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| Steps to Wisdom: First, Fear; Second, Piety; Third, Knowledge; Fourth, Resolution; Fifth, Counsel; Sixth, Purification of Heart; Seventh, Stop or Termination, Wisdom.
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Chapter 7.—Steps to Wisdom:
First, Fear; Second, Piety; Third, Knowledge; Fourth, Resolution;
Fifth, Counsel; Sixth, Purification of Heart; Seventh, Stop or
Termination, Wisdom.
9. First of all, then, it is
necessary that we should be led by the fear of God to seek
the knowledge of His will, what He commands us to desire and what
to avoid. Now this fear will of necessity excite in us the
thought of our mortality and of the death that is before us, and
crucify all the motions of pride as if our flesh were nailed to the
tree. Next it is necessary to have our hearts subdued by
piety, and not to run in the face of Holy Scripture, whether
when understood it strikes at some of our sins, or, when not
understood, we feel as if we could be wiser and give better
commands ourselves. We must rather think and believe that
whatever is there written, even though it be hidden, is better and
truer than anything we could devise by our own wisdom.
10. After these two steps of fear
and piety, we come to the third step, knowledge, of which I
have now undertaken to treat. For in this every earnest student
of the Holy Scriptures exercises himself, to find nothing else in
them but that God is to be loved for His own sake, and our neighbor
for God’s sake; and that God is to be loved with all the heart,
and with all the soul, and with all the mind, and one’s neighbor
as one’s self—that is, in such a way that all our love for our
neighbor, like
all our love for ourselves,
should have reference to God.1763
And on
these two commandments I touched in the previous book when I was
treating about things.1764
It is necessary, then, that each
man should first of all find in the Scriptures that he, through
being entangled in the love of this world—i.e., of
temporal things—has been drawn far away from such a love for God
and such a love for his neighbor as Scripture enjoins. Then that
fear which leads him to think of the judgment of God, and that
piety which gives him no option but to believe in and submit to the
authority of Scripture, compel him to bewail his condition. For
the knowledge of a good hope makes a man not boastful, but
sorrowful. And in this frame of mind he implores with unremitting
prayers the comfort of the Divine help that he may not be
overwhelmed in despair, and so he gradually comes to the fourth
step,—that is, strength and resolution,1765
—in which
he hungers and thirsts after righteousness. For in this frame of
mind he extricates himself from every form of fatal joy in
transitory things, and turning away from these, fixes his affection
on things eternal, to wit, the unchangeable Trinity in
unity.
11. And when, to the extent of
his power, he has gazed upon this object shining from afar, and has
felt that owing to the weakness of his sight he cannot endure that
matchless light, then in the fifth step—that is, in the
counsel of compassion1766
| 1766 Consilium
misericordiæ. | —he cleanses his soul, which is
violently agitated, and disturbs him with base desires, from the
filth it has contracted. And at this stage he exercises himself
diligently in the love of his neighbor; and when he has reached the
point of loving his enemy, full of hopes and unbroken in strength,
he mounts to the sixth step, in which he purifies the eye itself
which can see God,1767
so far as God can be seen by those
who as far as possible die to this world. For men see Him just so
far as they die to this world; and so far as they live to it they
see Him not. But yet, although that light may begin to appear
clearer, and not only more tolerable, but even more delightful,
still it is only through a glass darkly that we are said to see,
because we walk by faith, not by sight, while we continue to wander
as strangers in this world, even though our conversation be in
heaven.1768
And at
this stage, too, a man so purges the eye of his affections as not
to place his neighbor before, or even in comparison with, the
truth, and therefore not himself, because not him whom he loves as
himself. Accordingly, that holy man will be so single and so pure
in heart, that he will not step aside from the truth, either for
the sake of pleasing men or with a view to avoid any of the
annoyances which beset this life. Such a son ascends to
wisdom, which is the seventh and last step, and which he enjoys
in peace and tranquillity. For the fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom.1769
From
that beginning, then, till we reach wisdom itself, our way is by
the steps now described.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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