Epistolae [Incertus]

FIRST LETTER.

To a sick friend.

FIRST ADMONITION OF DOMINICUS VALLARSIUS IN TOME XI OF THE WORKS OF ST. JEROME.

This letter once seemed to Erasmus not to be out of keeping with the style of Tertullian, insofar, says Vallarsius, as one may catch its scent from that author's fragments: for it is rather affected and somewhat harsh, even if weighty in its sentences. Others think it fits rather consistently with the diction of the letter that follows, since, with no one now denying it, it is St. Maximus of Turin's, and that it approaches so close to it that he does not, however, attribute it with certainty. I, though I would not yet dare to pronounce on this matter, nevertheless feel, closer to the opinion of these men, that the one who wrote these things sustains the role of a bishop, who says at the very beginning that he is occupied by the religious necessity of the Lord's affairs.

SECOND ADMONITION.

Among the spurious works of St. Maximus we also place the letters once attributed to the blessed Jerome and published under his name, two in number. Compare in the preface the weight of the arguments that drove us to render this judgment against the opinion of Vallarsius and others. Nothing else remains for us to add except that we have taken the variant readings from the codex of the Pluteus XIX, parchment in folio, of the fifteenth century, page 265, of the Medicean Laurentian Library, and from the Roman edition of the Letters of St. Jerome at Peter de Maximus in the year 1468.

CHAPTER I. — Although I have known most certainly that your experience has no need of the alleviations and remedies of another's consolation, since you yourself cherish with the felicity of a vigorous and warm spirit the languors and hardships of a sick body and the numbness of stiffened limbs, and cure and compose them by medical reasoning; nevertheless amid adversities a defense, amid diseases a remedy, amid cares a solace, amid the waves a man seeks and desires always the oar of another's rowing. For the fruit of fraternal consolation is doubtless a part of the greatest remedies; and the fuel of words, by the sweetness of those who console, introduces relief to wearied minds. And even if not in bodily members, yet in the recesses and hidden places of the mind, by spiritual zeal it composes a man, and enters like a physician with health, and aids the efforts of exhausted strength under the burden of long pressures, especially since it is written: A brother helped by a brother shall be exalted (Prov. XVIII). For this reason, therefore, since the religious necessity of the Lord's affairs so holds me occupied that the opportunity is not granted to illuminate your hardships by frequent bodily approach, it has pleased me, as you asked, that by whatever consolation of letters I might come forth to meet so long a trial of virtue—or rather, visit the benefit of salvation—and advance a mind founded in Christian virtue to its greatest strength. We who strive to seize the prey of the heavenly kingdoms and the revenue of an eternal gift cannot be victors without some conflict.

For never does a delicate virtue, ignorant of struggle, ascend the palm-bearing summit of victory, nor does he receive the prize after his adversities are subdued, who counts his own body's life as more precious than victory. Nor, indeed, is he shaken by the fear of death, for whom life is born from death; for him it is precious even to shed his blood; it is a matter of felicity to struggle with misfortune, of the highest health to endure bitter wounds, and he reckons the loss of his limbs also to be the greatest gain. And—what is the last thing I shall say—it is glorious for him, in the very contest, to summon back his palm-bearing soul to the one who lent it. For it is better, as reason determines, that what is owed to nature be paid to virtue. These things, brother, must be borne, then—all things through which the Lord wishes us to be tried by the longest affliction, and to be destined for great rewards.

CHAPTER II. — THE SICK MAN. What spirit—not now with strength subdued—could bear these inevitable misfortunes, and the onsets of pernicious calamity, and the hostile diseases, which, as I see it, will now die together with the body itself? JEROME. He must now join battle with dangers, and contend—he whom the tempest has found amid the waves. And although no one willingly suffers or courts danger, yet beneath the weight of danger, compelled by necessity, he is hardened. THE SICK MAN. But another anxiety comes upon me, which, with my griefs doubled, envelops my senses, and after the manner of relentless cares imposes inexplicable cares.

For it moves me that with such temptations, and with the struggle of so obstinate a disease, it has fallen to me alone to fight, when I have known others both corrected by gentler blows and made victors by a brief struggle. Why did the Lord not declare the contest to me along with the rest? Why did he not chastise me as he did the others? JEROME: First, then, you must not, when placed in so arduous a contest, think about lowly things. For lower prizes belong to lower fights. B Moreover, where strong things are commanded to the strong, a stronger recompense follows a stronger service; and therefore the strong man judges it a disgrace to be compared with a lesser. For great is he who has conquered great things; it belongs to the greatest devotion to endure the greatest things, and it is the mark of immense virtue to overcome immense things. For he excels the rest in the sight of the king by more eminent merits, whom the heat of battles has troubled the most, and whom, once overcome, they have rendered a victor. Finally, the spoil in the very conflict is present, suited to the quality of the contest, deservedly destined for the victor. Kings impose weights according to the muster-roll, in proportion to strength; physicians apply remedies according to the causes. He who is to be cured does not tell the physician by what rule he is to be cured; nor does the soldier choose where he is to be sent, nor the slave with what blow he is to be chastised. For what depends on the judgment of a greater authority is not in the power of the subject.

Therefore we who are governed by a power from on high, and are engaged amid the manifold miseries of the world in being corrected, neither is it ours, regarding the power of the Lord, either to choose the blows or the other contests which by enduring we may overcome: just as it is not for servants to choose from their masters the kinds of whips. For never does the license of the one who strikes depend on the will of the one who hangs upon his decision. It belongs to power to correct, to condition to submit. It is the king's to impose a burden, and the soldier's to bear it. Since indeed nothing is done unjustly by the king himself, who, imposing warlike toils on his legions according to the measure of their strength, sends the strong to strong tasks and commands things suited to the weaker, so that neither is the weaker barred from the contest of the stronger beyond his own strength, nor is the one who comes later humiliated by the contest of an inferior, with merits thus graded. And while this is done, so that no one is diminished in another's field or indeed succumbs, he desires all to be victors. Nor is the one who strikes an enemy in between, so as to remove the danger and shut out the wound. Nor is paternal affection opposed if it teaches children by the embraces of whips. For paternal whips are the exercises of harmless piety. Therefore, since chastisement is the cause of correcting love, since it descends from piety, love the physician who strikes, whose blow is the mother of medicine. For piety brings forth nothing impious, so that, having embraced the virtues, one spiritually healed may include the fruit of piety. I will kill, says the Lord, and I will make alive; I will wound, and I will heal (Deut. 32).

CHAPTER III — II. But you have said: Does piety then strike? HIESON: It strikes indeed; lest it be judged impiety, if it does not correct the one who does wrong. For since there is not lacking in a man that which may be cured, it strikes in order to cure, as are the hands of a physician, which by much harming confer health, not without the murmuring of the patient. In this way we also, under the healing blow of the physician, amid the very straits of grief, murmur against the Lord as the wounded do against the physician, who are cured and yet grieve. Come then, brother, come to the remedy of endurance, by which you may be able to lighten the burden heavy with temptations, and to overcome dangers while you endure them. Let a firm mind console and care for the fallen members. Let virtue hold the kingdom within the body held captive by anxieties, so that the soul, enclosed by dangers, may flourish by the very freedom of virtue, which in the conflict of temptation has long since been commanded to be made ready in various ways by the legal trumpets; and at the very trace of the Lord's service, to be armed against hostile calamities. Son, it says, when you come to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation (Ecclus. 2). Therefore, since temptation is extended for our benefit, it is not to be wondered at if its heat comes upon us. As the most blessed Peter warns in his epistle and said: Do not wonder at the heat that comes upon you, which is for your temptation, lest you fall away amid the various waves of the world (1 Pet. 4).

The Christian life is shaken and tested by frequent storms, and is buffeted and grows by countless pressures. The most blessed prophet Solomon both testifies and proves this quite clearly: "Cleave," he says, "to the Lord, and endure, that your life may increase in the end" (Sirach 2). It rejoices when the winds drive the vessel of our life; it is disturbed by calm alone. For its course is stunned when the winds cease; it is endangered if it is not tested by dangers. For it is uncertain whether he belongs to the Lord, whom pressure, the mother of glory, does not purify by winnowing, does not nourish by pressing, does not prove by chastening, does not care for by striking. For since divine love bestows on us various trials in place of lashes, and like a physician applies a remedy from contraries, and brings help by tormenting, he does not prove himself to belong to the love of the Lord who has not deserved to be subjected to medicinal blows. But perhaps you say: If God is my lover, why then do the lashes of my lover sadden me with grievous tearing, and disturb me by wounding? If he who loves torments me with the embraces of lashes, then a false love already exercises the wells of hatred; already it is better for me to be hated, lest he torment me. Nay, take care lest he hate; pray that he may deign to love. For love corrects, but hatred threatens punishment. Love is accustomed to bestow discipline; hatred, by the verdict it dictates, to bring back guilt. That hatred is propagated from God into man by the birth of the human race.

And therefore it is the part of man that God either hates or is angry: he hates while he is offended, he is angry while, having been offended, he is not entreated. For he provokes the Lord to hatred of himself, who by his own hateful deeds makes himself hateful, and despises to entreat the one he has offended. Otherwise God loves man as the craftsman loves the workmanship, but he hates the evil works by which the workmanship is pressed into a fall and forced into ruin. And he who hates evil works cannot love the doer of evil works: as the most holy Solomon brought forth: "The impious man and his impiety are hateful to God" (Wis. 14). Therefore it is better in this world, which is perishing as its years roll on and whose old age the setting sun presses down and swallows up, to endure the healing lashes out of love for the Lord, than out of hatred to await an incurable blow, and beneath the thunderbolt of sentence to lead a damnable life. It is better, while passing through the hands of the physician, to endure a brief torment, than to renounce the physician and rush into punishment to be vexed by eternal torturers. But if you still wonder that our lover and physician is made known through scourges, you ought also to wonder at this, that remedies torment those whom the physician loves, who by harming excludes what harms. Surely he who seeks to exclude harmful things cannot harm; and therefore he heals by harming, so that health may be made ready for the sick by sorrows. For if medicine did not lacerate the one to be healed, the merit of health would always delight to go into a voluntary wound.

If the precious care of healing remedies were not established by the biting aids of harmful things, the need for treatment would not compel one into grief. And therefore healing is accomplished by harmful remedies, so that health, redeemed at the price of grief, may be held more dear and welcome. Therefore, the one who is to be loved cannot fail to be corrected by whatever trial; the one who is to be set right cannot fail to be scourged by the rod of one who loves him; the one who is to be healed cannot fail to be hurt by the sharpness of the healer. Why do you marvel that a man awaits help in dangers from him whom fire and iron heal? For there are many things that are healed only when struck. There are many whom physicians cannot cure without the knife. Those who grant health when asked through various torments often, at the demand of the disease, pour out the bitterest draughts for the sake of remedy to those who are not thirsty—draughts that are swallowed not without a wrinkling of the brow. For if you attend to the face of the one drinking, he drinks sad and anxious so that he may live glad and whole. How reasonable is the perversity of medicine in its inconveniences! A man is pressed to drink what he does not thirst for, when sometimes the remedy is what he does thirst for. For because they sometimes prescribe abstinence from food, by the imposed fasting they weaken the body, so that from that very weariness they may make it refreshed and very strong. The sudden wounds that chance has brought to the camp they foment, bind, stitch, and cure; by saddening they gladden, by wearying they strengthen, by wounding they heal.

For when the flesh has been joined together over the wound by the food, and fastened with certain clasps, they bring health in, promising life by consoling, which they restore by healing. But the things we have said are rather light: among them the remedy is not only to cut away putrid and enervated parts and to amputate dead members from a living man, although one of the members is not cut off without the sensation of the whole body; yet the man consents to his own losses, so that he may live. Among them sometimes, with the skins drawn back, the very bones are scraped; the whole man is scraped through. Among them sometimes a gathering that threatens, and a swelling with heat, is furrowed by the healing knife. Among them it burns, so that it may cool; the powder bites and tears, so that it may heal. What more? Under the physician's piety a man is tormented very much so that he may live very much. It is almost a necessary danger in which there is a benefit, a faithful torment. He is certainly put in danger whom the physician treats, but he is also put in danger who refuses. For to this one, although under torment, life is promised; to the other the hope of living is denied. Therefore, when necessity demands it, it is better to be in danger than to perish. It is better to be harmed by inconveniences with profit than to die from inconveniences refused; that is, it is preferable to be harmed by a remedy than to be unable to be cured.

CHAPTER IV. — I speak this according to the heavenly mean, and I refer it more to spiritual care, not to that alone which, doomed to die by its art, is occupied in mortal members. It is better for us, therefore, to be chastened by the Lord and healed under His wound, than to be removed incurable from His medicine. For God drives away from His face those whom He sees vexed by the incurable disease of iniquity, and like dust or chaff scattered and dispersed by the force of a whirlwind through vices; as He Himself speaks in His own voice, saying: Let the wicked depart from me, for I will not know their ways; because their lamp is extinguished, and they shall have groaning in their [portion]. For they shall be like chaff that flies before the wind, and like dust that is taken up by storms (Job 21). They do not wish to know His ways, who do not wish to hold the way that leads to things on high. For to the one Lord there is one way to be held in Christ, which through straitening trials leads into the expanse of long security. To this way alone the palace of heaven lies open; but the others, made crooked by the windings of pleasures, seek the region of flame. Concerning these Solomon thus testifies with his own voice: There are ways that seem just to men, and in their end is sadness and grief (Prov. 14). And along these ways those headlong ones walk, whose course the enemy life flatters with deceitful blandishments; whom the deaf time deceives and beguiles, receives unto destruction and shuts in.

Just as a storm drives a doomed ship onto the rocks, so an unhappy prosperity leads the headlong and the slipping into destruction. And just as, when someone is walking with steady steps, a sudden fall either from the smoothness of marble or from a floor tile giving way underfoot has twisted his footing, so those whom the uncertain path of prosperity leads unhappily, and a life wickedly pleasant, must needs be struck by a sudden fall into an irrevocable collapse. As the most holy Solomon testifies and cries out: As he who falls on the pavement, so the fall of the wicked will come swiftly (Sirach 20). These are without doubt they who do not deserve to be shaken by the buffeting demands of any misery, for whom eternal sickness is nourished, nor to be scourged with the saints, with the Lord chastising, with whom one may reign after the scourging; of whom David demands mention in this psalm: They are not in the thoughts of men, and they shall not be scourged with men; therefore their pride has held them (Psalm 72). You see, then, that the undeserving are cast down by the healing scourge, and the deserving are chastised in a friendly way. For God, the parent of all, as he is a faithful physician toward those he has taken up, and a father toward his children, strikes those whom he loves so as to correct, not to kill. Happy, therefore, is he who is beaten, where the blow is one of love.

Blessed is the one whom the remedy of the heavenly scourge cares for, corrects, amends, and sets in order; him the blessed prophet David, and illustrious enough, if he were stirred and cried out, you would call: Blessed is the man whom you have corrected, O Lord, and taught out of your law (Ps. 93). Therefore, since by divine permission we are subject to the sicknesses of various biting pains, and we carry a life to be healed by long calamity, let us endure with equanimity, as a test of our virtue, those miseries of old. The unhappy and manifold falls, anxieties, and weepings which we have run into at birth, let us bear with a felicity of mind. Nor is it to be wondered at that the life of mortals is thus laid waste in the world by the varied slaughters of frequent evils, in which no one is born laughing, in which no one begins the light of life except with tears. When at last the tent of the maternal womb showed us to the world, we learned the world weeping, so that we might taste, as it were, the firstfruits of evils in our first tears. The prophet Solomon bears witness by this pronouncement: I, he says, was born and received the common lot of life, and fell upon the earth made in like manner; I sent forth my first voice like all, weeping. I was nourished in swaddling clothes, and with great cares. No one of kings had any other beginning of birth. ... Therefore there is one entrance to life for all, and a like exit (Wis. 7). For it is necessary that he who has come pass through where he has led a pilgrim life; especially since Solomon declares thus: One, he says, is the entrance to life, and like the exit.

What prosperity or joy, then, can come our way, when from the very first we learn to weep, and amid the very cradle of newborn infancy, at the very threshold of life, nothing new from the world meets us but weeping? We have trodden the light of the world underfoot with weeping; we shall indeed weep as we pass away. Narrow and anxious enough is the time of mortal life, where the beginning is named together with the end, and we receive our beginning together with our end! He is already seized by death who is reckoned [alive]. The dead are witnesses, since they do not deny that they are to be tortured. Therefore, since we come as those who are about to depart, in the manner of travelers, let us overcome by endurance whatever has happened within the lodging-place of the world, as those passing through: evils imposed are overcome when borne with good devotion. For evil harms worse if it is borne badly; even good things harm if they are borne badly. There, surely, the work of virtue is our consolation (under the contemplation, that is, of the heavenly reward), where the end and departure of life is desired just as a safe harbor is longed for at sea. For who, amid the anxieties of this restless age and the troubles of harming diseases, would not rather desire death than a life long enough and languid, since Solomon says: Better is death than a bitter life; and eternal rest than lingering sickness (Sirach 30). And elsewhere: It is better for you to die than to live (ibid. 40). For death gives rest to every man. Certainly, amid evils raging, an exit is necessarily longed for with thirst. But just as it was not ours to be born, so it is not in our power to die.

Otherwise, if dying were in our power, not dying would also be in our power. It is for this reason that amid the straits of death we beg for rest, because amid evils it is a comfort in the face of good not to be silent: after the manner of sailors, for whom it is a refreshment, amid hostile and anxious voyages, to speak of the safety they are about to reach; and although it is not permitted to arrive there as swiftly as the mind desires, still it delights us, and it is quite honorable to strive for the better part. But since it is not in our power to obtain the better things that are born from death, while awaiting better things, let us in the meantime wage a good contest amid evils. For what contest is it not to yield to evils, but to overcome evils by the good of virtue, through which, exalted, we may be placed among the better things born from death, free from diseases and defects? For without the guidance and prompting of misfortune we do not reach the triumphs of immortal glory, because the course is completed through dangers into the harbor. First, no one can be called a triumphator unless virtue has won the victory for him—virtue which sees all that is feared crushed beneath it, and, unconquered, drags its captive along.

CHAPTER V. Meanwhile the world is like the sea, restless by nature and swollen even without winds, rearing up threatening and terrible waves in the very midst of calm; and though it does not harm those who sail upon it, its harmless vastness still holds something of dread, nor are fears and the buffeting of waves often absent for those who sail. In short, never has a helmsman unfolded all his sails in complete security. And in this world, where we seek the stormy and turbulent course of this life, we are frequently touched by the threats and causes of evils, especially those whom the heavenly militia has enclosed, marked out, within the royal camp. We have already said that the world is compared to the deep, in which prosperous things are rare, turbulent things are dense; there is panic, there is fear, diseases too are not lacking; the only safe harbor is the end. From this side and that the hostile onsets of calamity rush in; but it is the part of virtue to endure all the way to the harbor, that is, to the end. Amid dangers the helmsman guards and preserves the ship. Amid calamities the mind as pilot governs and rules the man. However much someone, with dangers somewhat allayed, may guide a manageable vessel, yet that ship is rather awaited and received with greater triumphs which has powerfully shaken off the blind waves rolling to a crest in a turbid river. It is received by triumphant security. Splendid is the soldier set in the army of arms; but sluggish and empty, he grows foul with deformed virtue, who in the field is known neither to himself nor to another.

For it lacks praises, and it lacks rewards. And therefore the danger ought not to be harmful where the reward is born. Nor ought the soldier to be recalled or to suffer fear where victory follows. For that man is wretched in his own good fortune, who, with the misfortunes by which glory is begotten, never deserved to have conflict. Nor has he learned his own strength, whom calamity has not shaken out. Finally, the soldier of sluggish limbs always lies ignorant of his own powers and unknown to himself, who has never breathed hard in the glorious heats of burning wars, who has never found triumphs through sweats. Nor does the happiness of rewards follow him, who is unwilling to bear the burden of years. And therefore that which generates reward ought to be in use, and that which brings forth glory ought to be desirable. Therefore, since we must fight with the various darts of temptations: if anything has emerged that tests our strength, that shakes our limbs, that proves our soul, let us seize it as an occasion of a gift with the embrace of virtue.

Thus the strength of the soul must be of immovable virtue and of unshaken mind, unconquered, like the rock in the sea which nature has founded amid the waves, which is beaten by the frequent collision of swelling waves and yet is not moved. And so, when adversities provoke a man to battle, and calamity urges and compels him to the contest, let the happy mind bring him forth armed with the shield of virtue, and keep him safe and secure amid dangers, show him happy amid misfortunes, cheerful amid anguish, sound amid diseased sicknesses, and make him, by the javelin of endurance, once calamity is conquered, a conqueror. For sickness in the body is overcome if the mind learns to endure; and therefore, when the body lies weak, a greater virtue must be nourished in the inner recesses, and that must be prepared which neither weariness may shake off nor age bend low.

CHAPTER VI. — Hold fast, therefore, brother, hold fast the unconquered strength of faith; hold fast the immovable Christian bulwark, founded on the firmness of heavenly vigor; amid languishing and quite stiffening limbs, carry the shield of faith and of the soul whole and strong, and you will have conquered the sluggish disease and the pernicious languor. When evils batter like a ram, meet them with the barriers of virtue. Conquer while you are being beaten; for thus Christian power is nourished by hardships, and advanced by adverse evils. It befits the Christian warfare to be shaken out by calamities and to be proved. It is its own to be happily enlarged under misfortunes and straits, to grow up under pressures, and by growing to trample pressures underfoot.

It is his to nourish his own defense by frequent exercises, and to have struggle with dangers. It is his to sail to the harbor of eternal felicity through the burning perils of the world, and beneath the blows of healing discipline to reign powerfully by necessity itself. It is ours, I say, to be raised to the height of glory by the exercise of calamity, and, when evils press upon us, to be advanced to good rewards. With us, weakness, or any pressure whatsoever, is a proof of power and a mother, to be sure, of triumphant virtue: just as the most blessed apostle Paul, amid various blows, diverse lashes, and stormy assaults, stationed in the battle of illnesses, as a heavenly soldier powerful in infirmities, glories and says: Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me (II Cor. 12): for which reason I take pleasure in glorying in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in imperfections, in distresses for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful (Ibid.); and again: As often, he says, as I am weak, then am I more truly proved, and I please myself in my infirmities. And again, when he asked that the thorn of the flesh be taken away from him, he learned that virtue can be nourished in infirmity: he says: There was given to me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me, that I should not be exalted; for which reason I besought the Lord three times that it might depart from me; and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in infirmity (Ibid.).

Virtue, then, is never instructed by gentler lessons, since the examples of the greatest virtues have perished. Our vessel rejoices in tossings, when it is raised up amid whirlwinds, when it is beaten by raging waves, when it does not spare this rough journey as adversities rise up, provoking devoted virtue to unceasing struggle. Otherwise we cannot be happy before the Lord unless it has befallen us to be cleansed by misfortunes and earthly filth. Moreover, that man must be judged wretched and sick who, slack with pleasures, wallows and lies amid allurements. Let that man know himself unhappy who wanders among the enticements of vices, enfeebled in his felicity and pierced through. Wretched and unhappy is he who has not been tried by unhappiness. For he lacks the gift who also lacks the contest. He who has dreaded the weapons of adverse conflict never deserved to obtain the name of victor. Beyond doubt it belongs to a prostrate mind to fear in a frightened way; it belongs to a lowly and sluggish man to follow safe things. Imperfect and weak is the good of virtue cast into idleness without contest. For vigor lies enervated and feeble, the mind lies sick, brightness lies obscured; and therefore one must always stand in the battle line like the strongest soldier, and seek an occasion by which virtue, shaken out, may shine forth. For to the lover of battles, wounds are ornaments. Therefore, for despising labors and for the knowledge of virtue, there is need of trials, that is, of a nourisher to raise up one's strengths. For solid is the body, and a robust mass of limbs, which frequent use has exercised.

Finally, for farmers, by frequent labor the arms are strengthened and the hands worn rough, while among briars and thorns, with bent body, the fruit is sought through sweat. The nautical art, whose vessel a storm has often twisted about, while it makes for port amid dangers, has learned to cross the waves and to fight with the tempest. A lacerated army is strong for shaking off weapons, and seeks victories amid wounds, to please its own king. The limbs of runners are agile, and practice as master has taught and trained them. Why more? No one ascends to the more perfect parts except by the addition of trials, and the victor has seized the prize.

CAP. VII.—And so, while we first endure small and middling things, it is necessary that we learn to bear greater or the greatest. For it is a bright pattern of our warfare to advance the step through steep places, to be carried through hard things, and to endure the harsh judgment of miseries with harsh strength. For us the way to heaven lies through rough things, through narrow things, through hard windings and places; a way which he who refused to be tried did not hold. To heaven God calls the strongest soldier, whom pressures lead on with accompanying glories, and rewards receive the victor to reign. Does he in the meantime impose on us anything abrupt, which exceeds the quality of balanced weight? Does he bring in anything that by excess surpasses the fitness of our virtue? The most faithful director orders the burden to be imposed according to strength. The proclamation of Paul testifies and proves this.

God is faithful," he says, "who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear" (1 Cor 10). So let us believe that we are driven and ruled by the Lord, just as the students of a most learned teacher are ruled: they heap and impose the greatest amount of labor on those whom they see standing out above the rest by their keen abilities. And we, too, temper the burden for the animals subject to our dominion according to the measure of their strength: we impose heavy loads on the stronger and small ones on the weak, so that that nurturer of virtue, practice, may raise and advance their strength to the greatest vigor of youth. In this way our first beginnings are struck with light blows, so that from there, by the love of divine virtue, they may prepare their accustomed strength for heavier ones. Although this principle abounds in many divine proofs, let us nevertheless use an example from worldly matters too; for it does no harm to use foreign examples in that respect in which they are our own. Do you suppose that their own children are hated by the Lacedaemonians, whose tender natures and limbs—still, of course, ignorant of labor—they test, and with public whips brought near, paternal affection itself urges them to bear the blows of the scourges bravely; and when they are torn and half-dead, they beg and entreat them to persevere in bearing wounds upon wounds? What wonder, then, if God permits you, his noble children and his own household, to be harshly tested for the splendor of nurturing virtue, since he will bestow eternal kingdoms on the victors?

He who thus promises the rewards of labor against all evils also says: "He who perseveres to the end will be saved" (Matt 10). And again: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matt 11). The price of a brief time that will perish belongs to eternity. The devotion of tribulation will be repaid, made fruitful by everlasting fruits. Among us the kingdom is sought through a fruitful captivity; security is bought through dangers, rest is obtained through sweat. For "virtue," says the Apostle, "is perfected in weakness" (2 Cor 12). Indeed, it is more advantageous for weak affections to be stirred carnally than for a man with sound limbs to carry a conscience vexed by blind punishment. For many are sick with sins from the very emptiness of their members. For while they are free from infirmities, the body must necessarily flow away in diseased laxity and be dissolved by a deadly disease, and it leads the man, wickedly healthy, headlong through vices and the forests of errors...

CHAPTER VIII.—Do you judge those to be free, or exempt from diseases, whom barbarous pleasures have bound? They do not have a chain, but luxury holds them in bonds with a deadly biting. Thus they have fallen into the snares of deadly pleasures like birds captured by the fowler's deceit, which the more they strive to escape, the more they entangle themselves in countless knots and plunge into deeper gulfs. Indeed, are those healthy whom disease envelops and tosses about in its madness? But he is sound whom God corrects with whatever blow, who testifies that he loves man by chastising him: "Those whom I love," says the Lord, "I reprove and chastise" (Rev 3). And therefore let not him judge himself sound who is free from diseases or filth, nor confess the remedy of his infirmity. But those are wretched who grow torpid in the inert tranquility of excessive happiness; whom a counterfeit health flatters so as to deceive and mislead; whom, namely, eternal sickness will hold, afterward to torment the whole man with an eternal torturer. For these, their paths are as many as the pleasures that have come to their aid. For these, their journey is whatever lust, their companion, has dictated amid perils, destined to perish. For seized by the winding ways of the vices that drag them along, the wretched are rolled about in varied downfall into destruction, never to return by that most uncertain path; they direct their mind outward like streams, whose return to their own source is never. Indeed, this life, whose companion is the end, as they themselves suppose, they lead with prosperous courses; but the step at the last is altogether badly smeared, while one stands harshly at the very end.

And what does it profit to have run prosperously through dangers, if after the course it should happen that one perishes? In vain, then, has a ship run with favorable prosperity through the proud sea and the mad waves to a friendly harbor, if it arrives with shipwreck and the harbor receives one who is about to perish. More advantageous, therefore, is it to arrive at the harbor of glory under the leadership of any pressure whatsoever, than with a delicate vessel, having completed the course of sickly laxity, to go forth into punishments. Often, then, poverty is better than riches, deformity than beauty, reproach than praises, servitude than power, weakness than strength, captivity than freedom, humility than dignity. David, the illustrious prophet, expressed a song of this kind: It is good for me, he says, Lord, that you have humbled me, that I may learn your justifications. Therefore it is better to be humbled by the judgment of the discipline of condemnation, than to be condemned with the world, as the Apostle says: When we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, lest we be condemned with this world. Therefore let us endure without murmuring what is bestowed upon our advantages out of love of the Lord. For it is administered as a remedy by the physician, as discipline by the Lord. It is the part of the medical art sometimes to cure with fires and iron. What wonder if the Lord, the physician of our souls, shakes us out by storms, examines us by diseases, purges us by calamities?

It is part of our courage to be purified as if through fire and flames, in the manner of vessels, as divine Scripture testifies and proves: "The furnace," it says, "tests the potter's vessels, and tribulation tests just men" (Sirach 27). And elsewhere it says: "Gold, and silver, and iron, and lead, and everything that passes through fire shall be cleansed" (Numbers 31). Vessels never say to the potter: Why do you examine us by the judgment of flames, and burn and test us with consuming fires? Unless the arbiter of fire has pronounced them most fit by his judgment, they cannot be of use. We too, unless the judgment or testing of temptations has purified us, are found useless to the potter of our members, who burns us that he may heal, tests us that he may free, vexes us that he may save. For nothing is so defiled, so sordid, that it is not cleansed from its vices by purgations. Often, indeed, we have seen those soiled by disgrace come to brightness, and iron covered with rust shine back into its former appearance. We have seen gold and silver purified by the discipline of flame, and cut-back trees revive with most joyful cultivation and be adorned with pleasant shoots. We have seen sterile things recalled to fertility, and, when the trunk has been drained, root and greatest fruit accompany it. So too in us, whatever perhaps swelled under pressing sins, whatever stood in the way from the stain of squalid oldness, this has been shut out by the light of sickness. And therefore, brother, the sickness of your members has restored you to health.

Only the substance of the flesh in you needs the strength of health; and lest it perhaps trouble you, it is troubled by a beneficial disease. This is what the gray hair of old age strikes in all things, and, like grass, it dries up, about to lose its own flower, as it is written: All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The grass has dried up, and the flower has fallen; but the word of the Lord remains forever (Isa. 40). Let us therefore bear it with equanimity if the body, which we read is to perish like grass with flowers destined to fall, is tossed about and drained by harmful afflictions—the body whose health is accustomed to bring disease to the soul and to draw forth wild and barbarous pleasures against spiritual advantages. Often, indeed, the unbridled flesh has stripped the soldiers of chastity of their belt. It is therefore for our good if we are chastised with long and biting scourges, since it is by its chastity that we are attacked. We foolishly love the flesh; we do not grieve that it is the soul's prison and tomb. Therefore, despising the fragility of the flesh itself, let us seize whatever has befallen us with the embraces of devotion as a treasure. It is the mark of a fearful Christian soldier to wish to stand at ease in tranquility like those who rejoice. It is the mark of a downcast mind to dread the storm, but the opposite—not to tremble amid adversities. It is the mark of misfortune not to know adversity; it is the mark of happiness to know how to meet adversities and to know how to fight.

For since all the blows by which we are shaken, as we have already said, are begotten by a divine gift, let him know that he is a stranger to the love of God who does not know how to be vexed by temptations, since the trumpet of the law with its manifold song drums this into our hearing and says: The Lord your God tempts you, it says, that he may know whether you love him with your whole heart and with your whole soul (Deut. 13). And elsewhere: My son, it says, do not neglect discipline, and do not faint when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves he rebukes (Prov. 3). And again: Do not despise the correction of the Lord. For he himself gives pain, and he himself gives refreshment; he strikes, and his hand presents healing (Job 5).

CAP. IX. — But perhaps you say: I AM SICK. Would that, as for others, it were granted to be tempted at intervals under hope of health! Would that it were permitted to taste well-being a little, by the interval of some success or other! What is this, that disease so dwells in the members and remains shut in, that it has shut out health that will not return? that a pernicious companion leads the stricken limbs even to the end of life, and is himself also to be led out by death, to be shut out with the members? What is this, that the limbs are deprived of the sense of health through the whole span of life? With the cold having been brought in, the warm vigor of the veins has vanished into chill; the gait that nature had given, an enclosed torpor has shut out. Finally, not even for the exercise of the wasting body is a path tasted, even a little.

The knees are not bent in the customary prayers; the uneven order of the fingers, thrown into confusion by an inner numbness, is kept from their usual grasping. What more? Every service of the body that once was wont to be at the disposal of the sinews in their stations thus grows numb, shut in. Alas! I alone ought to have been chastised thus: I alone to lie subject to such destructive blows, and to be wrapped in long-lasting evils. UTTER. I beseech you, brother, that you keep these murmurs in check with the reins of patience, and enclose your complaining words in silence, while the prophetic consolation thus addresses you and says: "Join yourself to God, and endure, that your life may increase at the last. Accept whatever is brought upon you, and endure in sorrow, and in your humiliation have shame, for gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation" (Sir 2). When I review the legal statutes and the songs of the prophets, the ear also, if I am not mistaken, receives the excellent sentences of worldly authority, stealthily drawn from the divine law, which must needs be inserted among the legal precepts. For it does no harm to use what belongs to others in that part in which they are ours. This is the first sentence: "Fire," it says, "tests gold, and misery tests good men." And elsewhere: "Nothing," it says, "seems more unhappy than the man to whom nothing adverse has ever happened. He was not permitted to prove himself, where all things flowed for him according to his wish." And elsewhere: "I judge you wretched," it says, "because you have not been wretched; you have passed your life without an adversary: no one will know what you were capable of, nor will you yourself.

For knowledge of itself requires experience. No one has learned what he is capable of unless he has been tested. And elsewhere: To be happy for a long time and to pass through life without disease of the mind—is this not to be ignorant of one part of the nature of things? Therefore let us bear with a happy mind the miseries that arise, by which unknown things are learned and felicity is born, and by which vice also is shaken out and purged: whether because it was fitting for us to suffer, or because we are now held as captives. Gold, unless the blast of the fire has added splendor to it, suffers vileness, darkened by its dross; so he who has not been shaken out by the trials of miseries lies ignorant of the parts of felicity and of his own virtue. Rightly does Solomon instruct you with this voice: He who has not been tested in anything does not know of what sort he is (Sirach 34). Bless therefore the Lord in the time of tribulation, you who have praised him in the time of health. Use the songs of the prophetic voice: I will bless, he says, the Lord at all times, his praise always in my mouth (Psalm 33). Let that voice of the most blessed Job be brought forth from you in constant proclamation, by which weakened powers are gladdened with great nourishment and rise up renewed in fresh shoot. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure evil things (Job 2)? The Lord gave, the Lord took away: as it seemed to the Lord, so it was done: blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1).

Against this, then, and contrary to the salt of wisdom, it is to murmur against the Lord in the time of testing—he who either harasses our life's pestilential stain by the tossing of troubles so that he may cleanse it, or sifts it by justice so that he may crown it; and by the vexation of the members, either sin is punished or justice is proved, so that it may conquer. For indeed, to bring comfort to your sufferings, let us turn back your mind to the ancient palms of testing, and let us use the most just examples.

CAP. X. — Although it is well known that the merits of persons differ by long degrees, it is not unjust if we compare the struggle of a Christian man to the contests of victorious justice. What you have seen fit to endure in this world is but moderate, if you reckon up what Job, the Lord's familiar friend, was able, with the Lord's permission, to sustain. God tempered it so that it might suit and match his strength. Could you, who are unequal, have been able to take the place of the succeeding ranks of justice? But you are shaken less than the just man, yet you are wounded more grievously by the rest; his are great, but yours are not less. For you yourself are great, who follow a great man.

This one man was Job the patriarch, an unconquered worshipper of the Majesty, rich and wealthy in the assessments of equity, whose Lord stood forth as witness of his illustrious merits, when he forestalled the deadly instruments of the hostile faction with a proclamation of praise: Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth: a man without complaint, a true worshipper of God, abstaining from every evil work, and persisting in his innocence and in the simplicity of his heart? Therefore when by divine permission he was battered by hostile darts, and the fierce insinuation of the robber kept striking him repeatedly, he warred down the emerging blows with the shield of patience, and, made strong by the barriers of justice, he met the deadly forest of threatening evils, full of arrows and crosses. That man, when his wealth was taken away by the enemy's whirlwind, felt no loss—he who found gain in losses, who held the Lord enclosed within the recesses of his heart. When a sudden force, with its corners shaken, twisted that building into collapse, he was bereaved as his children were taken away, and he endured steadfast and immovable in faith. When his harmless limbs, full of the Lord, swarmed with legions of beasts, and a destructive mass of worms wandered through the tunnels of his pierced flesh as his body was struck by hostile blows, within his wounds the just man fought on unharmed. And him whom the hostile madness tore at with pestilential blows, he bore with tranquility of mind, so that the hostile whirlwinds might give way. The just man conquered by being struck; the enemy failed by striking.

To him the service of his own servants is denied; around you your ministers perform their services. Friends console you by their frequent visits and grieve, so that, if nature allowed, they would perhaps bear this burden with you. One virtue of the mind, brother, is that which, snatching us from the whirlpools of this life as if from the sea, leads us into the harbor of tranquility. Behold, the day hastens toward its setting with downward falls. Behold, the unclean world is rolled into ruin by the filth of old age. Behold, by the aid of death heaven receives the victors. All things perish as we escape them, and, with the end now near, they are swallowed up never to return. With us, after the world is lost, after the death of the body, all things have been healed. We shall rejoice in the soundness of our members, where life will be vexed by no disease. Therefore in you, brother, let your most excellent spirit so guide and rule the hindered offices of the body with illustrious leadership, that this calamity of the body may be the chosen occasion of virtue. For a tree is not solid or robust unless, by the onslaught of continual storm, its trunks shaken and bent this way and that, it is tested, or unless the blast of the winds often rushes upon it; for by these very vexations it is bound together, pressed, and with roots fixed it is more firmly strengthened. So we are made ready by the biting scourges of frequent evils, stretched out, corrected by beatings, bound together by blows, and we are free of squalor while we are tossed about by long misfortunes.

Therefore amid increasing sorrows and when he afflicts his limbs with monstrous miseries, let virtue reign in heavenly vigor, strong and unharmed, by which adversities are borne, and those things which are called disadvantages. Amid these very straits the wise man, by the aid of consolation, rejoices and wastes away equally, and by ambitious reason he is enlarged and lives. Finally he is ignorant of what he suffers, who is mindful of unconquered virtue, who under the guidance of reason has learned that very many have been oppressed by evils, and by their own misfortune, with reason as their teacher, have been increased and nourished. Therefore the consolations of reason lie open to you, so that now the calamity of the body is reckoned as an advantage, and whatever the mass of the whole body makes captive. But the resurrection will come, destined to restore you unharmed, and whatever members are wholly occupied in you. But let the tongue be nourished daily in praises of the Lord by its theme, destined to tell of the abundance of praise in the heavenly kingdoms. May the Lord cherish you with heavenly medicine, and permit you to endure under such a weight with inflexible virtue.

LETTER II.

To a sick friend concerning the perfect man.

FIRST ADMONITION.

Vallarsius, in the place indicated above, writes that the author is S., Maximus of Turin: though no one now denies it, although St. Agobard, a writer of the ninth century, in book 20 of his work against Felix, describing a fragment which we shall note in its places below, does not doubt that it is Jerome's. He says: "The reader has, concerning the same matter, a sufficiently widespread and elaborated opinion of blessed Jerome, when he dealt with that passage of the divine Scriptures where it is said: 'I will place,' etc." Erasmus, on the contrary, says: "This letter was indeed the work of an eloquent and learned man, and carefully elaborated; but it is so discrepant from Jerome's style that neither could the latter have imitated the diction of the former, had he wished, nor the former that of the latter." In most manuscripts it bore no name at all; in some the name of Ctesiphon had been added. Nor in the letter itself is any mention made of the person to whom it was written. The author, however, mentions St. Ambrose and the discovery of the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius.

SECOND ADMONITION

That this letter too is unworthy of Marianus has been shown by us in the preface to the appendix. But the variant readings of this letter, which we have appended, are excerpted from the codex Plat. XIX of the Laurentian Library in Florence, page 337.

CHAPTER I. — Behold, I write to you again, and I find nothing worthy for your prudence to read. And is it any wonder if, when you are absent, my cold heart's wit grows chill as though deprived of the sun, and my mind, estranged from the light and stifled by the cloud of folly, grows dull, and I am wise all the less the farther I am separated from you? But if for the present anything in my speech has pleased you, it will be granted to me by your prayers. Finally, so that you may more diligently recognize all my folly, even after that waxen remedy was undertaken, I tended my own stomach without you, from which I deserve to suffer worse; to which, after your holy ministry and angelic service, I laid the hands of physicians, as though there were no prophet in Israel, when it should have been easier for me, if I suffered anything, to return to you than to think in the manner of the Gentiles; and better to endure the hardship of even the most difficult journey than to be cheated of the so precious vision of your countenance, so that any compensation whatever might follow rather than that I should come to the fly of the religion of Accaron. This world suggested to me in your absence, which, when you are present, has no counsel in me. For you had made me a senate of prophets, not a little gathering of sirens.

But now, to destroy the holy work you have done against me, the whole senate of folly enters into me and deals with me in fourfold form. For it exacts interest from me in your absence, which it did not presume to do in your presence, so that you may understand that if there was any wisdom in you according to God, what I was wise in was yours. Thus, when Moses was absent, the people of Israel committed fornication (Exod. 32); thus in the boat, while the Lord slept, the apostles were thrown into confusion by the storm (Matt. 8). Thus at the porches of Bethsaida, the man who had no one to put him into the healing pool is overlooked (John 5). How many other kinds of fault I notice here as well! I cared for the little body while the soul was sick; I cherished the outer man while the inner man was ailing; I came to the aid of human things while divine things were in distress, inclined by the vice of public custom, by which we are all cautious in the smallest matters and negligent in the greatest. And this happened for this reason, because we do not know where true life is. Surely this sun deceives us, this day tricks us, this course of ours circumvents us. The world leads us on, while we think that we are nothing more than it, and judge that to be light which we see with our eyes; and we judge that to be a man whom we behold, and we believe that we are making the world with our life, ignorant of where man is, and what man is, and what the life of that man is. For if we understood this, we would not live one thing while being born to another. Thus, having abandoned the origin of life, we have also lost the reason for living. And first, let us hear where this man is of whom we speak,

CHAPTER II. — Since the discussion which the division itself has just now generated for us — understand that he is contained within this body, which was formed by the hand of the divine Artisan from the clay of the earth, as within a kind of vessel, as the Apostle says: We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor 4) — he who, poured out everywhere through this body, has borrowed from the flesh the vital sense, which does not fail him. He rules, he is not ruled, and he has rather than is had, so that he does not receive life but ministers it. For when the fluid spirit gave life to this earthly and sluggish matter, taken up for the use of ministry, he becomes the master of the body, not a man under the bodily. Finally, this little vessel, as I said, lives while he is present and dies when he departs. This one, then, both visible and frail, is the dwelling, or the servant, or the sheath of that inner one. But he who truly is man, since he is the second, is the place of the division made; so that just as he is invisible, so all things of his must necessarily be invisible. To him, if he is sick, the hands of physicians cannot reach; nor is he restored by the juices of herbs, if he fails. Nothing bodily can enter into him; only the likeness of his own substance descends to him; he is cured by the word, he grows strong by obedience. And so, when in the church of Laodicea he seemed to himself both blessed and rich, and well-eyed and well-clothed according to the outer man, he is rebuked by the Lord, and it is said to him: Do you not know that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked (Apoc.

III. He who, as I said, was certainly considered to have neither clothing, nor eyes, nor riches. But our invisible God saw that invisible man to be in poverty, in blindness, in nakedness; and He even deigns to persuade him to buy from Him gold tried by fire, and a white garment, with which he may be most gloriously clothed, and eye-salve, with which he may recover his sight. Therefore he has his own eyes besides these carnal ones, which he can either lose or heal; and he lies naked beside himself, so that he needs clothing. But in a wondrous way he speaks to the physician, as the Lord Himself says, and He commands him to buy riches from Him. With what goods, if he is both naked and poor, will he buy either that most noble garment or that gold already purified by fire? From what source can the expense of such a transaction come? Clearly, if he either cherishes the profits of the outer man, or becomes rich by not using those very things in which he himself seemed outwardly rich; and if he blinds the eyes of the body, by which he was carried away by the ardor of worldly things, through contempt of the corrupt whole. Thus that invisible man, who truly, as we said, is man, is both raised up in contempt of this outer man, and is clothed in nakedness and enlightened in blindness. So Jacob, by bodily blindness, saw not only the places but also the merits of his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen. 48).

For when his son Joseph, who was offering the aforementioned little ones, perceived from his father's answer that he should not judge them as beneath his feet, he understood that he also foresaw even the things that were to come. But just as that inner man makes this outer man live by his own life, and animates him by irrigating him from the fountain of his own nature, so in turn the outer man, through the corruption of his death-dealing matter, kills that inner man if he has bound him with unlawful desires. And although the one seems to be of one nature and the other of another, each one passes over into the substance of the victor, so that either the spiritual man by his own virtues makes the carnal man also spiritual, or the flesh, as victor, makes the carnal soul its own. Finally, when the Lord in his anger was planning to destroy the human race, he said: My Spirit shall not remain in men, since they are flesh (Gen. 6). And because we are all certainly clothed in flesh, and yet without doubt we are not in the flesh—we who do not walk according to the flesh—from this it also arises that man is not always reckoned under this name of appellation. For in accordance with his virtues or his vices he takes on both forms and names. Finally the prophet says: Do not become like the horse and the mule (Ps. 31). There are therefore men who in the Lord's sight are horses and mules. And the Lord says: Do not cast your pearls before swine (Matt. 7). There are therefore men who are also swine. And again the Lord himself: Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt. 10). There are therefore men who are also wolves; and conversely there are men who are also sheep.

And the Lord said further to Peter: Feed my sheep (John 21); and he himself earlier: Come after me, and I will make you a fisher of men (Matthew 4). There are, then, men and fish. But these seem to be forms of actions, not of bodies. For the condition of our body is fixed, as is that of all living things; but since before God we are judged not by the condition of our body but by the merits of our life, it is evident that every man forms for himself his own condition and name by his own mind. And this is certainly brought about by the guilt or the virtue of that invisible man whom we are describing. For it is his own fault if, when made subject, he has allowed himself to be subject; if, contrary to the divine disposition, there is servitude in lordship and lordship in servitude. But lest I seem—since, as if with a wall lowered a little, I have come by my argument to that invisible man—to be destroying the body altogether, which is of so great a sacrament that in this very thing, that is, in our frail and weak body, the Lord came, I have not done this, nor do I do it; but I have attempted to show that the life of this outer man consists in the life of that inner man; and again, that the death of the inner man descends from the death of this outer man: when the poison has been brought near through vices, this outer man has nothing of life; unless he has been watered by that inner man, he holds nothing; and, as I said, the one passes into the nature of the other, either infected by vices or cleansed by virtue. Therefore, since I have now shown, as I think, both where man is and what man is, let us now see what the life of this man is.

For if that worldly life is certainly not the true life—the life that counts evil things as good and good things as evil, which the whole world follows and cultivates—it does not consist in an abundance of riches, nor in the height of power, nor in the cunning of jurisdiction, nor in the pomp of eloquence, nor in strength made glorious through battles, nor in merchandise that grows through the exchange of provinces and travel abroad, nor in the allurement of beauty, nor in the canvassing of gifts, nor, in short, in all these things that we see; since all these pass away, and even according to the world's standard people are accustomed to live blessedly without them. But that is the true life, the life to be revered: to know God, to fear his power, to love his goodness, to marvel at the world in its Maker, to despise the accuser, to be content with modest food according to nature's necessity, to be equipped with clothing either for the sake of modesty or for the injury of the season. Thus to make use of the rest of creation not out of its abundance, or for the sake of mere living, but as an aid to this light. For whatever is more than this is from evil: to love every man as a brother, to harm no one, to serve all, to bear the form of a servant with the Lord, who, besides the ministry that is contained within, daily serves us in the world—bringing forth the sun, sending out light, pouring down rains, varying the seasons, and either producing or ripening the fruits. For he serves us in the face of all creation, or in its abundance, since he generated all things for our sake.

But to return to the duties of man: to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the weak, grieve with the sorrowful, bury the dead, to hold nothing with oneself as one's own, but to judge all things one's own in common with all, and then truly to live for oneself when one is esteemed to live for others, and to lay up for oneself when one is believed to bestow upon others. And yet these things still pertain to the lineaments of the outer man.

CHAPTER III. — But the life of the inner man consists in the knowledge of divine things: not in what part of earth or heaven it is turned, not whether the stars are swept along in a contrary course, not whether the fullness of the ocean produces an increase of water, not whether the roundness itself suspends the orb of the world, or whether a fourfold form binds it by its more prominent corners, whether the world itself is one or there are many. For these things do not tend to the profit of the soul, and are judged foolish before God; but in those sound thoughts, whenever it is engaged in them, then it lives and is fed. And what are these sound thoughts? Those without doubt, when our mind remembers its Author; when it venerates and beholds Him as its Maker, as it were through a certain repentance of its own; when, about to see Him in His works, it marvels at His works, as the blessed Paul says: For His invisible things, from the creation of the world, are understood and seen through the things that are made, and also His eternal power and divinity (Rom.

that is, when from the immense visible things of creation we are stretched out to the universality of the invisible Creator, and through these things, while we learn that He is inestimable, we estimate Him, when by unrolling His height through the gift of the Holy Spirit (since He alone introduces us into that which is from Him), we look upon all the beginnings of rising creation as cast forth by Him beforehand, and when we gaze upon the things God has made as though He were still making them, and running through the whole origin of the world, we become, as it were, older than we are in age; and since all things were brought into being before we existed, we nevertheless reckon the nature of all things as though born through us, while we are grafted into the Author: into which we entered not to serve but to rule. Separated therefore from worldly wisdom, which ascribes all things either to chance or to atoms, and raised on high by divine meditations, and separated by His aid from those who said that matter always existed and willed God to be only the craftsman of things; or who worshipped these very elements as gods; or who introduced families of gods by sexes, by ages, by parts, as though some common people subject to the senses, distinguished by the Holy Spirit and drawn up to higher things, living the true life—that is, being wise with the true wisdom, which that folly lacks—let us remember that the world was made by God out of nothing, and that all living things came when called through God, the Word as craftsman, things which were not from nature.

Since it is lawful for Him alone to call things that are not as though they were; and since He deigned to make man himself, for whom such a great possession was being prepared, in His own image—not some Prometheus from a fable, but the founder of the universe with His own hand as well, lest any part of him be lacking in us—from the mud of the earth: this thought, as I said, is the life of the soul; since this is the first principle of living, that the soul should not be ignorant of Him to whom it owes itself; lest, deceived, it venerate another besides Him, lest it adore the ministrations of its life as though they were the authors of life; lest it marvel at the elements so much as not to judge them unworthy to be believed made, when He is far more to be admired who produced such wondrous things. How august is this divine thought, and how full of life! How greatly does it inflame man himself to every pursuit of uprightness! O how greatly does it commend to him the majesty of his Author, when he considers that nothing else in all creation besides himself was formed by the hand of God; not earth, not manna, not heaven, not finally the stars so lovely, so pure, so bright; that man alone was formed by that right hand from a certain mud, a heavier and fouler element, whose right hand measures heaven with a measure; whose fist encloses the spaces of the earth lying so vast; of such worth it was that he once existed.

Let us see, moreover, how far the goodness of the Creator further favors him, in that He did not make him from the stars; for if he had been created from them, he would have shone forth by the brightness of his material rather than by the condescension of his Maker, since he would seem lesser than the origin of his own body. But if, having been made from heavenly things, he were brought down to the earth for the cultivation of the lands, for whom would it be more glorious that one soon to be raised from the dust be set above the stars? Our God, I say, willed that what we are should be His own, properly His own, and that we owe nothing to matter, nothing to the elements, nothing to any principles whatsoever, whether great or small. If the mind, turned upon itself, reconsiders all these things and considers them, they become more moderate and more confined from our origins. But when, formed by the contact of the hand of God, we ceased to be what we were, and the underlying nature, changed into a new quality of matter, was made clear by the transformation of its element for its Craftsman, and there began to be, among the elements, a new element of our body—if it may be said—immediately we were made more sublime than all the bodies of the world, not by the substance of our nature, but by the power of the Creator, through which there arose from what underlies the other creatures that which would command all creatures. Finally, if you consider the metal of our flesh and body, you will find nothing more lowly, nothing more worthless, nothing more subject to every injury and passion.

The earth alone among the elements seems to be the handmaid of the rest; alone she endures the powers of all things not without loss to herself, whether, dusty, she is scattered by the winds, or, soaked, she is absorbed by the waves, or, baked, she is devoured by the fires of the stars—so that man cannot merely not glory that he is from her, but can even blush for it. But truly, if we contemplate our own condition, since it is more excellent than the other living creatures—while God brings him forth formed to His own image—you will find that the earth herself is the seed of our body. If there is any sense in her, she could have rejoiced that for our sake, in whom she received the image and likeness of the Creator, she was made happier by being changed than she was by being born. For the hand of God touched her, whose touch, while she was being made for His sake, she herself did not deserve. For what is more splendid than this condition? What could we know more sublime? What so carefully arranged into limbs? What so gracefully bent through the joints? What so sublimely raised up in the face and eyes? What so vocally modulated into words? What so vividly animated in the heart? What richer in sense? What more secret in thought? What more outpoured in speech? What stronger in intellect? What more furnished in arrangement? What more tenacious in memory? What more gentle in affection? What more sublime in thought?

So that it may be plainly evident that he adorned in this body that first-formed man, already then made beautiful with all dignities—indeed, with the state of his own Son, our God, who was to come at the end of the ages for our redemption—for him, even at that time, paradise, as a most pleasant estate, both adorned with things of the city and planted with things of the country, was given under the law of death; the pre-sower envied him, and by deceiving the credulous newness of the first humans he secretly poured his poison into our bodies, and by a certain discord of division he cut apart the single and perfect nature of man from two substances: so that, when we had one mind, that is, the one which the brotherhood of soul and body produced, through corrupted nature it brought forth another will against the soul. Finally, the Apostle also says: I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and making me captive in the law of sin which is in my members (Rom. 7). And elsewhere: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever you wish (Gal. 5).

CHAPTER IV. Hence also this our Creator, who had ruled both us for ourselves and the world for us, being offended by those first men, poured out curses upon each one, according as the measure of the crime demanded. And though angered, he nevertheless soon showed the mystery of our salvation, as a loving father. Nor would it have been fitting to think of the remedy of our salvation at any other time than that at which death was discovered. Thus, by the wiser sort, the physician is applied to death at the very outset, so that, once the seat of the disease has been detected, a healing remedy may more easily come to aid. Not therefore only then was our Lord and Savior promised, when Isaiah cries out: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and then when it was said to Abraham: At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son. For this was now almost too late, and so many thousands of the patriarchs seemed to be dead without hope, who assuredly could not have had life, if they did not hope that the Lord was to come, as the Apostle says: For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, but that which is hoped for. And what kind of hope could there have been, if it had not been promised? Nay, just as that beast, wiser than all the beasts, first tasted death for the first man, so it was fitting that the Lord, true wisdom, should already at that time taste the life-giving remedy, which he also did.

Nor did he cease to make this public, lest so great a work of his, overthrown by one battering-ram of the enemy, should seem to have been brought forth without the protection of any guardian, rather for ruin than for honor; and at the same time lest that one be considered the stronger, who had been able to overwhelm so great a work of another's power, than he, if he had either been unable to preserve his own work, which he made ineffably above all creatures, or had been unwilling to repair it. He defended himself, I say, against this envy. He defended himself, our Founder and Redeemer, and showed at once both that he could and that he willed: since neither did the power of his might fail, nor the condescension of his mercy. These things are for us the more to be adored, because in the very tempest of our error he did not hold back, but burst forth even greater when provoked; when, where we deserved punishment, the hope of redemption is shown, and, in the bitter crisis of shipwreck, the harbor of salvation is opened; so that in a new manner, what had been the material of wrath began to be the origin of mercy. If, revealing by a secret operation, he showed that he willed our weakness to be the proof of his power, and how greatly he loved us, while we sinned against him, he showed that he could not forget even those after their errors: nay, those whom he would redeem more preciousl, « than he had made.

Let human cruelty now seek out criminal defendants—whether private dungeons or public prisons—while it rages in iron shackles and stiff fetters on a hard beam, and lets its ingenuity loose upon punishments of many kinds; and let every judge, with head held high, prove the chastity of his own mind by another's peril, all the more a friend to cruelty the more alien he is to the crime. For those who are purer from guilt are accustomed to be more savage toward the accused. These men pursue the deeds of the wicked, or the contagions of criminals, all the more zealously the less and the more negligently they have avoided the company of evildoers—wretched men and endowed with utter blindness, who adorn good with evil, who exalt continence under the guise of cruelty, and commend their own cruelty by another's misfortune, since they make the destruction of the wretched a support for their own virtues, and applaud the tortures of the guilty as a supplement to the judge's innocence.

CHAPTER V. But our God, contrary to all hope, contrary to almost all belief, from the riches of his mercy has found good in evil, and in anger begetting and confirming piety, he willed the seed of sin to turn into the fruit of pitying; and he who ought to have destroyed us because of transgression promised that he would restore us because of his mercy. And at that time when we deserved punishments, he showed forth the proof of salvation: so that we might understand how much it avails to bestow what is not praise, since he gave so much to those who were angry.

In the first man, then, as he was speaking, he immediately promised us the aid of a judge, immediately brought forth good things from a good treasure, immediately made public the mystery, unknown even to the angels themselves, that was to be fulfilled in the last time, and promised to the earthly Adam an Adam from heaven. For when he struck the serpent with a curse according to its desert, he commanded it to have the earth for food and to crawl on its belly; and because he himself had brought about that death, he added, saying: And I will put enmities between you and the woman, and between your seed and the seed of the woman. She shall crush your head, and you shall watch for her heel (Gen. 3). Do you not consider, do you not see, that he was then threatening this very serpent in Christ? For I accept no other seed of the woman at all except that of which the Apostle says: Made of a woman, made of flesh (Gal. 14); that which, as the evangelist says (Luke 3), was thought to be the son of Joseph, but was not—that is, certainly, which Word was made flesh (John 1).

For if we consider that public and natural principle of generation, women do not have seeds; and no woman conceives without a man, and for this reason, since even then in Adam the seed of human generation had been corrupted by transgression, a heavenly seed is promised, as the Apostle understands it—not from the corruption of a man, but from God—and when it became flesh in a woman, he also naturally adapted those elements of bodily substance, that is, of moisture and blood, within that very vessel in which those same elements are situated. And so the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was already then promised in that woman. She was set in opposition to the enmities of the serpent: "I will put," he says, "enmities between you and the woman" (Gen. 3). He certainly does not say "I put," lest this be seen to pertain to Eve. It is a word of promise, which is transmitted into the future. "I will put," he says, "enmities between you and the woman"—that woman, surely, who will give birth to the Savior, not she who gives birth to a fratricide. "I will put," he says, "enmities between you and the woman," who, having rejected the ease of believing, will not only not listen to you, if you show her the sweetness of fruits in exchange for the opening of her eyes, or promise that she will be like the gods; but even when Gabriel himself brings the word, she will demand an account concerning the newness of the promise, saying: "How will this be, since I have not known a man?" (Luke 1).

That woman, certainly, whom golden modesty made tremble at the vision of the angel, yet the ardor of faith and a constancy that knew not how to slip made bold to inquire into the reason, and she who, at his coming, granted from modesty that she kept silent, did not yield to him when he promised, out of admiration. For she also, anxious, inquired about what was being announced. Finally, the angel did not reprove her as unbelieving, as in the case of Zechariah, but instructed her concerning the novelty of the divine operation, saying: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1). Behold, this is the seed of the woman, which was not poured into the womb through the channel of genital ministries by the mingling of both sexes, but was found in the womb of the undeflowered virgin with the enclosure closed. Finally, the prophet, when he promises a new thing and one full of miracle, fulfills it with a new word: Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son (Isaiah 7). Daily, certainly, we both see and hear of the necessity of procreation; yet of no woman is it said: she conceived in the womb, since the substance of the future human being, poured out through the man, coalesces in the woman, and the womb of the woman is not the beginning of the human being to be born, but the nourishment of what has been deposited. But Mary conceived in the womb not so much first as alone, and she whose purity of modesty brought forth the conception of the womb without damage to virginity: she alone bore for us what she did not receive from us, as the Lord says: You are from below, I am from above (John 8).

She alone is a mother to a son while remaining a virgin to a husband; whose conception, her virginity not knowing it, the birth made known; who alone was called a woman not by conceiving but by giving birth. From her, then, was promised the seed of the woman, which according to man is our Lord God, who was not infused into the womb but found there, as the evangelist confirms when he says of Mary: She was found to be with child in the womb (Matthew 1). Behold, he does not deviate from the preceding utterance of the prophet either, which had been announced: A virgin shall conceive in the womb; but in the newness of the mystery he agrees also in the parity of the wording, and by that same style the history of the deed is set forth by which the announcement declared what was to be done. And the prophet Isaiah says: A virgin shall conceive in the womb; Matthew reports: She was found to be with child in the womb (Ibid.). The effect answers to the very word of the promise, because the evangelist speaks no otherwise than the prophet, nor is he confounded in expressing the newness of the work by any difficulty of the wording he has found. Where are the grammarians? Where are the counselors? What school produced these men so that they speak beyond custom? Or what doctrine so openly showed the newness of the marked sign? They do not indicate it by human sense, since what they speak is not a human work. And yet they mark a new thing, never before done, in such a way that you understand that with the wonderful work a wonderful utterance was also born. Let us then repeat the holy women of the patriarchs, and let us see whether it is written thus of any of them. We read of Sarah: And the Lord visited Sarah, as he said.

And God did for Sarah as he had spoken to her, and she conceived and bore a son to Abraham (Gen. 21). In Isaac the divine benevolence is shown by these words: And God heard him, and Rebecca his wife conceived (Gen. 25). Finally, concerning Jacob and his wives it is set down thus: And Leah conceived and bore a son to Jacob (Gen. 29), etc. Of none of these certainly is it written, she conceived in the womb, though whatever they conceived, they could not conceive outside the womb, but because they knew they had conceived from marital union, for whom conception did not come about with virginity preserved; but Mary alone conceived in the womb, when, with the seminal passage unopened, she conceived with the womb closed. To the seed of this conception, if we reason rightly and treat divine things inwardly, that sentence which bound the firstborn by blessings or obligations preceded in figure for a time, the Lord saying: Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord (Exod. 13). What is that male that opens the womb, when the necessity of childbirth does not open the wombs of all women, but marital knowledge does. Finally, no virgin is spoken of after a husband, which name seems closed to future mysteries. And above we have shown that Scripture has this concerning Rachel: And God heard her, and opened her womb, and she conceived.

Certainly he did not say first "she conceived" and afterward "he opened her womb"; he said first "he opened," evidently so that the husband, with the doors of the womb opened, might enter as one about to sow seed into a plowed field. Then he adds, "and she conceived." It was not therefore by giving birth, but by conception; nay rather, the conception was made manifest; and it was not the one who was to be born in travail that designated her, but the one who was to be sown as the one to be brought forth. And if she was already opened before conception—namely, so that she might conceive—then certainly the one who was born could not have opened her long before, since he is spoken of as about to be born, who could not even be conceived while she was closed: "Every male," he says, "that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord" (Luke 2). What is this reasoning, which does not even seem to have been fulfilled according to the sense? Jacob deceitfully invades the place of the firstborn brother, and is neither excluded by the order of birth nor condemned for his deceit. The blessings of the son Joseph are marked out through his grandfather in reverse order according to the degree of birth; and there was no blindness in the one who foresaw, nor did the son, as he was being instructed, bend back the parent's right hand, which was irrigating the lesser with the richness of a richer blessing. All these things are certainly contrary, if we think that this was said of them: "Every male that opens the womb," that is, those who are born first from women by male seed. But since that sentence has another, inner meaning, for this reason firstborns of that sort yield, and lose the blessings.

Jesse's son David is not the first, nor the second, nor the third, but the last of all, who is anointed by the prophet, and is chosen king, more despised than all. Nor does the sentence of the law promulgated concerning the firstborn flatter him as first or second, since it would surely have judged the greatest, if it had judged the wombs of mothers to be opened by them; since this was certainly fulfilled, or in whom do we say it was fulfilled, which certainly could not fail to be fulfilled. Who is this whose womb a fetus opens, not a husband? What virgin conceives who did not cease to be a virgin in order to conceive? Certainly not she of whom Scripture says: Adam knew his wife, and she bore him a son (Gen. 4); but she of whom the evangelist signifies: And Joseph did not know her, until she bore a son (Matt. 1). Therefore in Mary this was fulfilled without doubt, whose womb not the deflowerer of virginity opened, but the offspring brought forth, she who as a virgin bore, who as a virgin conceived, who became a mother before she was married. From her went forth this male, who was truly to be called holy; and he opened the womb according to the promise of the offspring brought forth, not according to common custom and nature, since he was conceived by the seed of a man.

CHAPTER VI. — But since we cannot swiftly unfold the senses of God, with so many movements of the Scriptures opposing themselves to one single figure, so that it is easier to grow weary than to escape: since every Scripture is one path of all the senses, which who will be able to run through in human speech, even if the spirit should ascribe angelic wings to mortal tongues? It is fitting to return to the purpose, and with a small vessel not to fix sails for the deep, lest boldness run into danger, but for the solace of weakness to sail in sight of the shore, so that if any fear should arise, there may at least be hope that what is seen can easily be held. We were saying that the holy Lord is the seed of the woman, because according to the flesh he would not have a human father, and that he is already hostile to the serpent, whom the Spirit of God, not a material humor, had begotten in the womb of the virgin. Then what follows produces a greater effect from the man of the virgin: she herself shall bruise your head (Gen. 3). Who doubts that no one except our Lord has trodden the head of the serpent? For he alone walked over dragons and scorpions; he himself led captivity captive: and you shall bruise his heel, to whom else do we believe this pertains? The heel is indeed the outermost part of the footprint. And the Lord, after John's baptism, having fasted forty days, when he is tempted by the same serpent, now as victor over that third deceitfulness, exclaims: Get behind me, Satan (Matt. 4).

What else does he command his own heel to watch, if not that it is placed or cast behind? I have said these things above, and from there the discourse itself has led to this point, that the inner man, when he thinks not of this world but above this world itself, seems to live with that Craftsman of things and his own, as David says: Blessed are they who search out his testimonies (Psalm 119), so that it is almost—if it may be said—to become God, to meditate on divine things; that our Lord had already then disclosed the mystery of our salvation; whence in the psalms he says: In the head of the book it is written of me (Psalm 40). The head of the book is the beginning of Genesis, since all Scripture is one book, and one is he of whom it is written, God, and in this head we see that the promise concerning him is both [made] and the head of our life is hope, and therefore the head of the book of life has been made hope through God. Him, I say, as we have often said, the Creator, when the world was already growing old, fulfilled what he had promised in the first age of the world. Whence the prophet says: Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me (Psalm 23). The rod is the mother of the Lord, from which this staff went forth for the world now weary with age, to sustain it. Therefore that one, having slipped down into the womb of the virgin—so that we may retrace the whole history of our redemption—by birth made himself a man for man, and made his creature [come] from the Creator. That he received the form of a servant, but emptied himself by the will of power, not by the nature of divinity, through which he could not fail to be what he had been.

That he endured curses in return for saving miracles; that he suffered spittle, blows, the thorny crown, and finally the cross; that he penetrated the depths of hell; that on the third day he rose again in the very body that had been fixed to the cross; that this man, after death, as the living God and victor, sought heaven and sits at the right hand of God, to come in his own time to execute judgment; that he is celebrated by the Spirit of God through the mouths of his saints. To have thought these things is to have lived; this thought is the pasture of the soul; to fall back or return to these things is to be joined with the Lord, and with him through these things to be humbled is with him to suffer, with him to die, and with him also to be raised. What shall I say of the resurrection itself, in which, though we are laughed at by the nations, we are not separated from Christ—although many who call themselves Christians exclude the resurrection of the flesh. But let those be without a body, to whom perhaps it is granted—if it may be said—that the Lord is represented to them otherwise than the Lord returned to the Father, as we believe, and as we speak.

CHAPTER 7. What, I ask, is more joyful than this thought? What could be more uplifting than this? And it ought to cling more firmly fixed in our minds, that we shall one day, when we have departed from here, return to our bodies, and that the interim separation of soul and body does not bring it about that we are nothing at all, but that we are reformed into better things through the Spirit of God, since we have already received the pledge that the Lord promised us here. And this body, which in its own nature is frail, and rightly weighed down by the former transgression, and is borne under the divine curse, shall go to the earth (Gen. 3); it shall again after much time, that is, at the end of the ages, when it is the smallest portion of ash, perhaps even now nothing, be renewed from that same earth which corrupts it into nothing: since that earth itself is to be freed from the slavery of corruption, into the whole soundness of its members, and into a state of beauty and comeliness. Whom does such a thought not delight with admiration? The remains, I say, of our bodies, either none or certainly the smallest, and however tiny, yet filthy, and never looked upon without horror by the mind, are to be refitted into their own man again—not, as the lying and raving Pythagoras is believed to have been in Euphorbus, but into its own proper body and name, through bones and sinews, through veins, through all the vital parts, and indeed joint by joint.

But this is not a narrow thing, since the seeds of all crops and plants return greater and more beautiful in the blades than they were either sown in the earth by men or fell of their own accord. Who would not rejoice, so to speak, that he is sown in the earth, so that it may return us better than it received us, as the Apostle says: The resurrection of the dead is sown in corruption; it shall rise again in incorruption (1 Cor 15). What possession of present things can be compared to this hope? Or what else will there be that lifts us to contempt of death, than this meditation unfolded by divine promises and the voices of the prophets? What such thing had Cleombrotus of Ambracia learned from Plato's disputation in his book, who did not fear to be his own murderer and threw himself headlong from a very high wall, since he judged that there was no judgment after death, and supposed that without any distinction of merits all souls after the body are borne equally to heaven? This all held so truly, and so one cloud of this error enveloped all those wise men of the world, that even that teacher Socrates, so praiseworthy as they think, privately made a murderer of himself, lest he be put to death publicly. Far different was what the blessed Apostle had premeditated and pondered: that he was not [called] by men, but through the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal

what he taught he had received, not covered by the dark shadows of the wooded Academy, but illuminated by heavenly light; not instructed in some school of letters among yawning little boys, but imbued in the third heaven among shining angels, he cries out in contempt of the present life: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil. 1). Surely he does not seek a wall from which to throw himself to death, but Christ the Lord, through whom this mortal may be swallowed up of immortality. For he understands that to die is gain for him whose future life is with Christ. Without the Lord, however, nothing profits, even if one should gain the whole world, but will suffer the loss of his soul. The vessel of election therefore believed with manly strength that through Christ our Lord he would be returned from this earth—which never gives back what it receives without interest, but some things at less, some at greater usury, as thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold, the Lord himself in the Gospel thus reading the seeds he had planted; from this earth also the truth which Pilate did not know; which none of the princes of this world saw: For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2); from this earth, I say, the Apostle declares that he will be transformed to the body of the Lord's brightness, into shining members; with Solomon also promising this through Wisdom, when it says: They shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds (Wis. 3). And therefore into this utterance: For to me to live is Christ (Phil.

), he burst forth secure, in which surely the merits that were to live are; but those who were far off, as they did not know, so also will they be unknown. Now, if it seems good, let us inquire what that Solomonic sentence promised: The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks in a reed-bed. What is it that, to those to whom the brightness of flames is granted, so lowly a place is offered where they may run to and fro and be cast down; so that by the contempt of the place they seem to grow less, who have grown great by the light of their bodies? What is it, I say, that, compared to stars, they shall fly through the reed-beds, and in the form of starry splendor shall pass through the most wretched stalks of the earth: when things far incongruous are mingled, either brightness with reed-beds, or reed-beds with brightness? Consider, I pray you, the words of the divine mystery: for whom, as he has no care for oxen, so neither for the reed-bed: or what do reed-beds do in the resurrection, except that he labors to show us through the forms of all things, either of cattle or of plants; and through this, as the Apostle says, all things were written for our sake (Rom. 4). Understand that by the images of the reed-bed, unbelieving and incredulous men are shown: and their bodies are pleasing in surface, but inwardly empty of virtues, which as soon as the spirit of vanity has breathed upon them, they imitate the hissing of the serpent, and the healthy offspring, the progeny of vipers, follow. Sparks, he says, in a reed-bed. The saints, therefore, among sinners, since not all flesh is the same flesh.

In the reed-bed, he says—that is, in the empty light, bodies that will burn with alien splendors, for whom the future brightness of the saints is instead a punishment—since God is a consuming fire, and the righteous will come into the image of the Godhead. For God made man; in his own image he made him (Gen. 1); and the Apostle testifies that he believes he will necessarily be like him. For if he was like God when he was made, he will also be like him when he rises again; because whatever now in us seems unlike the Author has all been impressed by the fault of transgression; and the craftsman of lies has disfigured the living form of truth with his swollen needles, and has inscribed his own depravity even upon our members, corrupting our minds; these things, wrongly added or diminished, will be washed away through the glory of the resurrection, and only that will shine forth which reflects the Author of all things as in a mirror: so that the interpolator may grieve that he has lost his work, and man may at last glory that he is whole. Yet not all, as we have already said, but only the righteous will we be in the light. For we shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed (1 Thess. 4), for the diversity of persons will make a distinction of merits. For even if among the saints themselves there will be some difference in operation—as the Apostle says, Star differs from star in brightness (1 Cor. 15)—how much diversity will we perceive either among the impious or among sinners, of whom some rise again for judgment, others for the council of the saints.

Even though they are set apart at the time of the resurrection itself, what shall we say of their attire and form? This, as it seems to me, will not be found in any woven garment, nor in things elaborated by women’s skeins, but in their own merits and prayers: blessed John showing this in the Revelation, who says he saw the saints clothed in fine linen (Apoc. xix). And lest perhaps under the coverings of fine linen we should seek threads and material, or suppose that something material, corruptible, and fleeting is exercised in heavenly things, he added: But the fine linen is the justifications of the saints. Then, therefore, as I understand it, those things will come upon the surface of our body which now are hidden beneath the body. Then for each one—wretched me!—his own conscience will become his garment. Then those things which, upon that foundation than which no other can be laid (1 Cor. III), have been built up by each one will stand forth, so that either he who established a dwelling may receive a reward, or he who built what will burn may suffer loss. Now why should I mention those things which follow, which are wholly the saints’? Flesh without earth, a body without the sense of pain, a soul without fear, life without end, an age without time, light without night, blessedness without limit? I see man, and in man God: For God is all in all (1 Cor. xv).

Whatever is now seen by man as impossible, that then will be able to be accomplished through the munificence of the eternal King: to veil and to reveal, to melt and to solidify, and to become such a body as both entered to the disciples when the solid and corporeal nature of walls and doors did not perceive it, and yet all the gods stood and saw it before them within. And all things that the Spirit of God was fostering without this body, He would make to be body together with the Spirit of God. Christendom cannot be sated with the delight of these understandings. This is their rest, this their delight, this their pleasure, this their joy: to go in mind to the seat of God, and there to claim for themselves a place and a portion of that seat, not by their own presumption, but by the promise of the Godhead. Nor does this seem arduous to them, since they already know that their man is there in Christ the Lord. They claim for themselves a just right from their kinship through the God who assumed flesh, since we are of His flesh and of His bones. For He is the head of the body, the Church; He is the beginning of every principality and power, as the Apostle declares: From whom the whole body, thus compacted and produced through conjunction and joined together, grows into the increase of God (Col. 2). What then shall I say of the coming judgment, and of the day of the Lord, desirable to the pious and to be fled by the impious; what of that fiery deluge—not of waters—with the earth smoking, the sea fleeing, the heaven rolled up like a book?

These things are sorrowful to the rich of this world, but to be awaited by the poor of Christ, for whom the Lord sighs in the psalm, saying: Because of the misery of the needy and the groaning of the poor, now will I arise (Ps. 12). What of that tribunal, immense from the majesty of the judge, and to be adored with its twelve seats, and such great power given by the Son that in judging they have even the substances of angels, as it were bound over to them as their creator, as the Apostle says: Do you not know that we shall judge even angels (1 Cor. 6)? And what will there be that is not believed to be handed over to them, to whom even that spiritual nature of wickednesses is to be subjected? What then will they do, who now glory in honors, who through terrible prefectures and fasces and eternal (as they suppose) consulships strive to compare themselves to God by rapine, not by nature? What will he do who joins house to house? Who, having thrown a city into disorder and broken all the boundaries by which it was hemmed in on every side, leaping over mountains, rivers, and seas, as far as in him lies, wishes that there be one possession—the earth that is common to all—and, with insatiable greed exceeding the breadth of the immense world, pours himself out into the anxiety of Alexander of Macedon and the innumerable worlds of the Epicureans; and having acquired through avarice the narrow confines of this world, is kindled more credulously toward another, not having reckoned the possibility of his own body, thinking that he would suffer loss of right if he did not give credence to his own frenzy?

What will these men do, who, as correctors of morals, tear apart and harass the household of the Lord—living more attentively and more strictly, whether in the humble color of their clothing, or in the dry frugality of their food, or in the not-idle sobriety of their vigils—as though it were soft in too-soft garments, fattened on too-abundant feasts, or yawning on too-warm couches, not knowing that in the holy martyrs and confessors of God the pupil of his eye is struck? They will perish without doubt, all their thoughts will perish on that day; nor will Lucius Crassus defend them at that tribunal, nor M. Antonius, nor Tullius, more eloquent than these; because then every tongue of the world will fall silent, and justice alone will be eloquent in its little rustics, which made the mouths of infants eloquent, and loosed the tongues of the mute into a new song, and by its mercy acquired for itself a heavenly harmony from its little sheep. To celebrate whose glory, even if the zeal of men has ceased, the condemned stones are shown forth for the confusion of the human race. But I have digressed from the proposed subject, as if about to rebuke the wickedness of mortals. And as a public accuser of the world's vices, I have not spared, while I pitied some, the uniform nature of evil.

For even if it were the time for judging, I would not dare to cast a stone upon the adulterer; even if the authority of a purer conscience armed me for the judgment of the innocent, I ought still to wait for the time, as the Apostle teaches, who did not remove judgment from the saints but deferred it. For he says: Do not judge before the time (1 Cor. 4). He was intimating that the time of resurrection must be awaited, when through the glory of incorruption the flesh, restored to life, will stand forth to be marveled at for judgment, with the constancy of eternity now abiding, when fear concerning a fall will be present: he will not then tremble to bring a sentence against another, when he has earned the right to be secure concerning himself. But now all things are doubtful, all things wavering, as the Apostle says: Consider yourself, lest you also be tempted (Gal. 6), you who, being ignorant of another's state, easily judge him concerning his ruin. What then if God gives confidence to the wretched, as he does to the blessed? Let us rather praise the rewards of the saints, that is, the true ones, than be marked out as improvident or untimely, whether in conscience or in time.

CHAPTER VIII. Let us therefore return to those most noble and most joyful thoughts of the saints; for nothing is more joyful than for a mortal to meditate upon the inheritance promised to him. Let us indeed place before our eyes the one whom we have spoken of, since it is safer to celebrate true things than to censure wretched ones—although truly happy things cannot be narrated without the unhappiness of sins. So let us observe, as we have resolved, the saints of God flying about everywhere with torches, and with right hands flashing for vengeance, drawing two-edged swords. For this is the glory of God's saints, this the soldiery despised in this world, this scattered by the tongues of all in detractions. Here then will be the fruit of our patience, this the reward of our endurance. These are the prizes for the name of the blasphemed: to have subject to themselves every proud soul and every man who exalts himself, the once most powerful kings of the world and those adored by the whole globe, to be brought forth with iron cuffs and fetters, and their nobles bearing the weight of huge chains on neck and shoulders, to be offered before the splendor of that august tribunal to those whom they once despised, looked down on, and mocked. For the order has been reversed, so that this world may belong to the luxurious, and the other to the wretched. For woe to the rich, since they have received their reward; but to those rich to whom it shall be said: I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and you did not give me to drink (Matthew 25).

To those rich men, certainly, who had been unwilling to make friends from the unjust mammon, who pondered in their own thoughts, as their fruit overflowed, that they were refreshing no one, to build new storehouses for immense fruits—and they did not know where they would eat on the morrow. Their soul was being demanded of them at that time, occupied as it was under a single night by vain anxiety, since they had not ceased to lay up treasure, nor had they left off keeping watch over their buried riches. Hence Lazarus the poor man rejoices in his own resting place together with that patriarch who lived as a stranger in the world. But the rich man, by contrast, burns in eternal fires, and stripped of every dignity and substance, he implores the divine aid of the poor man he once despised, and longs to be touched by even the least finger of him whose destitution amid his own rich feasts and abundant banquets he did not sustain even with the crumbs falling from his table. Since, therefore, the foreordained judgment is to be carried out through us—that is, through the saints—vengeance upon the nations and upon the peoples has been given to us. When this is considered, what mind is in us, what ardor of spirit, what desire for things to come, what contempt for things present, can be more easily felt than said. Or who is there that, hastening toward these things, would not desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ? Or what great thing is it if, for goods so great and such as these, death is despised—goods for the sake of which even this life is to be despised? For to those who have lost their soul for these things, he saves it.

But on the contrary, whoever has saved his soul here will lose it. For since very many in this world are so inflamed with ambition of mind, as if by raging flames, that they spare neither their stored wealth nor their inheritances, nor even their own children—whom those accused of avarice have also been accustomed to put forward in their defense—while they purchase governorships and consular offices, powers which death takes away and a successor shuts them out from: what madness is it not rather to procure, at every expense and even at the loss of life itself, those things which make men either advanced and secure concerning eternal life, or glorious with the perpetual dignity of judgment?

CHAPTER IX. — The time admonishes and the place itself suggests, nor does the subject seem out of place, since we have begun to treat of the merits of the saints, so that we may wash away the blasphemies of a most wretched wretchedness which seems to pertain to this kind. For there have arisen those who have preferred to bite with detraction, rather than to receive with veneration, the excellent and heavenly virtues now already working, in our own times as it were, through the relics of the saints, vomiting forth upon the servants of God that ancient poison of Jewish unbelief, which they once poured out upon the Lord himself with viperous tongues and deadly hissings, saying: By what power do you do this? And who gave you this power (Matthew 25)?

For they were reciting to us, as we sat nearby, the foolish disbelief that was being spoken against the divine and most blessed Gervasius and Protasius; and while they schemed to disparage Pope Ambrose in some matter, they did not fear to violate them with sacrilegious words, seeking in this way an explanation of the miracles. What is this, that from the very fact that they are martyrs, they have merited the gifts of powers? Why is it exercised so late which was long ago granted to them? Or if they did not show it at the time when they suffered, how have they now worked? What is this that they now seem to show? Or has Ambrose made them greater by revelation than the dignity of martyrdom? Do you recognize, though in other words, that what we reported was falsely cast up against the martyrs concerning the Lord: By what power do you do this? and who gave you this power? A lukewarm consolation, I think, and one born of envy, to ask whether that is divine which you see to be divine; and to demand a reason, when it is necessary to believe. And since the Apostle says: Charity believes all things: who doubts that those who have not applied faith to such great powers are without the charity of God? But he denies the faith who, as a tempter, asks: Whence is this power? as if it were not manifest that the holy martyrs now work miracles in the Spirit in that same power in which they first conquered their adversaries in the flesh and in their passion.

Let us set our foot against these sons of the Jews (if it may be said), and just as recently we crushed their parent—that is, the Jew who thought himself exceedingly wise in his sacrifice—by the gift of the Godhead, so let us also destroy this offspring of blasphemies under the Christian name, through him who said: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the prudence of the prudent (1 Cor 1), so that we too may glory in a twofold triumph through the Lord, and they may recognize that the understanding of divine things is established in the catholic faith, not in the wisdom of the world, as the Lord warns: Unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa 7); so that it may be more manifestly evident both to the faithful that the obscure things of unbelief lie open, and that by the unfaithful even the plain things of faith are not perceived. Perhaps, in keeping with your solicitude and vigilance and life-giving diligence, you may ask what that question was in which the Lord granted us a trophy from the false Israelite. I will report it and not be silent, since you love that the page be extended for you with these matters. For even if it seems unsuitable that, with the earlier matters not yet finished, other beginnings should be inserted, nevertheless for your sake I prefer to speak some things even out of their proper order than to pass over what has just now been granted to me by your prayers. A certain one of the enemies of the cross of Christ, among the familiars of God and indeed teachers, striking at the Lord with a spirit of blasphemy, brought forward examples from the law concerning that stumbling block of his people which they took up against our Lord.

And just as his father of old, a murderer, testing the Lord on the pinnacle of the temple, impudently proclaimed what had been promised concerning him in the law, so this man, lest he should seem less learned in perfidy, or lest the lie stand exposed without greater authority, says: Our prophet Elisha performs more miracles than your Lord Christ. For since you report as something great that Lazarus was recalled to the light, what more can you say than that a dead man was raised by a living one? I set forth what is judged true even by your own confession. For our Elisha, already dead, by the application of his bones gave life to a dead man—whom the crowd, fleeing the arrival of pirates near his body and abandoning the duty of final rites, had cast out lifeless—and from cold bones and a bloodless body he poured vital warmth into another's corpse, and did not give what he had, but bestowed on another what he himself at that time did not have. This, I believe, seems to you greater than the other wonders: that a dead man was sent back to the living airs through a dead man, and at the very time when he himself was bound by the law of nature, he dissolved the law of nature. If this surpasses all works, why should he not be held the greater, whom nevertheless we confess to be both a prophet and a lord? Or if you know anything even similar to this, speak out, so that he may excel in honor who was more excellent by the merit of his power.

At these words our nobles were stunned, and offering no reply, nor bringing forth any weapon to strike back, they nearly fell beneath the empty engine of the adversary and the useless battering-ram—so much so that he who, as they say, ought to have been a fugitive from all, even carried off the glory of a victor without a contest. When this was reported to me, I groaned that such negligence dwelt in us that we cannot even establish the truth, while others are able to hammer home a lie on behalf of the truth; and I asked the Lord, since nothing is ours, to supply his arms, so that the reproach of our cowardice might be taken away. Give me, I said, that boastful man who says: Our lips are our own; who is our Lord? I shall bring him forth indeed through him who destroys the deceitful tongue, so that they may understand that a servant is not to be equated with his lord, even though the Jews themselves know that the ancient prophets performed no miracles by their own powers. Finally, Elisha himself, when he had inherited the spirit of his master, as though he had come rather too boldly through the recompense of gifts, could not nevertheless taste the waters except under the invocation of God. I confess that the power of that man was for the time being such as was set before us, so that the glory of our faith may be greater if we suppress even a temptation while we believe. What do you say, blasphemer of the Lord? Elisha, he says, himself dead, raised another dead man by the contact of his body.

At this point the prophet’s power rises up fully, as in all things, in its own Lord—that power which is in the Lord Jesus Christ. For when your unbelief secured his tomb with stones and soldiers besieged the stone, I believe it was so that his resurrection would not lack suitable witnesses. For you knew he would rise, if you were willing to believe; for suddenly he, after the bars of the underworld had been shattered threefold, amid the astonishment of the soldiers and the ruin of the rocks, raised not some other person but himself into the light. These were Elisha’s own gifts; if they had been his, he would have preferred to give them to himself, nor could he bestow on another what he himself needed. Finally, your own ancestors declared this to be greater, when they mocked the Lord on the cross, saying: He saved others, let him save himself; let him come down from the cross, and we will believe him (Matthew 27). Therefore we win by the verdict of your own people. Your people promised that they would believe if he had granted to himself what he was accustomed to grant to others. Why do you not believe what you do not deny to be more excellent? Certainly no one had this power. Finally, the Lord also says of his soul: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again (John 10). Review the proud images of your ancestors, and unroll the virtues of the patriarchs, and you will find who had such power. Why should I not believe that he can free my soul, who could also free his own?

The recollection has suggested that the volume is growing as I prepare to say more, and therefore the course of this inquiry must be recalled, since that earlier question still stands at the doors, to which its own space, though with tighter reins, is nevertheless still owed intact. And truly there was no need to say many things in this part, lest that too should grow: if indeed he thought he had brought forth something great, because he sought victory by a lengthy disputation—whose wisdom, which was none in him, but whose pride, which abounds, we have refuted.

CAP. X.—But since this Israelite has been rejected, lest he boast that he fought a battle (inasmuch as what we have said we brought forward for the instruction of our own people rather than for the contest and conflict of those who refuse to believe even when they are conquered), lest we be judged either to have impudently given holy things to dogs, or to have scattered pearls before swine (Matt. 7), we must return to that point from which, with the paths of meaning almost cut off, I digressed to this place; and the sheep of the house of Israel must be carefully gone around: for if the love of God is in us, who is weak and I am not weak? who is scandalized and I do not burn (1 Cor. 11)? And they must rather be taught, lest they speak even to blasphemies, if perhaps they neither hold nor understand the things prophesied. They ask whether it is divine power that began to appear in the martyrs. What men of what law seek this?

Namely, the Christian faith, which is so equipped with prophecies that nothing so new, so unexpected could rush upon our times that the more faithful would not marvel at it, or the more weak in faith blaspheme it. All things, even up to the Lord, the ancient prophets foretold. All things that were lacking after the Lord, the apostles prophesied: blessed Paul, through the freedom of the Holy Spirit, not keeping silent, who says: We know in part and we prophesy in part (II Cor. 13): not that he casts out all things or does not prophesy all things, in whom especially Christ speaks; but he prophesies in part concerning the whole, and in part knows concerning the whole. He prophesies to us that which he knows to belong to that time which was to come. But what he prophesies, he prophesies as things to come for a future age. Yet he prophesies the whole, even if he prophesies in part. For he prophesies those things whose revelation the part of that time which remains even to the end needed. In part, therefore, he prophesies, since it had already been prophesied in part: and therefore the prophet knew the things to come which he was prophesying. The fullness of time, as he himself said, has abolished the particles of this prophecy, in this way: When that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be destroyed (Ibid.): that is, when at the conclusion of the world, neither greater knowledge nor prophecy is any longer to be sought. Finally, to show more openly the power of this understanding, he added: We see now through a glass in an enigma; but then face to face (Ibid).

For the meantime all things are in a figure, and shadowed by certain outlines of images, so that the weakness of our flesh and our earthly substance might the more stretch itself out toward the truth of spiritual things, so that it might make desire for its own beauty, even through a mirror, faintly kindled in them, and might teach us how great It is in Its own substance, when It appeared so wondrous even in Its light reflected in enigmas; and therefore we do not see the things promised through a mirror, yet we do not possess them on account of the merits of virtues; and we marvel at the light still obscure, we do not hold the things handed down. But then prophecy and knowledge shall cease, when there shall be an entrance into the very power of all the promises that was promised. Hence also prophecy is always obscure, because it is sung at one time and seen at another. What is spoken while it is not seen is, as it were, not believed to have been foretold. Finally, Isaiah, when he had merited to recognize our redemption so long beforehand in the womb of the Virgin, and showed it to the people as though already present, saying: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel (Isa. 7); he troubled the present and future age of the unbelieving Israelites. For both those ancients killed their own prophet, because they did not see the things he showed; and these killed the one foretold to them, because they did not receive the prophecy. Let us take care that this not happen to us as well, if our age blasphemes those whom a former age persecuted.

And since, as we have said, what had been foretold has come, and there is nothing to come that was not foretold before, the Lord himself saying: Behold, I have foretold you all things (Mark 13). Let us rather see whether these things were ever proved to have been poured into the ears of the ancients, which now are feigned as though fulfilled before our eyes. Let us see whether all these things are worked by one and the same Spirit (1 Cor 12). If, finally, not even an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than what has been preached to us: although he himself, the powers of the Lord, are testified to through the torments of demons, since Satan does not cast out Satan: because the uniformity of wickedness, fused by an undivided natural fellowship, does not fear loss of itself through the addition of likeness, but receives increase. For both the spirit of wickedness had gathered many into the form of one legion, and the confederacy of viperine iniquity; nor did the multitude harm itself, which, just as it acquired wretched strength when joined in infirmity, so it feared to fall, when divided by permission, into the emptiness of a substance without strength.

CHAPTER XI. But for now, having set forth this part of the argument, as we proposed, let us prove that those things which we marvel at in the churches of the Lord and in the cemeteries of the saints are to be believed to happen divinely, if they have been foretold. And in this so hard and difficult a matter, and one not treated by anyone before, we ought to consult the Lord, if we did not fear being deservedly rejected for our boldness, since merit fails: because no one outside of him can explain the things that are his. For it is strange whence such great confidence comes to wretched men, whence comes such friendly familiarity of addressing the Lord, that we dare to burst forth into this utterance: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth (Song 1). Who has conceived so great a desire? Who, being a careless estimator of his own great vows, has sighed for such great things, that he longs to touch his very mouth closely; and would that he might deign to kiss us with the kiss of those whom he himself has deigned to kiss: so that, standing in the second, last, and third places, we may deserve to draw some knowledge in part from their lips, who learned the whole fullness of wisdom from the mouth of the Lord himself. Although, even if we were supported by the privileges of great merits, there were set forth in examples, as it were certain deep-laid foundations of modesty, repeated: lest any unseemly and disorderly presumption of levity should dare anything. What is more chosen than blessed Peter? What is more erect toward hope?

What is more free in faith than that the Lord promised that He would kiss him with the kiss of His own mouth, saying: "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven"; and that: "Upon this rock I will build my Church" (Matt. 16)? Yet here, bowing himself down with a certain weight of modesty, he submits to questioning with greater shyness the confidence that he had held more loftily from merit, when at the Lord's supper he does not ask by himself who it was that would betray the Lord, but humbly and bashfully he seeks the Lord's kiss from another's mouth. For although he had confidence before the Lord, so that he might even boldly presume unshaken things for a man, as there, when he dares to ask the Lord walking upon the seas that the surface of the waters, made solid beneath his footsteps, sustain him likewise, somewhat more diffident of himself but more considerate for us, he set before us, as in a mirror, forms imitable by his act. If through a messenger he cautiously explores the foreknowledge of the Lord, what is more worthy than this instruction? What is more subtle than this art of consulting, "which we ought to do," for whom, since there is confidence of no merit, there ought to be at least the modesty of example, imitating even in this part the blessed Peter, who showed not only with what humility, but also through what means we can arrive at the things desired. From him let us seek the resolution of this question, whom he himself did not blush to question.

From him, I say, who reclined on the Lord's own breast as if upon the ark of the New and Old Testament, and not only came as a diligent investigator to the vestibule of certain divine oracles, but entered the very inner sanctuary of the secret dispensation as a familiar priest; and therefore he alone saw the Word in the beginning, when it was committed to him to measure, as it were, the outer altar of the sacred temple and then the inner. Let him lead us into his own breast concerning that book which he wept to see closed with seven seals and rejoiced to see opened—not through some counterfeit, but through the open doors of truth.

CHAPTER XII. But lest we linger while he is consulted, he anticipates those who inquire with the shortcut of foreknowledge: what he saw would one day be a cause of trembling to our minds, he illuminates. He also gives answers, as if questioned, from Patmos—from that place, surely, where one not a stranger entered the secrets of the heavens closed to Caesar, and, driven from the company of men, came to know the sacraments of the angels. For he says: I saw beneath the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, which they had; and single robes were given to them; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying: How long, Lord, holy and true, will you not avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And white robes were given to each of them, and it was said to them that they should rest yet a little time, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who would be killed afterward should be completed.

VI) — The Apocalypse, truly divine, was rightly revealed by so great an apostle at the time of his confession, so that they might be made to endure unto patience the more, when the merits of those who suffered were shown to him! There is no need, then, to go astray through the leaves of the Sibyls, whose pages, even as they struggled with the uncertain evils of the world through spirits, were so troubled in their places by the winds of this air. Behold, the apostle most evidently unravels what he held, and brings light to a most obscure question. He had once sensed that these things must be spoken, which now a more sinister tongue, as it were with oil, softened by artful words, hurls forth to the destruction of its hearers and of itself. And therefore, he says, I saw under the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs. No one doubts the witness concerning the faith; let the testimony be sifted, let the understanding of the answer waver, but not the authority of the speaker.

CHAPTER XIII. — And first this must be noted, that the apostle testifies that he saw the souls of the slain martyrs: lest anyone, when we begin to dispute concerning gifts, say that after the resurrection those things are to be granted to martyrs which are shown even now to have been bestowed upon their souls; especially since this is supported for us, that they complain of the delay of judgment, which he who is yet to rise, and not he who has already risen, certainly accuses: for it is one thing to ask that you may hold, and another already to hold. But stoles are given to the army of martyrs, and, as if ungrateful for such great liberty, he strikes with great envy at the delay of vengeance, saying: How long, O Lord?

That is to say: How long will you not avenge those whom you ought to have avenged at once? How long, O Lord? That is to say: Will you put us off beyond the end of the ages? For already the end has been reached, and you do not speak of our avenging. For what they say wondrously, they add: Will you not avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Therefore not "how long," if those mortals are still engaged on the earth who persecuted the Lord's servants with club, stone, hoof, scourges, lead, iron, beasts, and fire. For "how long" is a reckoning of a longer age, so that it may be either "how long" without limit—but the persecutors still linger in the flesh—or they have departed from life, even if they dwell on the earth, if "how long" does not deceive. But nothing false is brought forward by the witnesses of the truth; and therefore the meaning is rather to be sought, not the faith, which by a somewhat obscure utterance is not excluded but veiled. When, then, they say: How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you not avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth, they do not desire the blood and deaths of those mortals who once raged against them either by popular sedition or, supported by tribunals, promulgated capital sentences, since they still dwell on the earth, nor is it right that the dead be accused, who, while they lived, were restrained by these words: Do not lay this sin to their charge; for they do not know what they do (Acts 7).

But if amid the torments of sufferings and the bitter labors of death, anyone prayed so devoutly for the unjust, for the impious, for the bloodstained, for those who blasphemed; if, finally, at that very time when the very sense of distress could have stirred those enduring the extremes to cursing, prayer was poured out for man, who does not understand that it was not the minds of the martyrs but the persons of the persecutors that were being marked out, and that those are being assailed whom it must be believed were still dwelling on earth at that time—those whom ignorance does not defend, not those who by the condition of their natural substance have already ceased to dwell on earth, and were long ago excused by the martyrs themselves in ignorance? Who these are, we do not fail to know. They are without doubt the spiritual forces of wickedness and the power of darkness, which both still dwell on earth and did not sin against God's servants in ignorance. For when they said to the Lord himself: Have you come to torment us before the time (Matthew 8)? How did they not know his servants, whom they would not even have persecuted if they had not known them to be his servants? Therefore, when they persecuted them, they knew those whom they were attempting to draw away from their Lord through torments.

And from this, when the blessed martyrs intercede for men and defend them by the excuse of ignorance, it follows that those who knew are held in guilt, and those who themselves poured the very darkness of ignorance over men, whose fury even excuses human impieties: we shall be able to call them nothing other than those who are not even friends to their own, since they do not permit them to be what is good; they are even enemies of God's servants, since they persecute in them what good they do not know.

CHAPTER XIV. After the complaint of these holy souls, let us see what follows: And there were given to them each white robes. What is this, that they are clothed again? For previously, as it is written, they obtained garments from God; and now they are endowed with a double freedom in their clothing. And these garments, since they are spiritual, we cannot fear that those which were given before appear outwardly; nor indeed has any complaint arisen. Therefore, since the diversity of these garments and their signification is not without mystery, we ought to understand the varieties of gifts and the riches of workings: since one and the same Spirit supplies them. They receive garments first, then, when through confession they laid down their bodies: I believe, so that being clothed they might not be found naked. Again they receive other garments after their intercession, nay rather after the change of so long a patience and endurance. And when they receive these, who does not understand that they are imbued with a new garment, so with the power by which they now shine forth and appear?

But if they had asked for one thing and received another, so that they rejected the gifts or sought more, they would have been mocked. But since it is not God's way to mock those to whom he has promised great things, and these do not complain after a second generosity, do we doubt that the appearance of those things which was granted to those asking for vengeance belongs to the consolation of their complaints? But if it belongs to consolation, what greater consolation can be found than this power, which persecutes demons, that is, its own enemies? For if we compare those stoles to the appearance of our garments, let us also seek certain others, so that they may not lack in laying these aside. But this is ridiculous, because it immediately occurs and departs from the true and necessary interpretation. The complaint was generated from the delay of vengeance. Certainly at the end of times, that is, our times; for the ends of the ages have come upon us, so that the delay may be believed; to wash this away, souls are clothed with stoles, lest they be thought entirely naked without greater protection. For the account of souls stripped of the body is one thing, and that of men still living in the flesh is another. For fleeces of sheep and the work of a woman procure garments for us, but merits make a garment for them. Therefore, after the complaint of the martyrs, the souls of the friends are clothed with stoles, they are granted divine protection, with which that vessel of election also desired to be clothed over; which garment when Adam had lost, he was found naked even in paradise. Finally, the work indicates what we ought to understand by stoles.

If we believe that the martyrs asked for vengeance, then we believe that in the meantime they received something for their consolation. If their complaint was quieted on account of the stoles, as though certain distributions of garments, who did not deserve these as their first gifts? But since, as I said, the varieties of virtues by which these divinely renowned souls are fortified were designated in the stoles, therefore after the second munificence, according to the form of their petition, they show what they appear to have obtained against those persecutors who dwell on the earth, and what they will still have: while by an equal persecution they will slay their fellow servants, until the predestined number of witnesses is fulfilled. Here this too must not be received idly, that between the two times of persecutions this voice of the martyrs came first, so as to designate those who blaspheme, who marvel that they obtained something new in our time. For since we see that cruel persecutions have occurred, and we believe that they will come, this intermediate time, in which the martyrs who came before are rewarded, is ours. And therefore they now work, not from the merit which they had always possessed, but from the virtue which they have recently acquired.

CHAPTER XV. — Perhaps someone may be moved to ask why it is that they are ordered to wait, if the power that will bring judgment upon the demons has already burst forth to the maturity of punishment, and they are admonished to endure resurrection. Moreover, this glory had been promised to them also in the songs of David with these words: They shall rejoice in their beds (Psalm 149). While they are buried, they shall certainly rejoice. He has set beds in place of graves, from which they shall also rise again, when they have been awakened by the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God (1 Thess 4). Therefore they are truly called beds, in which they now rest. Although they shall rejoice in their chambers, this was going to happen first, namely when they rose from their graves. And this has been so fulfilled that we see them rejoicing in their beds without any doubt. For what other such congratulation could enter their souls than when, before those very beds, that is, as we have said, the graves of the saints, there their enemies, whom they once believed they had killed, now confess both that they live and that they are avenged, not without the bitterness of torments? These stoles, which a special bounty has repeated, have conferred this upon them; through them even those who were not named are implored, and those who were unknown are celebrated, and those who were not seen appear. These stoles, as we have said, they did not have up to this point, but now they have begun to have them. In this form that woman is praised in Solomon, who makes double garments for her husband: one in the patience of suffering, the other in the power of vengeance.

Thus it is holy and pious for us to read; otherwise we ought not even to speak, lest either our faithlessness or our ignorance descend into the darkness of paganism through blasphemous disputation, since prophecy has gone before for this purpose, to bring light to those who are to come. Now it remains that we believe that what we have proved was done and promised by divine power, and not only promised but also demanded. But if they were also demanded, and granted to none other than those who asked, what wonder is it if they do not conceal that they have already received either what they had asked for or what they rejoice in? They exact punishments from those who dwell on the earth; those whom accusation has seized, power attacks. For they themselves dwell on the earth who possess the minds of men who possess earthly things; when the martyrs demand them for punishment, they even plead on behalf of those whom they had possessed. Finally, they also pursue their own desired things in such a way as to exclude them from earthly habitation, that is, from the earthly men they have possessed. Or do they slander, asking why demons are tormented, and do we favor their enemies? The martyrs rise up against them with an indignation that is almost invidious, and complain that they are endured for so long a span of ages; and do we pretend to wonder what this is, as if they ought not even in our own time to pay what they owe from Adam? But this miracle that seems first to have arisen at Milan, or to have been granted to the good Ambrose, who does not see that our faith has been approved by divine testimonies on account of the perfidy of the Arians?

For when the catholic faith in Italy had endured the intolerable tyranny under Auxentius, at last, by the Lord's gift, it breathed again its former freedom—even though it was already at that time when Ambrose was substituted for the aforesaid man. Nevertheless, to this same man, for the confusion of his adversaries and, of course, for our hope, all the glory of the heavenly powers and all the martyrs as well gave their assent; they, since they had long had the time to appear, were seeking the man to whom they might reveal themselves—certainly the one to whom they would be revealed under that faith which their martyrdom had produced. Thus it was granted to Ambrose which was denied to Auxentius, since what Auxentius blasphemed, Ambrose preached. But since this power of the martyrs was to go through all the provinces—for it is to be granted to all, not to Ambrose alone, without respect of persons—it nevertheless necessarily proceeded first in Italy, over which Arian infidelity had ruled. For signs are given not to the faithful but to the unfaithful. For those who demand a sign are unfaithful from the Lord: the scribes demand, the Pharisees demand; the apostles are silent, and believe, and follow. And therefore it is not to be wondered at that divine power works through the tombs of the saints, since the heretical mind could not be cured even by its own remedies, so that at last it might follow the bishop with whom the martyrs themselves had seen it communicate by the very revelation of their powers through their condescension.

CHAPTER XVI. — Now let us return to the meditation of the perfect man, from which this accumulation swelled up before its measure was fulfilled. For behold, this disputation is itself of those very meditations of which David says: For blessed is he who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night (Psalm 1). And indeed it is difficult, for one who has entered the forest of the law, to separate the individual material of questions, since one topic touches another as if by certain little branches, in such a fellowship of instruction that what has been begun cannot be unfolded without the beginning of another. Behold, how beautiful it is for that man of ours to know these very things—to be not merely astonished in such matters, while he is not moved by the rest as by certain chance things—to distinguish the kinds of operations. And because the demons themselves also operate, to understand natures, which are true, which false—to know this is not to be deceived, not to err; not to assign to the enemy the things that are God's, nor to ascribe to God the things that are the demons'; to know the times, to recognize the signs, to have the will of the Lord known; and to venerate some of God's wonders with thanksgiving, and to avoid others with worthy execration. Even the men of the world have praised such a man, as Virgil says: Happy is he who could know the causes of things. A good sentiment, if he had come to it by his own path, so that it may appear that he did not know what he praises: having omitted the first things, he celebrated the second.

For he reverses even the office of a wise man by an inverted order: while it is not the causes of things but the Creator of things who must be sought, through whom, if we have learned him, we shall enter into the causes of things. Otherwise, with him left aside, how shall we be able to have known the causes of things, when what must first be sought is who made these things, and then why he made them? But once the author of things is found, we shall find the causes of things as well. This man, however, failed to see this to such a degree that he declared this to be the principal place—the one that could have known the causes of things—accordingly, as he adds, that he had adored the gods as performing a lesser work, so that anyone may recognize that those were not the creators of things from whom the knowledge of things is separated as something alien, nor ought they to be worshiped, if they cannot bestow these things which are praised as first. But they do not know those things of which they were not the makers. Finally, having even taken away from their gods the invention of these things, they assign it to human genius—namely to those who excel in wisdom, who do not worship idols—so that now man is more powerful than their gods, if by higher thought he has reached these things which their gods do not know. But he commanded that the gods be worshiped by those who, on account of their full stupidity, cannot discover the causes of things, and whose hearts, to use his own words, cold blood encloses.

Our man still knows that to worship God is the principal wisdom, and he holds the causes of things as already discovered; he does not seek them by the Syracusan reasoning of a wise man of the world, but taught by him whom he worships, whom he sought before the causes of things, since the Creator of things precedes the things themselves, who warned him what things would be coming in what times, whose ordering no one has known without him who ordered it, since no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. But we, as the Apostle says, have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God; and therefore, taught not by the words of human wisdom but by the Spirit of God and by his condescension poured out upon us, we tread the things that are his. This is that foolishness of the worldly; this is the wisdom of the called, always to think in the heart: What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me? Always to have him in the mouth, since he is the Word; to hunger for him, since he is bread. By his Spirit also, drunk in mind, to go out of ourselves, because it is the cup of the New Testament, and the wine from the vine which he had previously brought over from Egypt, which vine is the people of Israel, or those whose fathers are those from whom the Lord Jesus Christ came forth according to the flesh. To speak of him at all times, since his Spirit has brought us new tongues. But what are these new tongues, if not these: to be in the world and not to have speech about the world; to speak in tongues to a people other than the people is accustomed to speak with itself?

Furthermore, this too is to speak in other tongues: to confess one God, by him who had been accustomed to confess many gods, and in our faith to speak and profess that same one God in new tongues, and to believe in the Trinity. Also to love him, because he intercedes for us; to fear him, because the Father has given all judgment to the Son; to adore him at every moment, to ask from him the things necessary for us and pleasing to himself, who wills to be asked through himself, so much so that he shows these words to the one who asks—he who, which is new among us, alone loves those who ask him. He who also, which is marvelous, is angry for this alone, unless he is asked. For it is faithlessness to have presumed nothing concerning God. He believes that he can do nothing, who does not ask for what he judges he can do. This is that narrow way, dearest son, this is that eye of the needle through which the burdened do not enter, nor animals assigned to loads, since the entrances are narrow and small, and not only do these misshapen beasts with their burdens not fit through them, but even the very sight of our eyes is frustrated if it is distracted in many ways. Hence the Lord also says through the prophet: Be at leisure and see (Psalm 46); and when will it be possible to enter, what through the occupations of the world has not yet begun to be found?

CHAPTER XVII. We have completed the questions set before us in their divisions, by showing the outer and the inner man, when we have shown what the holy life is, and in what activity it is placed, by what zeal it is held, by what substance it is nourished, and we have brought its whole course briefly, though rather by leaps, if it may be said, than by steps, on account of our haste, all the way to the end. Now as to why it is not seen even by the men of this world, receive the reason, since indeed my wordiness delights you, which you judge rather carelessly. While you attend more earnestly to divine things—when that one who first brought in the seed of death for us had subjected this world, that is, the passion of man, to himself by conquering man, and had taken his kingdom, with the king himself now captured, under his feet and dominion, and was using all things that are in the world as his own possessions and the spoils of his victory—lest man should ever seek the testament of the wisdom he had lost, or the life owed to him, he infected all things with the juices of his art, so that he both clothed folly in the color of wisdom and overshadowed death with the allurements of a counterfeit life, so that those who did not discern the better things set against them might not flee evils. Finally, from that time the human race proceeds thus everywhere, folly is held for wisdom, as the Psalmist says: For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and the unjust man is blessed (Ps.