Paucae Quaedam Sententiae Piam Interpretationem Desiderantes

A few sayings of Cassian requiring a pious interpretation. Column 8, chapter 17, and Conferences, chapter 12. Each of us has two angels attached, that is, a good and a bad one, as the book of the Shepherd teaches. — Concerning this book of the Shepherd, Jerome writes as follows in his Catalogue of Illustrious Men: "Hermas, whom the apostle Paul mentions in his letter to the Romans, is asserted to be the author of the book called the Shepherd, and it is even read publicly in some churches of Greece. It is indeed a useful book, and many of the ancient writers have used testimonies from it; but among the Latins it is unknown." So far Jerome. Moreover, Tertullian, in his book On Modesty, affirms that this scripture was judged by the whole council of churches to be among the apocryphal and false writings, and Pope Gelasius, in the chapter *Sancta Romana*, distinctio 15, rejected it as apocryphal. Therefore, what that book of the Shepherd affirms about the evil angel is false, even though Origen also wrote this in his homilies on Luke, unless perhaps figuratively, by the name of the evil angel that clings to us, the very tinder of sin is understood, which drew its origin from the suggestion of the evil angel.

Chapter 19 of the Conferences. He who is of the purest mind knows by the testimony of his own conscience that when Christ appears, he will soon be his companion. — This pertains to that passage of Paul to the Romans, chapter 8: The Spirit itself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God, and that of 2 Corinthians 1: Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience. From this testimony Cassian says that the righteous know that they will be companions of Christ, but he does not affirm that they know this with certainty, because this knowledge can be more or less certain, according as the Holy Spirit, through clearer or more obscure signs, bears witness to us concerning our salvation, such as internal sweetness, illumination of the mind, purity of life, and other things of this kind, in which, however, nothing is indubitable unless a most certain revelation is added, just as the human mind needs, in order not to be deceived in recognizing the presence of the Holy Spirit, much more to become certain of its perseverance in good. Therefore, what Cassian posits as the testimony of conscience concerning obtaining the companionship of Christ can be certain neither of perseverance nor of present righteousness, but is probably true of either one or both.

Chapter 24 of the Rule, or of the Conferences. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ wishes nothing perishable, nothing base, nothing temporal to be implored from himself by the creator of eternities. — Not that Cassianus thinks temporal things should not be asked for, but that the petition for spiritual things should not be postponed for their sake. For he adds: He will inflict the greatest injury upon the magnificence and munificence of God, whoever, having passed over these eternal petitions, prefers to ask of him something transitory and perishable. Conference 1? chapter and following, and book 5 of the Institutes, On Renunciation, chapters and 59. By a certain economy and dispensation, it is permissible to lie officiously. And that this stain or certain cloud is to be undergone rather than to profess a truth harmful to others is proved from the many lies of the patriarchs and prophets, who, having become all things to all people, relaxed something from the rigor of perfection by lying. — This opinion is not safe, as Augustine extensively proves in his two books Against Lying to Consentius, and condemns it in the Priscillianist heretics. Hence Innocent III, in the chapter On Usury, decrees that it be upheld by the precept of the divine word that no one, even for the sake of saving another’s life, should lie. But before that truth was defined by the Church, some Fathers, following Plato in book 5 of the Republic, thought that a prudent man could use an officious lie no differently than a medicine. Thus Origen in book 6 of the Stromata; Chrysostom at the end of the first book On the Priesthood, and in homilies and on Genesis, and in the letter to Olympias; S.

Jerome in chapter 2 of his Epistle to the Galatians: on the point which Augustine objects to him in his letters. Cassian therefore followed their opinion, before the Church decreed the contrary. Conference, chapter 8. Who is there who cannot humbly say: I have made my sin known to you, and I have not concealed my injustice, so that through this confession he may also deserve confidently to add: And you have forgiven the impiety of my heart? But if, with shame holding you back, you blush to reveal it before men, do not cease to confess it with constant supplication to him from whom it cannot be hidden, and say: I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always against me; I have sinned only to you, and I have done evil before you; who is accustomed both to heal without the publication of any shame, and to forgive sins without reproach. — He does not seem to deny the necessity of penance and secret confession, but of public confession, which Cassian himself mentions in book 2 of the Institutes of the Renunciants, chapters and 16, book 3 chapter 7, book 4 chapters and 20, book 1 of the Incarnation chapter 4.

And certainly, if anyone attentively examines his words, he will notice that they apply to public penance for secret sins: "If," he says, "you blush to reveal your sins before men," he did not say "before a man" or "before a priest"; and he adds: "God is accustomed to forgive without any publication of shame, and without reproach"; for from secret confession, publication and reproach are far removed: that he was not speaking about this is evidenced by the fact that none of the ancients or moderns have charged him with this error. Therefore, he seems to have followed his teacher Chrysostom, who speaks so everywhere, yet who never, just as his predecessor Nectarius, abolished secret confession, but public confession, as the Dean of Louvain proves at length against Calvin in the article on Confession. Conference, chapter 4. Thus we know that David observed the precepts of the law, who, when Moses commanded that retaliation be given to enemies, not only did not do this, but even embraced his persecutors with love, and piously prayed for them to the Lord, even weeping mournfully, and avenged the slain. — "When Moses commanded," he says; and indeed it is commanded in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, Deuteronomy 19; but it is commanded to judges, who are ministers of God for the punishment of the wicked and the praise of the good; but to private individuals it is not commanded, indeed it is forbidden, when it is said in Deuteronomy 32: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Which the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, chapter...

XII, in these words relates: It is written: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Although neither Moses nor any law forbade that, once hatred was set aside and the scandal ceased, private individuals could demand vengeance from judges for the sake of justice or the public good, or for the correction of the sinner, as St. Thomas extensively declares in the first question: for what is held in the Gospel concerning bearing and forgiving injuries is not always to be understood according to the outward performance of the act, but according to the preparation of the mind, as Augustine explains in book On the Sermon of the Lord on the Mount, chapter 34. David is said to have exceeded this concession of the law because he was unwilling to use the law which commanded judges to exact retaliation, especially when those who had been injured demanded it. Same chapter, 40. The deed of Theonas, who after completing marriage, leaving his wife, professed the monastic life, Cassian narrates—if not with the zeal of a praiser, at least with the fidelity of a narrator—and adds: I think that the judgment of so many spiritual men, uttered with God as author, did not err; which even the admiration of so many signs, as already mentioned above, confirmed. — These words signify that some particular instinct of the Holy Spirit intervened, either impelling to the deed or approving the deed done by the power of miracles; and this outside the ordinary course and law, so that we might have something to wonder at, not something to imitate.

In the same place, chapter 29. For understanding chapter 21 of the column, this seems to require prior notice: that a twofold force and power of law, both divine and human, is distinguished by theologians: one indeed which, like a rule, directs human actions and binds its transgressors with the bond of sin; the other, however, which compels subjects to observe it, coercing them with threats and punishments. And indeed it is agreed among all Catholics that, as regards the directive force, all are subject to the law, whether unjust or just, whether imperfect or perfect, so that those who violate it knowingly and willingly, even if they were previously most holy, incur both guilt and liability to punishment. As for the power to compel and punish, the Apostle Paul exempts perfect men from the law when he says: "For the just man, law is not laid down"; because they do not obey the law compelled by fear of punishments, but out of charity, which, if it is perfect, casts out fear. Thus Augustine thinks in his sermon on Psalm 118; thus also Cassian in Book IV of the Institutes of the Cenobites, chapter 39, and in the column, chapter 13. With these things set forth, it is easy to interpret in a Catholic manner what the same column writes about Lent in chapter.

29; for thus he says: Therefore, the just and perfect man is not bound by this law of Lent, nor is he content with the subjection of this meager canon, which the rulers of the churches established for those who, throughout the whole year, are entangled in pleasures or secular business; so that, constrained by this legal necessity, as it were, they might be compelled to devote themselves to the Lord at least on these days, and dedicate to the Lord the tithes, as it were, of the days of their life, which they were about to devour entirely like certain fruits. But the just, for whom the law is not established, and who devote not that meager part, that is, the tenth part, but the whole time of their life to spiritual things, because they are free from the function of legal tithes, therefore if an honorable and holy necessity overtakes and constrains them, they dare to relax the station of the fast without any dispute. Rabanus proves this in book II of *On the Institutions of Clerics*, chapter 20, and Isidore in book I of *On Ecclesiastical Offices*, chapter 56, and both confirm it with the testimony of the same author. Nevertheless, there are those who suspect that in this passage Cassian favors the Beghards and Beguines, whose heresies were condemned under Clement V in the Council of Vienne, recorded among the Clementines in the decretal *Ad nostrum*, *On Heretics*.

Concerning the second and third of their errors, the council writes thus: They assert, secondly, that a man ought not to fast nor to pray after he has attained a degree of perfection of this kind; because then sensuality is so perfectly subjected to spirit and reason that a man may freely grant to the body whatever it pleases. Thirdly, that those who are in the aforesaid degree of perfection and of liberty are not subject to human obedience, nor are they bound by any precepts of the Church, because (as they assert) Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Cassianus savors neither error, who affirms that the perfect fast throughout the whole year, and pray in every moment and action, and besides the very frequent praises of obedience with which he sprinkled all his Institutes and Conferences, in Conference also, among other advantages of social life which he recounts as existing in the coenobium, Abbot John adds this, that, he says, subject to the abbot to the end, I may seem in some measure to emulate him of whom it is said: He humbled himself, having become obedient unto death, and I may merit humbly to utter that word of his: Because I have not come to do my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me.

Therefore, the law of Lent does not exempt the perfect, neither under the name of perfection nor under the pretext of vain liberty, by which the Beghards and Beguines sought to support themselves, saying: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." But it does so for three reasons, which can be gathered from his words: first, because the law is not laid down for the just man, as the Apostle says in 1 Timothy; second, because those who devote their entire life to spiritual offices are free from the legal obligation of tithes, since Lent is said to be a kind of tithing of the days of the year rendered to God; finally, if an honorable and holy necessity constrains them. And these three causes, if rightly understood, are true. As regards the first, it is well known that just and perfect men are indeed bound by the law, and are liable to fault and punishment if they do not follow it as a guide for right living; yet they are said to be free from the law insofar as it compels men to its observance and worship by terrors and penalties, for just men do not need this severity of fear, since the grace of the Holy Spirit and charity have dilated their hearts to run the way of God's commandments. In this sense Cassian himself explains himself in this Conference, and in Book IV of the Institutes, chapter 39. The second cause, however, has force among those who think that those are not bound by the law, especially human law, for whom the end and reason of the law no longer holds.

For if the forty-day fast was instituted so that certain tithes of the annual time might be paid to the Author of the seasons, those who offer their whole life and themselves entirely to God as a kind of holocaust abundantly discharge them, in much patience, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in labors, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, etc. Certainly, if the power of the law rests on the line of the law, they cannot but approve according to Cassian’s reasoning, who derive the obligation of the law from its end. Their opinion, although the Church has nowhere condemned it—indeed, it is defended by many most learned men—nevertheless does not entirely meet with my approval, unless the third reason of Cassian is added, that is, an honorable and holy necessity, which, if it is evident, and access to prelates, in whom lies the right to dispense in such ecclesiastical sanctions, is not easy, each person may by himself break the fast, as St. Thomas is the authority, 2-2, question, article 4.

Conference, Chapter 30. It should certainly be known that this observance of Lent, as long as the perfection of that primitive Church remained inviolate, did not exist at all; for they were not bound by the necessity of this precept, nor constrained as if by a legal sanction, within the very strict limits of fasts, who enclosed the whole space of the year with an equal fast. But when the multitude of the faithful, falling away from that apostolic devotion, daily clung to their own possessions, and no longer divided them for the use of all according to the institutions of the apostles, but, consulting their own private expenses, strove not only to keep but even to increase them, not content to follow the example of Ananias and Sapphira; then it pleased all the priests of that time to recall men, bound by secular cares and almost (so to speak) ignorant of continence or compunction, to the holy work by a canonical imposition of fasts, and to compel them as if by the necessity of legal tithes, which could certainly benefit the weak, but could not prejudice the perfect, who, established under the grace of the Gospel, transcend the law by voluntary devotion. — This passage does not entirely conflict with the most constant opinion of the Fathers who refer Lent to apostolic tradition. For although the reason for instituting the Lenten fast was consecrated both in the fast of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, and in the Lord's general precept about fasting, when He says in Luke...

The days will come, however, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast, etc., then in many benefits which arise from fasting; yet it could have happened that, since in those first years of the nascent Church almost everyone fasted daily, there was no precept concerning Lent, but that later it was added, to curb the already burgeoning license of some, by the decision of all the priests, that is, the apostles and elders. For Luke in Acts 15 testifies that even these were accustomed to be convened in council by the apostles. It is therefore certain that Lent was instituted by the apostles, and it is also probable that it began with the Church itself; however, this is not so certain that Cassian could not have catholicly opined that it was instituted after some, that is, ten or twelve years, and indeed in such a way that its institution would not prejudice the perfect, as Cassian says, in the manner we have set forth in the previous chapter, and would recall the incontinent to the duty of their office, for whose sake especially it was instituted; which Saint Leo does not obscurely signify in his sermon on Lent. "Such incessant devotion and continued reverence," he says, "was indeed owed to such great mysteries, that we should remain in the sight of God such as it is fitting for us to be found on the Paschal feast itself.

But because this strength belongs to the few, and because, by the fragility of the flesh, a stricter observance is relaxed, and while the concern of this life is stretched out through vain actions, it is necessary that even religious hearts become soiled by the dust of the world. It has been provided with great wholesomeness of divine institution that the exercise of forty days should heal, in order to restore the purity of minds, in which the faults of other times might be redeemed by pious works, and chaste fasts might consume them. Book V, *De Institutis Renuntiantium*, chapter 40. He praises two youths, who preferred to lose their life rather than to eat figs contrary to the command of the elders, when they had nothing else. — Rightly indeed he praises obedience and simplicity, on account of which this was not given to them as a fault, even though in its own kind it was not done wisely, since they could have (unless the inexperience of age had stood in the way) interpreted the command of the elder in extreme necessity for themselves, if that could have sufficed for their life.

Book 17 of the Institutes of the Renunciants, chapter and 5. The devil lost the beatitude which he enjoyed by the gift of God. – Understand beatitude of life, not of homeland. The former is placed in faith, hope, love, and contemplation of an absent good; the latter, however, in seeing God face to face, and in knowing him as he is known. Book of the Institutes of the Renunciants, chapter 2. A voluntary gift is more pleasing than functions which are rendered by canonical compulsion. – More pleasing, understand, to us; for to God, not so, except accidentally, when sadness from a precept takes much away from the cheerfulness of the soul, which kind of affection is more apt for the increase of charisms than sadness from necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. Ibidem, chapter and 10. The reason why in the City the Sabbath was once fasted, he thinks is because the Apostle Peter, on the same day, when he was to contend against Simon Magus, the Romans asserted that he fasted, whereas before it was not fasted. – But Innocent I, in his first letter to Bishop Eugubinus, chapter, hands down that one must fast on Friday and the Sabbath, because on those two days they fasted, saddened by the death of Christ the Lord. If both causes cannot be true, it is an error of Cassian in history, which, since he himself was far from the City, he reported just as he had received it from certain Romans, as Augustine reports in his letter to Casulanus that he was of that opinion, although he adds that it is indicated as false by most Romans.

But what Cassian adds—that throughout the East fasting is observed by apostolic tradition on five days of the week, while on the Sabbath and the Lord’s day the fast is broken lest the body waste away from hunger—is observed by many, especially monks, as Augustine testifies. At Rome also very few clerics or monks fast for six days, so that they relax the fast only on the Lord’s day. Cassian also agrees with Augustine on this point: that neither in the East nor in many parts of the West is fasting observed on the Sabbath; from this they conclude that this fast did not depart from the tradition of the apostles, and rightly so. Nor does Innocentius teach that the Sabbath fast was instituted by a precept of the apostles, but by example—namely, because the apostles fasted when Christ suffered. Yet Augustine held that the fourth and sixth days of the week were assigned to fasting by the apostles: the former because on that day they entered into the plot to kill the Lord; the latter because on it he died; but on the Sabbath, because he rested in the tomb after the work of redemption, as once God did after completing the work of creation.

Hence, says Augustine, arose the variety: some (especially the Eastern peoples) prefer to relax the fast on account of signifying rest; others, on account of the humility of the Lord’s death, choose to fast—as do the Roman and several Western Churches, among which was the African. From there, Augustine’s mother, when she had set out for Milan and found that they did not fast on the Sabbath there, received this response from Ambrose: “When I am at Rome, I fast on the Sabbath; when I am here, I do not fast.” Augustine himself relates this in his letter to Januarius. And indeed, not only concerning the Sabbath, but also concerning the fast on the fourth and sixth days of the week throughout the year—as if received by the whole Church and handed down by the apostles—the same Augustine, along with Clement of Alexandria in Book VII of the *Stromata*, Epiphanius in *Haeresis* 75, Origen in his homilies on Leviticus, and Damascenus in his book *On Heresies* (in the section on the Aerians), all write. Book V, *On the Institutes of the Renunciants*, Chapter 34. Abbot Theodore admonishes a monk who desires to attain knowledge of the Scriptures that he ought to place his effort and industry in purifying the soul rather than in the books of commentators.

Certainly it teaches nothing other than what all the Fathers teach—namely, that the chief safeguard for understanding the Scriptures lies in purity of heart, even though it by no means condemns the books of commentators, especially the saints; for it would condemn itself, since in the last book On the Incarnation of the Lord it draws to the end the clearest testimonies against Nestorius from the books of the Fathers, and could not have drawn them unless it had diligently read them through. Collation 1, chapter 20. By that same kind of deception those also were led astray who, after making profession as monks, were incited by the glitter of speech and by certain dogmas of the philosophers which, at first glance, hearing those who are pious in certain sentiments and consonant with religion, like the gleam of gold, deceiving those whom they had once enticed on the surface, like men deceived by brass coins and false ones, they rendered perpetually naked and wretched, either recalling them to the clamor of the world of that age, or dragging them into heretical errors and swollen presumptions. This we read that Achan also suffered in the book of Joshua son of Nun, who, coveting and stealing a golden rule from the camp of the Philistines, deserved to be struck with anathema and condemned to eternal death.

Cassian does not condemn the study of eloquence or philosophy, by whose aid we understand even the invisible things of God through those things which have been made, and we explain, defend, and adorn the truth of divine doctrines; but he reproaches the incautious, who are captivated by certain vain inventions of the philosophers rather than sifting gold from their dung, and who contaminate themselves with the superstition of the Egyptians rather than, as from unjust possessors, stripping away vessels to be transferred to the worship of the true God—which Augustine teaches should be done in book 4 of *On Christian Doctrine*, when one is occupied with the books of the pagans: by which discernment and discrimination those who have not used philosophy have had a harvest and fodder of great heresies, as Tertullian writes in the book *On the Prescriptions of Heretics* and in the book *Against Hermogenes*. From the book *On the Institutes of the Renunciants*, chapter 20. It should be known, however, that in what is found in some copies—"He who is angry with his brother without cause will be guilty in judgment"—the phrase "without cause" is superfluous and was added by those who thought that anger should be cut off only for just causes, since assuredly no one, however moved without reason, says that he is angry without cause. For this reason it appears to have been added by those who did not understand the intention of Scripture, which wishes to cut off the tinder of anger in every way and to reserve no occasion for indignation whatsoever, lest while we are commanded to be angry with cause, the occasion for being angry even without cause should be introduced to us.

For the end of patience consists not in being angry justly, but in not being angry at all; although some interpret this very phrase, which is said "without cause," in such a way that one is angry without cause, so that it is not lawful for an angry person to seek vengeance. Yet it is better to hold it as the new and many old copies are all found to be written. — The same had been said earlier by Jerome on that passage of Matthew 5: "Who is angry with his brother." In some copies, he says, "without cause" is added; otherwise, in the true copies the sentence is definitive, and anger is entirely removed. And against the Pelagians: "He who is angry with his brother without cause will be guilty in judgment," although in most ancient copies "without cause" is not added, so that evidently we should not be angry even with cause. Augustine also, in Book 1 of his Retractations, chapter 19. Yet it is not to be believed that these teachers wished to commend the Stoics' view, which Augustine refutes in Book 2 of The City of God, chapter —, and rightly so. For if anger were not present when there is cause, as Chrysostom says in Homily 2 on Matthew, neither would doctrine profit, nor would judgments stand, nor would crimes be restrained. By the name "anger," therefore, Jerome and Cassian understood a certain emotion that anticipates reason. For this, even if it bursts forth from a just cause, cannot keep measure; therefore they advise not being angry at all. Others sometimes allow anger, because they understand it as that which the command of reason arouses and moderates. Hence St. Gregory, Book...

Moral. ch.: "It must be greatly taken care," he says, "that anger, which is assumed as an instrument of virtue, does not dominate the mind; nor should it go before as a mistress, but as a handmaid ready for service, never departing from the rear of reason." And although Cassian in the same book, chs. 6 and 8, indicates that the ministry of anger is implanted in us for this sole purpose, that we be angry at the wanton nets and vices of our own mind, yet for the same reason he not obscurely signifies that anger is sometimes to be brought forth also toward others when reason demands it, in Coll. 16, ch. 26, when he writes: "Nor did I say that the virtue and tolerance of one who is strong and robust is to be overcome, but that the very bad health of the weak one, which is nourished by the sustenance of one who is sound, and daily slipping into worse, will generate causes on account of which he himself should no longer be sustained." Coll. can. 13. Cassian calls Christ the "Dominic man," as many ancient Fathers had called him before, and Augustine in Book 83 Questions, q. 36, although he later corrected this expression in Book I of the Retractations, ch. 19, because since Christ is the Lord, "Dominic" would properly be said: for it would signify that that man is not God and Lord, but Dominic, that is, that he is a human suppositum united to the Lord, or to the suppositum of the Lord; whence two supposita in Christ would be imagined, which is Nestorian. And since it is established that Cassian not only did not consent to Ne...

history, but against him he wrote seven books, by which he proves that there are not two, but one person of Christ; therefore the Homo Dominicus is to be excused by him in the manner that St. Thomas sets forth in III part, q. 16, art.: The Homo Dominicus, he says, could be defended on some ground, namely because someone could say that he is called Homo Dominicus by reason of the human nature which the name "homo" signifies, not, however, by reason of the suppositum. See Rufinus in the Apology for Origen, near the end.