On Catechizing the Uninstructed

You asked me, brother Deogratias, to write you something on instructing the uninstructed (catechizing beginners) that would be of use to you. For you said that at Carthage, where you are a deacon, people who are to be grounded in the Christian faith from the start are often brought to you, because you are thought to have a rich gift for catechizing, owing both to your knowledge of the faith and to the pleasantness of your speech; but that you yourself are almost always in difficulties over how that very thing by which, through believing, we are Christians is to be conveyed fittingly: where the narration is to begin and how far it is to be carried; whether, when the narration is finished, we ought to add some exhortation, or only precepts, by observing which the person we are speaking to may know that the Christian life and profession are kept. You confessed and complained that it has often happened to you that in a long and lukewarm discourse you seemed worthless to yourself and wearisome, not to mention to the one you were instructing by your speaking and to the others who were present as listeners; and that you were driven by this necessity to press me, by the love I owe you, not to think it a burden amid my occupations to write you something on this subject. For my part, I am pressed not only by the love and service I owe to you personally, but also by that which I owe universally to our mother the Church, not to refuse in any way, but rather to undertake with ready and devoted will, whatever help I can give by my labour through the bounty of our Lord, when the same Lord bids me help those whom he has made my brothers. For the more I desire the Lord's money to be paid out widely, the more it is my duty, if I learn that the stewards who are my fellow servants find any difficulty in paying it out, to do what lies in me so that they may be able to do easily and readily what they wish to do diligently and zealously.

But as to what concerns your own reflection on this, I would not have you troubled because your discourse has often seemed to you poor and tedious. For it may be that it did not seem so to the one you were instructing, but that, because you longed to be heard saying something better, what you were saying seemed to you unworthy of others' ears. For my own discourse almost always displeases me too. I am eager for a better one, which I often enjoy inwardly before I begin to unfold it in audible words; and when I manage it less well than it is known to me, I am saddened that my tongue could not be equal to my heart. For I want my hearer to understand all that I understand, and I feel that I am not speaking so as to achieve this; chiefly because that understanding floods the mind as with a swift flash, while the speech is slow and drawn out and far unlike it; and while the speech is unrolling, the understanding has already hidden itself in its secret place. Yet because it has stamped certain traces on the memory in a wonderful way, these traces last through the brief delays of the syllables; and from these same traces we produce the sounding signs that are called a language, Latin or Greek or Hebrew or any other, whether these signs are only thought or also uttered by the voice; whereas the traces themselves are neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew nor proper to any other nation, but are formed in the mind as a facial expression is in the body. For anger is called one thing in Latin, another in Greek, and another and another in the variety of other languages; but the face of an angry man is neither Latin nor Greek. So not all nations understand when someone says Iratus sum (“I am angry”), but only Latins; yet if the feeling of a mind blazing up comes out into the face and forms its expression, all who look at him perceive that he is angry. But it is not possible to bring out and, as it were, spread before the hearers' senses by the sound of the voice those traces which the understanding stamps on the memory, in the way that a facial expression is open and plain; for those are within, in the mind, while the expression is outside, in the body. Hence we must infer how far the sound of our mouth is from that stroke of the understanding, when it is not even like the impression on the memory. But we, mostly burning keenly for the hearer's benefit, want to speak in the way we understand at that moment, when through that very straining we cannot speak; and because it does not succeed, we are distressed, and as though we were spending our effort in vain, we wilt with weariness; and from that very weariness the discourse itself becomes more languid and duller than it was when it brought on the weariness. But the eagerness of those who wish to hear me often shows me that my speech is not so cold as it seems to me; and I learn from their delight that they draw something useful from it; and I earnestly urge myself not to fail in rendering this ministry, in which I see them receiving well what is offered. So you too, from the very fact that those who are to be grounded in the faith are brought to you quite often, ought to understand that your discourse does not displease others as it displeases you; and you ought not to think yourself unfruitful because you do not unfold the things you perceive as you wish, when perhaps you cannot even perceive them as you wish. For who in this life sees except in a riddle and through a mirror? Nor is love itself so great that it breaks through the darkness of the flesh and pierces into the eternal clear sky from which even these passing things shine in whatever way they do. But because the good advance from day to day toward seeing the day without the rolling of the heavens and without the onset of night, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man, there is no greater reason why our discourse should grow cheap to us in instructing beginners than that we like to perceive things in an unaccustomed way and are weary of speaking in an accustomed way. And indeed we are heard with much greater pleasure when we ourselves delight in the same work; for the thread of our speech is affected by our very joy and comes out more easily and more acceptably. Therefore it is not a hard task to lay down where the things presented for belief are to be narrated from and how far, nor how the narration is to be varied, so that it is sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, yet always full and complete, and when a shorter and when a longer one is to be used. But by what means one may catechize with joy (for one will be the more pleasing the more one can do so), that is the greatest concern. And the precept on this matter is ready to hand. For if in bodily money, how much more in spiritual, does God love a cheerful giver? But that this cheerfulness should be present at the hour belongs to the mercy of him who gave these commands. So, as God shall suggest, we shall discuss first the manner of the narration, which I know you want; then giving precepts and exhorting; and afterward how this cheerfulness is to be gained.

The narration is full when each person is first catechized from what is written, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, down to the present times of the Church. Yet we ought not for that reason to recite from memory the whole Pentateuch and the whole books of Judges and Kings and Ezra and the whole Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, if we have learned them word for word, or to unfold and explain in our own words, by narrating, everything contained in these volumes; for which there is neither time nor any need. Rather we should take in everything in summary and general form, choosing certain more wonderful things which are heard with more pleasure and which stand at the very turning points, so that it is not right to show them as if in their wrappings and at once snatch them from sight, but by dwelling on them a while to unfold them, so to speak, and spread them out, and offer them to the hearers' minds to be examined and admired; while the rest is woven in by inserting it in a quick survey. In this way the things we most want to commend stand out more by the lowering of the others; the one we want to rouse by our narration does not reach them tired; and the memory of the one we ought to instruct by teaching is not confused. In everything, certainly, we must not only keep in view the end of the commandment, which is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, so that we refer to it all that we say; but the gaze of the one we are instructing by our speaking must also be moved toward it and directed there. For all the things we read in the holy Scriptures that were written before the Lord's coming were written for no other purpose than that his coming should be commended and the future Church foreshadowed, that is, the people of God throughout all nations, which is his body; with all the saints joined to it and counted in, who lived in this world even before his coming, believing that he would come as we believe that he has come. For as Jacob, when he was being born, first put out of the womb a hand, with which he was also holding the foot of his brother who was born before him, and then the head of course followed, and then necessarily the other limbs; yet the head goes before in dignity and power not only those limbs that followed but even the hand itself which went first in birth, and though not in the time of appearing, yet in the order of nature it is first: so also the Lord Jesus Christ, before he appeared in the flesh and came forth, as it were from the womb of his secrecy, to the eyes of men as Mediator between God and men, the man, who is God over all, blessed for ever, sent ahead in the holy patriarchs and prophets a certain part of his body, with which, as with a hand, foretelling that he would be born, he also supplanted the people who proudly went before, by the bonds of the Law as by five fingers. For through five periods of time he did not cease to be foretold and prophesied as coming; and in keeping with this, he through whom the Law was given wrote five books; and the proud, thinking carnally and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were not filled with blessing by the open hand of Christ, but were held back by it clenched and closed; and so their feet were bound and they fell, while we rose and stood upright. Although, then, as I said, the Lord Christ sent ahead a certain part of his body in the saints who preceded him in the time of birth, yet he himself is the head of the body, the Church; and all of them cleaved to the same body of which he is the head, by believing in him whom they foretold. For they were not torn away by running ahead, but rather joined on by obeying. For although a hand can be put out ahead of the head, its connection is nonetheless under the head. Therefore all things that were written before were written for our instruction, and were figures of us, and happened to them in figure; and they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

And what greater reason is there for the Lord's coming than that God might show his love toward us, commending it powerfully, because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us? And this so that, because the end of the commandment and the fullness of the law is love, we too might love one another, and as he laid down his life for us, so we too might lay down our lives for the brothers; and that, as for God himself, since he loved us first and did not spare his only Son but delivered him up for us all, if we were reluctant to love him, we might at least now not be reluctant to love him in return. For there is no greater invitation to love than to be first in loving; and a mind is too hard which, if it was unwilling to bestow love, is unwilling to repay it. For if we see even in shameful and sordid loves that those who wish to be loved in return do nothing else than reveal and show by whatever proofs they can how much they love; and they try to hold out a kind of image of justice, so that they may in a way demand a return from the hearts they are working to entice; and they themselves burn more ardently when they perceive that the minds they desire are already stirred by the same fire: if, then, a mind that was sluggish is roused when it perceives itself loved, and one that was already glowing is more inflamed when it learns that it is loved in return, it is plain that there is no greater cause by which love is either begun or increased than when one who does not yet love learns that he is loved, or when one who loves first either hopes that he can be loved in return or already finds that he is. And if this holds even in base loves, how much more in friendship? For what else do we guard against in giving offence to friendship than that our friend should think that we either do not love him or love him less than he loves us? If he believes this, he will be colder in the love in which people enjoy one another in mutual intimacy; and if he is not so weak that this offence makes him grow cold toward all love, he holds himself in the kind of love by which he loves not to enjoy but to take care. It is worth noticing, moreover, how, although superiors too wish to be loved by inferiors and delight in their zealous service toward them, and the more they perceive it the more they love them, yet with how great a love the inferior blazes up when he perceives that he is loved by the superior. For there love is more welcome, where it does not burn from the dryness of need but flows from the abundance of kindness. For the one love comes from misery, the other from mercy. And now if the inferior had despaired even of being able to be loved by the superior, he will be moved to love beyond words if the superior has of his own accord deigned to show how much he loves one who would never have dared to promise himself so great a good. But what is higher than God as judge, and what more desperate than man as sinner? Man had given himself over to be guarded and subjugated by proud powers, which cannot make him blessed, all the more as he had despaired that care could be taken of him by the power that does not wish to be exalted by malice but is exalted by goodness. If, then, Christ came chiefly so that man might learn how much God loves him; and might learn it so that he might burn with love for him by whom he was first loved, and might love his neighbour at the command and by the example of him who became our neighbour by loving one who was not his neighbour but a wanderer far away; and if all divine Scripture that was written before was written to foretell the Lord's coming, and whatever was afterward committed to writing and confirmed by divine authority tells of Christ and counsels love: it is plain that not only the whole Law and the Prophets hang on those two commandments of the love of God and of neighbour, which were as yet the only holy Scripture when the Lord said this, but also all the volumes of the divine Letters that were written later for our salvation and committed to memory. Therefore in the Old Testament the New is hidden, and in the New Testament the Old is revealed. According to that hiddenness, carnal people, understanding carnally, both then and now are subjugated by penal fear. According to this revelation, the spiritual, both those then to whom, as they knocked devoutly, even hidden things were opened, and those now who seek without pride, lest even what is open be closed to them, understanding spiritually, have been set free by the gift of love. Since, then, nothing is more opposed to love than envy, and the mother of envy is pride, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, is both a sign of the divine love toward us and an example of human humility among us, so that our great swelling might be healed by a greater contrary medicine. For a proud man is a great misery, but a humble God a greater mercy. With this love, then, set before you as the end to which you refer all that you say, narrate whatever you narrate in such a way that the one you are speaking to may believe by hearing, hope by believing, and love by hoping.

Even from the severity of God, by which the hearts of mortals are shaken with a most wholesome terror, love is to be built up; so that, rejoicing that he is loved by the one he fears, he may dare to love him in return, and may be afraid to displease his love toward him even if he could do so with impunity. For it very rarely happens, or rather never, that anyone comes wishing to become a Christian who has not been struck by some fear of God. For if he wishes to become a Christian expecting some advantage from people whom he thinks he cannot otherwise please, or avoiding some disadvantage from people whose offence or enmity he dreads, he does not so much wish to become one as to pretend. For faith is not a matter of a body that bows in greeting but of a mind that believes. But plainly the mercy of God is often present through the ministry of the catechist, so that, moved by the discourse, he now wishes to become what he had decided to pretend; and when he has begun to wish it, then let us reckon that he has come. And indeed it is hidden from us when one whom we see already present in body comes in mind; but still we ought to deal with him in such a way that this will may arise in him even if it is not there. For nothing is lost, since if it is there, it is certainly strengthened by such action of ours, although we do not know at what time or hour it began. It is useful, certainly, to be told beforehand, if possible, by those who know him, what state of mind he is in, or by what causes he has been moved to come and take up religion. But if there is no one else from whom we can learn this, he himself should be questioned, so that from what he answers we may draw the beginning of our discourse. But if he has come with a pretending heart, desiring human advantages or fleeing disadvantages, he will certainly lie; yet a beginning is to be taken from the very thing he lies about; not so as to refute his lie as though you were sure of it, but so that if he has said he came with a purpose that is truly to be approved, whether he is telling the truth or a falsehood, we may approve and praise the kind of purpose with which he answered that he came, and make him delight in being the kind of person he wishes to seem. But if he has said something other than what ought to be in the mind of one who is to be grounded in the Christian faith, then by rebuking him rather gently and mildly, as one untaught and ignorant, and by showing and praising, briefly and seriously, the truest end of Christian teaching, so as neither to take up the time of the narration to come nor to dare to impose it on a mind not first settled, you should make him wish what, through error or pretence, he did not yet wish.

But if he perhaps answers that he has been warned or frightened by God to become a Christian, he offers us a most welcome opening for beginning with how great God's care is for us. Certainly his attention must be turned from miracles or dreams of this kind to the more solid way of the Scriptures and to more certain oracles; so that he may also know how mercifully that warning was granted to him in advance, before he clung to the holy Scriptures. And it must certainly be shown to him that the Lord himself would not have warned or compelled him to become a Christian and be incorporated into the Church, or taught him by such signs or revelations, unless he had wished him to travel more safely and securely the road already prepared in the holy Scriptures, where he would not look for visible miracles but would learn to hope for invisible things, and would be warned not while asleep but while awake. From there the narration is to begin, from the fact that God made all things very good, and to be carried, as we have said, down to the present times of the Church; in such a way that for each of the things and deeds we narrate, causes and reasons are given by which we refer them to that end of love, from which the eye of one who acts or speaks must never be turned away. For if those who are considered and called good grammarians try to refer the invented fables of the poets, devised for the pleasure of minds whose food is trifles, to some usefulness, although a vain one greedy for worldly fattening, how much more careful ought we to be, lest the true things we narrate, set out without giving their causes, be believed either for empty pleasantness or even for harmful desire? Yet let us not set out these causes in such a way that, leaving the course of the narration, our heart and tongue run off into the knots of more difficult disputation; but let the very truth of the reasoning applied be like gold binding a row of gems, yet not disturbing the series of the ornament by any excess.

When the narration is finished, the hope of the resurrection is to be presented, and, according to the hearer's capacity and strength and the measure of the time available, the matter is to be dealt with against the empty mockery of unbelievers concerning the resurrection of the body; and also the future last judgment, with its goodness toward the good, its severity toward the wicked, and its truth toward all; and after the punishments of the ungodly have been recalled with loathing and horror, the kingdom of the righteous and faithful, and that heavenly city and its joy, are to be proclaimed with longing. Then indeed human weakness is to be instructed and strengthened against temptations and stumbling blocks, whether outside or within the Church itself: outside, against pagans or Jews or heretics; within, against the chaff of the Lord's threshing floor. Not that we should dispute against each kind of perverse people and refute all their wrong opinions by setting out questions; but, as time allows, it should be shown briefly that this was foretold, and what usefulness temptations have for training the faithful, and what medicine there is in the example of the patience of God, who has determined to permit these things until the end. And while he is being instructed against those whose perverse crowds fill the churches in body, at the same time the precepts of a Christian and upright way of life should also be recalled briefly and fittingly, so that he may not be so easily led astray by drunkards, the greedy, cheats, gamblers, adulterers, the sexually immoral, lovers of the shows, those who bind on sacrilegious remedies, enchanters, astrologers, or diviners by any empty and evil arts, and others of this kind, and may not think that he will go unpunished, because he sees many who are called Christians loving these things, doing them, defending them, urging them, and persuading others to them. For what end has been set for those who persist in such a life, and how far they are to be tolerated in the Church itself, from which they are to be separated at the end, must be taught by testimonies from the divine Books. He should also be told beforehand that he will find in the Church many good Christians, truest citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, if he himself begins to be one. Finally, he must be carefully warned not to place his hope in man; because it cannot easily be judged by man which man is righteous; and even if it could easily be done, the examples of the righteous are set before us not so that we may be justified by them, but so that, imitating them, we may know that we too are justified by the one who justified them. For from this will come what is most to be commended: that when the one who hears us, or rather hears God through us, begins to advance in conduct and knowledge and to enter eagerly on the way of Christ, he will not dare to ascribe this either to us or to himself; but he will love both himself and us and whatever other friends he loves in him and for his sake, who loved him when he was an enemy, so that by justifying him he might make him a friend. Here I do not think you need a teacher to tell you that when time is short, whether yours or that of your hearers, you should deal with things briefly, and when there is more, you should speak at greater length; for necessity itself teaches this without anyone's prompting.

But this plainly must not be passed over: if someone comes to you to be catechized who has been cultivated in liberal studies, who has already decided to be a Christian and has come for this reason, to become one, it is quite unlikely that he has not learned much of our Scriptures and literature, and, already instructed by these, has come only to share in the sacraments. For such people usually inquire carefully into everything, not at the very hour when they become Christians, but beforehand, and communicate and discuss the movements of their mind with whomever they can. With these, then, one must deal briefly, not tiresomely driving home what they know but touching on it modestly; so that we say we believe that they already know this and that, and in this way run quickly through everything that has to be driven home to the uninstructed and unlearned; so that if this educated man knows something, he does not hear it as from a teacher, and if he is still ignorant of something, he learns it while we are recalling what we believe him already to know. It is certainly not useless to ask him too what moved him to wish to become a Christian; so that if you see that he has been persuaded by books, whether canonical ones or those of useful writers, you may say something about these at the beginning, praising them according to the different merits of canonical authority and of the most skilful diligence of the expositors; and above all commending in the canonical Scriptures their most wholesome humility, joined to an admirable loftiness, and in the others, according to each writer's ability, a style of more sonorous and, as it were, more polished eloquence, suited to prouder and therefore weaker minds. Certainly he should also be drawn out to indicate whom he has chiefly read and with which books he has been most familiar, from which he was persuaded to wish to join the Church. When he has told us, then, if those books are known to us, or at least we have heard by the Church's report that they were written by some notable catholic man, let us approve them gladly. But if he has come upon the volumes of some heretic and, perhaps not knowing what the true faith rejects, has held it in his mind and thinks it catholic, he must be carefully taught, with the authority of the universal Church set before him, and that of other most learned men who are distinguished for their disputations and writings in its truth. And yet even those who departed this life as catholics and left some Christian writings to posterity, in certain passages of their works, either through not being understood, or, such is human weakness, because they were less able with the keenness of their minds to penetrate more hidden things, and strayed from the truth by its likeness, have given occasion to presumptuous and bold men for contriving and giving birth to some heresy. This is not surprising, since even from the canonical Letters themselves, where everything has been said most soundly, many have brought forth many harmful doctrines, cutting the unity of communion; not, indeed, by taking certain things otherwise than either the writer meant or the truth itself is (for if that were all, who would not gladly pardon human weakness when it is ready to be corrected?), but by defending with the bitterest animosity and stubborn arrogance what they had perversely and wrongly supposed. All these things are to be handled in modest conference with one who comes to the fellowship of the Christian people not as an ignorant person, as they say, but polished and cultivated by the books of the learned; assuming only so much authority in instructing him, that he may beware of the errors of presumption, as the humility that brought him is already felt to allow. As for the rest, according to the rules of saving doctrine, whatever is to be narrated or discussed, whether concerning faith or morals or temptations, running through it in the manner I have described, everything is to be referred to that more excellent way.

There are also some who come from the most common schools of the grammarians and orators, whom you would not dare to count among the ignorant, nor yet among those most learned men whose minds have been trained by questions about great matters. To these, then, who seem to excel other people in the art of speaking, when they come to become Christians, we ought to impart this more than to the illiterate: they must be carefully warned to put on Christian humility and learn not to despise those whom they know to avoid faults of conduct more than faults of words; and not to dare even to compare a trained tongue with a chaste heart, which they had been accustomed even to rank above it. Above all, these must be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, so that solid eloquence may not seem mean to them because it is not inflated; and so that they may not think that the words or deeds of men that are read in those books, wrapped and covered in fleshly coverings, are not to be unrolled and opened up so as to be understood, but are to be taken just as the letters sound; and concerning the very usefulness of what is secret, from which they are also called mysteries, how much the hiding places of riddles avail to sharpen the love of truth and to shake off the torpor of disdain, this must be proved to such people by experience itself, when something that did not move them much when it lay open to view is drawn out by the unravelling of some allegory. For it is most useful for these to know that thoughts are to be ranked above words as the soul is ranked above the body. From this it follows that they ought to prefer to hear truer rather than more eloquent discourses, as they ought to prefer to have wiser rather than handsomer friends. Let them know also that nothing is a voice to the ears of God but the affection of the mind; for then they will not mock if they happen to notice that some bishops and ministers of the Church either call on God with barbarisms and solecisms, or do not understand the very words they pronounce, and divide them up confusedly. Not that these things should not be corrected, so that the people may say Amen to what it plainly understands; but they should be tolerated devoutly by those who have learned that, as in the forum it is a matter of sound, so in the Church it is of desire that blessing is spoken. And so that forensic speech may sometimes perhaps be called good diction, but never benediction. As for the sacrament they are about to receive, it is enough for the more intelligent to hear what that thing signifies; but with the slower, one must deal with rather more words and with comparisons, so that they may not despise what they see.

Here perhaps you want some model discourse, so that I may show you in practice how the things I have advised are to be done. I will do this, as far as I can with the Lord's help; but first I must speak, as I promised, of gaining that cheerfulness. For I have now paid what I promised, as far as seemed sufficient, about the precepts for setting out a discourse in catechizing one who has come to become a Christian. It is not owed, indeed, that I should myself do in this volume what I teach ought to be done. If, then, I do it, it will count as an overflow; but how can I pour out an overflow before I have filled up the measure of what is owed? For I did not hear you complain chiefly of anything except that your discourse seemed to you cheap and poor when you were grounding someone in the Christian name. But I know that this comes not so much from a lack of the things to be said, for which I know you are well prepared and equipped, nor from a lack of the power of speech itself, but from weariness of mind: either for the reason I mentioned, because what we perceive in our mind in silence delights and holds us more, and we do not want to be called away from it to the far different noise of words; or because, even when speaking is pleasant, we prefer to hear or read things that have been said better and that are brought out without our trouble and anxiety, rather than to fit sudden words to another's understanding with uncertain outcome, both whether they will come to hand to express the thought and whether they will be received with profit; or because the things that are presented to the uninstructed, since they are very well known to us and no longer needed for our progress, are irksome to return to very often, and a mind that has grown up no longer walks with any pleasure among things so familiar and, as it were, childish. A listener also makes the speaker weary [who is unmoved, either because he is not stirred in feeling or because he gives no sign by any movement of his body that he understands or is pleased by what is said]: not that it becomes us to be greedy for human praise, but because the things we minister are God's; and the more we love those to whom we speak, the more we desire that the things offered for their salvation should please them; and if this does not succeed, we are saddened, and in the very course of our speaking we are weakened and broken, as though we were wearing out our effort in vain. Sometimes, too, when we are turned away from something we wish to do, whose doing either delighted us or seemed more necessary to us, and we are compelled, either by the order of someone we do not wish to offend or by the unavoidable insistence of some people, to catechize someone, we come already troubled to a task that needs great calm, grieving that we are not allowed to keep the order of actions we want and that we cannot be equal to everything; and so the discourse that proceeds from that very sadness is less pleasing, because it flows less abundantly out of the dryness of gloom. At times, again, grief over some scandal has beset the heart, and just then we are told: “Come, speak to this man; he wants to become a Christian.” For it is said by those who do not know what is burning us, shut up within; and if it is not fitting to open our feelings to them, we take on what they want with little pleasure; and surely that discourse will be languid and unpleasant, passed through the channel of a heart that is seething and smoking. Since there are so many causes, whichever of them clouds the calm of our mind, remedies are to be sought according to God, by which that tightness may be loosened, and we may exult in fervour of spirit and be joyful in the calm of a good work. For God loves a cheerful giver. For if the reason we are saddened is that the hearer does not grasp our understanding, from whose summit we are forced in a way to come down and linger in the slowness of syllables far below it, and we are anxious how something that is drunk in by the mind in one swift draught may come out of the mouth of flesh by long and tangled windings, and because it comes out very unlike, we are weary of speaking and would rather be silent: let us think what was granted to us beforehand by him who showed us an example, that we should follow in his steps. For however much our articulate voice differs from the liveliness of our understanding, much more different is the mortality of the flesh from equality with God. And yet, though he was in the same form, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and so on down to the death of the cross. For what reason, if not that he became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak? Hear his imitator also saying elsewhere: For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, judging this, that one died for all. For how would he be ready to be spent for their souls, if it were irksome to him to bend down to their ears? This is why he became a little one in our midst, like a nurse cherishing her children. For is it a delight to murmur clipped and mutilated words, unless love invites it? And yet people long to have infants to whom they may do this; and it is sweeter to a mother to put small chewed morsels into the mouth of her little son than to chew and swallow larger ones herself. So let not the thought of that hen leave our hearts either, which covers her tender brood with drooping feathers and calls her chirping chicks with a broken voice; and those who proudly flee her gentle wings become prey to birds. For if understanding delights in the purest inner places, it is also a delight to understand how love, the more dutifully it comes down to the lowest things, the more strongly it returns to the inmost things, through a good conscience that seeks nothing from those to whom it comes down except their everlasting salvation.

But if we would rather read or hear things that are already prepared and better said, and so are reluctant to fit what we say to the occasion with uncertain outcome: provided only that the mind does not stray from the truth of the matters, it is easy, if anything in the words offends the hearer, for him to learn from that very occasion how little it matters, once the thing is understood, if what sounded so that the thing might be understood could not sound quite correctly or properly. But if the effort of human weakness has strayed even from the truth of the matters themselves (although in catechizing the uninstructed, where the most beaten path is to be kept, this can hardly happen), still, lest the hearer perhaps be offended by this too, it ought to seem to us to have happened for no other reason than that God wished to test us, whether we would be corrected with calmness of mind, so as not to rush headlong into a greater error in defence of our error. And if no one has told us, and it has escaped both us and those who heard altogether, there is no grief, provided it does not happen again. Often, however, we ourselves, going back over what we have said, find something to blame, and do not know how it was received when it was said; and when love burns in us, we grieve the more if, though it was false, it was gladly received. And so, when an opportunity is found, just as we have blamed ourselves in silence, so care must be taken that those too may be gradually corrected who have slipped into some falsehood, not through God's words but plainly through ours. But if some, blinded by mad envy, rejoice that we have erred, whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, let them give us material for exercising patience with mercy, because the patience of God too leads them to repentance. For what is more detestable, and what more stores up wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, than to rejoice in another's harm in the likeness and imitation of the devil? Sometimes, too, though everything is said rightly and truly, something either not understood, or harsh by its very novelty, being against the opinion and custom of an old error, offends and disturbs the hearer. If this becomes apparent and he shows himself curable, he must be healed without any delay by an abundance of authorities and reasons. But if the offence is silent and hidden, God's medicine can help. And if he recoils and refuses to be cured, let us be consoled by that example of the Lord, who, when people were offended by his word and drew back from it as hard, said even to those who had stayed, Do you also wish to go away? For it must be held fixed and immovable in the heart that captive Jerusalem will be set free from the Babylon of this world when the times have run their course, and that none of her will perish; because whoever perishes was not of her. For the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his; and, Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Thinking on these things, and calling the Lord into our heart, we shall fear less the uncertain outcome of our discourse because of the uncertain movements of the hearers; and even the enduring of troubles for a work of mercy will delight us, if we do not seek our own glory in it. For a work is truly good when the intention of the one who acts is launched from love and, as if returning to its own place, rests again in love. And the reading that delights us, or the hearing of some better eloquence, which we would like to set above our own discourse and so speak with sluggishness or weariness, will receive us more eagerly afterward and will be granted us more pleasantly after the labour; and we shall pray with greater confidence that God may speak to us as we wish, if we cheerfully undertake that he may speak through us as we can: thus it comes about that for those who love God all things work together for good.

And now, if we are weary of often repeating things that are familiar and suited to little ones, let us suit ourselves to them by a brotherly, fatherly, and motherly love, and once we are joined to their hearts, even these things will seem new to us. For the feeling of a mind that shares in suffering has such power that, when they are touched by us as we speak and we by them as they learn, we dwell in one another; and so they, as it were, speak in us what they hear, and we in a way learn in them what we teach. Does it not usually happen, when we show certain spacious and beautiful places, whether in cities or in the countryside, which we used to pass by without any pleasure because we had often seen them, to people who had never seen them before, that our delight is renewed in the delight of their novelty? And the more so the closer friends they are; because through the bond of love, so far as we are in them, so far what was old becomes new to us too. But if we have made some progress in contemplating things, we do not want those we love to rejoice and be amazed when they look at the works of men's hands; we want to lift them up to the art itself or the plan of the maker, and from there to rise to the admiration and praise of God, the creator of all, where love has its most fruitful end: how much more, then, ought we to be delighted when people now come to learn of God himself, for whose sake whatever is to be learned is to be learned; and to be renewed in their newness, so that if our customary preaching is rather cold, it may grow warm through their unaccustomed hearing? Add to this, for gaining joy, that we think and consider from what death of error a person is passing into the life of faith. And if we walk through the most familiar streets with kindly cheerfulness when we happen to show the way to someone who had been struggling because he was lost, how much more eagerly and with greater joy ought we to walk, in saving teaching, even those ways that we have no need to go over again for our own sake, when we are leading a pitiable soul, wearied by the errors of the world, along the paths of peace, at the command of him who granted it to us?

But indeed it is a great thing to persevere in speaking up to the set end when we do not see the hearer being moved; whether, constrained by religious fear, he does not dare to indicate his approval by voice or by some movement of the body, or is held back by human shyness, or does not understand what is said, or despises it. Since, as we cannot see his mind, it is uncertain, everything must be tried in our discourse that can serve to rouse him and, as it were, draw him out of hiding. For excessive fear, which hinders him from declaring his judgment, must be driven out by gentle encouragement; shyness must be tempered by suggesting brotherly fellowship; we must ask him whether he understands; and he must be given confidence, so that if anything seems to him to call for objection, he may freely say so. We should also ask him whether he has ever heard these things before, and whether perhaps they do not move him because they are known and commonplace; and we should act according to his answer, so as either to speak more plainly and clearly, or to refute a contrary opinion, or not to unfold at greater length what he knows but to fold it up briefly, and to choose some of the things said in a mystical sense in the holy Books, and especially in the narration itself, in opening and revealing which our discourse may grow sweet. But if he is very slow, and deaf and averse to all such sweetness, he must be borne with mercifully; and after briefly running through the other matters, the things most necessary, about the unity of the Catholic Church, about temptations, about the Christian way of life in view of the future judgment, must be driven home in a way that inspires awe; and more must be said to God for him than to him about God. It often happens, too, that one who at first listened gladly, tired either by listening or by standing, opens his lips no longer to praise but to yawn, and shows even against his will that he wants to go away. When we notice this, we ought either to refresh his mind by saying something seasoned with honest cheerfulness and suited to the matter in hand, or something very wonderful and astonishing, or even something grievous and lamentable, and preferably about himself, so that, stung by concern for himself, he may wake up; yet in a way that does not offend his modesty by any harshness but rather wins him by friendliness; or else we ought to help him by offering him a seat; although without doubt it is better, where it can be done fittingly, that he should listen seated from the beginning; and far more wisely, in some churches overseas, not only do the bishops speak to the people sitting, but seats are also provided for the people themselves, so that no weaker person, wearied by standing, may be turned away from a most wholesome attention, or even be forced to leave. And yet it makes a great difference whether someone withdraws from a great crowd to restore his strength who is already bound by sharing in the sacraments, or whether one leaves who is to be initiated into the first sacraments (for he is mostly forced to do so unavoidably, lest, overcome by inner weakness, he should even fall): for out of shame he does not say why he is going, and out of weakness he is not allowed to stand. I speak from experience: for a certain man, a countryman, did this when I was catechizing him, and from that I learned that this must be carefully guarded against. For who could bear our arrogance, when we do not have men who are our brothers, or, what is to be cared for with greater concern, who are to become our brothers, sit in our presence, when a woman sat and listened to our Lord himself, before whom the angels stand? Certainly, if the discourse is to be short, or the place is not suitable for sitting, let them listen standing; but that is when many are listening, and they are not then to be initiated. For when there are one, or two, or a few who have come in order to become Christians, it is risky to speak to them standing. Yet if we have already begun in this way, at least when we notice the hearer's weariness, a seat should be offered, or rather he should be positively urged to sit, and something should be said to refresh him, and also to chase from his mind any cares that may perhaps have rushed in and begun to call him away. For since the reasons why he now silently declines to listen are uncertain, once he is seated let something be said against the intruding thoughts of worldly business, either in a cheerful or, as I said, a sad manner: so that, if these are what have taken hold of his mind, they may give way as though accused by name; but if it is not these, and he is tired from listening, then when we speak of them as if it were they (since we do not know), saying something unexpected and out of the ordinary in the way I have described, his attention is refreshed from weariness. But let this be brief, especially since it is inserted out of order, lest the medicine itself increase the illness of weariness that we wish to relieve; and the rest should be hurried along, and a nearer end promised and delivered.

But if your mind has been broken by having to leave another task, on which you were already intent as more necessary, and you are catechizing unpleasantly because you are sad, you ought to reflect that, apart from the fact that we know that whatever we do with people is to be done mercifully and out of the duty of the most sincere love, apart from this, then, it is uncertain what we are doing more usefully, and what we are more fittingly either interrupting or leaving undone altogether. For since we do not know what the merits of the people for whom we act are before God, what is good for them at the time we rather suspect, by no conjecture or a very slight or very uncertain one, than grasp. Therefore we ought to arrange the things to be done according to our understanding; and if we are able to carry them out in the way we determined, let us rejoice, not because it pleased us, but because it pleased God that they should be done so; but if some necessity arises by which that order of ours is disturbed, let us bend easily, so as not to break, so that the order which God has preferred to ours may itself be ours. For it is fairer that we should follow his will than that he should follow ours. Because that order of doing things which we wish to keep by our own choice is surely to be approved only where the better things come first. Why then do we grieve that men are preceded by the Lord God, who is so much better, so that by the very fact of loving our own order we desire to be disordered? For no one orders what he does better than one who is readier not to do what is forbidden by the divine power than eager to do what he plans by human thinking. For there are many thoughts in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord abides for ever. But if the mind, disturbed by some scandal, cannot produce a calm and pleasant discourse, there ought to be such love toward those for whom Christ died, wishing to redeem them by the price of his blood from the death of worldly errors, that this very news, brought to us in our sadness, that someone is here who wishes to become a Christian, ought to serve to console and dispel that sadness, as the joys of gains usually soften the pain of losses. For the scandal of someone does not sadden us unless we believe or see either that he is perishing or that a weak person is perishing through him. Let the one, then, who comes to be initiated, while he is hoped to make progress, wipe away the grief over the one who is falling away. For even if the fear is suggested that he may become a proselyte, a son of hell, since many such people are before our eyes, from whom arise those scandals with which we are burned, this ought not to serve to hold us back, but rather to rouse and sharpen us: so that we warn the one we are instructing to beware of imitating those who are Christians not in truth itself but in name only; and not, moved by their crowd, either to wish to follow them or to refuse to follow Christ because of them; and either to refuse to be in the Church of God where they are, or to wish to be there such as they are. And somehow in warnings of this kind the discourse is more ardent, when present grief supplies the kindling: so that we are not only not more sluggish, but by that very fact say more fervently and vehemently what, if we were more at ease, we would say more coldly and slowly; and let us rejoice that an occasion is given us where the movement of our mind does not pass away without bearing fruit. But if sorrow seizes us over some error or sin of our own, let us remember not only that a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit, but also this: As water quenches fire, so almsgiving quenches sin; and, I desire mercy, he says, rather than sacrifice. Just as, then, if we were in danger from fire, we would of course run to water by which it could be put out, and would be grateful if someone offered it from nearby; so if some flame of sin has sprung up from our own hay, and we are troubled because of it, when the occasion of a most merciful work is given, let us rejoice as at a spring offered to us, so that what had flared up may be smothered by it. Unless perhaps we are so foolish as to think that we should run more eagerly with bread to fill the belly of a hungry man than with the word of God to instruct the mind of one who eats it. Add to this that, if it were only profitable to do this, and not doing it did no harm, it would still be a wretched thing for us to spurn the remedy offered when the salvation, not now of our neighbour but our own, is in danger. But since there sounds so threateningly from the mouth of the Lord, Wicked and slothful servant, you should have given my money to the bankers, what madness is it, because our sin distresses us, to wish to sin again by not giving the Lord's money to one who wishes it and asks for it? When the fog of weariness has been driven off by these and similar thoughts and considerations, the attention is fitted for catechizing, so that what bursts forth eagerly and cheerfully from the abundance of love may be drunk in with pleasure. For it is not so much I who say these things to you as love itself says them to all of us, love which has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

But now perhaps you demand as already owed what I did not owe before I promised it: that I should not be reluctant to set out some model discourse, as if I were catechizing someone, and to put it before you to look at. Before I do this, I want you to reflect that the intention of one who dictates, when a future reader is in mind, is one thing, and that of one who speaks, when a present hearer is in view, is another; and within that, the intention of one who admonishes in private, when no one else is present to judge us, is one thing, and that of one who teaches something publicly, when the ears of people of differing opinions surround him, is another; and within this kind, it is one thing when one person is being taught and the rest listen as though judging or confirming things known to them, and another when all alike are waiting for what we will bring before them; and again within this, it is one thing when people sit together as if in private, so that conversation may be exchanged, and another when the people, silent and intent, gaze at one man about to speak from a raised place; and it makes a great difference, even when we speak in this way, whether few or many are present; learned or unlearned, or a mixture of both; city people or country people, or both together; or a congregation made up of every kind of person. For it cannot be but that they affect the one who is to speak and discourse in one way and another, and that the discourse which is uttered bears, as it were, a kind of expression of the feeling of the mind from which it is uttered, and by that same variety affects the hearers variously, since they too affect one another variously by their presence. But since we are now dealing with instructing the uninstructed, I can testify to you about myself that I am moved in one way and another when I see before me to be catechized a learned man, a dull man, a citizen, a foreigner, a rich man, a poor man, a private person, a man of rank, one set in some position of power, a man of this or that nation, of this or that age or sex, coming from this or that sect, from this or that popular error: and according to the variety of my feeling, the discourse itself both begins, goes on, and ends. And since the same love is owed to all, but the same medicine is not to be applied to all, that same love is in labour with some, is weak with others; takes care to build up some, trembles to offend others; bends down to some, lifts itself up to others; gentle to some, severe to others, an enemy to none, a mother to all. And one who has not experienced, with the same love, what I am saying, when he sees us, because some gift granted to us delights in becoming known with praise on the lips of the multitude, thinks us happy for that reason; but may God, into whose sight comes the groaning of the prisoners, see our humility and our toil, and forgive all our sins. Therefore, if anything in us has pleased you so much that you sought to hear from us some guidance for your discourse, you would learn it better by seeing and hearing us when we are doing these things than by reading when we are dictating them.

But still, let us suppose that someone has come to us who wishes to be a Christian, of the class of the uneducated, yet not of country people but of city people, such as you must meet many of at Carthage; and that, asked also whether he desires to be a Christian for some advantage in the present life or for the rest that is hoped for after this life, he has answered: for the future rest. He might perhaps be instructed by us with an address like this. “Thanks be to God, brother: I congratulate you warmly and rejoice over you, that amid such great and dangerous storms of this world you have thought about some true and certain security. For even in this life people seek rest and security with great labours, but because of wrong desires they do not find it. For they want to rest in things that are restless and do not last; and because these are taken away by time and pass away, they toss them with fears and griefs and do not let them be at peace. For if a man wishes to rest in riches, he is made proud rather than secure. Do we not see how many have suddenly lost them, and many have even perished because of them, either while desiring to have them or when they are taken from them, crushed by those more greedy? And even if they stayed with a man for his whole life and did not desert their lover, he himself would desert them by his death. For how long is a man's life, even if he grows old? Or when people wish themselves old age, what else do they wish for but a long infirmity? So too the honours of this world: what are they but conceit and emptiness and the danger of ruin? For so the holy Scripture says: All flesh is grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass has withered, the flower has fallen; but the word of the Lord abides for ever. Therefore one who desires true rest and true happiness ought to take his hope away from mortal and passing things and place it in the word of the Lord; so that, clinging to what abides for ever, he too may abide with it for ever. There are also people who neither seek to be rich nor strive to attain the empty pomp of honours, but want to rejoice and rest in taverns and in sexual immorality, and in the theatres and the trifling shows which they have free of charge in great cities. But in this way they too either waste their poverty through luxury, and afterwards from want leap into thefts and burglaries, and sometimes even into highway robbery, and are suddenly filled with many great fears; and those who a little before were singing in the tavern now dream of the lamentations of prison. Through their passion for the shows they become like demons, inciting men by their shouts to cut one another down, and to have quarrelsome contests with one another though they have done each other no harm, while they long to please a mad people; and if the spectators notice that they are in agreement, then they hate and persecute them, and shout that they should be beaten with clubs as cheats in collusion, and force even the judge, the avenger of wrongdoing, to do this wrong; but if they learn that they are practising horrible enmities against one another, whether they are those who are called sintae, or stage actors and musicians, or charioteers, or beast fighters, wretched people whom they set in contest and combat not only man against man but even man against beasts, then the greater the discord with which they perceive them raging against one another, the more they love and delight in them, and they favour them when roused and rouse them by favouring, the spectators themselves raging against one another, one for one side and one for the other, more than those whose madness they madly provoke and madly desire to watch. How then can a mind keep the health of peace that feeds on discords and contests? For as the food that is taken, so the health that follows. Finally, although mad joys are not joys, yet whatever they are, and however much the boasting of riches may delight, and the swelling of honours, and the gulf of the taverns, and the battles of the theatres, and the uncleanness of sexual immorality, and the itch of the baths, one little fever takes all these away, and while people are still alive withdraws their whole false happiness: there remains an empty and wounded conscience, which will find God a judge, whom it would not have as a guardian, and will find a harsh Lord, whom it scorned to seek and love as a sweet Father. But you, because you seek the true rest that is promised to Christians after this life, will taste it even here, sweet and pleasant amid the most bitter troubles of this life, if you love the commandments of him who promised it. For you will soon feel that the fruits of righteousness are sweeter than those of iniquity, and that a man rejoices more truly and pleasantly in a good conscience amid troubles than in a bad one amid delights; for you have not come to be joined to the Church of God in order to seek some temporal advantage from it.

For there are those who want to be Christians in order either to win the favour of people from whom they expect temporal advantages, or because they do not want to offend those whom they fear. But these are reprobate; and though the Church bears them for a time, as the threshing floor bears the chaff until the time of winnowing, if they do not correct themselves and begin to be Christians for the sake of the future everlasting rest, they will be separated at the end. And let them not flatter themselves that they can be on the threshing floor with the grain of God; for they will not be with it in the barn, but are destined for the fire they deserve. There are also others, of a better hope indeed but in no less danger, who already fear God and do not mock the Christian name, nor enter the Church of God with a pretending heart, but expect happiness in this life, that they may be happier in earthly things than those who do not worship God; and so, when they see some wicked and ungodly people strong and outstanding in the prosperity of this world, while they themselves either have less of it or lose it, they are disturbed, as though they worshipped God for nothing, and they easily fall away from the faith. But one who wishes to become a Christian for the sake of the everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest promised to the saints after this life, so as not to go into the eternal fire with the devil but to enter the eternal kingdom with Christ, he is truly a Christian: on guard in every temptation, so as not to be corrupted by prosperity nor broken by adversity, modest and temperate in an abundance of earthly goods, and brave and patient in tribulations. Such a person, by advancing, will also come to such a mind that he loves God more than he fears hell; so that even if God said to him, ‘Enjoy everlasting fleshly delights, and sin as much as you can, and you will neither die nor be sent to hell; only you will not be with me,’ he would shudder and would not sin at all, no longer so as not to fall into what he feared, but so as not to offend him whom he so loves: in whom alone is rest, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him. Of this rest Scripture gives a sign, and does not keep silent, that from the beginning of the world, when God made heaven and earth and all that is in them, he worked for six days and on the seventh day rested. For the Almighty could have made all things even in one moment of time. He had not laboured so as to rest, since he spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created; but in order to signify that after six ages of this world, in the seventh age, as on the seventh day, he will rest in his saints; because they will rest in him after all the good works in which they have served him, which he himself works in them, who calls and commands and forgives past sins and justifies one who before was ungodly. And just as, when they work well by his gift, it is rightly said that he works, so when they rest in him, it is rightly said that he rests. For as far as he himself is concerned, he seeks no pause, because he feels no labour. He made all things through his Word; and his Word is Christ himself, in whom the angels and all the most pure heavenly spirits rest in holy silence. But man, fallen by sin, lost the rest he had in his divinity, and receives it again in his humanity; and so at the fitting time, when he knew it ought to happen, he became man and was born of a woman. For he could not be defiled by the flesh, he who was rather to cleanse the flesh. The saints of old knew by the revelation of the Spirit that he would come, and prophesied it, and so they were saved by believing that he would come, as we are saved by believing that he has come: so that we might love God, who so loved us that he sent his only Son, who, clothed in the lowliness of our mortality, died both at the hands of sinners and for sinners. For already, from of old, from the beginning of the ages, the depth of this mystery has not ceased to be prefigured and foretold.

For God almighty, good and just and merciful, who made all things good, whether great or small, whether highest or lowest; whether those that are seen, such as heaven and earth and sea, and in heaven the sun and moon and the other stars, and on earth and in the sea trees and shrubs and animals each of its own nature, and all bodies whether heavenly or earthly; or those that are not seen, such as the spirits by which bodies are quickened and given life: he also made man in his own image; so that, as he himself by his almighty power is over the whole creation, so man by his understanding, by which he also knows and worships his Creator, might be over all earthly animals. He also made woman as a helper for him: not for fleshly lust, since they did not then have corruptible bodies, before mortality invaded them as the penalty of sin; but so that the man might also have glory from the woman, when he went before her to God and offered himself to her to be imitated in holiness and piety, just as he himself would be the glory of God when he followed his wisdom. And so he set them in a certain place of perpetual blessedness, which Scripture calls paradise; and he gave them a commandment, that if they did not transgress it, they would remain for ever in that blessedness of immortality; but if they transgressed it, they would pay the penalties of mortality. Now God foreknew that they would transgress; but still, because he is the founder and maker of every good, he chose rather to make them, since he made the beasts too, to fill the earth with earthly goods. And certainly a man, even a sinner, is better than a beast. And he chose rather to give the commandment which they were not going to keep, so that they would be without excuse when he began to punish them. For whatever a man does, he finds God worthy of praise in his own deeds: if he acts rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of rewards; if he sins, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of punishments; if he confesses his sins and returns to living rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the mercy of pardon. Why then should God not make man, although he foreknew that he would sin, since he would crown him when he stood, set him in order when he fell, and help him when he rose, being himself always and everywhere glorious in goodness, justice, and mercy? Above all, since he also foreknew that from the offspring of his mortality there would be saints who would seek glory not for themselves but would give it to their Creator, and, by worshipping him, freed from all corruption, would be found worthy to live for ever, and live blessedly, with the holy angels? For he who gave men free choice, so that they might worship God not by servile necessity but by free will, gave it also to the angels. And so the angel who, with other spirits his followers, abandoned obedience to God through pride and became the devil, did no harm to God, but to himself; for God knows how to set in order the souls that abandon him, and from their just misery to adorn the lower parts of his creation by the most fitting and suitable laws of his wonderful governance. So the devil did no harm to God, either by falling himself or by seducing man to death; nor did man himself in any way lessen the truth or power or blessedness of his Creator, because he consented by his own will to his wife, who had been seduced by the devil, to do what God had forbidden. For by the most just laws of God all were condemned, God being glorious by the equity of his punishment, they being disgraced by the shamefulness of their penalty: so that man, turned away from his Creator, was conquered and made subject to the devil, and the devil was set before man, once turned back to his Creator, to be conquered; so that all who consented to the devil to the end would go with him into eternal punishment, while all who humbled themselves before God and by his grace conquered the devil would merit eternal rewards.

Nor ought this to trouble us, that many consent to the devil and few follow God; for the grain too, compared with the chaff, is far fewer in number. But as the farmer knows what to do with a huge heap of chaff, so the multitude of sinners is nothing to God, who knows what to do with them, so that the governance of his kingdom is in no way disturbed or disgraced. Nor is the devil to be thought to have won because he drew more with him, with whom he would be conquered by a few. And so two cities, one of the wicked and the other of the saints, run from the beginning of the human race to the end of the world, now mingled in body but separated in will, and on the day of judgment to be separated in body as well. For all people who love pride and temporal domination with empty conceit and the pomp of arrogance, and all spirits who love such things and seek their own glory in the subjection of men, are bound together in one society; and even if they often fight against one another over these things, yet by an equal weight of desire they are hurled into the same depth, and are joined to one another by likeness of conduct and deserts. And again, all people and all spirits who humbly seek the glory of God, not their own, and follow him with piety, belong to one society. And yet God is most merciful, and is patient even toward ungodly people, and offers them room for repentance and correction. For when he destroyed all by the flood, except one righteous man with his family, whom he willed to be saved in the ark, he knew indeed that they would not correct themselves; yet while the ark was being built for a hundred years, the wrath of God that was to come upon them was certainly preached to them; and if they had turned to God, he would have spared them, as he afterwards spared the city of Nineveh when it repented, after he had foretold its coming destruction through the prophet. And God does this, giving time for repentance even to those whom he knows will persevere in wickedness, in order to exercise our patience and shape it by his example; so that we may know how patiently we ought to bear with the wicked, since we do not know what they will be later, when he spares them and lets them live from whom nothing in the future is hidden. Yet by the sacrament of the flood, in which the righteous were set free through wood, the future Church was also foretold, which its King and God, Christ, has lifted up from the drowning of this world by the mystery of his cross. For God was not unaware that from those who had been saved in the ark there would be born wicked people who would again fill the face of the earth with iniquities; but still he both gave an example of the future judgment and foretold the deliverance of the saints by the mystery of the wood. For after this, too, wickedness did not cease to sprout again through pride and lusts and unlawful impieties, when people, having abandoned their Creator, not only sank to the creature which God made, so as to worship in place of God what God made, but even bowed their souls to the works of men's hands and the crafts of artisans, where the devil and the demons might triumph over them more shamefully; for they rejoice to be adored and venerated in such images, while they feed their own errors on human errors. Yet even then there were not lacking righteous people who sought God devoutly and overcame the pride of the devil, citizens of that holy city, whom the future humility of their King Christ, revealed through the Spirit, healed. From among these, Abraham, a devout and faithful servant of God, was chosen, to whom the sacrament of the Son of God was to be shown, so that, through the imitation of his faith, all the faithful of all nations might be called his children. From him was born a people by whom the one true God, who made heaven and earth, was worshipped, while the other nations served idols and demons. In that people, plainly, the future Church was figured much more evidently. For there was in it a carnal multitude who worshipped God for the sake of visible benefits. But there were also in it a few who thought of the future rest and sought the heavenly homeland, to whom the future humility of God, our King and Lord Jesus Christ, was revealed by prophecy, so that by that faith they might be healed of all pride and swelling. Of these saints who preceded the Lord's birth in time, not only the speech but also the life, and marriages, and children, and deeds were a prophecy of this time, in which the Church is gathered from the nations through faith in the passion of Christ. Through those holy patriarchs and prophets there were given to the carnal people of Israel, who were later also called Jews, both the visible benefits which they carnally desired from the Lord, and the restraints of bodily punishments by which they were to be frightened for a time, as befitted their hardness. And yet in all these things spiritual mysteries were signified, which pertained to Christ and the Church; of which Church those saints too were members, although they lived in this life before Christ the Lord was born according to the flesh. For the only-begotten Son of God himself, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, through whom all things were made, became man for our sake, so that he might be the head of the whole Church as of a whole body. But as a whole man, when he is born, even if he puts out a hand first in being born, is yet joined and knit together with the whole body under the head, as indeed some among the patriarchs themselves were born with a hand put out first as a sign of this very thing: so all the saints who were on earth before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, although they were born before, still cleaved under the head to the whole body of which he is the head.

That people, then, carried down into Egypt, served a most harsh king; and, schooled by the heaviest labours, they sought God as their deliverer; and one of that people was sent to them, Moses, the holy servant of God, who by the power of God, terrifying the then ungodly nation of the Egyptians with great miracles, led the people of God out from there through the Red Sea; where the water parted and gave a way to those crossing; but the Egyptians, when they pursued them, were drowned and destroyed as the waves returned upon themselves. So, just as through the flood the earth was cleansed by waters from the wickedness of the sinners, who were then destroyed in that inundation, and the righteous escaped through wood: so the people of God, going out of Egypt, found a way through the waters by which their enemies were consumed. Nor was the sacrament of wood lacking there. For Moses struck with a rod so that that miracle might take place. Both are a sign of holy baptism, through which the faithful pass into new life, while their sins, like enemies, are blotted out and die. But the passion of Christ was figured more openly in that people, when they were commanded to kill and eat a sheep, and to mark their doorposts with its blood, and to celebrate this every year and call it the Lord's Passover. For prophecy says most plainly of the Lord Jesus Christ that he was led like a sheep to be sacrificed. With the sign of his passion and cross you are to be marked today on your forehead as on a doorpost, and all Christians are marked with it. From there that people was led through the desert for forty years; it also received the law written by the finger of God, by which name the Holy Spirit is signified, as is most plainly declared in the Gospel. For God is not bounded by a bodily form, nor are limbs and fingers to be thought of in him as we see them in ourselves; but because the gifts of God are divided to the saints through the Holy Spirit, so that, though they have different powers, they still do not depart from the concord of love, and in the fingers there especially appears a certain division, yet no cutting off from unity; whether for this reason or for any other, the Holy Spirit has been called the finger of God, yet when we hear this, the form of a human body is not to be thought of. That people, then, received the law written by the finger of God, on tablets of stone indeed, to signify the hardness of their heart, because they were not going to fulfil the law. For, desiring bodily gifts from the Lord, they were held more by carnal fear than by spiritual love; but nothing fulfils the law except love. Therefore they were burdened with many visible sacraments, so as to be pressed by a servile yoke, in observances of foods and in sacrifices of animals and in countless other things: which were nonetheless signs of spiritual things pertaining to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church; which at that time were both understood by a few saints for the fruit of salvation and observed by them as befitted the time, but by the multitude of carnal people were only observed, not understood. So, through many and various signs of things to come, which it would take long to recount, and which we now see fulfilled in the Church, that people was led to the land of promise, where it was to reign temporally and carnally according to the measure of its desire; yet that earthly kingdom bore the image of a spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, the most famous city of God, serving as a sign of the free city which is called the heavenly Jerusalem; this is a Hebrew word and is interpreted “vision of peace.” Its citizens are all sanctified people who have been, who are, and who will be; and all sanctified spirits, even all those in the high regions of heaven who obey God with devout dedication and do not imitate the ungodly pride of the devil and his angels. The King of this city is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God by whom the highest angels are ruled, and the Word taking on man so that men too might be ruled by him, who will all reign together with him in eternal peace. As a prefiguration of this King, in that earthly kingdom of the people of Israel King David stood out most of all, from whose seed according to the flesh our truest King, the Lord Jesus Christ, was to come, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Many things were done in that land of promise as a figure of the coming Christ and the Church, which you will be able to learn little by little in the holy Books.

After some generations, however, he showed another type, pertaining most of all to the matter in hand. For that city was taken captive, and a great part of it was carried off into Babylonia. And as Jerusalem signifies the city and society of the saints, so Babylonia signifies the city and society of the wicked, since it is said to be interpreted “confusion.” Of these two cities, running mingled through the changes of times from the beginning of the human race to the end of the world, and to be separated at the last judgment, we have already spoken a little earlier. That captivity of the city of Jerusalem, then, and that people led into Babylonia, is commanded by the Lord through Jeremiah, the prophet of that time, to go into servitude. And there arose kings of Babylonia, under whom they served, who, moved by their presence through certain miracles, came to know and worship, and commanded to be worshipped, the one true God, who founded the whole creation. They were commanded also to pray for those by whom they were held captive, and to hope for peace in their peace, to beget children, build houses, and plant gardens and vineyards. And after seventy years deliverance from that captivity was promised them. All this signified figuratively that the Church of Christ in all his saints, who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, would be in servitude under the kings of this world. For apostolic teaching also says that every soul should be subject to the higher powers, and that all things should be rendered to all: tribute to whom tribute, tax to whom tax; and the other things which, without harm to the worship of our God, we render to the rulers of human government; since the Lord himself, to give us an example of this sound teaching, did not disdain to pay tribute for the head of the man with which he was clothed. Christian slaves, too, and good believers are commanded to serve their temporal masters with even temper and faithfully: whom they will judge, if they find them wicked to the end; or with whom they will reign as equals, if those too have been converted to the true God. Yet all are commanded to serve human and earthly powers, until, after the predetermined time which the seventy years signify, the Church is set free like Jerusalem from the confusion of this world as from the captivity of Babylon. Through the occasion of this captivity, the earthly kings themselves, having abandoned the idols for whose sake they persecuted Christians, have come to know and now worship the one true God and Christ the Lord; for these kings the apostle Paul commands prayer to be made, even when they were persecuting the Church. For he says this: I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, adorations, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for kings, for all people, and for all who are in high position, that we may lead a secure and quiet life with all piety and love. And so through them peace has been given to the Church, though temporal, a temporal tranquillity for building houses spiritually and planting gardens and vineyards. For see, we are now building and planting you by this discourse. And this is being done throughout the whole world with the peace of Christian kings, as the same apostle says: You are God's field, God's building. And after the seventy years which Jeremiah had prophesied in a mystical sense, to prefigure the end of the times, yet so that the figure itself might be completed, the rebuilding of the temple of God in Jerusalem took place; but because the whole was done figuratively, no firm peace and freedom was restored to the Jews. So afterward they were conquered by the Romans and made tributaries. Indeed, from the time when they received the land of promise and began to have kings, lest they should think that what was promised to them, Christ the deliverer, had been fulfilled in any of their kings, Christ was prophesied more openly through many prophecies; not only by David himself in the book of Psalms, but also by the other great and holy prophets, down to the time of the captivity in Babylon; and in the captivity itself there were prophets who prophesied the coming Lord Jesus Christ as the deliverer of all. And after the temple was restored when the seventy years had passed, the Jews suffered such oppressions and calamities from the kings of the nations that they might understand that the deliverer had not yet come, whom they did not understand as one who would deliver spiritually, but longed for him for the sake of a carnal deliverance.

When, then, five ages of the world had been completed (the first of which is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was made the first man, to Noah, who made the ark at the flood; then the second is to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all the nations that would imitate his faith, but nonetheless, by the descent of his flesh, of the future people of the Jews, which, before the Christian faith of the nations, was the one people among all the peoples of all lands that worshipped the one true God, the people from whom Christ the Saviour was to come according to the flesh. For these turning points of two ages stand out in the old Books, while those of the other three are declared also in the Gospel, when the fleshly descent of the Lord Jesus Christ is recorded. For the third is from Abraham to King David; the fourth from David to that captivity in which the people of God migrated to Babylonia; the fifth from that migration to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ), from his coming the sixth age is running: so that now the spiritual grace, which was then known to a few patriarchs and prophets, might be made manifest to all nations; so that no one should worship God except freely, desiring from him not visible rewards for his service and the happiness of the present life, but only eternal life, in which he would enjoy God himself; so that in this sixth age the human mind might be renewed to the image of God, as on the sixth day man was made to the image of God. For then the law too is fulfilled, when whatever he commanded is done not from desire for temporal things but from love of him who commanded it. And who would not strive to love in return a most just and most merciful God, who first so loved most unjust and most proud people that for their sake he sent his only Son, through whom he made all things; who, having become man not by any change of himself but by taking on man, could not only live with them but also be killed for them and by them? So, making manifest the new testament of the everlasting inheritance, in which man, renewed by the grace of God, would lead a new life, that is, a spiritual life; so that he might show the old one to be the first, in which a carnal people, acting the old man (except for a few patriarchs and prophets who understood, and some hidden saints), living carnally, desired carnal rewards from the Lord God and received them as a figure of spiritual goods: the Lord Christ, having become man, despised all earthly goods, so as to show that they are to be despised; and endured all earthly evils, which he taught were to be endured; so that happiness should not be sought in the former, nor unhappiness feared in the latter. For, born of a mother who, although she conceived untouched by a man and remained always untouched, a virgin conceiving, a virgin giving birth, a virgin dying, was nonetheless betrothed to a carpenter, he extinguished all the conceit of fleshly nobility. Born, too, in the town of Bethlehem, which among all the towns of Judea was so small that even today it is called a village, he would not have anyone boast of the eminence of any earthly city. He also became poor, to whom all things belong and through whom all things were created, so that no one, when he had believed in him, might dare to be lifted up by earthly riches. He refused to be made king by men, because he was showing the way of humility to the wretched, whom pride had separated from him; although the whole creation bears witness to his everlasting kingdom. He hungered who feeds all; he thirsted through whom all drink is created, and who spiritually is the bread of the hungry and the fountain of the thirsty; he was wearied by an earthly journey who made himself our way to heaven; he became as it were dumb and deaf before his revilers, through whom the dumb spoke and the deaf heard; he was bound who loosed from the bonds of infirmities; he was scourged who drove the scourges of all pains from the bodies of men; he was crucified who ended our torments; he died who raised the dead. But he also rose again, never to die, so that no one might learn from him to despise death as though he would never live again.

Then, having strengthened his disciples, he spent forty days with them and ascended into heaven as they watched; and when fifty days from the resurrection were completed, he sent them the Holy Spirit (for he had promised him), through whom, love being poured out in their hearts, they could fulfil the law not only without burden but even with delight. That law was given to the Jews in ten commandments, which they call the Decalogue. These in turn are reduced to two: that we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind; and that we love our neighbour as ourselves. For that on these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets the Lord himself both said in the Gospel and showed by his example. For the people of Israel too, from the day on which they first celebrated the Passover in an image, killing and eating a sheep, with whose blood their doorposts were marked for the protection of their safety, from that very day the fiftieth day was completed, and they received the law written by the finger of God, by which name, as we have already said, the Holy Spirit is signified: just as, after the Lord's passion and resurrection, which is the true Passover, on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit himself was sent to the disciples; no longer signifying hard hearts by tablets of stone; but, when they were gathered together in one place in Jerusalem itself, suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared to them tongues divided like fire, and they began to speak in tongues, so that all who had come to them each recognized his own language (for Jews used to gather to that city from every land, wherever they had been scattered, and had learned the various languages of various nations); then, preaching Christ with all boldness, they did many signs in his name, so much so that as Peter passed by, his shadow touched a certain dead man and he rose again. But when the Jews saw such great signs done in the name of him whom they had crucified, partly through envy and partly through error, some were provoked to persecute his preachers, the apostles; but others, wondering all the more at this very thing, that such great miracles were done in the name of him whom they had mocked as crushed and conquered by them, turned in repentance, and thousands of Jews believed in him. These no longer desired temporal benefits and an earthly kingdom from God, nor did they expect the promised king Christ in a carnal way; but understanding immortally, they loved him who for them had borne such great things mortally at their hands, and had forgiven them their sins, even the crime of his own blood, and had shown by the example of his resurrection that immortality is to be hoped for and desired from him. And so, now putting to death the earthly desires of the old man, and burning with the newness of the spiritual life, as the Lord had commanded in the Gospel, they sold all that they had and laid the prices of their goods at the feet of the apostles, so that they might distribute to each as each had need; and living in harmony in Christian love, they did not call anything their own, but they had all things in common, and one soul and one heart toward God. Then they too suffered persecution from the carnal Jews, their fellow citizens according to the flesh, and were scattered, so that Christ might be preached more widely by their dispersion, and that they too might imitate the patience of their Lord; for he who had meekly suffered them commanded them, made meek, to suffer for him. Among these very persecutors of the saints was also the apostle Paul, and he raged most fiercely against the Christians; but afterward, believing and made an apostle, he was sent to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, suffering worse things for the name of Christ than he had done against the name of Christ. And founding churches throughout all the nations where he sowed the Gospel, he earnestly instructed them that, since they, coming from the worship of idols and unpractised in worshipping the one God, could not easily serve God by selling and distributing their goods, they should make offerings for the poor among the saints who were in the churches of Judea that had believed in Christ: so apostolic teaching established the one as soldiers, and the others as tribute-paying provincials; setting in among them Christ as the cornerstone, as he had been foretold through the prophet, in whom both, like walls coming from different directions, namely from the Jews and from the Gentiles, might be joined by a kindred love. But afterward heavier and more frequent persecutions arose against the Church of Christ from the unbelieving nations, and day by day the word of the Lord was fulfilled, who foretold: Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.

But that vine which, as had been prophesied of it and foretold by the Lord himself, was spreading its fruitful branches throughout the world, sprouted the more abundantly the more richly it was watered with the blood of martyrs. As they died beyond number in every land for the truth of the faith, even the persecuting kingdoms themselves gave way and, with the neck of their pride broken, were converted to know and revere Christ. And it was necessary that the same vine, as had been repeatedly foretold by the Lord, should be pruned, and that the unfruitful shoots should be cut off from it, by which heresies and schisms have arisen in various places under the name of Christ, of people seeking not his glory but their own, through whose opposition the Church would be more and more exercised, and its teaching and patience tested and made illustrious. All these things, then, just as we read that they were foretold so long before, so we know that they have been done; and as the first Christians, because they did not yet see these things come to pass, were moved to believe by miracles, so we, because all these things have been fulfilled just as we read them in the Books that were written long before they were fulfilled, in which all were spoken of as future and are now seen as present, are built up to faith, so that, enduring and persevering in the Lord, we may believe without doubt that the things that remain will also come. For the tribulations still to come are read in the same Scriptures, and the last day of judgment itself, when all the citizens of both those cities will rise again, having received their bodies, and will give account of their life before the judgment seat of Christ the judge. For he who first deigned to come in the lowliness of humanity will come in the brightness of power; and he will separate all the godly from the ungodly: not only from those who were altogether unwilling to believe in him, but also from those who believed in him in vain and without fruit; to the one he will give the eternal kingdom with himself, to the other eternal punishment with the devil. But just as no joy in temporal things can be found in any way like the joy of eternal life which the saints will receive, so no torment of temporal punishments can be compared with the everlasting torments of the wicked.

So, brother, strengthen yourself in the name and help of him in whom you believe, against the tongues of those who mock our faith, through whom the devil speaks seductive words, wishing above all to mock faith in the resurrection. But believe from your own case that you will be, after you have been, since you see that you are now, when before you were not. For where was this mass of your body and this form and framework of limbs a few years ago, before you were born, or even before you were conceived in your mother's womb? Where was this mass and this stature of your body? Did it not come forth into the light from the hidden secrets of this creation, the Lord God forming it invisibly, and rise by sure stages of growth to this size and form? Is it then difficult for God, who even gathers banks of clouds out of hiding in a moment and covers the sky in an instant, to restore this bulk of your body as it was, who was able to make it when it was not? Believe, then, firmly and unshakably, that all things which seem to be withdrawn from human eyes as if perishing are safe and whole for the almighty power of God; who, when he wills, will restore them without any delay or difficulty, at least those which his justice judges are to be restored: so that people may give account of their deeds in those bodies in which they did them; and in them may merit either the change to heavenly incorruption for the merits of piety, or a corruptible condition of the body for the merits of iniquity, not one that is dissolved by death but one that provides matter for everlasting pains. Flee, then, by unshaken faith and good conduct, flee, brother, those torments where neither the torturers fail nor the tortured die; for whom it is death without end not to be able to die in their torments. And burn with love and longing for the everlasting life of the saints, where activity will not be toilsome nor rest idle; there will be the praise of God without weariness and without failing; no weariness in the mind, no labour in the body; no need, neither your own, for which you might wish to be helped, nor your neighbour's, which you might hasten to help. God will be all the delight and the fullness of the holy city that lives wisely and blessedly in him and from him. For we shall be made, as we hope and expect from his promise, equal to the angels of God, and together with them we shall enjoy that Trinity, now by sight, in which we now walk by faith. For we believe what we do not see, so that by the very merits of faith we may be found worthy also to see what we believe and to cleave to it; so that the equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the unity of the Trinity itself, how these three are one God, we may no longer sound out in words of faith and noisy syllables, but drink in by most pure and most ardent contemplation in that silence. Hold these things fixed in your heart, and call upon God in whom you believe to protect you against the temptations of the devil; and be on your guard lest that enemy creep up on you from another quarter, who, for the most malicious consolation of his own damnation, seeks others with whom to be damned. For he dares to tempt Christians not only through those who hate the Christian name, and grieve that the world has been taken over by that name, and still desire to serve idols and the curious arts of demons; but he also attempts it through those whom we mentioned a little earlier, cut off from the unity of the Church like a pruned vine, who are called heretics or schismatics; and sometimes he also attempts to tempt and seduce through the Jews. But above all one must beware lest anyone be tempted and deceived through people who are in the Catholic Church itself, whom it bears like chaff until the time of its winnowing. For God is patient toward them for this reason: both to strengthen the faith and prudence of his elect by exercising it through their perversity; and because many from their number make progress and, taking pity on their own souls so as to please God, are converted with great vigour. For not all, through the patience of God, store up for themselves wrath on the day of the wrath of his just judgment; but the same patience of the Almighty leads many to the most wholesome sorrow of repentance. Until that happens, not only the forbearance but also the mercy of those who already keep the right way is exercised through them. So you will see many drunkards, greedy people, cheats, gamblers, adulterers, the sexually immoral, people who bind sacrilegious remedies on themselves, people given over to enchanters and astrologers or diviners of any ungodly arts. You will notice too that the same crowds fill the churches on the festival days of the Christians that fill the theatres on the holidays of the pagans; and seeing this you will be tempted to imitate them. And why should I say you will see what you certainly know already? For you are not unaware that many who are called Christians do all these evils that I have briefly mentioned. And you are not unaware that people whom you know to be called Christians sometimes perhaps do still worse things. But if you have come with this intention, as if to do such things without fear, you are greatly mistaken: nor will the name of Christ profit you when he begins to judge most severely who first deigned to help most mercifully. For he foretold these things and says in the Gospel: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, in your name we ate and drank. For all who persist in such works, then, damnation is the end. So when you see many not only doing these things but also defending and urging them, hold yourself to the law of God and do not follow its transgressors. For you will be judged not according to their opinion but according to his truth. Join yourself to the good, whom you see loving your King with you. For you will find many, if you too begin to be such. For if at the shows you wanted to be with them and cling to those who loved, together with you, a charioteer or a beast fighter or some actor, how much more ought you to delight in union with those who love God with you, of whom his lover will never be ashamed, because not only can he himself not be conquered, but he will also make those who love him unconquerable? And yet you ought not to place your hope even in the good themselves, who go before you or accompany you to God, since you ought not to place it even in yourself, however much you have advanced, but in him who, by justifying them and you, makes you such. For you are secure about God, because he does not change; but about man no one is wisely secure. But if we ought to love those who are not yet righteous so that they may become so, how much more ardently are those to be loved who already are? But it is one thing to love a man, another to place one's hope in a man; and the difference is so great that God commands the one and forbids the other. And if, having suffered some insults or tribulations for the name of Christ, you do not fall away from the faith or turn aside from the good way, you will receive a greater reward; while those who give way to the devil in these things lose even the lesser one. But be humble before God, so that he may not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength.

When this has been said, he is to be asked whether he believes these things and desires to observe them. When he has answered, he is of course to be signed solemnly and treated according to the custom of the Church. As for the sacrament which he receives, when it has been well commended to him, he should be told that the signs of divine things are indeed visible, but that the invisible things themselves are honoured in them; and that that substance, sanctified by the blessing, is not to be regarded as it is regarded in any ordinary use; he should also be told what is signified by the discourse he has heard, and what it seasons in him, of which that thing bears the likeness. Then he is to be advised on this occasion that if he hears anything in the Scriptures that sounds carnal, even if he does not understand it, he should still believe that something spiritual is signified which pertains to holy conduct and the future life. And he learns this briefly in this way: whatever he hears from the canonical Books that he cannot refer to the love of eternity and truth and holiness, and to the love of neighbour, he should believe to have been said or done figuratively; and he should try to understand it so as to refer it to that twofold love. In such a way, of course, that he understands his neighbour not carnally, but as everyone who can be with him in that holy city, whether this is already apparent or not yet; and that he should not despair of the correction of any person whom the patience of God sees living, for no other reason, as the Apostle says, than that he may be led to repentance. If this discourse, in which I have instructed an uninstructed man as though he were present, seems long to you, you may say these things more briefly; but I do not think it ought to be longer; although it makes a great difference what the matter itself suggests when it is being dealt with, and what the presence of the hearers shows that they not only bear but even desire. But when speed is needed, see how easily the whole matter can be set out. Suppose again that someone is present who wishes to be a Christian; then, when questioned, that he has answered as the former one did; for even if he does not answer this, it must be said that he ought to have answered it. Then the rest is to be woven together in this way. “Truly, brother, that is the great and true blessedness which is promised to the saints in the world to come. But all visible things pass away, and all the pomp and delights and curiosity of this world will perish, and they drag their lovers with them to destruction. From this destruction, that is, from everlasting punishments, God in his mercy, wishing to set people free, if they are not enemies to themselves and do not resist the mercy of their Creator, sent his only-begotten Son, that is, his Word, equal to himself, through whom he founded all things. And while remaining in his divinity, and not departing from the Father, nor changed in any way, yet by taking on man and appearing to men in mortal flesh, he came to men: so that, as through one man, who was made first, that is Adam, death entered the human race, because he consented to his wife, who had been seduced by the devil, so that they transgressed God's commandment; so through one man, who is also God, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, all past sins being blotted out, all who believe in him might enter into eternal life.

For all the things that you now see done in the Church of God and under the name of Christ throughout the whole world were foretold ages ago; and as we read them, so we also see them; and from this we are built up in faith. There was once a flood over the whole earth, so that sinners might be destroyed; and yet those who escaped in the ark showed forth the sacrament of the future Church, which now floats on the waves of the world and is delivered from drowning by the wood of the cross of Christ. It was foretold to Abraham, the faithful servant of God, a single man, that from him would be born a people that would worship the one God among the other nations that worshipped idols; and all things that were foretold as coming to that people came to pass as they were foretold. In that people Christ was also prophesied, the King of all the saints and God, to come from the seed of Abraham himself according to the flesh, which he took on, so that all who imitated Abraham's faith might also be children of Abraham; and so it was done: Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, who was of that race. It was foretold through the prophets that he would suffer on the cross at the hands of the same people of the Jews, from whose race he came according to the flesh; and so it was done. It was foretold that he would rise again; he rose again; and according to the very predictions of the prophets he ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples. It was foretold not only by the prophets but also by the Lord Jesus Christ himself that his Church would spread throughout the whole world, scattered by the martyrdoms and sufferings of the saints; and it was foretold at a time when his name was still unknown to the nations and was mocked where it was known; and yet, by the mighty works of his miracles, whether those he did himself or those he did through his servants, as these are proclaimed and believed, we now see that what was foretold has been fulfilled, and the very kings of the earth, who before persecuted Christians, are now subjected to the name of Christ. It was also foretold that schisms and heresies would go out from his Church, and under his name, in whatever places they could, would seek their own glory, not Christ's; and these things have been fulfilled. Will the things that remain, then, not come? It is plain that, as these foretold things have come, so those too will come: whatever tribulations of the righteous still remain; and the day of judgment, which will separate all the ungodly from the righteous in the resurrection of the dead; and he will set apart for the fire they deserve not only those who are outside the Church, but also the chaff of the Church itself, which it must bear with great patience until the final winnowing. Those who mock the resurrection, thinking that this flesh cannot rise because it rots, will rise in it to punishment; and God will show them that he who could make these bodies before they existed can restore them in a moment as they were. But all the faithful who are to reign with Christ will rise in the same body in such a way that they will also be found worthy to be changed to angelic incorruption; so that they become equal to the angels of God, as the Lord himself promised; and praise him without any failing and without any weariness, living for ever in him and from him, with such joy and blessedness as can neither be spoken nor conceived by man. You, then, believing these things, beware of temptations (because the devil seeks others to perish with him): so that that enemy may not lead you astray, not only through those who are outside the Church, whether pagans, or Jews, or heretics; but also, those whom you see in the Catholic Church itself living evil lives, either immoderate in the pleasures of the belly and the throat, or unchaste, or given to empty curiosities or unlawful ones, whether of the shows, or of remedies, or of devilish divinations, or living in the pomp and conceit of greed and pride, or in any life that the law condemns and punishes, do not imitate them; but rather join yourself to the good, whom you will find easily if you too are such; so that together you may worship and love God freely: for he himself will be our whole reward, so that in that life we may enjoy his goodness and beauty. But he is to be loved not as something seen by the eyes, but as wisdom is loved, and truth, and holiness, and justice, and love, and whatever else is so called: not as these things are in men, but as they are in the very fountain of incorruptible and unchangeable wisdom. Whomever, then, you see loving these things, join yourself to them, so that through Christ, who became man that he might be the Mediator between God and men, you may be reconciled to God. But as for perverse people, even if they enter the walls of the church, do not think that they will enter the kingdom of heaven; for in their own time they will be separated, if they do not change for the better. So imitate good people, bear with the bad, love all; since you do not know what he who is bad today will be tomorrow. And do not love their unrighteousness; but love them for this purpose, that they may lay hold of righteousness: for not only the love of God has been commanded us, but also the love of neighbour, on which two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets. And no one fulfils it except one who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is certainly equal to the Father and the Son; for the Trinity itself is God: and in this God all hope is to be placed. It is not to be placed in man, of whatever kind he may be. For he by whom we are justified is one thing, those with whom we are justified are another. And the devil tempts not only through desires, but also through the terrors of insults and pains and death itself. But whatever a man suffers for the name of Christ and for the hope of eternal life, and endures persevering, a greater reward will be given him; but if he yields to the devil, he will be condemned with him. But works of mercy, with devout humility, obtain from the Lord that he does not allow his servants to be tempted more than they can bear.”