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| Further Answers to the Plea, How Am I to Live?
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Chapter XII.—Further Answers to the Plea, How Am I to
Live?
In vain do we flatter ourselves as to the
necessities of human maintenance, if—after faith sealed238
—we say, “I have no means to
live?”239
| 239 See above, chaps.
v. and viii. [One is reminded here of the famous pleasantry of Dr.
Johnson; see Boswell.] | For here I will now
answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is advanced too
late. For after the similitude of that most prudent
builder,240
who first computes
the costs of the work, together with his own means, lest, when he has
begun, he afterwards blush to find himself spent, deliberation should
have been made before. But even now you have the Lord’s
sayings, as examples taking away from you all excuse. For what is
it you say? “I shall be in need.” But the Lord calls the
needy “happy.”241
“I shall have
no food.” But “think not,” says He, “about
food;”242
| 242 Matt. vi. 25, 31, etc.; Luke xii.
22–24. | and as an example of
clothing we have the lilies.243
“My work was my
subsistence.” Nay, but “all things are to be sold, and
divided to the needy.”244
“But provision
must be made for children and posterity.” “None, putting
his hand on the plough, and looking back, is fit” for
work.245
“But I was under contract.”
“None can serve two lords.”246
If
you wish to be the Lord’s disciple, it is necessary you
“take your cross, and follow the Lord:”247
| 247 Matt. xvi. 24; Mark viii. 34; Luke ix. 23;
xiv. 27. |
your cross; that is, your own straits and
tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of
a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind,
for God’s sake.248
| 248 Luke xiv. 26; Mark x. 29, 30; Matt. xix.
27–30. Compare these
texts with Tertullian’s words, and see the testimony he thus
gives to the deity of Christ. | Do you hesitate about
arts, and trades, and about professions likewise, for the sake of
children and parents? Even there was it demonstrated to us, that both
“dear pledges,”249
| 249 i.e., any dear
relations. | and handicrafts, and
trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord’s sake; while
James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father
and ship;250
| 250 Matt. iv. 21, 22; Mark i. 19, 20; Luke v.
10, 11. | while Matthew is
roused up from the toll-booth;251
| 251 Matt. ix. 9; Mark ii. 14; Luke v.
29. | while even burying a
father was too tardy a business for faith.252
None
of them whom the Lord chose to Him said, “I have no means to
live.” Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is
no less to be contemned by it for God’s sake, than every kind of
death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more
food? [You ask] “How many have fulfilled these
conditions?” But what with men is difficult, with God is
easy.253
| 253 Matt. xix. 26; Luke i. 37; xviii.
27. | Let us, however, comfort ourselves about the
gentleness and clemency of God in such wise, as not to indulge our
“necessities” up to the point of affinities with idolatry,
but to avoid even from afar every breath of it, as of a pestilence.
[And this] not merely in the cases forementioned, but in the universal
series of human superstition; whether appropriated to its gods, or to
the defunct, or to kings, as pertaining to the selfsame unclean
spirits, sometimes through sacrifices and priesthoods, sometimes
through spectacles and the like, sometimes through
holy-days.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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