Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 32.26–32.32

and you will be saved. For righteousness comes through believing alone; but full salvation is also to confess, and to add boldness to knowledge. You seek something greater than salvation, the glory and splendour there; for me even to be saved is the greatest thing, and to escape the torments there. You walk the untrodden and inaccessible road; I the beaten road, which has saved many. Nothing would be more unjust in our faith than if it fell only to the wise and to those who excel in speech and logical demonstrations, while the many failed to obtain it, as they fail to obtain gold and silver and the other things that are precious below and sought after by the many; and if what is lofty and reaches only a few were dear and proper to God, while what is common and within reach of the many were to be spat on and rejected. For not even the more moderate among men would act so, refusing honours offered according to ability and rejoicing only in the outstanding ones; much less God, of whose many marvels nothing is so characteristic as that he benefits all. Do not despise what is customary, do not hunt for novelty, so that you may be approved among the many. “Better a small portion with safety than a great one with rottenness,” let Solomon teach you by his counsel; and “Better a poor man walking in his simplicity” (this too is one of the wise proverbs), the man poor in speech and knowledge, who leans on simple words and is saved on them as on a light raft, than the crooked-lipped fool, confident in his demonstrations of argument along with his ignorance, and emptying the cross of Christ, a thing beyond reason, by the power of words, where the weakness of the demonstration is a lessening of the truth.

Why do you fly up to heaven when you go on foot? Why do you build a tower when you do not have the means to finish it? Do you too measure the water in your hand, the heaven with a span, and all the earth with a handful, great elements measurable only by the one who made them? Know yourself first; consider what lies in your hands: who you are, how you were formed, and how you were compounded, so as to be the image of God and to be bound to what is worse; what moved you, what wisdom is in you, and what is the mystery of your nature; how you are measured by place, while the mind is not bounded but, remaining in the same place, goes over all things; how the sight is small and yet reaches very far, and whether it is a reception of what is seen or a passing over to it; how the same being moves and is moved, governed by will; what the cessation of motion is; what the distribution of the senses is, and how through them the mind converses with things outside and receives what comes from outside; how it takes up forms; what the keeping of what has been taken up is, that is, memory; and what the taking up again of what has departed is, that is, recollection; how a word is the offspring of the mind and begets a word in another mind, and how a thought is passed on by a word; how the body is nourished through the soul, and how the soul shares in suffering through the body; how fear congeals, boldness relaxes, grief contracts, pleasure diffuses, envy melts, vanity lifts up, and hope lightens; how anger maddens, and shame reddens through the blood, the one when it boils, the other when it retreats; and how the marks of the passions appear in bodies; what the presidency of reason is, and how it presides over all these and tames the movements of the passions; how the incorporeal is held fast by blood and breath, and how their failure is the departure of the soul. Consider these, or some of them, O man; I do not yet speak of the nature or motion of heaven, the order of the stars, the mixture of the elements, the differences of the animals, the ranks of the heavenly powers, lower and higher, and all the things among which the creative Word is distributed, and the principles of providence and government. And even then I do not yet say, “Take courage,” but “Still fear to approach loftier things.” As for what is more beyond your power, as long as you are unable, study these things, stay with them, and let your ambition spend itself on what is safe.

You do not accept this; your tongue has no bridle, and you are not stronger than your impulse, but you must by all means be mad and not yield to the first powers, unless they too have the measure of being greater than is useful; but at least do not condemn your brother, nor call timidity impiety, nor go away condemning him … But show yourself humble here, as long as it is allowed; here prefer your brother, not to your own harm, where condemning and dishonouring him means falling away from Christ and the only hope, and cutting out, along with the tares, the hidden wheat, perhaps more precious than you. Rather correct him, and that gently and humanely, not as an enemy, nor as a harsh physician, nor as one who knows only cautery and the knife; and condemn yourself and your own weakness. For what if, being blear-eyed or suffering some other trouble in your eyes, you see the sun dimly? What if everything seems to you to be turning round, perhaps when you are seasick or drunk, and you attribute your own ignorance to others? One must pray much and suffer much before condemning another of impiety.

It is not the same to cut down a plant, or some short-lived flower, and a man. You are the image of God and you are speaking with the image of God; you who judge will yourself be judged; and you are judging another’s servant, whom another manages. So test your brother as one who will yourself be judged by the same measures. Therefore do not quickly cut off or estrange the member, since it is uncertain whether by doing so you may not also harm what is healthy; but admonish, rebuke, exhort. You have a rule of healing. You are a disciple of Christ, who is meek and loving, and who bore our weaknesses. If he resists the first time, be patient; if the second time, do not despair, there is still time for healing; if the third time, become the kindly farmer: beg the Master still not to cut down or hate the fruitless and useless fig tree, but to turn it, tend it, and put manure around it, that is, correction through confession, public shame, and a humbler way of life. Who knows whether it will change and bear fruit, and feed Jesus as he returns from Bethany?

Bear something of your brother’s foul smell, whether real or apparent, you who are anointed with the spiritual ointment compounded by the perfumer’s art, so that you may share your fragrance with him. Vice is not a viper’s poison, that as soon as you are struck you should be overwhelmed with pains or even destroyed, and so be pardoned for fleeing the beast or killing it. But if you are able, heal him too; and if not, you at least have the safety of sharing nothing of his wickedness yourself. His passion is a kind of unpleasant smell, which your fragrance may perhaps overcome and drive away. Would you be quick to accept for your fellow servant and kinsman anything like what zealous Paul dared to think and to say, that he himself, if it were possible, should be exchanged for Israel and cut off from Christ, out of sympathy? You, who often cut off your brother on mere suspicion! The one whom you might perhaps have won by kindness you destroy by rashness: your own member, for whom Christ died. “If, then, you are strong,” says Paul, discussing foods, and confident in reason and in the nobility of your faith, yet build up your brother too. Do not by your food destroy the one whom Christ honoured with his suffering, common to all. For even if the subject is different, the word of exhortation is equally useful.

There ought to be a law among us, as there was among the wise men of the Hebrews of old, that some of the sacred books are not to be given to the young, as not profitable to souls still unsettled and tender; so too that discourse about the faith should be permitted neither to everyone nor always, but at certain times and to certain people: I mean to those who are neither altogether careless and sluggish in mind, nor too insatiable, ambitious, and more fervent than they should be for piety. The latter should be set where they will harm neither themselves nor others; those who are moderate in speech, truly orderly and sober, should have freedom in discourse; and the many should be led away from this road, and from the loquacity and sickness that now prevail, and turned to some other form of virtue, where carelessness is less harmful and insatiability more pious. [33] For if, as there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, through all and in all, so there were one way of salvation, that through reason and contemplation, and those who fell from it had to miss everything and be cast away from God and the hope there, nothing would be more dangerous than either to give such advice or to follow it. But if, as in human affairs there are many differences of lives and choices, greater and lesser, more brilliant and more obscure, so also in divine things the means of salvation is not one, nor is there one way of virtue, but more; and if the much-repeated saying on everyone’s tongue, that there are many dwelling places with God, has no other cause than that there are many roads leading there, some more dangerous and more brilliant, others humbler and safer: why do we leave the safer roads and turn to this one alone, so precarious and slippery, which leads I know not where? Is the same food not suitable for all, but different food for different people according to their differences of age and condition, while the same life or the same discourse benefits all? I would not say so, nor agree with those who say it. If, then, you will be persuaded by me, young and old, rulers of peoples and ruled, monks and those living in the world, bid farewell to superfluous and useless ambitions; and drawing near to God through your life, your conduct, and safer words, you will attain the truth and contemplation there, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.