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| Chapter X.—To Act Well of Greater Consequence Than to Speak Well.
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Chapter X.—To Act Well of Greater Consequence Than to Speak Well.
Wherefore the Saviour, taking the bread, first
spake and blessed. Then breaking the bread,1897
| 1897 [“Eat it according to reason.”
Spiritual food does not stultify reason, nor conflict with the
evidence of the senses.] | He presented it, that we might
eat it, according to reason, and that knowing the Scriptures1898
| 1898 [This constant appeal to the
Scriptures, noteworthy.] | we might walk obediently. And as
those whose speech is evil are no better than those whose practice is
evil (for calumny is the servant of the sword, and evil-speaking inflicts
pain; and from these proceed disasters in life, such being the effects
of evil speech); so also those who are given to good speech are near
neighbours to those who accomplish good deeds. Accordingly discourse
refreshes the soul and entices it to nobleness; and happy is he who has
the use of both his hands. Neither, therefore, is he who can act well
to be vilified by him who is able to speak well; nor is he who is able
to speak well to be disparaged by him who is capable of acting well. But
let each do that for which he is naturally fitted. What the one exhibits
as actually done, the other speaks, preparing, as it were, the way for
well-doing, and leading the hearers to the practice of good. For there is
a saving word, as there is a saving work. Righteousness, accordingly,1899
is not constituted without discourse. And as the receiving of good is
abolished if we abolish the doing of good; so obedience and faith are
abolished when neither the command, nor one to expound the command, is
taken along with us.1900
But now we are benefited mutually and reciprocally
by words and deeds; but we must repudiate entirely the art of wrangling
and sophistry, since these sentences of the sophists not only bewitch and
beguile the many, but sometimes by violence win a Cadmean victory.1901
| 1901 A victory disastrous to the
victor and the vanquished. | For true above all is that Psalm,
“The just shall live to the end, for he shall not see corruption,
when he beholds the wise dying.”1902
And whom does
he call wise? Hear from the Wisdom of Jesus: “Wisdom is not the
knowledge of evil.”1903
Such he calls what the arts of speaking and of
discussing have invented. “Thou shalt therefore seek wisdom among
the wicked, and shalt not find it.”1904
And if you inquire again of
what sort this is, you are told, “The mouth of the righteous man
will distil wisdom.”1905
And similarly
with truth, the art of sophistry is
called wisdom.
But it is my purpose, as I reckon, and not
without reason, to live according to the Word, and to understand what
is revealed;1906
| 1906 [Revelation
is complete, and nothing new to be expected. Gal. i. 8, 9.] |
but never affecting eloquence, to be content merely with indicating
my meaning. And by what term that which I wish to present is shown,
I care not. For I well know that to be saved, and to aid those who
desire to be saved, is the best thing, and not to compose paltry
sentences like gewgaws. “And if,” says the Pythagorean
in the Politicus of Plato, “you guard against solicitude
about terms, you will be richer in wisdom against old age.”1907
| 1907 Plato’s Politicus,
p. 261 E. | And in the Theœtetus you will find again,
“And carelessness about names, and expressions, and the want
of nice scrutiny, is not vulgar and illiberal for the most part, but
rather the reverse of this, and is sometimes necessary.”1908
| 1908 Plato’s
Theætetus, p. 184 C. | This the Scripture1909
has expressed with the greatest possible brevity, when it said, “Be
not occupied much about words.” For expression is like the dress
on the body. The matter is the flesh and sinews. We must not therefore
care more for the dress than the safety of the body. For not only a
simple mode of life, but also a style of speech devoid of superfluity
and nicety, must be cultivated by him who has adopted the true life, if
we are to abandon luxury as treacherous and profligate, as the ancient
Lacedæmonians adjured ointment and purple, deeming and calling them
rightly treacherous garments and treacherous unguents; since neither
is that mode of preparing food right where there is more of seasoning
than of nutriment; nor is that style of speech elegant which can please
rather than benefit the hearers. Pythagoras exhorts us to consider the
Muses more pleasant than the Sirens, teaching us to cultivate wisdom
apart from pleasure, and exposing the other mode of attracting the
soul as deceptive. For sailing past the Sirens one man has sufficient
strength, and for answering the Sphinx another one, or, if you please,
not even one.1910
| 1910 The story
of Œdipus being a myth. | We ought never, then, out of
desire for vainglory, to make broad the phylacteries. It suffices the
gnostic1911
if only one hearer is found for
him.1912
You may hear therefore Pindar the
Bœotian,1913
| 1913 [Here I
am sorry I cannot supply the proper reference. Clement shows his Attic
prejudice in adding the epithet, here and elsewhere (Bœotian),
which Pindar felt so keenly, and resents more than once. Olymp.,
vi. vol. i. p. 75. Ed. Heyne, London, 1823.] | who
writes, “Divulge not before all the ancient speech. The way of
silence is sometimes the surest. And the mightiest word is a spur to the
fight.” Accordingly, the blessed apostle very appropriately and
urgently exhorts us “not to strive about words to no profit, but to
the subverting of the hearers, but to shun profane and vain babblings,
for they increase unto more ungodliness, and their word will eat as
doth a canker.”1914
| 1914
2 Tim. ii. 14, 16, 17. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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