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| Chapter XVIII
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Chapter
XVIII.
If any
one supposes that1459
| 1459 τὸ μὴ
συνηρμόσθαι
τινὶ διὰ τῶν
καταλλήλων
τὸν βίον | this want of mutual
harmony between his life and a single one of its circumstances is quite
unimportant, let him be taught the meaning of our maxim by looking at
the management of a house. The master of a private dwelling will not
allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a
couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price
thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses
are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything
arranged neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most
advantage; and then he can welcome his guests, without any misgivings
that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to receive
them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of our
“tabernacle,” the mind; it has to arrange everything within
us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator
has fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble
uses. We will now mention in detail the way in which any one might
manage his life, with its present advantages, to his improvement,
hoping that no one will accuse us of trifling1460
| 1460 ἀδολεσχίαν
τοῦ λόγου τις
καταγινώσκοι | ,
or over-minuteness. We advise, then, that love’s passion be
placed in the soul’s purest shrine, as a thing chosen to be the
first fruits of all our gifts, and devoted1461
| 1461 ὥσπερ
τι ἀνάθημα; so Gregory calls the tongue of S. Meletius the
ἀνάθημα of
Truth. |
entirely to God; and when once this has been done, to keep it untouched
and unsullied by any secular defilement. Then indignation, and anger,
and hatred must be as watch-dogs to be roused only against attacking
sins; they must follow their natural impulse only against the thief and
the enemy who is creeping in to plunder the divine treasure-chamber,
and who comes only for that, that he may steal, and mangle, and
destroy. Courage and confidence are to be weapons in our hands to
baffle any sudden surprise and attack of the wicked who advance. Hope
and patience are to be the staffs to lean upon, whenever we are weary
with the trials of the world. As for sorrow, we must have a stock of it
ready to apply, if need should happen to arise for it, in the hour of
repentance for our sins; believing at the same time that it is never
useful, except to minister to that. Righteousness will be our rule of
straightforwardness, guarding us from stumbling either in word or deed,
and guiding us in the disposal of the faculties of our soul, as well as
in the due consideration for every one we meet. The love of gain, which
is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once
applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it; for he
will be violent1462
where it is right
to be violent. Wisdom and prudence will be our advisers as to our best
interests; they will order our lives so as never to suffer from any
thoughtless folly. But suppose a man does not apply the aforesaid
faculties of the soul to their proper use, but reverses their intended
purpose; suppose he wastes his love upon the basest objects, and stores
up his hatred only for his own kinsmen; suppose he welcomes iniquity,
plays the man only against his parents, is bold only in absurdities,
fixes his hopes on emptiness, chases prudence and wisdom from his
company, takes gluttony and folly for his mistresses, and uses all his
other opportunities in the same fashion, he would indeed be a strange
and unnatural character to a degree beyond any one’s power to
express. If we could imagine any one putting his armour on all the
wrong way, reversing the helmet so as to cover his face while the plume
nodded backward, putting his feet into the cuirass, and fitting the
greaves on to his breast, changing to the right side all that ought to go on
the left and vice versa, and how such a hoplite would be likely
to fare in battle, then we should have an idea of the fate in life
which is sure to await him whose confused judgment makes him reverse
the proper uses of his soul’s faculties. We must therefore
provide this balance in all feeling; the true sobriety of mind is
naturally able to supply it; and if one had to find an exact definition
of this sobriety, one might declare absolutely, that it amounts to our
ordered control, by dint of wisdom and prudence, over every emotion of
the soul. Moreover, such a condition in the soul will be no longer in
need of any laborious method to attain to the high and heavenly
realities; it will accomplish with the greatest ease that which
erewhile seemed so unattainable; it will grasp the object of its search
as a natural consequence of rejecting the opposite attractions. A man
who comes out of darkness is necessarily in the light; a man who is not
dead is necessarily alive. Indeed, if a man is not to have received his
soul to no purpose1463
| 1463 ἐπὶ
ματαί& 251·
λάβοι. Gregory
evidently alludes to Ps. xxiv. 4, and agrees with
the Vulgate “in vano acceperit.” | , he will certainly
be upon the path of truth; the prudence and the science employed to
guard against error will be itself a sure guidance along the right
road. Slaves who have been freed and cease to serve their former
masters, the very moment they become their own masters, direct all
their thoughts towards themselves so, I take it, the soul which has
been freed from ministering to the body becomes at once cognizant of
its own inherent energy. But this liberty consists, as we learn from
the Apostle1464
, in not again being held in the yoke
of slavery, and in not being bound again, like a runaway or a criminal,
with the fetters of marriage. But I must return here to what I said at
first; that the perfection of this liberty does not consist only in
that one point of abstaining from marriage. Let no one suppose that the
prize of virginity is so insignificant and so easily won as that; as if
one little observance of the flesh could settle so vital a matter. But
we have seen that every man who doeth a sin is the servant of sin1465
; so that a declension towards vice in any
act, or in any practice whatever, makes a slave, and still more, a
branded slave, of the man, covering him through sin’s lashes with
bruises and seared spots. Therefore it behoves the man who grasps at
the transcendent aim of all virginity to be true to himself in every
respect, and to manifest his purity equally in every relation of his
life. If any of the inspired words are required to aid our pleading,
the Truth1466
Itself will be sufficient to
corroborate the truth when It inculcates this very kind of teaching in
the veiled meaning of a Gospel Parable: the good and eatable fish are
separated by the fishers’ skill from the bad and poisonous fish,
so that the enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt by any of the
bad getting into the “vessels” with them. The work of true
sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and habits to choose that which
is pure and improving, rejecting in every case that which does not seem
likely to be useful, and letting it go back into the universal and
secular life, called “the sea1467
,” in the
imagery of the Parable. The Psalmist1468
also, when
expounding the doctrine of a full confession1469
| 1469 διδασκαλίαν
ἐξομολογήσεως
ὑφηγούμενος | ,
calls this restless suffering tumultuous life, “waters coming in
even unto the soul,” “depths of waters,” and a
“hurricane”; in which sea indeed every rebellious thought
sinks, as the Egyptian did, with a stone’s weight into the
deeps1470
. But all in us that is dear to God, and has
a piercing insight into the truth (called “Israel” in the
narrative), passes, but that alone, over that sea as if it were dry
land, and is never reached by the bitterness and the brine of
life’s billows. Thus, typically, under the leadership of the Law
(for Moses was a type of the Law that was coming) Israel passes
unwetted over that sea, while the Egyptian who crosses in her track is
overwhelmed. Each fares according to the disposition which he carries
with him; one walks lightly enough, the other is dragged into the deep
water. For virtue is a light and buoyant thing, and all who live in her
way “fly like clouds1471
| 1471 Is. lx. 8. The LXX.
has περιστερὰν
σὺν
νεοσσοῖς. | ,” as Isaiah
says, “and as doves with their young ones”; but sin is a
heavy affair, “sitting,” as another of the prophets says,
“upon a talent of lead1472
| 1472 Zech. v. 7. “this is a
woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah:” ἐπὶ
μέσον τοῦ
μέτρου (LXX.).
Origen and Jerome as well as Gregory make her sit upon the lead itself.
Vatablus explains that the lead was in an amphora. | .” If,
however, this reading of the history appears to any forced and
inapplicable, and the miracle at the Red Sea does not present itself to
him as written for our profit, let him listen to the Apostle:
“Now all these things happened unto them for types, and they are
written for our admonition1473
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