Letters 2.242–2.275

To the same. We must go to the holy war against the passions of the flesh not trusting in ourselves, but entrusting the victory to the divine alliance. If we set out in this way, putting in motion all our preparation, battle line, toil and vigils, but trusting in the help from above, we will easily prevail and set up brilliant trophies over them, increasing our good hopes by our victories one by one.

To Apollonius the deacon. There being two general kinds of vice, that which is conceived and that which is done, the one done in deeds was punished long ago through the law; the one conceived was checked through the Gospel, which does not punish the deed after it is done, but takes forethought that the evil may not even begin. Then the law was given to the hand, now to the soul.

To Ammonius. [On insensibility.] As those seized by incurable madness are deprived, by the excess of the disease, even of the perception of what they suffer, so those who have fallen into insensibility (and one of them, as you wrote, is Zosimus) are in a way without perception and do not even know their own evils.

To Eutonius the deacon. Since the one who is praised reaps a more dignified glory when the one who attempts to speak proclaims his defeat even before speaking, I too, defeated by the virtues of the celebrated Eustathius, will keep silent.

To Theodosius the bishop. Let Eusebius, who presides over the people living at the city of the Pelusiots, learn what the Church is; for it is most absurd and very terrible that one who seems to act as priest should not even know this. That the Church is the assembly of the saints, brought together by right faith and the best way of life, is clear to those who have tasted wisdom. But that he, not knowing this, pulls down the true Church by scandalizing many, while building the church house; strips the one of its adornment by banishing the earnest, while adorning the other with costly marbles; this too is known to all. If he knew exactly that the Church is one thing and the church house another (for the one is made up of blameless souls, the other is built of stones and timber), I think he would stop pulling down the one and adorning the other beyond need. For it was not for the sake of walls but of souls that the King of heaven came to dwell here. And if he pretends not to understand what is said, though it is plain even to the very slowest, I will try to make it clear by examples. As the altar is one thing and the sacrifice another, the censer one thing and the incense another, the council chamber one thing and the council another (for the one indicates the place in which they sit, the other the men who deliberate, to whom both the danger and the safety belong), so it is with the church house and the Church. And if he says that he has not understood even so, let him learn that in the time of the apostles, when the Church flourished with spiritual gifts and teemed with a splendid way of life, there were no church houses; while in our time the church houses are adorned more than is needful, but the Church (I do not wish to say anything harsh) is mocked. I, at least, if the choice had been put before me, would have chosen to be born in those times, in which there were no church houses so adorned, but the Church was crowned with divine and heavenly gifts, rather than in these, in which the church houses are decked with every kind of marble, but the Church is destitute and naked of those spiritual gifts.

To the same. It is right, I think, in the greatest subjects, even if the speaker falls short of their worth, that the hearers should not condemn him for incapacity but grant pardon, referring the cause to the greatness of the deeds.

To Elias and Dorotheus, town councillors. [A comparison of virtue and vice.] I confess that I am a friend to you both; but since I am called into alliance by each of you, now that you are, I know not how, divided and at war with each other, I will not come. It is not that I avoid doing good to the one, but that I avoid doing harm to either. But if you do what you ought, and, laying aside your truceless battle, look to peace, I will come: not to help one against the other, but to join you both again in friendship.

To Palladius. One must neither look askance at the divine oracles nor speak against them, but promise to act even before hearing what one must do. For the fact that it is God who decrees banishes all contradiction and creates all persuasion. He who knows above all what profits us is trustworthy both when he speaks and when he gives laws.

To Zeno the presbyter. Bodily kinship is worth nothing compared with kinship of character. So, if I called you the nephew of the celebrated bishop Hermogenes, I would be paying you no compliment; but if I called you his genuine disciple, I would shame neither of you. For you will seem to have followed the best of men, and he to have made the one who imitated him noble.

To Peter. Two things, I think (by what name could I call you so as to reach your worth?), persuaded people to come gladly to the divine preaching: the word, which was trustworthy, and the way of life of those who preached it. Each was sinew and strength to the other: the word was credible, and the life guaranteed the word. For they did not preach one thing and do another (otherwise they would have incurred ridicule, like some people today; I do not wish to say anything harsh), but, presenting a life in agreement with the word, they won people over. That is why Christ, knowing that a word devoid of action is weak and ineffective, while one breathed into by actions is living, vigorous and effective, taught them every virtue and philosophy by deeds, instructed them by words, adorned them with divine gifts, and so sent them out to hunt men. For he knew very precisely that the way of life of the heralds would be able to draw people no less than the signs. So, scattered throughout the world like winged farmers, sowing the word of piety, ordering their way of life by the guidance of their teacher, and presenting a life not only blameless but admirable, they prevailed over all that is under the sun. Neither wisdom, nor power, nor wealth, nor kingship, nor tyranny, nor barbarian cruelty, nor a phalanx of demons, nor the devil himself, nor famine, nor precipice, nor prisons, nor anything else of what seems and is fearful prevailed over them; rather all yielded and gave way, and they considered defeat more glorious than every victory and trophy. For, thinking it better to be defeated nobly than to conquer basely, they became citizens of heaven.

To Martinian, Zosimus, Maron and Eustathius. You are in danger, as I learn, of having your ears blocked by despair; and, as though you had long ago consecrated yourselves to the death of sin, you are provoked against those who exhort you to what is good. If, then, this is so, you would rightly receive from now on laments and wailing, not counsel and exhortation.

To the same. Even if you yourselves, uninitiated and unperfected in the best way of life, have asked that what cannot be put into words be made clear in words to people disposed as you are, and so are unaware that you are being robbed of right reasoning about such matters, I shall not be led by daring to make speakable to you what is for now unspeakable for you, and to bring under words what is beyond your hearing. For it is not lawful either for the unholy to hear holy things or for the profane to look into the sanctuary. The ordinance does not allow it, or rather the divine oracle does not permit it, crying out plainly: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs." So I, though I have things to say, but none to say to you, advise you rather to keep away from vice and hold fast to virtue. If you do this, you will not fail to hear the interpretation of what you wrote about.

To Isidore the deacon. Those who falsify the divine oracles and force them to their own will sin beyond pardon. For they will not have the seeming defence of deception and miscalculation to plead for them, since they erred from villainy and not from simplicity; nor will they escape the calm and gentle eye, whose teaching they dared to contradict, carried away in frenzy by vice.

To Ophelius the grammarian. Many of the sophists try to cover the defeats that befall them with their earlier glory, since formerly they were superior to the matters they handled, but now have been overcome by them.

To Olympiodorus. [That virtue is achieved by toil.] I wonder how, admiring Plato as you do, you set his advice at nothing. He says that the shoots of virtue grow by toil and sweat; but you, I know not how, have chosen a life without toil.

To Eutonius the deacon. Of the greedy and unjust, some know that they sin, while others do not even know that they sin, and these are incurable. For not to perceive the illness one is in is the height of insensibility, and it ends in complete callousness and deadness. These, then, must be pitied most of all. For doing evil is more pitiable than suffering evil: for the one the danger concerns the ultimate things, for the other the loss extends only to money. Besides, they do not perceive their double deadness. For they display the mark of an immature and childish mind: mere infants take no account of what is truly fearful, and often put their hands even into fire, while they are frightened and tremble when they see empty masks and bogeys. The lovers of greed are likely to be like them: they fear poverty, which is not fearful but a ground of all safety and modesty, and make much of unjust wealth, which is more fearful than fire; for it reduces to ashes both the minds and the hopes of those who have it.

To the same. [That virtue is achieved by toil.] I know very well that you consider the fruits of virtue great, even when you are in danger, but that you are despondent because you are thought unfortunate by the many. But if you entrust the matter not to the opinion and reputation of the many but to the exact examination of reason, your despondency will vanish; or rather it will become a cause of joy. For the crowns of virtue are woven in proportion to the contests here.

To Theodosius the presbyter. Among men it seems equally right to repay benefactors and to retaliate against enemies. But in the divine philosophy the repaying of benefactors holds, the retaliating against enemies does not; rather, forbearance in every way, and, if possible, even doing them good.

To Theon the bishop. As a brave and humane king, mixing arms with laws, turns aside every practice of outrage, turning back without punishment those who obey when they hear the laws, and disciplining the disobedient by the compulsion of arms, so too a holy and reasonable priest, mixing fear with the canons and blending reasonableness with his rule, turns aside, as far as in him lies, every practice of vice: healing with words those of his people who yield to words, and leading the disobedient by the correction of the canons to sin no more.

To Zosimus the presbyter. [On judgment.] Even if you do not blush before men or care for your reputation, at least fear the penalty from God that follows such daring. For even if for the moment he is long-suffering, calling to repentance, a little later he will pursue more bitterly those who did not respect even such great humanity. Many, even here, have not escaped the invincible hand, but have been caught by calamities so great that they eclipsed tragedies. And many who seemed to have escaped punishment here received more bitter punishment there, justice rightly measuring out their due to them.

To Hermogenes the bishop. The friends you wrote about need neither exhortation nor encouragement. For they seem never to stop their rivalry in what is best, but will keep up their struggle for victory to the end, eagerly longing for the heavenly prizes.

To Isidore the bishop. [On the story of Joseph and the Egyptian woman; and on not slandering or accusing.] When the Egyptian woman, that licentious creature, I mean, quick to be persuaded and most clever at persuading (for such, as a rule, woman seems to be), was mad for the most chaste Joseph, and, unable to persuade him by words, turned to forcing the young man; and he, like a noble athlete, stripped off his garment (for she, drunk with passion, was holding on to it) and went out naked of his cloak but pure of adultery, and bound on the crowns of chastity; then, then she sat down downcast: truly, because she had failed in her desire; falsely, as though over her feigned chastity. When her husband came, either fearing to face a charge or wishing to avenge herself on Joseph, she fell into an uncontrollable rage, and, mixing everything together, longing, grief, fear, outrage and anger, she considered how she might punish him; and she brought against him the very charge that ought to have been brought against her. He, without even granting Joseph a defence, threw him into prison. But the impartial eye, the lawgiver and umpire of chastity, raised him to the royal throne. Let us too, then, consider neither slander, nor accusation, nor anything else that seems terrible to be terrible, but sin alone; and we shall surely obtain the most precious crowns, either here or there.

To Lampetius the bishop. Let each who reads this letter hold whatever opinion he has about what I am going to say. I have not decided to draw up a definition of the priesthood now, but, defining the road that leads to it, I say that the one who comes to this office too quickly, before submitting to the rule of the canons, takes up the stewardship not for the good of those he rules; while the one who, in the rank of a subject, has trained himself in the virtues that rule requires and has won approval, comes to the administration of the ministry with experience, the greatest good. The former, trying to regulate others before he has been regulated, misses the truth; the latter, regulated first and having experience of the matter, will be found fit to regulate others. For the one thinks he has been appointed general before practising with arms; the other, having become an approved soldier, will be a still more approved general. The one, inexperienced in tactics, thinks himself a commander; the other, trained in such exercises, is appointed tactician.

To Maron. [How great a good is freedom from the love of money; and on self-sufficiency.] Even if you cut countless roads to wealth, you will find, I do not say satiety, but not even the roads by which it travels. For it hates those who insatiably pursue money and will not bear to visit them; but it loves above all those who adorn their life with frugality and self-sufficiency, and visits them gladly.

To Strategius the monk. When, with good counsel leading the way, all a man's power serves virtue, putting away every excuse and delay, then indeed God brings it to completion, he who whets even the unwilling to choose it. For it would not be like the same God to drive those who flee from virtue toward it, and not to hold out a helping hand to those who choose it of themselves.

To Antiochus. You seem not to know that one who continually conquers the raging passions of the body, rejoicing in his trophies, does not notice his toils, stolen from him by his gladness.

To Orion the monk. I learn that in the form of the contest you overcame one, but in truth all of your contemporaries. For he who was preferred to the others in humility, but proved second to you, showed them all to be defeated. [Letter 2.269] [On what is written in the law, "You shall not … the poor …"

To Apollonius the bishop. [Letter 2.269, title continued: "… shall not pity the poor in judgment."] Poverty, when it scorns supplication and turns to accusation, uses its misfortune for meddling, and takes on the guise of an adversary at law instead of a suppliant and refugee, would not deserve to be pitied. That is why the fountain of justice said: "You shall not pity the poor in judgment." One must pity the one who begs and entreats, but not the one who brings charges and accuses; for he does not ask for a favour, but insists that he is wronged.

To the same. [How the saying "Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears" is to be understood.] The change of persons clearly proclaims the sense of what is said. If everything was to be said to the people, it would have been said like this: "Go and say to this people: You will hear with hearing and not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive. For your heart has grown fat, and you have heard heavily with your ears and closed your eyes, lest you should see with your eyes and hear with your ears and understand with your heart and turn, and I should heal you." But since it was not said so, and what is said shows a change among three persons, the one from whom, the one to whom and the one about whom the word is spoken, the force of the passage brings forth some such sense as this: "Go and say to this people: You will hear with hearing and not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive." Then, as if the prophet had asked the reason, or, without asking, was being taught it, it was said: "For the heart of this people has grown fat, and they have heard heavily with their ears and closed their eyes." "If, then, they are working against their own salvation, as one might say, why do you command me to preach?" he perhaps says. This is what is meant here by "Lest perhaps they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I will heal them." For "lest" (μήποτε) here signifies not the abolition of hearing but a hope of obedience. And that it is taken in this way, hear what the Jewish crowds say about the Saviour: "Is this not the man whom the Pharisees were seeking to kill? Look, he speaks openly, and they say nothing to him. Can it be that they truly know that this is the Christ?" It is the custom of the learned, among whom Philo seems to be, to use μήποτε in place of "perhaps" or "sometimes". And if you wish to have this testimony from a divinely inspired man, hear Paul writing: "The Lord's servant must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, apt to teach, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness; perhaps God may grant them knowledge leading to salvation." Here too μήποτε is said for "sometimes, perhaps, maybe"; it shows a hope of repentance, not its abolition. And elsewhere it is written: "Reprove a friend; perhaps he did not do it." If the prophetic passage is understood in this way, what befits God is preserved, who has chosen to do his own part. For he wills that those who wallow in vice be saved by every means, and sends those who will heal them, not ignorant that they will be destroyed by their disease, but cutting away their excuse. For even if they did not recover from their madness, at least his doing his own part has been accomplished. So what befits God is preserved, and the prophet will not seem to have been sent in vain, nor will he be thought a minister of insult, but will be found a servant of healing and cure. For he was sent not [simply] to insult, but to accuse the offenders, to bring forward and show them their failings, to call them to repentance, and to announce healing to those who turn.

To Anysius. What the lawgiver said, "You shall not pity the poor in judgment," is not full of inhumanity, as you think, but of humanity and of all justice. It achieves two very great things: first, it does not train the poor in meddling; second, it frightens by a wide margin those who judge unjustly and hand the vote of victory to the rich. For if one must not favour those who wrestle with the untamed and incorrigible beast of poverty when they accuse instead of entreating, much less those who out of great luxury insult the poor.

To Isidore the deacon. [On "Did this man sin, or his parents?"] The apostles, as disciples of wisdom and lovers of truth, gazing intently at the Saviour as he attended to the blind man and all but invited them to ask, brought him two much-discussed doctrines that people debated. For the children of the Greeks said that the soul had erred and was therefore sent down into a body to be punished, while the Jews thought that the failings of ancestors passed on to their descendants, because it is written, "the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation." So they said to him, as to one who knew all things before their birth: "Who sinned, this man (as the Greeks say) or his parents (as the Jews say), that he was born blind?" The Truth made its answer not oblique, nor sideways, nor full of riddles, but straight and brighter than all clarity. It overturned both, saying, "Neither this man sinned" (for how could he, before he was born?) "nor his parents", that is, so that he should be born blind; for he answered the question. It is likely that they had sinned, or rather they had sinned, but they are not the cause of this misfortune. Why, then, was he born blind? "That the works of God might be displayed in him": that is, nature was allowed to fail, so that the Craftsman might be proclaimed.

To Ophelius the grammarian. That many things are unclear to us and not easily caught by human reasoning is clear. That those which contribute nothing to our salvation escape us, and usefully so, is also clear. Let us consider, then, what profits us for blessedness and what does not, and so test what is said. To say that heaven is a sphere or a hemisphere; to busy oneself with the sun's swiftest course, the waning and waxing of the moon and the position of the stars; to inquire whether the earth is a cylinder or shaped like a winnowing-fan or the centre of the universe; and to know the distances of the one or the other: what this contributes to the best way of life I do not see. If anyone has something to say, he will say it perhaps, but he will not persuade. But to know and to practise justice, courage, prudence and self-control, and whatever is akin to them, sends those who know them up to the highest blessedness. We must therefore keep away from what profits us nothing and hold fast to what profits.

To Gottus. [On the polygamy of the two patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob.] The polygamy of the two patriarchs (for Isaac had intercourse with one wife) did not come about from carelessness or love of passion, but was woven, so to speak, from the necessity of circumstances; and that is why they were pardoned. See, following Scripture, how it happened. Abraham, had he not been urged by his wife, who ought to have been jealous, to approach the maidservant, would not have approached her. For he was not pleasure-loving (the long time that had passed shows it); but, desiring children, he left aside the most beautiful and comely woman, who had excited all Egypt with her beauty, and was compelled to sow another field, ill-favoured and low-born. So pure was he of all passion that when the girl had conceived and, perhaps playing the queen, despised her mistress, as though the rule would pass to the one who would be born of her, he drove her out of the house; and she went off into the desert with necessity as her guide. And if he also had Keturah, it was after the death of Hagar and Sarah. Jacob, had he obtained from the beginning the one he loved, would perhaps not have touched another woman. That this is no guess is clear from this: his father-in-law laid the elder daughter, who was ill-favoured, beside him instead of the younger, who had irresistible beauty. Jacob, learning of the deceit late, was indignant, but did not cast her out, thinking it wrong to send away one who had in whatever way been married to him. Then Laban, accused as a deceiver, of his own accord hastened to give him the other too, such a thing being certainly customary and permitted by ancient usage. When he accepted, the elder, though she was not to his liking, bore children; but the one who had captured him by love had not even a hope of it. Overcome by grief, she threatened to kill herself unless she bore children: "Give me children," she says, "or else I shall die," that is, I shall do away with myself. When she despaired, she urged him to approach her maidservant, so that she might have children by her and seem to have some comfort in such a misfortune; for childlessness then seemed the greatest evil. He, not enslaved by passion (for he would not have left the woman of unspeakable beauty and given himself to a maidservant), but wishing to free her from her despondency, was persuaded. When the maidservant had borne children, the elder again grew jealous, though she had many children, and compelled him to go in to her maidservant as well. He, wishing to cast every occasion of strife and contention out of his house, was persuaded. And the chain of events was woven for him from his love for Rachel. Had he received her at the beginning, he would perhaps have been content with her. But since he suffered deceit, he was forced to come to this, not from love of pleasure, but sometimes urged and sometimes compelled by the very women who ought to have been jealous. Isaac, as I said before, not having fallen into such necessity, had intercourse with one wife, and by being content with her he made a defence for both Abraham and Jacob. The Apostle also draws these events into a spiritual sense, applying Hagar and Sarah to the two covenants. Let no one, then, of those who are enslaved to incontinence and lust, who put away their own wives, wallow in brothels and throw strife and contention into their own houses, think that he has a defence for his own vice by bringing forward the defects that accompanied those celebrated men through the necessity of circumstances, men adorned with every other virtue; nor let him attempt to compare those who lived before the law with those who live after the law and grace. For if those who gladly embraced virtue when it was unwritten had also learned it from writings, they would surely have shone still more. Who would consent to slaughter an only son, born late, in the very flower of his youth, as Abraham did? Who would set up such a trophy over nature? Who is so hospitable that, though surrounded by many servants, he would himself do the work of servants together with his wife? Who is so faithful that, having embraced all Palestine in the promises, he would not waver if he had to buy a tomb, as Abraham did? Who is so superior to money as to despise barbarian spoils and Persian booty? But I do not know how I was led to insult the man by comparing him with ordinary men; I do not wish to say anything harsh. Saying only this, I will stop: if they had both the patriarchs' excellences and their defects, and then, when accused of the defects, brought those men forward, even so they would not, above all, have a just defence (for it is not the same thing to live before the law and to live after the law and grace); still they might perhaps have a shadow of a defence. But if, destitute of good deeds and caught in defects, they leave aside the excellences of those men and bring forward their defects, they deserve every condemnation.

To Hierax, most illustrious. A life without speech is more able to benefit than speech without a life. The one benefits even when silent; the other annoys even when it shouts. And if speech and life run together, they produce a statue of all philosophy.