Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 2.2–2.33

[2] And so that my discourse may proceed in order, I shall speak first about my cowardice, since it came first. For I cannot bear that any of those who watch my affairs carefully, whether they go well or otherwise, should take offence at me, since God has been pleased that our affairs should mean something to Christians; and those already offended, if there are any, I will heal by my defence. For it is good, as far as possible and as reason allows, neither by sinning nor by being suspected of it to put a stumbling block or an offence before the many; since we know how inexorable and how very severe is the punishment from the One who does not lie, even for those who cause one of the little ones to stumble. [3] For I did not suffer this, my friends, as one uneducated and without understanding, nor rather (if I may boast a little) as one who despises the divine laws and ordinances. For just as in a body one part rules and, as it were, presides, while another is ruled and led, so also in the churches God has ordained, by a law of equality that has regard to worth, or by the providence by which he has bound all things together, that some should be shepherded and ruled, those for whom this is more profitable, being directed in word and deed toward what is right; and that others should be shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the church: those who are above the many in virtue and in nearness to God, holding the place of soul to body, or of mind to soul; so that both, joined and blended together, the deficient and the excessive, as in members, and brought together and bound by the harmony of the Spirit, may be shown to be one perfect body, truly worthy of Christ himself, our head. [4] I know, then, that anarchy and disorder are not more profitable than order and rule for other things, nor for men; but for men least of all, inasmuch as the danger for them concerns greater things. For them it is a great thing, even if they do not keep the first course of reason, not to sin at all, at least to keep the second: when they sin, to be brought back. Since this seemed good and just, it is in my view equally evil and equally disorderly for all to wish to rule and for no one to accept it. For if all were to flee this office, whether one should call it a ministry or a leadership, the church’s fullness would be lame in its greatest part and would no longer remain beautiful. Where, then, and by whom would God still be worshipped among us with the mysteries that lift us upward, which is the greatest and most precious of our possessions, if there were no king, no ruler, no priesthood, no sacrifice, nor any of those things whose loss the disobedient of old were sentenced to as the heaviest penalty for their great offences?

Nor is it anything strange or out of place for most of those who pursue divine philosophy to rise from being ruled to ruling; nor is it outside the accepted bounds of philosophy, nor a matter for reproach; just as it is not for a distinguished sailor to become a bow-officer, and for a bow-officer who has watched the winds well to be entrusted with the helm; or, if you like, for a brave soldier to become a captain, and for a good captain to become a general and be entrusted with the command of a whole war. Nor (as one of those thoroughly perverse and wicked people might perhaps suppose, who judge other people’s affairs by their own passions) was I ashamed of the rank of this degree out of desire for a higher one. I am not so ignorant either of the divine greatness or of human lowliness as not to think it a great thing for any created nature to come near to God in any way at all, who alone is most luminous and most brilliant, and who surpasses all material and immaterial nature in purity.

What then was it that happened to me, and what is the reason for my disobedience? For to many I seemed at that time not to be myself, nor to be as I had been known, but to have become someone else, and to resist and be self-willed more than was right. Hear now the causes of this, which you have long wanted to hear. Most of all, struck by the unexpectedness of it, like those panic-stricken by sudden noises, I did not keep control of my thoughts; and for this reason I let go of the modesty to which I had been accustomed all my life. Then there stole over me a love of the beauty of quiet and withdrawal. I had been a lover of it from the beginning, as much, I think, as anyone who has devoted himself to letters; in the greatest and most severe dangers I had promised it to God; and I had even taken hold of it a little, so far as to stand in its vestibule, and my longing had been kindled the more by the experience. So I could not bear being tyrannized and thrust into the midst of the tumults, and dragged by force, as it were, from this way of life as from some sacred place of asylum.

For nothing seemed to me so good as to shut the senses, to be outside the flesh and the world, gathered into oneself, touching nothing human except where it is absolutely necessary, speaking with oneself and with God, to live above visible things, and always to carry within oneself the divine reflections pure, unmixed with the impressions here below that lead astray; being, and always becoming, truly an unspotted mirror of God and of divine things, receiving light upon light, the clearer upon the dimmer; already reaping in hope the good of the age to come; going about with angels, still upon earth yet having left the earth, and set on high by the Spirit. If any of you is possessed by this love, he knows what I mean and will forgive what I felt then. For the many I could perhaps not persuade by speaking, those to whom the thing even seems laughable, being badly disposed either by their own folly or by those unworthy of the profession, who have pinned an evil name on a fine thing, the name of vainglory on philosophy, taking as their allies envy and the wickedness of the many, which is readier for the worse; so that in any case they commit at least one sin: either evil is done, or good is disbelieved.

Besides this, I felt something (I will speak out the whole secret to you; I do not know whether it was boorish or noble, but I felt it all the same): I was ashamed on behalf of the others, those who, being no better than the many (indeed it is a great thing if they are not much worse), with unwashed hands, as the saying goes, and uninitiated souls, thrust themselves into the holiest things, and before becoming worthy to approach the sanctuary lay claim to the bema, and press and jostle around the holy table, thinking this rank not a pattern of virtue but a means of livelihood, not a ministry subject to account but an office free from scrutiny. And they are almost more in number than those they rule: pitiable in piety and wretched in their splendour; so that it seems to me that, as time and the evil advance, they will soon have no one left to rule, all teaching instead of being “taught by God,” as the promise says, and all prophesying, so that even Saul is among the prophets, according to the ancient history and proverb. For at no time has anything been, or is anything, so prevalent (though different things have flourished and died down at different times) as such reproaches and sins are now among Christians. And if to stop their course is beyond us, yet to hate them and be ashamed of them is not the least part of piety.

But what is last and greater than what has been said (for I come now to the very crown of my discourse, and I will not lie, since it is not right for those who speak about such great matters): I did not think, nor do I think now, that it is the same thing to rule a flock or a herd and to preside over the souls of men. There it is enough to make the herd or the flock as fat and sleek as possible; and with this in view the herdsman and the shepherd will look out for watered and grassy places, will drive them in and out, from pasture and to pasture, will rest them, move them on, and call them back, a little with the staff but mostly with the pipe. And the shepherd or herdsman has no other work except to fight the wolves a little and now and then to tend a sick animal; for the most part his concern will be oak and shade and reeds, lying down on a fine spot of grass by cold water, improvising a bed under the breezes, now and then singing a love song over his cup, chatting with his cattle or his flock, and feasting on or selling the fattest of them. But no one has ever yet cared for the virtue of flocks or herds. For what virtue do these have? Or who has considered their good before his own pleasure? [10] But for a man, since it is hard to know how to be ruled, it is likely far harder to know how to rule men, and above all this rule of ours, which is under divine law and leads to God, whose danger is as great as its height and dignity, at least to anyone with sense. Such a man must first of all, like silver or gold turned every way, in all kinds of times and circumstances, never ring false or alloyed, nor carry in himself anything of the baser matter that deserves a hotter fire; or else the evil will be greater the more people he rules, since wickedness that spreads to many is greater than wickedness confined to one.

For a fabric does not so readily take a fast dye, nor does what is near take on a stench or its opposite, nor is any diseased vapour so readily poured out into the air and through the air reaches living creatures (which is, and is called, a plague), as subjects are wont very quickly to be filled with the vice of the one set over them, and far more readily than with its opposite, virtue. For this is where wickedness most has the advantage over goodness, and what I find most distressing when I consider it: that badness is something easily imitated and close at hand, and nothing is so easy as to become bad, even if no one happens to lead us to it; while the acquisition of the good is rare and uphill, even if much draws and invites us to it. And this is what, it seems to me, the most blessed Haggai also perceived when he came to that wonderful and most true image: “Ask the priests about the law,” he says, “if holy meat in a garment touches any food or drink or vessel, will it at once sanctify what it touches?” And when they said no, he says: “Ask again whether something that has come into contact with uncleanness has not at once received a share of the defilement,” since they would say that it does receive a share, and does not remain clean through the contact.

What does he mean by this? Just what my discourse means: that the good is hard for human nature to take hold of, as fire is for moister material; but most people are ready and apt for sharing in evil, like stubble, I think, easily kindled by a spark and a wind and consumed because of its dryness. For one would sooner take on a little vice in abundance than deep virtue little by little. Indeed, a little wormwood very quickly imparts its bitterness to honey, while honey does not impart its sweetness even to twice its quantity of wormwood; and a small pebble pulled away could draw a whole river downhill, while even the strongest dam could hardly check or hold it back. [13] This, then, of the things we have said, is the first thing worth guarding against: that we not appear bad painters of wonderful virtue, or rather, perhaps not bad painters, but a bad original for the many; and that we not come near the proverb, trying to heal others while ourselves teeming with sores.

Second, even if someone were to keep himself pure from all sin, or as nearly as possible, I do not know whether even this suffices for one who is to train others in virtue. For the one entrusted with this must not only not be bad (for that is most shameful even among the many under his hand), but must excel in good, according to the commandment that bids us “turn away from evil and do good”; and he must not only wipe out the bad impressions from his soul but write in the better ones, so as to stand further ahead in virtue than he does in rank; and he must know no limit to the good and to the ascent, nor count what has been won as gain so much as what escapes him as loss, but always make what he has reached a step to what comes next; and not think it a great thing if we surpass the many, but a loss if we fall short of what is fitting; and measure his achievement by the commandment, not by his neighbours, whether they are bad or have reached some measure of virtue; and not weigh virtue with small weights, since it is owed to the Greatest, from whom and to whom are all things.

Nor must he think that the same things suit everyone, just as not all have the same age, nor the same features of face, nor the same animal natures, qualities of land, or beauty and size of the heavenly lights. He must consider that for a private person vice is doing wrong and whatever deserves punishment, for which the law too is a harsh master; but for a ruler or one who presides, vice is not being as excellent as possible and always advancing in good, if he is to draw the many to moderation by the surplus of his virtue, and not to rule them by force but to bring them by persuasion. For what is involuntary, besides being tyrannical, is neither praiseworthy nor lasting: what is forced, like a plant bent by force of hands, tends to spring back to itself when let go; but what is by choice is at once most lawful and most secure, being kept by the bond of good will. Hence our law and lawgiver above all bids us shepherd the flock “willingly, not under compulsion.”

But suppose someone is not bad and has reached the summit of virtue: I do not see what knowledge he could take, or in what power he could trust, to dare this office of presiding. For in truth this seems to me the art of arts and science of sciences: to lead man, the most changeable and complex of living creatures. One may see this by comparing the healing of souls with the treatment of bodies: learning how laborious that is, and considering how much more laborious ours is, and how much more precious, in the nature of its material, in the power of its knowledge, and in the end of its activity. For the one labours about bodies, perishable matter that flows downward, which will certainly be dissolved and suffer its own fate, even if for now, with the help of the art, it overcomes the strife within it; for either disease or time dissolves it as it yields to nature and does not pass its own limits.

But our concern is with the soul, which is from God and divine and shares in the nobility from above, and presses on toward it, even though it has been bound to what is worse. Perhaps this is for other reasons too, which only God who bound them together knows, and anyone instructed by God in such mysteries; but so far as I and those like me can know, it is for two reasons. One is that through struggle and wrestling with what is below it might inherit the glory above, tested by the things here like gold by fire, and might have what it hopes for as a prize of virtue and not only as a gift of God (and this indeed belonged to the supreme goodness: to make the good ours as well, not only sown in us by nature but cultivated by choice and by the movements of free will that can go either way). The other is that it might draw the worse to itself and set it on high, freeing it little by little from its grossness, so that what God is to the soul, the soul may become to the body, training by itself the matter that serves it and making its fellow servant God’s own. [18] Places and times and ages and seasons and such things the physician will examine; he will prescribe drugs and diet and guard against what is harmful, so that the cravings of the sickness may not oppose the art; and at times, in some cases, he will use cautery and surgery and the more severe treatments. But none of these, however laborious and hard they seem, is so great a task as to observe and heal characters and passions and ways of life and wills and anything else of this kind in us; to banish from our compound everything bestial and wild and to bring in and establish in its place everything gentle and dear to God; and to arbitrate justly between soul and body, not allowing the better to be dominated by the worse, which is the greatest of injustices, but subjecting what is second by nature to what rules and leads; as the divine law, which is most excellently in force throughout his whole creation, both what is visible and what is beyond sense, requires.

I consider this too: each of the things I enumerated, as the physician observes them, remains as its nature is, and does not cunningly contrive anything against him of itself, nor devise anything against what the art applies; rather, the treatment masters the material, unless perhaps some slight disorder on the patient’s part intervenes, which is not hard to guard against and check. But with us, our own intelligence and self-love, and our neither knowing how nor being willing to be easily overcome, are the greatest hindrance to virtue, and become a kind of battle line against those who fight on our side; and as much zeal as we ought to bring to laying bare the disease to those who treat it, so much do we bring to fleeing the treatment; and we are brave against ourselves and skilled against our own health.

For either we slavishly hide our sin, covering it up in the depth of the soul like some festering and malignant ailment, as though we shall escape the great eye of God and of justice if we escape men; or we “make excuses in sins,” finding arguments to plead for our passions; or, stopping our ears in the manner of the deaf adder that stops its ears, we strive not to hear the voice of the charmers, nor to be charmed by the remedies of wisdom by which sickness of soul is healed; or finally, those of us who are bolder and more high-spirited, we are openly shameless toward sin and toward those who heal it, going bareheaded, as the saying is, into every lawlessness. O what madness, or whatever more proper name there is for such a passion! Those whom we ought to love as benefactors we drive off as enemies, “hating those who reprove in the gates and abhorring holy speech”; and we think we are waging war the more against those who wish us well, the more we harm ourselves, like those who devour their own flesh thinking they are consuming their neighbours’. [21] These are the reasons why I count our healing art far more laborious than the one concerned with bodies, and for this reason more precious: because that one mostly concerns what is seen and seldom touches what lies hidden in the depth, while for us the whole treatment and care concerns “the hidden man of the heart,” and the battle is against the one who fights and wrestles against us from within, who uses us ourselves as weapons against us and, most terrible of all, … to the death of sin. Against these, then, there is need of much and complete faith, of still greater cooperation from God, and of no small counter-skill on our part (so I persuade myself), shown in both word and deed, if we are to be well healed and cleansed and become of the greatest worth in what is most precious of all we have, our souls.

[22] As for the ends of the two treatments (for this still remains for our examination): the end of the one is to preserve the health or good condition of the flesh if present, or to recall it if it has gone; and it is not yet clear whether these will benefit those who have them, since their opposites have often helped their possessors more, as poverty and wealth, fame and obscurity, lowliness and brilliance, and whatever things lie in the middle by nature and incline no more this way than that, but take on the better or the worse from the use and choice of those who have them. But the aim of the other is to give wings to the soul, to snatch it from the world and give it to God; to guard what is according to the image if it abides, to take it by the hand if it is in danger, or to restore it if it has been ruined; to make Christ dwell in hearts through the Spirit; and, the sum of it all, to make god, and a sharer in the blessedness above, one who belongs to the company above. [23] This is what the law, our tutor, intends for us; this the prophets, who stand between Christ and the law; this Christ, the perfecter and end of the spiritual law; this the Godhead that emptied itself; this the flesh that was assumed; this the new mingling, God and man, one from both and both through one. For this reason God was blended with flesh through the medium of a soul, and things far apart were bound together by the kinship of the mediator with both; and all things came together into one for the sake of all, and for the sake of the one forefather: the soul for the soul that disobeyed, the flesh for the flesh that served it and was condemned with it, the one for soul, the other for flesh; Christ, who is stronger and higher than sin, for Adam who came under sin. [24] For this reason the new was brought in in exchange for the old, and by suffering he who had suffered was called back, and for each of our things each of his who is above us was given in exchange; and the economy of love for humankind toward the one who fell through disobedience became a new mystery. For this reason, birth and the Virgin; for this reason the manger and Bethlehem: the birth in place of the formation, the Virgin in place of the woman, Bethlehem because of Eden, the manger because of paradise; small and visible things in place of great and hidden ones. For this reason angels glorify the heavenly one, then the earthly; and shepherds see glory over the Lamb and Shepherd; and a star leads, and magi fall down and bring gifts, that idolatry may be destroyed. For this reason Jesus is baptized and has witness borne to him from above, fasts and is tempted, and conquers the conqueror. For this reason demons are driven out and diseases healed, and the great preaching is entrusted to small men and brought to success. [25] … burial against the return to the earth, and resurrection for the sake of the resurrection. All these things were a kind of training of God for us and a healing of our weakness, bringing the old Adam back to the place from which he fell, and bringing him to the tree of life, from which the tree of knowledge estranged us when it was partaken of out of season and unfittingly.

Of this treatment we who preside over others are the servants and fellow workers. For us it is a great thing to know and to heal our own passions and sicknesses; or rather, not yet a great thing, except that the wickedness of the many who hold this rank has made us say so; but it is much greater to be able to heal and cleanse the passions of others skilfully, and in a way that profits both, those who need the treatment and those entrusted with the healing.

Then those who treat bodies will have toils and sleepless nights and cares, as we know, and will reap griefs of their own from others’ misfortunes, as one of their wise men said; and, partly by toiling and discovering things themselves, partly by collecting and contributing them from others, they will apply them to those in need; and nothing is so small to them, even of the least things, whether found or missed, as not to be thought of great weight toward health or, conversely, toward danger. And all this for what? That a man may live more days on earth, and he perhaps not even one of the decent but one of the most wicked, for whom it would perhaps have been better to have died long ago, being bad, so as to be rid of the greatest of sicknesses, vice. And if we suppose him one of the good, for how long will he live? For all time? Or what will he gain from the life here, whose dissolution it is the part of the good to seek … reason leads some, while others are regulated by examples; some need the goad, others the bridle. For some are sluggish and slow to move toward the good, and must be roused by the blow of the word; others are hotter in spirit than is moderate and hard to restrain in their impulses, like thoroughbred colts running far from the turning post, whom the word would improve by checking and curbing them.

Some are helped by praise, others by blame, both applied in season; while their opposite, out of season and without reason, does harm. Some are set right by encouragement, others by rebuke; and this either by being reproved in public or by being admonished in secret. For some tend to despise private admonitions and are brought to their senses by the condemnation of the many; while others grow shameless under the openness of reproof, but are trained by the secrecy of rebuke and repay the sympathy with obedience.

With some it is necessary to watch everything carefully, down to the smallest things: those whom the thought that they are unnoticed (since they contrive this) has puffed up as cleverer than others. With others it is better to overlook some things, so as, in the words of the proverb, “seeing not to see and hearing not to hear,” so that we do not provoke them to desperation by drowning them in the diligence of our reproofs, and in the end make them bold for anything by dissolving their sense of shame, the medicine of persuasion. With some, indeed, we must be angry without being angry, disdainful without disdaining, and despairing without despairing, so far as their nature requires this. Others must be treated with gentleness and humility, and by sharing their eagerness for better hopes. Some it is more profitable to conquer, by others often to be defeated; and as for wealth and power in some cases, and poverty and misfortune in others, either to praise them or to pray them away. [33] For it is not with our medicine as it is with virtue and vice, the one being always the most beautiful and the most beneficial for all, the other the worst and most harmful: one and the same remedy has not been shown always to be the most healthful or the most dangerous, even for the same people, for instance severity, or gentleness, or each of the others I listed. For some this is good and useful, and for others again the opposite, according, I think, as the times and circumstances concur and as the character of those being treated admits. To distinguish all these in words and to survey them with complete precision, so as to sum up the treatment in a summary, is impossible, however far one may attain in care and understanding; but in actual experience and practice they become plain to the man who has the healer’s skill.

In general this is well known to us: that just as for those who walk on a rope stretched high in the air it is not safe to lean this way or that, and the tilt, even if it seems small, does not lead to something small, while their safety consists in balance; so also here, whichever way one leans, whether from vice or from ignorance, there is no slight danger to himself and to those he leads of falling into sin. We must truly walk on the royal road, and take care to turn aside neither to the right nor to the left, as they say. Such, then, is the state of our passions, and so great is the work here for the good shepherd, who is to know well the souls of his flock and to guide them according to the reason of the shepherd’s art, the right and just one, worthy of our true Shepherd.