Miscellanies 7.12.69–7.13.83

So much for that. The one who knows, being so disposed toward body and soul, is found equal and alike toward his neighbors, whether one is a servant, or has become an enemy by law, or anyone at all. For he does not despise his brother, who by the divine law has the same father and the same mother; certainly he relieves him in affliction with consolation and encouragement, helping him with the needs of life, giving to all who are in need, yet not equally, but justly and according to worth; and moreover even to the one who persecutes and hates him, if he should need it. He cares little for those who say he gave out of fear, if in fact he does it not out of fear but to help. For those who are free from love of money toward their enemies and bear them no grudge, how much more loving will they be toward their own? Such a person advances from this to knowing precisely to whom one should give most, how much, when, and how. And who could reasonably become the enemy of a man who gives no cause for enmity at all? Is it not so that, just as with God we say that God opposes no one and is no one's enemy (for he is creator of all, and nothing exists that he does not will), yet we say that his enemies are the disobedient and those who do not walk according to his commandments, those hostile, as it were, to his covenant, so we would find it also with the one who knows? For he himself would never in any way become anyone's enemy, but those who turn to the opposite way might be thought to be his enemies. This is especially so since the disposition to share is called righteousness among us; moreover, the disposition that distinguishes according to worth, giving more or less in the cases where this should be done with understanding, is a form of the highest righteousness. Now there are things that some people do rightly even in an ordinary way, such as self-control in pleasures. For as among the gentiles some abstain from the pleasures at their feet both because they cannot “obtain what they love” and out of fear of human beings, and others for the sake of greater pleasures, so also in the faith some practice self-control either because of the promise or out of fear of God.

But such self-control is a foundation of knowledge, a kind of approach to what is better and an impulse toward what is perfect. For “the beginning of wisdom,” it says, “is the fear of the Lord.” But the perfect man, through love, “bears all things, endures all things,” “not as pleasing man but God.” And yet praise follows him too as a consequence, not for his own benefit but for the imitation and use of those who praise him. In another sense also, the self-controlled man is said to be not only the one who masters the passions, but also the one who has become master of good things and has securely acquired the great riches of understanding, from which he bears the fruit of virtuous activity. In this way the one who knows never departs from his own disposition when a crisis arises. For the understanding possession of the good is steadfast and unchangeable, being understanding of divine and human things. Knowledge, then, never becomes ignorance, nor does the good change into evil. That is why he eats and drinks and marries, not as an end in itself, but out of necessity. And I say “marries,” if reason chooses it, and as is fitting. For having become perfect, he has the apostles as his examples. And the true man is shown not by choosing the solitary life; rather, he “surpasses men” who has trained himself in marriage, the begetting of children, and the care of the household, without pleasure and without grief, and has remained inseparable from the love of God while caring for his household, and has risen above every temptation that comes through children and wife, servants and possessions. But the man without a household has for the most part turned out to be untested. Caring, at any rate, for himself alone, he is surpassed by the man who falls short of him in his own salvation but excels in the management of life, and who preserves, quite simply, a small image of the true providence. But we, as far as possible, must train the soul beforehand in various ways,

so that it may become well suited for receiving knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and bronze purified so that it may receive the impression stamped on it? Indeed, as death is “the separation of the soul from the body,” so knowledge is a kind of rational death, leading the soul away from the passions, separating it from them, and leading it on to the life of doing good, so that it may then say to God with boldness, “I live as you wish.” For the one who chooses “to please men” “cannot please God,” since the many choose not what is beneficial but what is delightful; but whoever pleases God becomes, as a consequence, acceptable to good people. How, then, could the pleasures of food, drink, and sex still be delightful to such a man, when he is wary even of speech that brings some pleasure, and of any movement of thought or activity that delights? For “no one can serve two masters, God and mammon.” He does not say this simply of money, but of the supply that money furnishes for various pleasures. Truly, one who has known God nobly and truly cannot serve the pleasures that are opposed to him.

The only one, then, who was free from desire from the beginning is the Lord, the lover of humanity, who also became human for our sake; but those who hasten to be made like the impression he has given strive to become free from desire through discipline. For the one who has felt desire and has restrained himself … just as the widow too becomes a virgin again through self-restraint. This is the fee for knowledge owed to the Savior and Teacher, the fee that he himself asked for: abstaining from evils and practicing good, by which salvation is gained. Just as those who have learned a craft earn their living by what they were taught, so the one who knows is saved, earning life by what he understands. For whoever has not been willing to cut out the passion of the soul has killed himself. But, it seems, ignorance is the starvation of the soul, and knowledge its nourishment. These are the knowing souls that the gospel likened to the consecrated virgins waiting for the Lord: virgins because they have abstained from evils, waiting for the Lord because of their love, and kindling their own light for the contemplation of things; wise souls, saying, “We long for you, O Lord, to receive you at last. We have lived according to what you commanded, transgressing none of your precepts. Therefore we also claim the promises; and we pray for what is beneficial, not for what is pleasant, since it is fitting to ask the best things from you; and we will accept all things as for our good,

even if the trials that come seem to be evil, the exercises that your dispensation brings upon us for training in steadfastness.” The one who knows, then, out of surpassing holiness, is readier to fail when he asks than to obtain without asking. For his whole life is prayer and converse with God, and if he is pure of sins, he will certainly obtain what he wishes. For God says to the righteous man, “Ask, and I will give to you; think, and I will do it.” If, then, the things are beneficial, he will receive them at once; and things that are not beneficial he will never ask for, so he will not receive them either. So it will be as he wishes. And if someone tells us that some sinners too obtain what they ask, this happens rarely, because of God's just goodness, and it is given to those who are able to benefit others as well. Hence the gift is not made for the sake of the one who asked; rather, the dispensation, foreseeing the one who is to be saved through him, makes the gift just once again. But to those who are worthy the truly good things are given even without asking. When, then, someone is righteous not from necessity or fear or hope, but by choice, this is called the royal road, which the royal race travels; the other byways are slippery and lead over cliffs. If, at any rate, one took away fear and honor, I do not know whether the noble philosophers who speak so boldly would still endure afflictions.

Desires and the other sins have been called “thistles and thorns.” The one who knows, then, works in the Lord's vineyard, planting, pruning, watering, truly a divine farmer of those who have been planted in faith. Those who have not done evil think they deserve to receive a wage for idleness; but the one who has done good by free choice claims his wage as a good workman. Indeed, he will receive double, both for what he did not do and for the good he did. This one who knows is tempted by no one, unless God permits it, and this too for the benefit of those around him. They are strengthened in faith, at any rate, encouraged by his manly endurance. Indeed, for this reason too the blessed apostles were brought to trial and to a martyrdom of perfection, to fix and confirm the churches. The one who knows, then, having ringing in his ears the voice that says, “Whom I strike, you have mercy on,” asks even those who hate him to repent. For even children should not watch the punishment of criminals carried out in the stadiums. There is no way the one who knows could ever be educated or delighted by such things, since he has trained himself by choice to be good and noble, and so has become unsoftened by pleasures. Never falling into sins, he is not educated by the examples of others' evils. Far indeed is he from being pleased by earthly pleasures and spectacles, he who has looked down even on the worldly promises, although they are divine. “Not everyone, then, who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of God.” And this would be the knowing workman, who masters “worldly desires” while still in the flesh, and who is so exactly persuaded about what he has come to know, the things to come and still unseen, that he considers them more present than what lies at his feet.

This is a fit workman, rejoicing in what he has come to know, but holding back in the things in which he is entangled by the necessity of life, not yet counted worthy of an active share in what he has known. So he uses this life as something foreign to him, only so far as necessity requires. He also knows the hidden meanings of the fast on these days, I mean Wednesday and Friday. For the one is named after Hermes, the other after Aphrodite. Indeed, he fasts throughout his life from love of money and love of pleasure alike, from which all vices spring. For we have often shown before that, according to the apostle, the three highest kinds of fornication are love of pleasure, love of money, and idolatry.

He fasts, then, according to the law, from bad deeds, and according to the perfection of the gospel, from evil thoughts. Temptations are brought upon him not for his own cleansing but, as we said, for the benefit of his neighbors, if, having had experience of toils and pains, he has despised them and let them pass by. The same argument holds for pleasure. For the greatest thing is to have come into experience of it and then to abstain. For what great thing is it if someone practices self-control in what he does not know? He, having carried out the commandment of the gospel, makes that day the Lord's day on which he casts off a bad thought and takes on a knowing one, glorifying the Lord's resurrection in himself. Moreover, whenever he grasps an object of understanding contemplation, he thinks that he sees the Lord, leading his gaze by the hand toward what is invisible. And even if he seems to see what he does not wish to see, he punishes his faculty of sight when he becomes aware of taking pleasure at the impact of what he sees, since he wishes to see and hear only what befits him. For instance, contemplating the souls of the brothers, he sees the beauty of the flesh too with the soul itself, which is accustomed to look only on what is beautiful, without fleshly pleasure.

And they are truly brothers according to the chosen creation, in likeness of character and in the substance of their works, doing, thinking, and speaking the same holy and good actions, which the Lord wished them, as elect, to have in mind. For faith lies in choosing the same things, knowledge in having learned and thinking the same things, and hope in longing for the same things. And even if, by the necessity of life, he spends a little time on food, he thinks he is being cheated, distracted by the business. So he never sees, even in a dream, anything unfitting for one of the elect. Truly, every such person is “a stranger and sojourner” throughout his life: living in a city, he has despised what others in the city admire, and he lives in the city as in a desert, so that the place may not compel him, but his own choice may show him to be righteous. This one who knows, to put it briefly, makes up for the absence of the apostles, living rightly, knowing precisely, benefiting those who are fit, “removing the mountains” of his neighbors and casting out the unevenness of their souls. And yet each of us is his own vineyard and his own workman. Even when he does the best things, he wishes to escape the notice of human beings, persuading the Lord and himself that he lives according to the commandments, and preferring the things to which he believes he belongs (“for where a person's mind is,” it says, “there too is his treasure”). He deprives himself so as never to overlook a brother who has fallen into affliction, because of his perfection in love, especially if he knows that he himself will bear want more easily than his brother.

He counts that man's pain as his own suffering; and if, giving out of his own want in order to do good, he suffers some hardship, he does not complain about it, but increases his generosity all the more. For he has an undiluted faith about the realities, praising the gospel by works and by contemplation. And indeed he reaps “praise not from men but from God,” by carrying out what the Lord taught. Absorbed in his own hope, he does not taste the good things of the world, looking down on everything here; he pities those who are disciplined after death through punishment and confess against their will; he has a good conscience about his departure and is always ready, as a “sojourner and stranger” to the things here, mindful only of his own inheritance and counting everything here foreign to him. He not only admires the Lord's commandments, but, so to speak, through knowledge itself he shares in the divine will, truly an intimate of the Lord and of the commandments, chosen as righteous. He is ruling and royal as one who knows, looking down on all the gold on the earth and under the earth, and on dominion from one end of the ocean to the other, so as to cling to the service of the Lord alone. That is why, whether eating, drinking, or marrying, if reason chooses it, and even when he sees dreams, he does and thinks holy things; so he is always pure for prayer. He also prays with angels, as being already “equal to the angels.” He is never outside the holy guard; even if he prays alone, he has the chorus of the saints standing with him. He knows that faith is twofold: the activity of the one who believes, and the pre-eminence, according to its worth, of what is believed; since righteousness too is twofold,

one kind through love, the other through fear. It has been said, at any rate: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever.” For those who turn from fear to faith and righteousness endure forever. Fear produces abstinence from evils, while love, building up toward what is voluntary, urges one to do good, so that one may hear from the Lord, “I no longer call you servants but friends,” and may now approach prayer with confidence. The form of his prayer is thanksgiving for things past, things present, and things to come, as already present through faith; and before this comes his having received knowledge. And indeed he asks to live the life appointed in the flesh as one who knows, as one without flesh, to obtain the best things and escape the worse. He also asks for relief for the sins we have committed and for conversion to full knowledge. So he follows promptly the one who calls him at his departure, as soon as he calls, going ahead, so to speak, because of his good conscience, hastening to give thanks there too, once he has come to be with Christ, having shown himself worthy through purity to possess, as though blended with it, the power of God supplied through Christ. For he wishes not to be warm by sharing in heat, nor bright by sharing in fire, but to be wholly light. He knows precisely what was said: “If you do not hate father and mother, and moreover your own soul, and if you do not carry the sign.” For he has hated fleshly attachments, which hold the powerful charm of pleasure, and he looks down on everything that belongs to the making and nourishing of the flesh; indeed he rises up even against the bodily soul, putting a bridle on the unruly irrational spirit, since “the flesh desires against the spirit.” And “to carry the sign” is “to carry about death,” “renouncing all things” while still alive; since love for the one who sowed the flesh is not equal to love for the one who created the soul for understanding.

Having come into a settled disposition of doing good, he does good more quickly than he speaks of it, praying to share his brothers' sins for the confession and conversion of his kin, and eager to share his own good things with those dearest to him; and his friends are such to him. Increasing, then, the seeds entrusted to him according to the farming the Lord commanded, he remains sinless and becomes self-controlled, and lives in spirit with those like him in the choirs of the saints, even though he is still held on earth. All day and night, speaking and doing the Lord's commands, he rejoices exceedingly, not only when he rises in the morning and at midday, but also when walking and lying down, dressing and undressing; and he teaches his son, if he has a son, never separated from the commandment and the hope, always giving thanks to God like the living creatures that sing his glory, which are described allegorically through Isaiah, and patient in every trial: “The Lord gave,” it says, “the Lord has taken away.” Such was Job, who, when external things and even his bodily health were taken away, had already laid everything aside through his love for the Lord. “For he was,” it says, “righteous, holy, abstaining from all evil.” And “holy” indicates what is due to God in his whole dispensation, which he understood, and so he was one who knows. For one must neither, if things are good, cling to them, since they are human, nor again, if they are evil, hate them, but be above both, trampling the one underfoot and passing the other on to those who need it. The one who knows is careful in accommodating himself to others, so that the accommodation does not, without his noticing, become his disposition.

He never remembers those who have sinned against him, but forgives them. That is why he also prays rightly, saying, “Forgive us, for we too forgive.” For this too is one of the things God wills: to desire nothing and to hate no one; for all human beings are the work of one will. And does not our Savior, wishing the one who knows to be “perfect as the heavenly Father,” that is, as himself, he who says, “Come, children, hear me: the fear of the Lord,” wish him no longer to need the help that comes through angels, but, having become worthy, to receive it from himself, and to have his protection from himself through obedience? Such a person claims from the Lord, and does not merely ask. And in the case of poor brothers, the one who knows will not ask for an abundance of money for himself to share, but will pray that a supply of what they need may come to them. For in this way the one who knows gives even his prayer to those in need, and provides what comes through prayer unknown to them and without pride. Poverty, then, and disease and such trials are often brought upon people for admonition, both for correction of the past and for care about the future. Such a person, asking relief for them, since he has the special gift of knowledge, not from vainglory but simply because he is one who knows, himself works the good deed, having become an instrument of God's goodness.

They say in the Traditions that Matthias the apostle said on every occasion: “If the neighbor of an elect man sins, the elect man has sinned; for if he had conducted himself as the Word dictates, his neighbor too would have so respected his life as not to sin.” What, then, should we say about the one who knows himself? “Or do you not know,” says the apostle, “that you are a temple of God?” The one who knows, then, is divine and already holy, bearing God and borne by God. Indeed, Scripture, presenting sin as something alien, sells those who have fallen away into the hands of foreigners; and when it says, “Do not look with desire at another man's wife,” it plainly declares sin to be alien and contrary to the nature of the temple of God. One temple is great, the church; another is small, the human being who preserves the seed of Abraham. He, then, who has God resting in him will not desire anything else. Indeed, leaving behind every hindrance and disdaining all the matter that distracts him, he cuts through heaven by understanding, and passing through the spiritual beings and every rule and authority, he touches the highest thrones, hastening toward that alone which alone he has known. Having mixed, then, the serpent with the dove, he lives perfectly and with a good conscience, blending faith with hope in expectation of what is to come. For he is aware of the gift he has received, having become worthy to obtain it; and having been transferred from slavery to adoption, he acts in keeping with his understanding (“having known God and been known by him”), showing works worthy of the grace. For works follow knowledge as the shadow follows the body.

Reasonably, then, he is troubled by nothing that happens, nor does he suspect anything of what takes place under God's dispensation for our good, nor is he ashamed to die, since he has a good conscience about being seen by the powers, having been cleansed, so to speak, of all the stains of the soul, and knowing very well that it will be better for him after his departure. Hence he never prefers what is pleasant or what seems advantageous to the dispensation, training himself through the commandments so as to become pleasing to the Lord in all things and praiseworthy before the world, since all things depend on the one almighty God. “To his own,” it says, “the Son of God came, and his own did not receive him.” That is why, in the use of the things of the world, he not only gives thanks and admires creation, but, using it as is fitting, is also praised; since his end, through knowing activity according to the commandments, is completed in contemplation. From here already, gathering by understanding the provisions for contemplation and generously taking up the greatness of knowledge, he advances to the holy reward of his being taken up. For he has heard the psalm that says, “Go around Zion and encompass her, tell of it in her towers.” For it hints, I think, that those who have received the Word in a lofty way will be lofty as towers, and will stand firm in faith and in knowledge.