Letter to Valerian on Contempt of the World 1–18

Those are well bound by the bond of blood who are united by the bond of love. So we too may glory greatly for this very gift of God, we whom love binds just as kinship does, and whom two ties draw together into one affection: the one we received from the parents of our flesh, the other we took up ourselves. This double bond by which we are joined (kinship on one side and love on the other uniting us) has compelled me to write to you at somewhat greater length, so as to commend to your mind the cause of your soul, and to set forth that true blessedness, which is able to hold eternal things, as the work of our profession. For since I love you as I love myself, I must desire that you, as another self, attain the highest good. And indeed you are not averse, by your devout nature too, to the profession of a holy life: by an early ripeness and happiness of character you have anticipated in very many things what holy teachings instruct, so that you seem to me to have taken up certain duties of religion as though by a provident nature, through the kindness of our Lord and God already at work in you; by his grace divine teaching can in part find its good things in you, and in part bestow them. Although, raised by your father and your father-in-law to the highest peaks of the world, you are surrounded by distinguished titles on both sides, I nevertheless long for far higher summits of honour in you; and I call you not to the dignity of earthly things but of heavenly, not of the age but of the ages. For this is a sure glory that cannot be blotted out: to glory in eternity. I will speak to you, then, not the wisdom of this age, but that secret and hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages for our glory. I will speak with you with great zeal for you, and very little thought for myself, since I have considered more what I want in you than what I can do myself.

The first duty of man, once he has been made and brought into the light, my dearest Valerian, is to know his own Author and, having known him, to receive him; and to devote his life, that is, a divine gift, to divine service and worship, so that what he received by God's gift may be fulfilled by devotion to God, and what he, unworthy, took from him he may spend in subjection to him. For we are moved by a sound opinion when we consider that, as we were brought forth by him, so we were brought forth for him. Hence whoever understands it so, that he both made us and made us for himself, sees plainly and nobly the purpose of our Creator in forming man. Next, it is best to spend our principal care on the soul, so that what is first in usefulness may not be last in consideration. Let what is held first hold the first cares among us, and let salvation, which is highest, claim the highest share of our concern. Let it occupy us for its own defence and protection, no longer merely first, but alone. Let it surpass all things in our zeal, as it goes before all things. We owe the highest observance to God, and next the greatest to the soul; and yet it is so that, though both are chief, the one can by no means be observed without the other. So whoever has satisfied God must already have provided for his soul; and again, whoever has provided for his soul must already have satisfied God. Thus the matter of both our highest concerns is settled by a useful shortcut: whoever diligently fulfils the one has achieved both, because, by God's unspeakable kindness, our very advantage becomes a sacrifice to God. Much use of treatment is spent on the body; much is given to this work in the hope of healing. Does the soul not deserve medicine? And if various aids are applied to the body in the zeal to protect its health, it is not right that the soul should lie as if shut out, waste away in its diseases as if neglected, and alone be exiled from its own remedies; rather, truly, more must be given to the soul if so much is given to the body.

For if some have rightly said that this flesh is the servant and the soul the mistress, we ought not to put the mistress in the lower place and prefer the servant by an unjust law. The better part rightly demands the greater zeal, because with all care we must look to where the greater dignity of our substance lies. It is not fitting, in this honour of our concern, to make it subject to the worse. For the flesh, prone to vices, calls us back to the earth, as to its origin; but the soul, coming from the Father of lights, strives upward, as fire is wont to do. This is the image of God in us; this is the precious pledge of the divine gift. Let us protect it with all our resources, with all our strength; if we govern and preserve it, we guard God's deposit. What room is there for building unless you have laid the foundations? For one who intends to build other advantages on top, salvation is the foundation. Otherwise how could anyone add what follows if he does not possess what comes first? From where will he grow by the increase of what follows if he fails in the beginnings of what goes before? How can he think he shares in blessedness when he lacks even salvation? Lacking life, from where can he abound in a happy life? Or what use is it to add to his food, if he has nothing by which to provide for the soul? Of the soul our Lord Jesus Christ also says: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul?” Therefore no reason for gain can stand if it is plain that loss to the soul comes in. Where there is damage to salvation, there certainly is no gain; for how can gain be taken unless the place that receives it is kept unshaken? And therefore, while there is time, let us hasten to that true gain, to that holy and desirable exchange.

A few days can bring forth eternal life; and yet those days, even if they possessed an unharmed and undefiled blessedness of life, would still have to be valued little, because they were few. For nothing is great in reality that is small in time; nor is anything enlarged by long joys that is shut in by a narrow end. The brief advantage of this world has brief comforts. Rightly, then, even if this brief life were good, the advantage of the everlasting life would seem to deserve preference over it, because the one would be a temporal happiness and the other an eternal; because it would be fragile to enjoy brief goods, and safe to rejoice in everlasting ones. But in fact eternal life is most blessed. For what can be called happier than eternal life? This life, however, is brief, and as it is most brief, so it is most full of hardship: it is pressed on every side by the troubles of the sorrows around it, wearied by evils as its strength fails, and tossed by the injuries of chance. For what is so faithless, so changeable, so calamitous as the course of this life? It is full of toil, full of worry, full of cares, full even of dangers themselves; and, pulled apart by uncertain chances, it becomes restless with the body's vexations, anxious with the mind's pains, unsure in the whirlwinds of perils. What advantage, what reason is there in not seeking eternal goods, and in following temporal ones, even evil ones? Do you not see how, even in this life, every provident man equips at lavish expense, for his use, a place or a field where he thinks he will stay longer? Where one will be for a short time, he provides little; where for a longer time, he procures more. For us too, since at present the time is very short, with narrow straits pressing upon us, and in the future there will be ages, let us enlarge the eternal life with fitting provisions and furnish the little one with fitting provisions, lest by perverse provision we spend the greatest care on a brief time and a brief care on the greatest time.

And I hardly know what ought to drive us more swiftly or more effectively to this most blessed life: the advantages of the future life, which are promised, or the disadvantages of the present life, which are seen. From the one side the former call us most sweetly; from the other the latter thrust us out forcefully. Therefore, since even the worst things vote for the better side, if we are not enticed by good things, let us be driven out by evils. To spur us on to better things, the best agree with the worse, and opposites run together to the same advantage: while some invite us and others put us to flight, both urge us toward the better. For if some famous and wealthy man were to summon you in order to adopt you as his son, would you not go through all the difficulties in your way and hurry along a road however long and remote? God, the Lord of the universe and of all things, calls you to adoption, granting you, if you will, that sweet name of son by which he names our God, his only one; and are you not set on fire and swept along, not urged to haste, lest swift death snatch away so great a condition before you hurry to meet it? And to obtain this, will you not cross the trackless deserts of the earth and the uncertainties of a distant sea? When you will, this adoption of yours is with you. Will this matter keep us slothful and idle because it is as ready to hand as it is great? Those who neglect it will find this condition all the harder; for it is as much more ruinous to the unwilling as it is more ready to the willing.

Surely it is the desire for life that has bound us to delight in the present world. Therefore, since you love life, we exhort you to life. It is the true method of persuasion when what is asked is that we obtain from you what you desire. We act as ambassadors to you on behalf of the life which you love; and we commend this life, which you all love though it is small, so that you may love the eternal one. I do not know how we love this life unless we desire that what we love be as fair as possible. So let what pleases even though it is narrow please more if it can be everlasting; and let what has value with us although it has an end be beyond all price to us if it can be without end. Let it be right, then, that the lesser life has looked ahead to the greater, so that a passage may be built for us to the other, but through this one; and it is not fitting that this partner should interfere by crooked counsels with the other's advantages. Let it not set itself against it, to hinder or to harm. For it is absurd and self-contradictory that love of life should bring loss to life. So whether you think this life is to be despised or embraced, my cause is easy either way. For if it is spurned, there is one reason for spurning it: that the better may be sought. And if it is loved, so much the more must that one be loved which is greater. Yet I would wish you to hold this life according to your experience of it, to judge it (as it is) most troublesome and restless with uncertain weariness, and to spurn and reject it together with its occupations.

Let that endless chain of worldly business be broken, and that one labour, made of many necessities, which runs through the whole of life. Let us burst the bonds of empty cares, whose knots follow one upon another and are entangled together, in which our occupation is always, as it were, just beginning. Let those concerns be removed, as empty as they are joined to one another, in which, as long as we live, the zeal of mortals, constantly begun again in business, is never finished. Unwearied attention to these things has made this life, already brief and narrow in itself, narrower still. Through them come now vain joys, now bitter sorrows, now anxious wishes, now suspicious fears. Let us cast away, in short, all those things that make this present life short for occupation and long for grief. Let us reject the life of a little-trusted world, suspect on both sides, in which the high and the lowly are equally unsafe. The lowly are crushed, pressed down by their lowliness; the lofty totter at their height. Put a man in whatever state you like: here there is no rest, neither among the lowest nor among the highest; neither condition escapes the heavy lot of the whirlwind. The lesser lies open to insult, the greater to envy.

There are two chief things, as I think, that most of all hold men bound in the business of the world and, capturing their flattered senses, bind them with alluring love: the pleasure of wealth and the dignity of honours. The first of these should be called not pleasure but want; the second not dignity but vanity. These two, with alternating knots entangled, hinder our step, a deceitful partnership embracing us. They breathe into human hearts, to their ruin, vices sweet to the desires, and tempt the wearied minds of mortals with an easy pleasantness. For what is more ruinous than this wealth (to speak of it first), which is rarely heaped up except with injustice? By such a steward it is acquired, by such a guardian it is kept. “For the root of all evils,” it says, “is greed.” So much is there a kind of fellowship, almost even in name, between these two things, vices and riches. Is not this wealth a kind of material for insults? Hence one of our own also says: “For what else are riches but pledges of injury?” Do they not, like prizes set out for the wicked, provoke the eyes and minds of the factious, and in a way display proscriptions themselves and invite them? But suppose these things do not happen: can we be sure where, after us, they will migrate as they wander and flee? “He heaps up treasure,” it says, “and does not know for whom he gathers it.” But suppose the heir comes as you wished: does not the heir often intercept the estate, and either a son badly brought up or a son-in-law badly chosen consume the wealth heaped up? What pleasure do these riches hold in themselves, when their possession is wretched and their passing on uncertain? Where are you swept, wayward and headlong love of men? You know how to love the things that come to you, and do not know how to love yourself? What you love is outside; what you desire is outside you. Return rather into yourself, so that you may be dearer to yourself than your possessions. Surely, if someone with experience of the world approached you, you would prefer that he love you yourself rather than the things that are with you; and you will choose that he give his affection to your life rather than to your wealth. You want him to keep faith with the man, not with things. What you would wish another to give you, give it yourself, you who are most faithful to yourself. Let us love ourselves rather than what is ours. Let this, then, be said against possessions.

As for the honours of this world, to say nothing of the rest, what dignity can be thought to belong to them, when the wicked climb to them by ambition together with the good, when one honour encircles men not of one merit, and dignity no longer distinguishes the worthy and the unworthy but confuses them? So what ought to set the better above the worse has begun to make them equal; and in a new way there is hardly any place where there is less distinction between the best and the worst of men than in honour. Is it not a greater honour to prefer to be without an honour of this kind, and to be valued by one's own character rather than by indiscriminate honours? And these very honours, however they stand, how fleeting, how perishable they are! We have lately seen men conspicuous in honour who sat on the summits of lofty dignities and stretched out their estates, their wealth spread everywhere across the world. They had outrun their desires by their successes, their fortunes had surpassed their wishes. But I am recalling only private fortunes. Kings themselves, raised high by great empire, shone with gems; their garments, wondrous to tell, gleamed with woven metals; [their halls] sparkled with rows of [trees]; the court shone furnished with palatial adornment, and the roofs glowed with gilded beams. Their wishes were called the rights of men, their words were called laws. Who can escape above the heads of men by a temporary happiness? See, that pomp of theirs is nowhere; their most abundant wealth has gone as well; the masters of such great wealth have themselves passed away.

Those recent and renowned kingdoms are already a kind of tale among us. All those things that were great here are now nothing. Nothing, I think, or rather, I know for certain, did they take with them of that wealth, those honours, those kingdoms, except (if there was any in them) the substance of faith and piety. This alone follows them, stripped of all else; this alone goes with them as they depart, inseparable and, as it were, faithful. By that wealth they are now nourished; in those riches now, in those honours alone, they find rest. These goods they now hold in their benefits. Therefore, if we are captivated by honours and wealth, let us be stirred up by true wealth and true honours. Every best man transfers earthly honours and earthly wealth into heavenly honours and heavenly wealth: to that place, surely, where the separation of good and bad is complete and unconfused; where what we once obtain we hold forever; where, if there is any place for obtaining, there will be none for losing.

But since we have spoken of the fragile possession of temporal goods, we must also say something about the condition of this brief life itself. What is this, I ask, what is this? Men see nothing every day as they see death; they forget nothing as they forget death. The human race is driven on by a mortality swift to its setting, and all posterity runs its course by the law of the ages that follow one another. Our fathers have passed away, we shall depart, our descendants will follow: as waves thrown up from the deep, others coming on top of others, are broken on the edge of the shore, so the generations, one after another, are dashed against the boundary of death. Let this consideration, let this remembrance of our condition, resound around us day and night. Let us think that the end due to our road is now on the point of arriving; it will draw the nearer to us the longer it has delayed. Let us expect the day to be near; we do not know that it is far. Let us prepare our ways, as it is written, for the departure. If we think of these things, if we meditate on these things, we shall not fear death, by fearing it beforehand. Blessed are you who have already reconciled yourselves to Christ. No great fear of death troubles those who already long to be dissolved and to be with Christ, who, already ready, already at rest, await in silence the last day of this life. For it matters little when they end the temporal life, who pass over into the eternal.

Let not the crowd of the careless persuade us to carelessness about life, nor let us be led by others' errors to the loss of our own salvation. What will a multitude profit us at that judgment of God, where each will be judged singly, where only the examination of merits, where each man's own acts, not the people, will acquit him? Let them cease, let them cease, those ill-counselling consolations of shared danger. Surely it is better to have prolonged life with the fewer than to have lost it with the many. And so let not the mere number of sinners draw us into heedlessness of sins, nor let the fact that others take little thought for themselves become a kind of authority for us. I beseech you, always regard another's sin as a reproach, never as an example. But if you like to turn your eyes to examples, look rather to that side where, though they are fewer, they are yet abundant in their own part. Look, I say, to that side where there are those who wisely understand why they were born, and who, surely, as long as they live, plead the cause of their life. Distinguished by useful work and outstanding in excellent virtue, they cultivate the present life and sow the future. Nor are their examples only plentiful; great ones are not lacking either. For what nobility of the world, what honours, what dignity, what wisdom, what eloquence, what learning has not already betaken itself to this service of the heavenly kingdom? What loftiness does not already submit itself in surrender to this light heavenly yoke? And truly it is beyond all error and ignorance for anyone to neglect the business of his own salvation. I could also, were it not too long, name one by one many out of countless men, how many illustrious men in the world have followed this stricter observance of divine worship and this way of life; yet, so as not to leave them out entirely, I will add a few examples briefly.

Clement, of an ancient line of senators and even of the stock of the Caesars, filled with all knowledge and most skilled in all the liberal arts, passed over to this way of the righteous, and flourished in it so excellently that he became the successor even of the prince of the apostles. Gregory of Pontus, a bishop, first in philosophy before the world and outstanding in eloquence, became afterwards greater and more outstanding in virtues, so that (as the trustworthy record of our history tells of him), among the other signs of his wonderful merits, a mountain is reported to have moved away and a lake to have dried up at his prayers and supplications. Another holy man also, Gregory of the same name, devoted equally to letters and to philosophy, longed for this heavenly philosophy. Of him too, as concerns our subject, it seems we must by no means be silent: entering the lecture room of Basil, who had earlier been his close companion in secular studies and was still occupied with the profession of rhetoric, he took him by the hand and led him out of the school, saying: “Leave these things and give your attention to salvation.” And afterwards each of them, a memorable bishop, left distinguished monuments of his genius in the books of our church. Paulinus also, bishop of Nola, a special and blessed example of our Gaul, once most rich in the wealth of his talent and a fount of eloquence, so passed over to our view and purpose that he sprinkled almost every part of the world with his eloquence and his works. Hilary lately, and Petronius, now a bishop in Italy, both from that seat of worldly power which is, as they say, the fullest, rose, the one to the name of religion, the other to that of the priesthood. And when shall I unroll, from that great volume, those most famous for eloquence, Firmianus, Minucius, Cyprian, Hilary, John, Ambrose? These too, I believe, had said to themselves what one of our own says, when he roused himself from the world to this more blessed life as with a goad; they had said, I believe: “What is this? The unlearned rise up and seize heaven, and we with our learning, see where we wallow in flesh and blood!” They had said this, and therefore they themselves afterwards did violence to the kingdom.

Having brought forward in part those whom the greater fervour of our faith has held, men who had passed through the philosophy, eloquence and honours of the world, I now come to kings themselves and to that head of the world. Nor shall I think it necessary now to recall all those earlier men devoted to religion and men of royal dignity: only the distinguished ones, David for piety, Josiah for faith, Hezekiah for humility, will be brought out from the memory of the venerable annals. Some of more recent times also have appeared, and princes in this age of ours, who have come nearer to the knowledge of the true King and have yielded to that supreme Lord of lords with supreme contrition of heart; and both sexes in the palace have shown attentive reverence to the divine majesty. These rather, as I judge, should be set forth for imitation, since their examples, as they hold salvation regarding the future, hold authority regarding the present.

You see how even the days and years and all these ornaments of the sky keep God's word and command with unwearied observance, and guard the service of his precepts by an unremitting law. Shall we, for whose use these things were made, before whose eyes they were set, who are not unaware of the heavenly commandments nor ignorant of the divine will, pass by God's command with a deaf ear? And to these aforesaid supports of the world it was commanded once for all what they should observe through the ages; but to us the commands are repeated in so many volumes of the divine law, so that man may learn at least this, which has been given to man himself: to obey the will of his Author and to give himself to his precepts; for all this creation, while it provides service, gives an example. And yet, if some are unwilling to return to their Author, can they for that reason avoid their Lord? Or where is there room to flee for those who turn away from God? Let them hear you, holy David, let them hear you saying: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; if I take my wings at dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me.” Therefore, whether they will or not, though they withdraw themselves from the Lord of the universe by their will, they do not remove themselves from his right. They are absent indeed by affection, but he is present by lordship. So, what is most improvident and ill-advised, wandering yet shut in, they live outside regard for the Lord and inside his power. And if anyone pursues his runaway slave with threatening search, and, as claimant of his right, follows him as he slips away, why does he not give back to the heavenly Lord his right over himself, and give himself as soon as possible into his service by a voluntary offering, being a fair judge both for himself and over himself? Why are we fixed on the delightful sight of present things? Why brood only on what we see? Do we live by these eyes alone, or do we carry our eyes only for use?

We live by our ears too, so that we may long for the promises. Great affections draw us through this part of the body as well. What is pledged, what is preached, let us await with fervent prayers and more urgent desires. He who is faithful, the Author himself, impresses on us faith in the promises. We aspire to the best things that are promised. And yet, if we will use our eyes too well and profitably, through them also we are largely carried toward the future with great desire: if we turn back the wonder we draw from contemplating the world to the Author of so great a fabric. Or if we consider how great a splendour of light may meet our eyes hereafter, since so great a one now presents itself; how magnificent the form of everlasting things will shine, since it is now so beautiful in perishing ones. So we must not draw the offices of our members to the worse side; rather let them be fittingly tempered for both lives, and so keep the use of the temporal life that they do not cast off the service of the eternal. But if this distraction and love please us, and delight stirs the very sense, there is plainly here a love of the highest pleasure: there is a good that can not only be loved most lavishly but most ought to be loved, pleasant, glorious, unique, eternal.

Our God, I say, for whom you can burn with a fire as great as it is holy, if precious desires in turn take the place of your former desires. If the dignity of something magnificent captured you, nothing is more magnificent than he. If something carried you away as fit for glory and suited to it, nothing is more glorious than he. If your sight drew you to the splendour of shining things, nothing is brighter than he. If your gaze drew you to beautiful things, nothing is more beautiful than he. If you thought you embraced the truth in anything, nothing is truer than he. If you believed that generosity deserved admiration in anyone, nothing is more bountiful than he. Do you admire what is pure and simple? Nothing is more sincere than his goodness. Are you stirred by plenty of abundant things? Nothing is more plentiful than his abundance. Do you love something as faithful? Nothing is firmer than his faithfulness. Do you love something as advantageous? Nothing is more advantageous than love of him. Is there something that draws you by the appearance of severity or of pleasantness? There is nothing more terrible or more gentle than that greatness, that condescension. Kindness is sought in adversity, sweetness in prosperity: from him alone comes joy in glad things and comfort in sad ones. So it is most fully reasonable that you love above all things him in whom you have all things. Riches, and whatever other things now hold you by their delights, are held not only within him but also from him. Let love, badly scattered until now, be given from now on to the divine watches. Let charity, wandering until now in its affections, be led back, now chaste, to sacred uses; and correcting love that has strayed through mere opinions, with error checked, direct it, and bring your love to God: for whatever you now love is his; his, I say, it is his. For he is so great that those who do not love him, unjustly indeed, yet cannot love anything but what is his.

Yet I would like a just judge to consider whether it is fair to love the work while neglecting and forsaking the Maker, the Creator of all things; to rush with one's desires here and there, indiscriminately, upon his works, when the very affection for his works ought to have drawn one to love of him. And now man, turned the wrong way, is turned to desiring and serving only unworthy figments; with minds incongruously divided he seeks the art and deserts the artist, and embraces the beauty whose author he does not admire. And what have we said of that great multitude of his sweetness? Or what have we spoken of the sweetness of so great and unspeakable a good, of the holy and deep treasure of his charity? Or when can anyone, in anything said of him, attain by praise the dignity of the thing itself? Let us consider, then, that to love him is not only pleasant but also necessary. For it is impious not to love him whom you cannot repay even when you have loved him. It is most unjust to be unwilling to give what you can to him whom you cannot repay even if you wish. For what shall we render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to us? What shall we render even for this alone, that he gave man salvation through faith, and established it to be as easy as possible to do, so that through it he might spread hope to the world and life to mortals?