols, by which they were being polluted through fear of death? Though we did this not without some reason, yet we so set it out before the people as to acknowledge it and to maintain that it was much better to keep souls for the Lord than gold. For he who sent the apostles without gold also gathered the churches without gold. The Church has gold, not to keep it, but to pay it out and to help in necessities. What need is there to guard what is of no help? Or do we not know how much gold and silver the Assyrians carried off from the temple of the Lord? Is it not better that priests melt it down for the sustenance of the poor, if other means are lacking, than that a sacrilegious enemy carry it off defiled? Will not the Lord say: “Why did you allow so many needy to die of hunger? You certainly had gold; you should have provided sustenance. Why were so many captives led away into trade and, not redeemed, killed by the enemy? It would have been better for you to keep the vessels of the living than those of metal”? No answer could be given to this. For what would you say? “I feared that the temple of God would lack its ornament”? He would answer: “The sacraments do not seek gold; nor do things please by gold that are not bought with gold. The ornament of the sacraments is the redemption of captives.” Those are truly precious vessels which redeem souls from death. That is the true treasure of the Lord which works what his blood has worked. Then is the vessel of the Lord’s blood recognized, when one sees redemption in both, so that the chalice redeems from the enemy those whom the blood redeems from sin. How fine, when columns of captives are redeemed by the Church, that it be said: “These Christ has redeemed!” Behold gold that can be approved, behold useful gold, behold Christ’s gold that frees from death, behold gold by which modesty is redeemed and chastity kept. These, then, I preferred to hand over to you free rather than to keep the gold. This number of captives, this company, is more excellent than the beauty of cups. The gold of the Redeemer ought to serve this office, to redeem those in danger. I recognize that the blood of Christ poured into gold not only shone red in it but also impressed on it, by the office of redemption, the power of divine operation. Such gold the holy martyr Lawrence kept for the Lord: when the treasures of the Church were demanded of him, he promised to show them. The next day he brought the poor. Asked where the treasures were that he had promised, he showed the poor, saying: “These are the treasures of the Church.” And truly treasures, in whom Christ is, in whom faith is. Indeed the Apostle says: “We have a treasure in earthen vessels.” What better treasures has Christ than those in whom he said he is? For thus it is written: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in.” And below: “For what you did to one of these, you did to me.” What better treasures has Jesus than those in whom he loves to be seen? These treasures Lawrence showed, and he conquered, because the persecutor could not take them away. So Joachim, who kept his gold during the siege and did not dispense it to buy food, saw his gold seized and himself led into captivity. Lawrence, who preferred to pay out the Church’s gold to the poor rather than keep it for the persecutor, received the sacred crown of martyrdom for the singular liveliness of his understanding. Was it said to holy Lawrence: “You ought not to have paid out the treasures of the Church and sold the vessels of the sacraments”? This office must be fulfilled with sincere faith and keen foresight. Certainly if anyone diverts it to his own profit, it is a crime; but if he pays it out to the poor and redeems a captive, it is mercy. For no one can say: “Why does a poor man live?” No one can complain that captives were redeemed; no one can accuse because the temple of God was built; no one can be indignant because space has been enlarged for burying the remains of the faithful; no one can grieve because in the burial places of Christians the dead have rest. For these three purposes it is permitted to break, melt down, and sell the vessels of the Church, even consecrated ones. It is necessary that the form of the mystic cup not go out of the Church, lest the service of the sacred chalice be transferred to wicked uses. Therefore within the Church vessels were first sought which had not been consecrated; then they were broken up, finally melted down, and dispensed to the needy in small portions, and they served also for the ransom of captives. But if new ones are lacking, and such as do not seem to have been consecrated, I think all can piously be converted to such uses as we have said.

This must certainly be carefully watched, that the deposits of widows remain inviolate and are kept without any loss, and not only those of widows but of all; for good faith must be shown to all, but the cause of widows and orphans is the greater. Indeed by this name of widows alone, as we read in the books of the Maccabees, all that was entrusted to the temple was kept safe. For when information had been given of the money which the wicked Simon betrayed to King Antiochus as being found in very great amounts in the temple at Jerusalem, Heliodorus, sent for the purpose, came to the temple and disclosed to the high priest the odious information and the cause of his coming. Then the priest said that the deposits were the provisions of widows and orphans, and some belonged to Hyrcanus son of Tobias, a holy man, and he showed them. There were forty talents of silver and two hundred of gold. When Heliodorus wished to seize them and claim them for the king’s advantage, the priests threw themselves before the altar, clothed in priestly robes, and weeping called upon the living God, who had given a law about deposits, to show himself guardian of his own commandments. The changed face and colour of the high priest declared the pain of his soul and the anxiety of his intent mind. All wept that the place would come into contempt if the safe keeping of trust was not preserved even in God’s temple; women girded at the breast, and virgins kept shut away, beat on the doors; some ran to the walls, others looked out through the windows; all stretched their hands to heaven, praying that the Lord would stand by his laws. But Heliodorus, not frightened even by these things, pressed on with what he had intended, and had surrounded the treasury with his guards, when suddenly a terrible horseman appeared to him, shining with golden arms; and his horse was adorned with a splendid covering. Two other young men also appeared, of glorious strength, pleasing beauty, splendid in glory, and fair in dress, who stood around him and scourged the sacrilegious man from either side with continuous blows without any pause. In short, surrounded with darkness he fell to the ground and lay senseless by the evident sign of divine operation, and no hope of life remained in him. Joy arose for those who feared, fear for the proud; and some of Heliodorus’s friends, cast down, begged Onias, asking life for him, since he was breathing his last. So at the high priest’s request the same young men appeared again to Heliodorus, clothed in the same garments, and said to him: “Give thanks to Onias the high priest, for whose sake your life has been given back to you. And you, having experienced God’s scourges, go and announce to all your people how great you have found the sanctity of the temple and the power of God.” Having said this, they vanished. So Heliodorus, recovering his breath, offered a victim to the Lord, gave thanks to Onias the priest, and returned with his army to the king, saying: “If you have any enemy or plotter against your affairs, send him there, and you will receive him back scourged.” Good faith, then, my sons, must be kept with deposits, and diligence applied. Your ministry shines out splendidly from this, if the pressure of a powerful man, which a widow or orphans cannot endure, is restrained by the help of the Church; if you show that the command of the Lord counts more with you than the favour of the rich. You yourselves remember how often we have entered the contest against royal assaults on behalf of the deposits of widows, indeed of all. This I have in common with you. I shall bring forward the recent example of the church of Ticinum, which was in danger of losing a widow’s deposit that it had received. For when the man who wished to claim it for himself by an imperial rescript pressed his demand, the clergy did not keep their authority; the dignitaries too, and the intercessors appointed, said that the emperor’s orders could not be resisted. The text of the rescript was read, quite explicit; there was the decree of the master of offices; an imperial agent was pressing. In short, it had been handed over. Yet, having taken counsel with me, the holy bishop occupied the rooms to which he had learned that the widow’s deposit had been moved. When it could not be carried off, it was taken back under a written receipt. Afterwards it was demanded again on the strength of the receipt; the emperor had repeated the command, intending to meet us in person. It was refused; and when the authority of the divine law had been set out, with the course of the reading and the danger of Heliodorus, the emperor at last, with difficulty, accepted the reason. Later a surprise attempt was also made; but the holy bishop forestalled it by returning to the widow what he had received. Good faith meanwhile is safe: the pressure is not to be feared, because now it is the property, not good faith, that is in danger.

My sons, flee the wicked, beware of the envious. Between the wicked and the envious there is this difference: the wicked man delights in his own good, the envious man is tormented by another’s; the one loves evil, the other hates good; so that he who wishes himself well is almost more tolerable than he who wishes ill to all. My sons, think before acting; and when you have thought long, then do what you approve. When the occasion of a praiseworthy death is given, it must be seized at once. Put off, glory flees and is not easily caught again. Love faith, since through faith and devotion Josiah gained great love for himself even from his adversaries; since he celebrated the Lord’s Passover when he was eighteen years old, as no one had before him. As he surpassed his predecessors in zeal, so you too, my sons, take up zeal for God. Let the zeal of God search you out and devour you, so that each of you may say: “The zeal of your house has searched me out.” An apostle of Christ was called the Zealot. What do I say of an apostle? The Lord himself says: “The zeal of your house has eaten me up.” Let it be, then, the zeal of God, not that human zeal which envy begets. Let there be among you the peace that surpasses all understanding. Love one another. Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more pleasing than peace. And you yourselves know that I have always loved and love you above others: as sons of one father you have grown together into the affection of brothers. Hold fast what is good, and the God of peace and love will be with you in the Lord Jesus, to whom be honour, glory, majesty, and power, with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.

The prophet David taught us to walk about in our heart as in a spacious house and to converse with it as with a good companion, so that he spoke to himself and talked with himself, as in that saying: “I said, I will guard my ways.” Solomon too, his son, says: “Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells,” that is, use your own counsel. For “counsel in the heart of a man is deep water.” “Let no stranger,” he says, “share it with you. Let the fountain of your water be your own; and rejoice with the wife who is yours from your youth. Let the hart of friendship and the foal of your graces converse with you.” So Scipio was not the first to know that he was not alone when he was alone, nor less at leisure when he was at leisure. Moses knew it before him: when silent he was crying out; when he stood at leisure he was fighting; and not only fighting, but triumphing over enemies he had not come into contact with; so much at leisure that others held up his hands, and no less busy than the rest, since with idle hands he overcame an enemy whom those who fought could not conquer. So Moses both spoke in silence and worked at leisure. Whose business was greater than this man’s leisure, who, set on the mountain for forty days, received the whole Law, and in that solitude did not lack one to speak with him? Hence David too says: “I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me.” And how much more it is if God speaks with someone than if he speaks with himself! The apostles passed by, and their shadow healed the sick. Their garments were touched, and health was given. Elijah spoke a word, and the rain stopped and did not fall on the earth for three years and six months. Again he spoke, and the jar of meal did not fail, and the vessel of oil was not emptied during the whole time of the famine. And since warlike things delight many: what is more excellent, to have finished a battle by the arms of a great army, or by merits alone? Elisha sat in one place, and the king of Syria brought a great mass of war against the people of the fathers, heaped up various deceits of counsel, and tried to surround them with ambushes; but the prophet detected all his preparations, and, present everywhere by vigour of mind through the grace of God, he announced the enemies’ thoughts to his own people and warned them in what places to beware. When this was made known to the king of Syria, he sent an army and shut in the prophet. Elisha prayed, made them all struck with blindness, and made those who had come to besiege him enter Samaria as captives. Let us compare this leisure with the leisure of others. For others, for the sake of rest, are accustomed to withdraw their minds from business and to remove themselves from the assembly and company of men, and either seek the seclusion of the countryside and the solitude of the fields, or within the city give their minds to leisure and indulge in quiet and tranquillity. But Elisha either divides the Jordan in the wilderness by his passing, so that the lower part flows down and the upper runs back to its source; or on Carmel, removing the difficulty of begetting, makes the barren woman fruitful by an unexpected conception; or raises the dead; or tempers the bitterness of food and makes it sweet by mixing in meal; or, distributing ten loaves, gathers leftovers after the people are filled; or, when the iron of an axe has flown off and sunk into the depth of the river Jordan, makes it float by throwing wood into the water; or changes leprosy by cleansing, drought by rains, famine by plenty. When, then, is the just man alone, who is always with God? When is he solitary, who is never separated from Christ? “Who,” he says, “will separate us from the love of Christ? I am confident that neither death nor life nor angel…” And when is he idle from business, who is never idle from merit, by which business is completed? In what places is he confined, whose possession of riches is the whole world? By what estimate is he defined, who is never caught by opinion? For he is as unknown and yet well known; as dying, and behold he lives; as sorrowful, yet always more joyful; as needy, yet generous; as having nothing, and possessing all things. For the just man looks to nothing but what is constant and honourable. And so, even if he seems poor to another, he is rich to himself, since he is rated not by the estimate of perishable things but of eternal ones.

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.

When could our forefathers have come out of slavery, if they had not believed that it was not only shameful but also useless to serve the king of the Egyptians? Joshua too and Caleb, sent to spy out the land, reported that the land was indeed fruitful, but inhabited by most ferocious nations. The people, broken by terror of war, refused possession of that land. The spies who had been sent, Joshua and Caleb, urged that the land was useful; they thought it unseemly to give way to the nations; they chose rather to be stoned, as the people threatened, than to depart from the honourable. Others dissuaded; the people cried out, saying that there would be war against dreadful and fierce nations, that they would have to fall in battle, that their wives and children would be plunder. The Lord’s indignation blazed so that he wished to destroy them all; but at Moses’ entreaty he tempered his sentence and put off vengeance, judging it punishment enough for the faithless that, even if he spared them for the time and did not strike the unbelievers, they should not reach the land they had refused, as the price of their unbelief; but the children and women who had not murmured, pardonable by sex or age, should receive the promised inheritance of that land. So all who were twenty years old and upward fell in the desert; but the punishment of the others was put off. Those who had gone up with Joshua and thought they should dissuade died at once by a great plague; but Joshua and Caleb entered the land of promise with those of innocent age or sex. The better part, then, preferred glory to safety, the worse safety to the honourable. But the divine sentence approved those who judged the honourable to be preferred to the useful, and condemned those with whom what seemed suited to safety weighed more than the honourable.

Nothing, then, is more unsightly than to have no love of the honourable, and, by a kind of habit of degenerate trading, to be troubled by base gain, to burn with an avaricious heart, to gape day and night after loss to another’s patrimony, not to raise the mind to the brightness of the honourable, not to consider the beauty of true praise. Hence arise inheritances sought by fowling, caught by a pretence of continence and gravity: which is far from the purpose of a Christian man; for whatever is drawn out by art and composed by fraud lacks the merit of simplicity. Even in those who have not received any office of the ecclesiastical order, the desire for an inheritance is judged unbecoming. Let those set at the last end of life have their own judgment, so that they may freely make the will they think right, since they will not be able to correct it afterwards; since it is not honourable to divert gains owed to others or prepared for them; since it belongs to a priest or minister to benefit all, if possible, and to harm no one. Indeed, if one cannot be helped without another being injured, it is better that neither be helped than that the other be burdened. And so it is not for a priest to intervene in money cases, in which it cannot help happening that the one who loses is often injured, since he thinks he has been beaten by the intercessor’s favour. It belongs, then, to a priest to harm no one, to wish to benefit all; but to be able to do so belongs to God alone. For in a capital case to harm one whom you ought to help in his danger is not without grave sin; but in a money case to seek hatreds is foolishness, when for the safety of a man heavy troubles are often undertaken, in which it is even glorious to be in danger. Let the rule set out, then, be kept in the priestly office, that he harm no one, not even when provoked and offended by some injury. For he is a good man who said: “If I have repaid those who repaid me evil.” For what glory is it if we do not harm one who has not harmed us? But that is virtue, if when injured you forgive. How honourable that, when he could have harmed the king his enemy, he preferred to spare him! How useful too, because this profited his successor, so that all learned to keep faith with their own king, and not to usurp rule but to revere it! So the honourable was preferred to the useful, and the useful followed the honourable. It is little that he spared him; he added that he grieved even when Saul was killed in war, and lamented him tearfully, saying: “Mountains of Gilboa, let neither dew nor rain fall upon you. Mountains of death, for there the protection of the mighty was taken away, the protection of Saul. He was not anointed with oil, and from the blood of the wounded and the fat of the warriors the arrow of Jonathan did not turn back, and the sword of Saul did not return empty. Saul and Jonathan, beautiful and most dear, inseparable in their life, and in death they were not separated. Lighter than eagles, stronger than lions. Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet with your ornaments, who put gold upon your garments. How have the mighty fallen in the midst of battle! Jonathan was wounded to death. I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan, very beautiful to me. Your love for me fell upon me as the love of women. How have the mighty fallen, and the desirable weapons perished!” What mother would so weep for an only son as he wept for his enemy? Who would follow the author of a favour with such praises as those with which he followed the plotter against his life? How dutifully he grieved, with what affection he groaned! The mountains dried up by the prophetic curse, and divine power fulfilled the sentence of the one who cursed. So the elements paid the penalty for having witnessed the king’s death. And what was the cause of death for holy Naboth but regard for the honourable? For when the king asked him for his vineyard, promising to give money, he refused the unseemly price for his father’s inheritance, and preferred by death to avoid such a disgrace. “The Lord forbid me,” he said, “that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers”; that is, may so great a reproach not be done to me, may God not allow so great a crime to be extorted. He certainly does not speak of vines—for God has no care for cheap things—nor of a plot of earth, but he speaks of the right of his fathers. He could certainly have taken another vineyard from the king’s vineyards and been a friend, in which no small advantage of this world is usually reckoned; but he judged that what was shameful should not be thought useful, and preferred to undergo danger with honour rather than advantage with reproach—I speak of common advantage, not that in which there is also the grace of the honourable. Indeed the king himself could have extorted it, but he thought it shameless, and he grieved when Naboth was killed. The Lord too announced that the cruelty of the woman, who, unmindful of the honourable, preferred shameful gain, was to be punished with fitting punishment. Every fraud, then, is shameful. Indeed, even in cheap things a deceitful balance and a fraudulent measure are accursed. If in the market of things for sale, in the practice of trade, fraud is punished, can it seem blameless among the duties of the virtues? Solomon cried out: “A great and a small weight, and double measures, are unclean before the Lord.” And above he says: “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is acceptable to him.”

In all things, then, good faith is seemly, justice pleasing, and the measure of equity delightful. What shall I say of other contracts, and especially of the purchase of estates, or of transactions and agreements? Are there not formulas that fraud be absent, and that whoever is caught in fraud be liable to a double penalty? Everywhere, then, regard for the honourable prevails, which excludes fraud and casts out deceit. Hence rightly the prophet David put forth a general sentence, saying: “Nor did he do evil to his neighbour.” So not only in contracts (in which the defects of what is sold are ordered to be disclosed, and unless the seller has made them known, even though he has transferred it into the buyer’s ownership, the sale is made void by an action for fraud), but in general, in all things, fraud must be absent: simplicity must be opened up, truth made known. But that old formula about fraud was clearly expressed by divine Scripture, not as a formula of lawyers but as a judgment of the patriarchs, in the book of the Old Testament which is entitled Joshua son of Nun. For when the report had gone out among the peoples that the sea had been dried up when the Hebrews passed over, that water had flowed from the rock, that daily food was supplied from heaven, abundant for so many thousands of people; that the walls of Jericho had fallen at the holy sound of the trumpets, battered by the blow and shout of the people; that the king of Ai too had been conquered and hanged on a tree until evening: the Gibeonites, fearing the strong hand, came with cunning, pretending that they were from a far country and that during their long travel their shoes had burst and their clothing worn out, whose signs of age they showed; and that the cause of so great a labour was the desire to earn peace and to enter into friendship with the Hebrews; and they began to ask Joshua son of Nun to make a league with them. And because he was still unacquainted with the places and did not know the inhabitants, he did not recognize their fraud, nor did he ask God, but believed quickly. So holy was good faith in those times that it was not believed that anyone could deceive. Who would blame this in the saints, who judge others by their own disposition, and because truth is dear to them, think that no one lies, and do not know what it is to deceive? They readily believe others to be what they themselves are, and cannot suspect what they themselves are not. Hence Solomon says: “The innocent man believes every word.” His readiness is not to be blamed, but his goodness praised. This is to be innocent: not to know what harms; and even if he is cheated by someone, he judges well of all, since he thinks there is good faith in all. Inclined, then, by this devotion of his mind to believe, he made a covenant, gave peace, confirmed the league. But when they came to their lands and the fraud was detected, that though they were neighbours they had pretended to be strangers, the people of the fathers began to be indignant that they had been cheated. Yet Joshua did not think the peace he had given should be revoked, because it had been confirmed by the sanctity of an oath; lest while he convicted another’s faithlessness he should break his own faith. Yet he punished them with the service of a meaner ministry. The sentence was milder, but longer lasting; for the punishment of their old cunning remains in their duties, assigned as a hereditary service to this day.

I shall not note, in entering upon inheritances, the snapping of fingers and the dancing of the naked heir; for these are notorious even among the common people; nor the arranged abundance of a feigned fishing, to entice the buyer’s desire. For why was he found so eager for luxury and delights that he suffered such a fraud? What need have I to treat of that pleasant and secluded retreat at Syracuse and the cunning of the Sicilian, who, having found a foreigner and learned that he was eager for gardens for sale, invited him to dinner in the gardens; the guest promised and came the next day; he found there a great crowd of fishermen, a banquet adorned with choice supplies, fishermen arranged in front of the gardens in view of the diners, where they had never before cast nets; each eagerly offered to the diners what he had caught; fish were heaped on the table and, leaping, struck the eyes of those reclining. The guest wondered at such an abundance of fish and so great a number of boats. When he asked, he was answered that there was a watering place there, and that countless fish gathered there for the sake of fresh water. In short, he enticed the guest so as to wring the gardens from him; the owner, who wanted to sell, lets himself be pressed and accepts the price with a show of reluctance. The next day the buyer came to the gardens with friends and found no boat. When he asked whether the fishermen had some holiday that day, he was told none, and that they had never been accustomed to fish there except on the day before. With what authority could he convict the fraud, who had hunted so shamefully for delights? For he who accuses another of sin ought himself to be free from sin. I shall not, then, call such trifles into this authority of the Church’s judgment, which condemns in general all appetite for shameful gain and excludes levity and cunning in a brief summary of speech. For what shall I say of him who, from a will which, though made by others, he knows to be false, claims an inheritance or legacy for himself and seeks gain from another’s crime, when even the public laws bind him who knowingly uses a forgery as guilty of the crime? The rule of justice is plain, that it does not become a good man to turn aside from the truth, nor to inflict unjust loss on anyone, nor to attach any deceit or put together any fraud. What is more evident than that Ananias, who cheated over the price of his field, which he himself had sold, and laid a part of the price at the apostles’ feet as though it were the whole sum, perished as guilty of fraud? He was certainly free to offer nothing, and would have done so without fraud. But because he mixed in fraud, he did not win the favour of liberality but paid the penalty of deceit. And the Lord in the Gospel rejected those who came to him with guile, saying: “Foxes have holes”; since he commands us to live in simplicity of heart and innocence. David too says: “Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit,” convicting the traitor of wickedness, because such an instrument is used for a man’s adornment and often wounds. If anyone, then, makes a show of favour and weaves deceit after the traitor’s example, so as to betray to death one whom he ought to protect, he is judged by comparison with that instrument, which by the fault of a drunken mind and an unsteady hand usually wounds. As that man, drunk with the wine of malice, brought death on Ahimelech the priest by the information of a deadly betrayal, because he had received the prophet as a guest, whom the king, kindled by the goads of envy, was pursuing.

The disposition, then, must be pure and sincere, so that each one speaks simply, possesses his vessel in holiness, does not lead a brother astray by deceitful words, and promises nothing dishonourable; and if he has promised, it is more tolerable not to do what was promised than to do what is shameful. Often many bind themselves by the sacrament of an oath, and though they themselves know they ought not to have promised, yet out of regard for the oath they do what they pledged; as we wrote above of Herod, who shamefully promised a reward to a dancer and cruelly paid it. It is shameful that a kingdom is promised for a dance; cruel that the death of a prophet is given for the sake of an oath. How much more tolerable would perjury have been with such an oath! If indeed it could be called perjury, what a drunk man had sworn among the wine, what an unmanned man had promised among the bands of dancers. The prophet’s head is brought in on a dish, and what was madness was thought to be good faith. Nor shall I ever be brought to believe that the leader Jephthah did not promise rashly to sacrifice to God whatever met him at the threshold of his house on his return, since he himself regretted his vow after his daughter met him. Indeed he tore his clothes and said: “Alas, my daughter, you have entangled me; you have become a goad of pain to me.” Though from pious fear and awe he fulfilled the bitterness of a hard payment, yet he established and left an annual mourning to be lamented even by posterity. A hard promise, a bitterer payment, which even he who made it had to mourn. Indeed a precept and decree was made in Israel from days to days: “The daughters of the people of Israel,” it says, “went lamenting the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.” I cannot accuse the man who had to fulfil what he had vowed; but miserable is the necessity which is paid by the slaying of one’s own kin. It is better not to vow than to vow what he to whom it is promised does not wish paid. Indeed in Isaac we have an example, in whose place the Lord appointed a ram to be sacrificed to him. Not all promises, then, are always to be kept. Indeed the Lord himself often changes his sentence, as Scripture indicates. For in the book entitled Numbers he had proposed to strike the people with death and destroy them; but afterwards, entreated by Moses, he was reconciled to his people. And again he says to Moses and Aaron: “Separate yourselves from the midst of this congregation, and I will consume them together.” And when they had withdrawn from the assembly, the earth, loosened in a sudden chasm, swallowed up the ungodly Dathan and Abiram. This example of Jephthah’s daughter is more excellent and older than that which is held memorable among the philosophers, of the two Pythagoreans, one of whom, condemned to death by the tyrant Dionysius, with the day of his death fixed, asked to be given leave to go home to commend his family; and so that faith in his return might not waver, he offered a surety for his death, on condition that if he himself was absent on the appointed day, his surety would know he must die for him. He who was offered did not refuse the nature of the pledge, and awaited the day of death with a steady mind. So the one did not withdraw, the other returned on the day. This was so wonderful that the tyrant took into his friendship those whose danger he was pressing. What, then, is full of wonder in tried and learned men is found much more magnificent and illustrious in a virgin, who said to her groaning father: “Do to me as it went out of your mouth.” But she asked a space of two months, to hold a gathering with her companions on the mountains, who would with loving affection mourn her virginity destined for death. The weeping of her companions did not move the girl, nor grief bend her, nor groaning delay her; she did not let the day pass nor fail the hour. She returned to her father as if returning to a vow, and by her own will urged him on as he hesitated, and by her spontaneous choice brought it about that what was the accident of impiety became a sacrifice of piety.

Behold, Judith offers herself to you, wonderful, who went to Holofernes, a man feared by the peoples, surrounded by the triumphant host of the Assyrians. Him she first struck by the grace of her form and the beauty of her face, then ensnared by the elegance of her speech. Her first triumph was that she brought back her modesty unharmed from the enemy’s tent; the second, that as a woman she won the victory over a man and put peoples to flight by her counsel. The Persians shuddered at her daring. Certainly—what they admire in those two Pythagoreans—she did not fear the danger of death, nor even that of her modesty, which is graver for good women: she did not tremble at the blow of a single executioner, nor even at the weapons of a whole army. A woman, she stood among the wedges of warriors, among victorious arms, secure about death. As far as the weight of danger goes, she went forth to die; as far as faith goes, to fight. Judith, then, followed the honourable, and while she followed it she found the useful. For it belonged to the honourable to prevent the people of God from surrendering to the profane, from betraying their ancestral rites and sacraments, from subjecting holy virgins, grave widows, and chaste matrons to barbarian impurity, from ending the siege by surrender; it belonged to the honourable that she preferred to be in danger for all, so as to rescue all from danger. How great the authority of the honourable, that a woman claimed for herself counsel on the highest matters and did not entrust it to the leaders of the people! How great the authority of the honourable, that she counted on God as her helper; how great the grace, that she found him!

And what did Elisha follow but the honourable, when he led captive into Samaria the army of Syria, which had come to besiege him, whose eyes he had covered with blindness, and said: “Lord, open their eyes that they may see,” and they saw? So when the king of Israel wished to strike those who had come in and asked the prophet to give him leave, he answered that they were not to be struck, since he had not achieved their captivity with his hand and weapons of war, but should rather be helped with a supply of food. And so, refreshed with abundant feasting, the raiders of Syria never afterwards thought of returning to the land of Israel. How much more sublime this is than that story of the Greeks: when two peoples were contending with each other for glory and empire, and one of them had the opportunity of secretly burning the other people’s ships, it thought this shameful, and preferred to have less power honourably than more shamefully. And these indeed could not have done this without crime, deceiving by such a fraud those who had come into alliance to finish the Persian war; which, though they could deny it, they could not but blush for. But Elisha preferred to save rather than destroy men who, though not deceived by fraud, had been struck by the power of the Lord; because it would be seemly to spare an enemy and to give life to an adversary, which he could have taken away had he not spared it. It is clear, then, that what is seemly is always useful. For holy Judith too by a seemly contempt for her own safety ended the danger of the siege and gained public advantage by her own honour; and Elisha won more glory by pardoning than by striking, and more usefully kept alive the enemies he had captured. And what did John consider but the honourable, so that he could not bear a dishonourable marriage even in a king, saying: “It is not lawful for you to have her as wife”? He could have kept silent, had he not judged it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth from fear of death, to bend the prophetic authority to the king, to slip in flattery. He knew certainly that he would die because he opposed the king; but he preferred the honourable to safety. And yet what was more useful than what brought the holy man the glory of martyrdom? Holy Susanna too, when the terror of false witness was announced, seeing herself pressed on one side by danger, on the other by disgrace, preferred to avoid disgrace by an honourable death rather than, from desire for safety, to take up and endure a shameful life. So while she aimed at the honourable, she also kept her life; whereas if she had preferred what seemed to her useful for life, she would not have won so great a glory; indeed, choosing what was not only useless but even dangerous, she might perhaps not have escaped the penalty of the crime. We notice, then, that what is shameful cannot be useful, nor again what is honourable useless; because usefulness is always the companion of the honourable, and the honourable of usefulness.

The rhetoricians tell as memorable that a general of the Romans, when the physician of the enemy king came to him promising to give the king poison, sent him back bound to the enemy. And truly it was splendid that one who had undertaken a contest of valour refused to conquer by fraud. For he did not place the honourable in victory, but declared victory itself shameful unless gained honourably. Let us return to our Moses and go back to earlier things, so that we bring forward examples as much older as they are more excellent. The king of Egypt would not let the people of the fathers go. Moses told Aaron the priest to stretch out his rod over all the waters of Egypt. Aaron stretched it out, and the water of the river was turned into blood, and no one could drink the water, and all the Egyptians were perishing of thirst; but the fathers had pure streams in abundance. They threw ashes into the sky, and there came sores and burning blisters on men and beasts. They brought down hail with flaming fire; all things on the earth were crushed. Moses prayed, and everything returned to its own favour: the hail was calmed, the sores healed, the rivers gave their usual drink. Again the earth was covered with thick darkness for three days, from the time Moses raised his hand and poured out darkness. Every firstborn of Egypt was dying, while all the offspring of the Hebrews were unharmed. Asked to put an end to these destructions too, Moses prayed and obtained it. In the one man it is to be praised that he held back from partnership in fraud; in the other it is wonderful that by his own virtue he turned away even from an enemy the punishments threatened by God, being truly, as it is written, very meek and gentle. He knew that the king would not keep faith with his promises; yet he thought it honourable to pray when asked, to bless when injured, to forgive when attacked. He threw down his rod, and it became a serpent, which devoured the serpents of the Egyptians: signifying that the Word would become flesh, which would make void the poisons of the dread serpent by the remission and pardon of sins. For the rod is the Word, upright, royal, full of power, the emblem of rule. The rod became a serpent, since he who was the Son of God, born of God the Father, became Son of Man, born of a virgin; who, lifted up on the cross like a serpent, poured medicine into human wounds. Hence the Lord himself says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Indeed another sign too which Moses did belongs to the Lord Jesus: he put his hand into his bosom and brought it out, and his hand became like snow. Again he put it in and brought it out, and it had the appearance of human flesh; signifying first the brightness of the Lord Jesus’ Godhead, and afterwards his taking of flesh, in which all nations and peoples must believe by faith. Rightly he put in his hand, for Christ is the right hand of God; and if anyone does not believe in his Godhead and incarnation, he is scourged as reprobate, like that king who, because he did not believe evident signs, afterwards, when scourged, begged to obtain pardon. How great, then, the love of the honourable ought to be is proved from these things, and above all from his offering himself for the people, saying that God should forgive the people or else blot him out of the book of the living.

Tobit too expressed the form of the honourable very plainly, when he left a banquet to bury the dead, and invited the needy to the food of a poor man’s table. Raguel above all, who, out of regard for the honourable, when asked to give his daughter in marriage, did not keep silent even about his daughter’s misfortunes, lest he seem to deceive the suitor by silence. So when Tobias son of Tobit asked that the girl be given to him, he answered that by law she was indeed owed to him as a kinsman, but that he had already given her to six husbands, and all of them had died. So the just man feared more for others, and preferred that his daughter remain unmarried for him than that strangers be in danger because of her marriage. How briefly he resolved all the questions of the philosophers! They discuss the defects of houses, whether they should be concealed or disclosed by the seller; this man of ours did not think that even his daughter’s defects should be hidden. And certainly he did not seek to give her away, but was asked. How much more honourable he is than they we cannot doubt, if we compare how much more important the cause of a daughter is than the money for a thing for sale.

Let us consider another deed, done in captivity, which held the highest beauty of the honourable. For the honourable is hindered by no adversity; it stands out in adversity and excels more than in prosperity. Amid chains, then, amid arms, flames, slavery (which for free men is heavier than any punishment), amid the punishments of the dying, the destruction of the fatherland, the fear of the living, and the blood of the slain, care for the honourable did not fall away from our forefathers, but amid the ashes and embers of their overthrown fatherland it shone and gleamed in their devoted affections. For when our fathers, who were then worshippers of the almighty God, were being led into Persia, the priests of the Lord took fire from the altar and secretly hid it in a valley. There was there a kind of open well, little frequented because of the withdrawal of the water, not open to common use, in an unknown place remote from witnesses: there they sealed up the hidden fire with sacred secrecy and silence. It was not their concern to bury gold or hide silver to keep for their descendants; but, caring for the honourable in their last extremity, they thought the sacred fire must be preserved, lest the impure defile it, or the blood of the dead quench it, or a heap of ugly ruins blot it out. So they went off to Persia free only in religion, since that alone could not be wrung from them by captivity. But after a long time, when it pleased God, he put it into the mind of the king of the Persians to order the temple in Judea to be restored and the lawful rites repaired at Jerusalem. For this task the king of the Persians sent Nehemiah the priest. And he brought with him the grandsons of those priests who, when about to leave their native soil, had hidden the sacred fire lest it perish. When they came, as is handed down by the account of the fathers, they did not find fire but water. And since there was no fire with which to kindle the altars, Nehemiah the priest ordered them to draw the water, bring it to him, and sprinkle it on the wood. Then—wonderful to see!—though the sky was overcast with clouds, the sun suddenly shone out, a great fire was kindled, so that all, amazed at so evident a grace of the Lord, were filled with joy. Nehemiah prayed; the priests sang a hymn to God. And when the sacrifice was consumed, Nehemiah ordered the larger stones to be drenched again with the remaining water; when this was done a flame was kindled, but the light shining from the altar was at once consumed. When this sign became known, the king of the Persians ordered a temple to be made in the place where the fire had been hidden and water was afterwards found, to which very many gifts were brought. Those who were with holy Nehemiah called it Ephthar, which means purification; by most it is called Nephthe. It is found in the records of the prophet Jeremiah that he ordered those who would come after to take of the fire. This is the fire that fell on the sacrifice of Moses and consumed it, as it is written: “For fire went out from the Lord and consumed all the burnt offerings that were on the altar.” With this fire the sacrifice had to be sanctified; and so against the sons of Aaron, who wished to bring in strange fire, fire went out again from the Lord and consumed them, so that they were cast out of the camp dead. And Jeremiah, coming to the place, found a dwelling like a cave, and brought the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense there, and blocked the entrance; and when those who had come with him searched curiously to mark the place for themselves, they could by no means grasp or find it. When Jeremiah learned what they had attempted, he said: “The place will be unknown until God gathers the congregation of the people and becomes merciful. Then God will show these things, and the majesty of the Lord will appear.”

We hold the congregation of the people; we recognize the mercy of the Lord our God, which the propitiator wrought in his passion. I think we cannot be ignorant of this fire either, since we have read that the Lord Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire, as John said in the Gospel. Rightly the sacrifice was consumed, since it was for sin. That fire was a type of the Holy Spirit, who was to descend after the Lord’s ascension and remit the sins of all; who, like fire, inflames the faithful soul and mind. Hence Jeremiah, having received the Spirit, says: “And it became in my heart like a burning fire, flaming in my bones; and I am dissolved on every side and cannot bear it.” Also in the Acts of the Apostles, when the Spirit had descended on the apostles and on many who were waiting for the Lord’s promises, we read that tongues as of fire were distributed. Indeed the soul of each was so warmed that those who had received the diversity of tongues were thought to be filled with new wine. What, then, is the meaning of the fact that fire became water and water kindled fire, unless that spiritual grace burns away our sins by fire and cleanses them by water? For sin is washed away and burned away. Hence the Apostle too says: “Fire will test what sort of work each one’s is”; and below: “If anyone’s work burns, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” We have put this to prove that sins are burned away by fire. It is known, then, that this is truly the sacred fire which then, as a type of the future remission of sins, came down on the sacrifice. This fire, then, is hidden in the time of captivity, when guilt reigns; but in the time of liberty it is brought out. And though changed into the appearance of water, yet it keeps the nature of fire, so as to consume the sacrifice. Do not wonder, since you have read that God the Father said: “I am a consuming fire”; and elsewhere: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.” The Lord Jesus himself too inflamed the hearts of his hearers like fire and refreshed them like a fountain; for he himself says in his Gospel that he came to cast fire on the earth, and to supply a drink of living water to the thirsty. In Elijah’s time too fire came down, when he challenged the prophets of the nations to kindle the altar without fire. And when they could not do it, he drenched his own victim three times with water, and the water ran round about the altar, and he cried out, and fire fell from the Lord out of heaven and consumed the burnt offering. You are that victim. Consider each thing in silence. The vapour of the Holy Spirit descends on you; he seems to burn you up when he consumes your sins. Indeed the sacrifice consumed in Moses’ time was a sacrifice for sin. Hence Moses says, as is written in the book of the Maccabees: “Because what was for sin was not eaten, it was consumed.” Does it not seem to you to be consumed when in the sacrament of baptism the whole outer man perishes? “Our old man has been nailed to the cross,” the Apostle cries. There, as the examples of the fathers teach you, the Egyptian is drowned and the Hebrew rises, renewed by the Holy Spirit, who even crossed the Red Sea with unharmed step, where the fathers were baptized in the cloud and in the sea. In the flood too, in Noah’s time, all flesh died, yet the just man with his offspring was saved. Is not man consumed when that which is mortal is absorbed by life? Indeed the outer man is corrupted, but the inner is renewed. And not only in baptism, but also in penance, there is a destruction of the flesh for the advance of the spirit; as we are taught by apostolic authority, holy Paul saying: “I have judged, as present, to hand over him who has done this to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This longer digression seems to have been made for the sake of the wonderful mystery, while we strive to set out more fully the sacrament revealed, which is so full of the honourable that it is full of religion.

How great a care for the honourable our forefathers had, that they avenged by war the wrong done to one woman by the lust of intemperate men, and, having conquered the people, swore that they would not give their own daughters in marriage to the tribe of Benjamin! The tribe remained without any support for posterity, unless it had received permission for a necessary fraud. Yet that indulgence does not seem free of a punishment fitting their intemperance, since they were allowed only this, to enter marriages by abduction, not by the sacrament of wedlock. And truly it was fitting that those who had broken up another’s union should themselves lose the solemnity of marriage. How full of pity the story is! A man, it says, a Levite, had taken a wife for himself (whom I think was called concubine, concubina, from concubitus, lying together), who some while later, offended by certain things, as happens, went off to her father and was there four months. And her husband rose and went to his father-in-law’s house, to restore favour with his wife and to call her back and bring her home; the woman met him and brought her husband into her father’s house. The young woman’s father was glad; he came to meet him and sat with him three days; and they feasted and rested. And on the next day the Levite rose at dawn, and was held back by his father-in-law, so as not to leave the pleasure of the feast so soon. And on another day and a third, the young woman’s father did not allow his son-in-law to set out, until all joy and good feeling between them was complete. But on the seventh day, when the day was already declining toward evening, after the meal and the feasting were over, though he pleaded the nearness of the coming night, so that he would think it better to rest among his own than among strangers, he could not hold him, and sent him off together with his daughter. But when they had gone some way, as evening was pressing nearer and they had come close to the city of the Jebusites, the servant said that his master should turn aside to it; his master did not agree, because that was not a city of the sons of Israel, but he aimed to reach Gibeah, which was inhabited by people of the tribe of Benjamin. And there was no one to receive the travellers as guests except a stranger advanced in age. When he saw them and asked the Levite, “Where are you going, or where do you come from?” and he answered that he was a traveller returning to the hill country of Ephraim and that there was no one to take him in, he offered him hospitality and prepared a meal. But when they had eaten their fill and the tables were removed, men of pestilence rushed upon the house and surrounded it. Then the old man offered to the men of iniquity his virgin daughter and the companion with whom she used to sleep, so long as no violence was done to his guest. But when reason made little progress and force prevailed, the Levite gave up his wife; and they knew her and abused her all night. Overcome by this atrocity, or by grief at the wrong, she threw herself down before the door of the host where her husband was lodging and breathed out her spirit, yet keeping, as a last service of her life, the affection of a good wife, so as at least to leave to her husband the burial of her body. When this became known (not to delay you with much), almost the whole people of Israel blazed into war; and when the battle remained doubtful with uncertain outcome, yet at the third time of fighting the people of Benjamin were delivered to the people of Israel and, condemned by the divine sentence, paid the penalty of their intemperance. It was also decreed that no one of the number of the fathers should give his daughter to them as wife; and this was confirmed by the sacrament of an oath. But, pricked that they had brought so harsh a sentence against their brothers, they so tempered its severity that they took for themselves in marriage virgins bereaved of their parents, whose fathers had been slain for an offence, or joined in union by abduction; because, for the crime of so shameful a deed, those who had violated the right of another’s marriage had shown themselves unworthy of obtaining marriage. But lest one tribe perish from the people, the connivance of a fraud was granted. How great a care for the honourable our forefathers had appears from this, that forty thousand men drew the sword against their brothers of the tribe of Benjamin, wishing to avenge the wrong done to modesty, because they would not tolerate violators of chastity. So in that war sixty-five thousand warriors were slain on both sides, and cities burned. And though the people of Israel were at first the weaker, yet, not moved by fear of adverse war, they did not set aside their grief in avenging chastity. They rushed into battle, ready even with their own blood to wash away the stain of the crime committed.

And what wonder if the people of God cared for that seemliness and the honourable, when even lepers, as we read in the books of Kingdoms, did not lack regard for the honourable? There was a great famine in Samaria, because the army of the Syrians had besieged it. The king was anxiously inspecting the military watches on the wall; a woman appealed to him, saying: “This woman persuaded me to bring my son, and I brought him, and we cooked him and ate him; and she promised that afterwards she too would bring her son, and we would eat his flesh together; but now she has hidden her son and will not bring him.” The king, moved that women seemed to have fed not only on human corpses but on those of their own children, and roused by the example of so dreadful a calamity, threatened death to the prophet Elisha, in whose power he believed it lay to break the siege and drive away the famine; or because he had not allowed the king to strike the Syrians whom he had struck with blindness. Elisha was sitting with the elders in Bethel, and before the king’s messenger came in to him, he said to the elders: “Have you seen that the son of that murderer has sent to take away my head?” And the messenger came in and delivered the king’s order, which threatened immediate danger to his life. The prophet answered him: “At this hour tomorrow a measure of fine flour will be a shekel, and two measures of barley a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” And when the messenger sent by the king did not believe, saying that even if the Lord rained abundance of grain from heaven this could not be done, Elisha said to him: “Because you have not believed, you will see it with your eyes and will not eat.” And suddenly there was in the camp of Syria as it were a sound of chariots, and the noise of many horsemen, and the noise of a great host, and a huge tumult of war; and the Syrians thought that the king of Israel had called the king of Egypt and the king of the Amorites into alliance for battle; and they fled at dawn, leaving their tents, because they feared that they would be overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of new enemies and could not resist the kings’ combined forces. This was unknown in Samaria, because the people, overcome by fear and wasted by hunger, did not dare even to look out. Now there were four lepers at the gate of the city, for whom life was a punishment and death a gain; and they said to one another: “Here we sit and are dying. If we go into the city, we shall die of hunger; if we stay here, no means of living is available to us; let us go into the camp of Syria: either it will be a shortcut to death or a remedy for life.” So they went on and entered the camp; and behold, everything was bare of enemies. Going into the tents, they first drove away their hunger with the food they found, then carried off as much gold and silver as they could. And though they alone were intent on the plunder, they decided nevertheless to report to the king that the Syrians had fled; because they thought this honourable rather than to suppress the news and cherish plunder gained by fraud. At their report the people went out and plundered the camp of Syria, and the supplies of the enemy brought abundance and made grain cheap, according to the prophetic word, so that a measure of fine flour cost a shekel and two measures of barley the same. In this joy of the people, the messenger on whom the king leaned was crushed in the haste of those going out and the exultation of those returning, trampled by the people, and died.

What of Queen Esther? To rescue her people from danger, which was seemly and honourable, did she not offer herself to death and not tremble at the fury of a cruel king? The king of the Persians himself too, fierce and proud of heart, yet judged it seemly to show gratitude to the one who had revealed the plot prepared against him, to rescue a free people from slavery, to snatch them from death, and not to spare him who had urged such unseemly things. Indeed he handed over to the cross the man whom he held second to himself and chief among all his friends, because he perceived that he had been dishonoured by his fraudulent counsels. For that friendship is approved which guards the honourable, and it is certainly to be preferred to wealth, honours, and powers; but it is not usually preferred to the honourable, rather it follows the honourable. Such was Jonathan’s, who for the sake of loyalty shrank neither from his father’s displeasure nor from danger to his life. Such was Ahimelech’s, who for the duties of hospitality thought he should undergo his own death rather than the betrayal of a fleeing friend.

Nothing, then, is to be preferred to the honourable; and lest it be passed over through zeal for friendship, Scripture admonishes us about friendship too. For there are many questions among the philosophers: whether anyone ought to take a position against his fatherland for a friend’s sake, so as to obey his friend; whether one ought to desert good faith while indulging and attending to a friend’s advantages. And Scripture indeed says: “A club, a sword, and an iron arrow: so is the man who bears false witness against his friend.” But consider what it establishes. It does not blame testimony given against a friend, but false testimony. For what if someone is compelled to give testimony for God’s cause, or for his fatherland’s? Ought friendship to outweigh religion, to outweigh love of fellow citizens? Yet in these very matters the truth of the testimony must be sought, lest a friend be attacked by the faithlessness of a friend by whose good faith he ought to be acquitted. A friend, then, ought neither to gratify the guilty nor to lay snares for the innocent. Certainly if it is necessary to give testimony, if one has learned of some fault in a friend, let him reprove him secretly; if he does not listen, let him reprove him openly. For reproofs are good, and often better than a silent friendship. And even if your friend thinks himself hurt, reprove him nevertheless; and even if the bitterness of correction wounds his mind, reprove him nevertheless, do not be afraid: “For the wounds of a friend are more bearable than the kisses of flatterers.” Reprove, then, an erring friend; do not desert an innocent one. For friendship ought to be constant and persevere in affection; we ought not to change friends in a childish way by some wandering judgment. Open your heart to a friend, that he may be faithful to you and that you may take from him the delight of your life. “For a faithful friend is the medicine of life” and the grace of immortality. Defer to a friend as to an equal, and do not be ashamed to anticipate your friend in service; for friendship knows no pride. So the wise man says: “Do not blush to greet a friend.” Do not desert a friend in need, nor abandon him, nor leave him destitute; since friendship is a help to life. Therefore let us bear one another’s burdens, as the Apostle taught; for he says this to those whom the love of the same body has embraced. For if a friend’s prosperity helps his friends, why should not the help of friends also be at hand in a friend’s adversity? Let us help with counsel, contribute our efforts, suffer with him in affection. If necessary, let us endure even harsh things for a friend’s sake. Often enmities must be undergone for a friend’s innocence, often disparagement, if you resist or answer when your friend is blamed and accused. Do not regret an offence of this kind; for it is the voice of the just man: “Even if evils befall me because of a friend, I bear them.” For a friend is proved in adversity; for in prosperity all seem to be friends. But as in a friend’s adversity patience and endurance are necessary, so in his prosperity a fitting authority, to check and rebuke the insolence of a friend who exalts himself. How beautifully Job, placed in adversity, says: “Have pity on me, my friends, have pity.” This is not an abject voice but a censorious one. For when he was unjustly blamed by his friends, he answered: “Have pity on me, my friends”; that is, you ought to show mercy; but you oppress and attack a man whose hardships you ought to have suffered with out of friendship. Keep, then, my sons, the friendship you have entered into with your brothers, than which nothing is finer in human affairs. For it is the comfort of this life to have someone to whom you may open your heart, with whom you may share secrets, to whom you may entrust the secret of your breast; to place beside you a faithful man, who will rejoice with you in prosperity, suffer with you in sorrows, encourage you in persecutions. What good friends were the Hebrew boys, whom not even the flame of the burning furnace separated from their love for one another! Of this we spoke above. Holy David says well: “Saul and Jonathan, beautiful and most dear, inseparable in their life, and in death they were not separated.” This is the fruit of friendship, that faith not be destroyed because of friendship. For he cannot be a friend to man who has been faithless to God. Friendship is the guardian of piety and the teacher of equality, so that the superior shows himself equal to the inferior, and the inferior to the superior. For between unlike characters there can be no friendship; and so the goodwill of each ought to agree. Let not authority be lacking to the inferior, if the matter requires it, nor humility to the superior. Let him listen as to a peer, as to an equal; and let the other admonish and reprove as a friend, not from zeal for display but from the affection of love. Let admonition not be harsh, nor reproof insulting; for as friendship ought to shun flattery, so it ought also to be free from insolence. For what is a friend but a sharer of love, to whom you join and apply your mind, and so mingle it that you wish one to be made out of two; to whom you entrust yourself as to another self, from whom you fear nothing, from whom you yourself ask nothing dishonourable for your own advantage? For friendship is not a source of revenue but full of seemliness, full of grace. For friendship is a virtue, not a business; because it is born not of money but of grace, not by bidding up prices but by a contest of goodwill. Indeed the friendships of the poor are generally better than those of the rich; and often the rich are without friends, whom the poor have in abundance. For there is no true friendship where there is deceitful flattery. Many, then, gratify the rich by flattery; towards a poor man no one feigns. Whatever is offered to a poor man is genuine; his friendship is free of envy. What is more precious than friendship, which is common to angels and men? Hence the Lord Jesus too says: “Make friends for yourselves of the unrighteous mammon, who will receive you into their eternal dwellings.” God himself makes us friends instead of servants, as he himself says: “Now you are my friends, if you do what I command you.” He gave a pattern of friendship for us to follow: that we do a friend’s will, that we open our secrets to a friend, whatever we have in our breast, and are not ignorant of his secrets. Let us show him our heart, and let him open his to us. “Therefore,” he says, “I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” A friend, then, hides nothing, if he is true; he pours out his mind, as the Lord Jesus poured out the mysteries of the Father. So he who does the commandments of God is a friend, and is honoured with this name. He who is of one mind is a friend, because there is a unity of minds among friends; and no one is more detestable than he who has wronged friendship. Hence in the traitor the Lord found this the gravest thing to condemn his faithlessness, that he did not return gratitude and mixed the poison of malice into the banquets of friendship. So he says: “But you, a man of one mind with me, my guide and my acquaintance, who always took sweet food with me!” That is, this cannot be borne, that you, of one mind, attacked him who had given you favour. “For if my enemy had cursed me, I would certainly have borne it; and I would have hidden myself from him who hated me.” An enemy can be avoided; a friend cannot, if he wishes to lay snares. We are on guard against one to whom we do not entrust our counsels; we cannot be on guard against one to whom we have entrusted them. So, to heap up the odium of the sin, he did not say, “But you, my servant, my apostle,” but “my one of one mind”; that is, you are a traitor not to me but also to yourself, who betrayed one of one mind with you. The Lord himself, when he had been offended by the three kings who had not deferred to holy Job, preferred to pardon them through their friend, so that friendship’s intercession might win the remission of sins. So Job asked, and the Lord pardoned. Friendship profited those whom insolence had harmed. These things I have deposited with you, my sons, for you to keep in your minds; whether they have any profit you will prove. Meanwhile they offer an abundance of examples; for almost all the examples of our forefathers, and very many of their sayings too, are contained in these three books; so that even if the style brings no grace, yet the course of antiquity, expressed in a kind of summary, may bring much instruction.