Letter to Valerian on Contempt of the World

Contents

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–27

1. 1Eucherius writes to his kinsman Valerian, bound to him by blood and love, to call him from worldly honours to the heavenly wisdom and eternal blessedness of the Christian life.
2. 2Man's first duty is to know his Creator and devote his life to him; next comes care for the soul, which cannot be separated from serving God, and which deserves more medicine than the body.
3. 3The soul, the image of God and his deposit, is mistress and the flesh servant; salvation is the foundation of every other good, for nothing profits a man who gains the world and loses his soul.
4. 4Even a good earthly life would be worth little beside eternal life because it is short, and in fact it is full of hardship; as men provide most for the places where they will stay longest, we should provide most for eternity.
5. 5Both the promised joys of the future life and the evils of the present should drive us to God, who offers adoption as his sons, a gift greater than adoption by any rich man and ready to anyone who wills it.
6. 6Love of this life should lead to love of the eternal life, to which this one is a passage; whether this life is despised or loved, the greater life deserves more love.
7. 7The endless chain of worldly business should be broken, for it fills life with anxiety and leaves no rest to either the lowly or the great.
8. 8Wealth and honours hold men bound to the world; wealth, the root of evils, is gathered unjustly, invites violence, passes to uncertain heirs, and turns love away from oneself to outward things.
9. 9Worldly honours are shared indiscriminately by good and bad and are fleeting, as the fall of wealthy magistrates and even of splendid kings shows.
10. 10Of all the wealth and power of recent kings nothing went with them but their faith and piety; true wealth and honour are to be transferred to heaven, where nothing is lost.
11. 11Men see death every day and forget it; generations break on death like waves on the shore; those reconciled to Christ, who long to be with him, await the last day without fear.
12. 12The number of careless people is no excuse, since each is judged by his own deeds; the reader should follow the fewer but abundant examples of the noble and learned who have taken up Christ's yoke.
13. 13Examples of the learned and noble who turned to the Christian life: Clement of Rome, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory who drew Basil from the school of rhetoric, Paulinus of Nola, Hilary and Petronius, and the eloquent Latin writers.
14. 14Kings too have served God, David, Josiah and Hezekiah of old, and in the author's own day princes and princesses of the imperial court.
15. 15Sun, days and seasons obey God's command, and man, who has the commandments in Scripture, should do no less; no one can flee from God, as Psalm 139 says, so each should freely give himself to the Lord's service.
16. 16Ears and eyes alike should lead us to God: the ears by his promises, the eyes by turning wonder at the world to its Maker and to the greater splendour to come.
17. 17Everything the reader admired in the world, magnificence, glory, beauty, truth, generosity, faithfulness, is found supremely in God, who should therefore be loved above all, since everything else that is loved is his.
18. 18It is unjust to love God's works and neglect their Maker; loving him is not only pleasant but necessary, for we can never repay him, above all for giving salvation through faith.
19. 19God united the nations under Rome so that the faith could spread through one people like medicine through one body, and came into the world under Augustus when Rome was at its height.
20. 20Love of the world and the desires of the flesh war against the soul; yet the world has grown old and lost even its power to deceive.
21. 21The world is in its last age, full of famine, plague, war and portents, as the apostle said the ends of the ages have come; those who neither enjoy this life nor hope for the next are most to be pitied.
22. 22As anyone would wait a day for gold rather than take copper now, we should prefer eternal goods; hope by its nature looks to what is not yet seen.
23. 23Future things are seen more clearly than present ones, as distant objects are seen better than those pressed against the eye; our confidence rests on Christ, God and man, who reconciled man to God and was exalted in glory.
24. 24Valerian should exchange the philosophers' precepts for Christian teaching, since the philosophers, not knowing God, have only a shadow of virtue, and some, like the school of Aristippus, place happiness in bodily pleasure.
25. 25Instead of the philosophers' maxims, Valerian should read Christian writers, and Eucherius gives a sample of their sayings on faith, love, lust, anger, enemies, almsgiving, marriage, providence, fate, judgment and vanity.
26. 26Scripture shines from within like a gem and feeds the soul; Valerian should turn to God in all he says and does, trusting God to give him strength, for God already gives light and sun to good and bad alike.
27. 27If God gives so much to all now, his rewards for the just will be beyond telling; Eucherius urges Valerian to steer from the sea of business into the harbour of the religious life, anchored on the cross, and closes.