32. Some man will say:
“What then does it profit a servant of God, that, having left the
former doings which he had in the world he is converted unto the
spiritual life and warfare, if it still behove him to do business
as of a common workman?” As if truly it could be easily unfolded
in words, how greatly profiteth what the Lord, in answer to that
rich man who was seeking counsel of laying hold on eternal life,
told him to do if he would fain be perfect: sell that he had,
distribute all to the indigence of the poor, and follow Him?2575
Or who
with so unimpeded course hath followed the
Lord, as he who saith,
“Not in
vain have I
run, nor in
vain labored?”
2576
who yet
both enjoined these works, and did them. This unto us, being by so
great
authority taught and informed, ought to suffice for a pattern
of relinquishing our old resources, and of working with our
hands.
But we too, aided by the
Lord Himself, are able perchance in some
sort to
apprehend what it doth still
profit the
servants of
God to
have left their former businesses, while they do yet thus
work. For
if a person from being
rich is
converted to this mode of
life, and
is
hindered by no
infirmity of body, are we so without
taste of the
savor of
Christ, as not to understand what an healing it is to the
swelling of the old
pride, when, having pared off the superfluities
by which erewhile the
mind was
deadly inflamed, he refuses not, for
the procuring of that little which is still naturally necessary for
this present
life, even a common workman’s lowly toil? If however
he be from a
poor estate converted unto this manner of
life, let
him not account himself to be doing that which he was
doing aforetime, if foregoing the
love of even increasing his ever
so
small matter of private substance, and now no more seeking his
own but the things which be Jesu
Christ’s,
2577
he hath translated himself into
the
charity of a
life in common, to
live in
fellowship of them who
have one
soul and one
heart to
Godward, so that no man saith that
any thing is his own, but they have all things common.
2578
For if in
this earthly
commonwealth its
chief men in the old times did, as
their own men of letters are wont in their most glowing phrase to
tell of them, to that degree prefer the common weal of the whole
people of their city and
country to their own private affairs, that
one of them,
2579
| 2579 Scipio ap. Val. iv. 4. |
for
subduing of Africa
honored with a
triumph, would have had nothing
to give to his
daughter on her
marriage, unless by
decree of the
senate she had been dowered from the
public treasury: of what
mind
ought he to be towards his
commonwealth, who is a
citizen of that
eternal City, the heavenly
Jerusalem, but that even what with
labor
of his own hands he earns, he should have in common with his
brother, and if the same lack any thing, supply it from the common
store; saying with him whose precept and example he hath followed,
“As having nothing, and possessing all things?”
2580
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