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Letter
CXVIII. To Julian.
Jerome writes to Julian, a wealthy nobleman apparently
of Dalmatia (§5), to console him for the loss of his wife and two
daughters all of whom had recently died. He reminds Julian of the
trials of Job and recommends him to imitate the patience of the
patriarch. He also urges him to follow the example set by Pammachius
and Paulinus, that is, to give up his riches and to become a monk for
the sake of Christ. The date of the letter is 406 a.d.
1. At the very instant of his departure Ausonius, a son
to me as he is a brother to you, gave me a late glimpse of himself but
quickly hurried away again, saying good-morning and good-bye together.
Yet he thought that he would return empty-handed unless he could bring
you some trifle from me however hastily written. Clothed in scarlet as
befitted his rank, he had already strapped on his sword-belt3072
and sent down a requisition to have a
stage-horse saddled. Still he made me send for my secretary and dictate
a letter to him. This I did with such rapidity that his nimble hand
could hardly keep pace with my words or manage to put down my hurried
sentences. Thus hasty dictation has taken the place of careful writing;
and, if I break my long silence, it is but to offer you an expression
of good will. This is an impromptu letter without logical order or
charm of style. You must look on me for once as a friend only; you will
find, I assure you, nothing of the orator here. Bear in mind that it
has been dashed off on the spur of the moment and given as a provision
for the way to one in a hurry to depart.
Holy scripture says: “a tale out of season is as
musick in mourning.”3073
Accordingly I
have disdained the graces of rhetoric and those charms of eloquence
which boys find so captivating, and have fallen back on the serious
tone of the sacred writings. For in these are to be found true
medicines for wounds and sure remedies for sorrow. In these a mother
receives back her only son even on the bier.3074
In these a crowd of mourners hears the
words: “the maid is not dead but sleepeth.”3075
In these one that is four days dead comes
forth bound at the call of the Lord.3076
| 3076 Joh. xi. 39, 43, 44. |
2. I hear that in a short space of time you have
suffered several bereavements, that you have buried in quick succession
two young unmarried daughters, and that Faustina, most chaste and loyal
of wives, your sister in the fervour of her faith and your one comfort
in the loss of your children, has suddenly fallen asleep and been taken
from you. You have been like a shipwrecked man, who has no sooner
reached the shore than he falls into the hands of brigands, or in the
eloquent language of the prophet like one “who did flee from a
lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand
on the wall, and a serpent bit him.”3077
Pecuniary losses have followed your
bereavements; the entire province has been overrun by a barbarian
enemy, and in the general devastation your private property has been
destroyed, your flocks and herds have been driven off, and your poor
slaves either made prisoners or else slain. To crown all, your only
daughter, made all the more dear to you by the loss of the others, has
for her husband a young nobleman who, to say nothing worse of him, has
given you more occasion for sorrow than for rejoicing. Such is the list
of the trials that have been laid upon you; such is the conflict waged
by the old enemy against Julian a raw recruit to Christ’s
standard. If you look only to yourself your troubles are indeed great
but if you look to the strong Warrior,3078
they are but child’s play and
the conflict is only the semblance of one. After untold trials a wicked wife was still left to
the blessed Job, the devil hoping that he might learn from her to
blaspheme God. You on the other hand have been deprived of an excellent
one that you might learn to go without consolation in the hour of
misfortune. Yet it is far harder to put up with a wife whom you dislike
than it is to mourn for one whom you dearly love. Moreover when
Job’s children died they found a common tomb beneath the ruins of
his house, and all he could do to shew his parental affection was to
rend his garments, to fall upon the ground and to worship, saying:
“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I
return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: it has been
as the Lord pleased: blessed be the name of the Lord.”3079
But you, to put the matter briefly, have
been allowed to perform the obsequies of your dear ones; and those
obsequies have been attended by many respectful kinsmen and comforting
friends. Again Job lost all his wealth at once; and, as, one after
another, the messengers of woe unfolded new calamities, he flinched as
little as the sage of whom Horace writes:3080
| 3080 Horace, C. III.
iii. 7, 8. | —
Shatter the world to atoms if you will.
Fearless will be the man on whom it falls.
But with you the case is different. The greater part of your
substance has been left to you, and your trials have not been greater
than you can bear. For you have not yet attained to such perfection
that the devil has to marshal all his forces against you.
3. Long ago this wealthy proprietor and still wealthier
father was made by a sudden stroke destitute and bereaved. But as, in
spite of all that befel him, he had not sinned before God or spoken
foolishly, the Lord—exulting in the victory of his servant and
regarding Job’s patience as His own triumph—said to the
devil: “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none
like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth
God and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his
integrity?”3081
He finely adds
the last clause because it is difficult for innocence to refrain from
murmuring when it is overborne by misfortune; and to avoid making a
shipwreck of faith when it sees that its sufferings are unjustly
inflicted. The devil answered the Lord and said: “Skin for skin,
yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine
hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to
thy face.”3082
See how crafty
the adversary is, and how hardened in sin his evil days have made him!
He knows the difference between things external and internal. He knows
that even the philosophers of the world call the former ἀδιάφορα, that is
indifferent, and that the perfection of virtue does not consist in
losing or disdaining them. It is the latter, those that are internal
and objects of preference,3083
| 3083 He alludes to
the προηγμένα of
the Stoics. | the loss of
which inevitably causes chagrin. Wherefore he boldly contradicts what
God has said and declares that Job deserves no praise at all; since he
has yielded up no part of himself but only what is outside himself,
since he has given for his own skin the skins of his children, and
since he has but laid down his purse to secure the health of his body.
From this your sagacity may perceive that your trials have so far only
reached the point at which you give hide for hide, skin for skin, and
are ready to give all that you have for your life. The Lord has not yet
stretched forth His hand upon you, or touched your flesh, or broken
your bones. Yet it is when such afflictions as these are laid upon you
that it is hard not to groan and not to ‘bless’ God to His
face, that is to curse Him. The word ‘bless’ is used in the
same way in the books of Kings where it is said of Naboth that he
‘blessed’ God and the king and was therefore stoned by the
people.3084
| 3084 1 Kings xxi. 10, Vulg. (which mistranslates the neutral
verb of the Hebrew). | But the Lord knew His champion
and felt sure that this great hero would even in this last and severest
conflict prove unconquerable. Therefore He said: “Behold he is in
thine hand; but save his life.”3085
The holy man’s flesh is placed at
the devil’s disposal, but his vital powers are withheld. For if
the devil had smitten that on which sensation and mental judgment
depend, the guilt arising from a misuse of these faculties I would have
lain at the door not of him who committed the sin but of him who had
overthrown the balance of his mind.
4. Others may praise you if they will, and celebrate
your victories over the devil. They may eulogize you for the smiling
face with which you bore the loss of your daughters, or for the
resolution with which, forty days after they fell asleep, you exchanged
your mourning for a white robe to attend the dedication of a
martyr’s bones; unconcerned for a bereavement which was the
concern of the whole city, and anxious only to share in a
martyr’s triumph. Nay, say they, when you bore your wife to
burial, it was not as one dead but as one setting forth on a journey.
But I shall not deceive you with flattering words or take the ground
from under your feet with slippery praises. Rather will I say what it
is good for you to hear: “My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for
temptation,”3086
and
“when thou shalt have done all those things which are commanded
thee, say, I am an unprofitable servant; I have done that which was my
duty to do.”3087
Say to God:
“the children that thou hast taken from me were Thine own gift.
The hand-maiden that Thou hast taken to Thyself Thou also didst lend to
me for a season to be my solace. I am not aggrieved that Thou hast
taken her back, but thankful rather that Thou hast previously given her
to me.”
Once upon a time a rich young man boasted that he had
fulfilled all the requirements of the law, but the Lord said to him (as
we read in the gospel): “One thing thou lackest: if thou wilt be
perfect, go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor;
and come and follow me.”3088
He who
declared that he had done all things gave way at the first onset to the
power of riches. Wherefore they who are rich find it hard to enter the
kingdom of heaven, a kingdom which desires for its citizens souls that
soar aloft free from all ties and hindrances. “Go thy way,”
the Lord says, “and sell” not a part of thy substance but
“all that thou hast, and give to the poor;” not to thy
friends or kinsfolk or relatives, not to thy wife or to thy children. I
will even go farther and say: keep back nothing for yourself because
you fear to be some day poor, lest by so doing you share the
condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira;3089
but give everything to the poor and
make to yourself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they may
receive you into everlasting habitations.3090
Obey the Master’s injunction “follow me,”3091
and take the Lord of the world for your
possession; that you may be able to sing with the prophet, “The
Lord is my portion,”3092
and like a true
Levite3093
may possess no earthly
inheritance. I cannot but advise you thus if you wish to be perfect, if
you desire to attain the pinnacle of the apostles’ glory, if you
wish to take up your cross and to follow Christ. When once you have put
your hand to the plough you must not look back;3094
when once you stand on the housetop you must think no more of your
clothes within; to escape your Egyptian mistress3095
you must abandon the cloak that belongs to
this world. Even Elijah, in his quick translation to heaven could not
take his mantle with him, but left in the world the garments of the
world.3096
Such conduct, you will object, is
for him who would emulate the apostles, for the man who aspires to be
perfect. But why should not you aspire to be perfect? Why should not
you who hold a foremost place in the world hold a foremost place also
in Christ’s household? Is it because you have been married? Peter
was married too, but when he forsook his ship and his nets he forsook
his wife also.3097
The Lord who
wills that all men shall be saved and prefers the repentance of a
sinner to his death3098
has, in His
almighty providence, removed from you this excuse. Your wife can no
longer draw you earthwards, but you can follow her as she draws you
heavenwards. Provide good things for your children who have gone home
before you to the Lord. Do not let their portions go to swell their
sister’s fortune, but use them to ransom your own soul and to
give sustenance to the needy. These are the necklaces your daughters
expect from you; these are the jewels they wish to see sparkle on their
foreheads. The money which they would have wasted in buying silks may
well be considered saved when it provides cheap clothing for the poor.
They ask you for their portions. Now that they are united to their
spouse they are loth to appear poor and undistinguished: they desire to
have the ornaments that befit their rank.
5. Nor may you excuse yourself on the score of your
noble station and the responsibilities of wealth. Look at Pammachius
and at Paulinus that presbyter of glowing faith both of whom have
offered to the Lord not only their riches but themselves. In spite of
the devil and his shuffling they have by no means given skin for skin,
but have consecrated their own flesh and bones, yea and their very
souls unto the Lord. Surely these may lead you to higher things both by
their example and by their preaching, that is, by their deeds and
words. You are of noble birth, so are they: but in Christ they are made
nobler still. You are rich and held in repute, so once were they: but
now instead of being rich and held in repute they are poor and obscure,
yet, because it is for Christ’s sake, they are really richer and
more famous than ever. You too, it is true, shew yourself beneficent,
you are said to minister to the wants of the saints, to entertain
monks, and to present large sums of money to churches. This however is
only the a b c of your soldiership. You despise money; the
world’s philosophers have done the same. One of these3099
—to say nothing of the
rest—cast the price of many possessions into the sea, saying as
he did so “To the bottom with you, ye provokers of evil lusts. I
shall drown you in the sea that you may never drown me in sin.”
If then a philosopher—a creature of vanity whom popular applause can buy and
sell—laid down all his burthen at once, how can you think that
you have reached virtue’s crowning height when you have yielded
up but a portion of yours? It is you yourself that the Lord wishes for,
“a living sacrifice…acceptable unto God.”3100
Yourself, I say, and not what you have. And
therefore, as he trained Israel by subjecting it to many plagues and
afflictions, so does He now admonish you by sending you trials of
different kinds. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”3101
The poor widow did but cast two mites into the treasury; yet because
she cast in all that she had it is said of her that she surpassed all
the rich in offering gifts to God.3102
Such gifts
are valued not by their weight but by the good-will with which they are
made. You may have spent your substance upon numbers of people, and a
portion of your fellows may have reason to rejoice in your bounty; yet
those who have received nothing at your hands are still more numerous.
Neither the wealth of Darius nor the riches of Crœsus would
suffice to satisfy the wants of the world’s poor. But if you once
give yourself to the Lord and resolve to follow the Saviour in the
perfection of apostolic virtue, then you will come to see what your
place has hitherto been, and how you have lagged in the rear of
Christ’s army. Hardly had you begun to mourn for your dead
daughters when the fear of Christ dried the tears of paternal affection
upon your cheeks. It was a great triumph of faith, true. But how much
greater was that won by Abraham who was content to slay his only son,
of whom he had been told that he was to inherit the world, yet did not
cease to hope that after death Isaac would live again.3103
Jephthah too offered up his virgin
daughter, and for this is placed by the apostle in the roll of the
saints.3104
I would not therefore have you offer
to the Lord only what a thief may steal from you or an enemy fall upon,
or a proscription confiscate, what is liable to fluctuations in value
now going up and now down, what belongs to a succession of masters who
follow each other as fast as in the sea wave follows wave, and—to
say everything in a word—what, whether you like it or not, you
must leave behind you when you die. Rather offer to God that which no
enemy can carry off and no tyrant take from you, which will go down
with you into the grave, nay on to the kingdom of heaven and the
enchantments of paradise. You already build monasteries and support in
the various islands of Dalmatia a large number of holy men. But you
would do better still if you were to live among these holy men as a
holy man yourself. “Be ye holy, saith the Lord, for I am
holy.”3105
The apostles boasted that they had
left all things and had followed the Saviour.3106
We do not read that they left anything except their ship and their
nets; yet they were crowned with the approval of Him who was to be
their judge. Why? Because in offering up themselves they had indeed
left all that they had.
6. I say all this not in disparagement of your good
works or because I wish to under-rate your generosity in almsgiving,
but because I do not wish you to be a monk among men of the world and a
man of the world among monks. I shall require every sacrifice of you
for I hear that your mind is devoted to the service of God. If some
friend, or follower, or kinsman tries to combat this counsel of mine
and to recall you to the pleasures of a handsome table, be sure that he
is thinking less of your soul than of his own belly, and remember that
death in a moment terminates both elegant entertainments and all other
pleasures provided by wealth. Within the short space of twenty days you
have lost two daughters, the one eight years old and the other six; and
do you suppose that one so old as you are yourself can live much
longer? David tells you how long a time you can look for: “the
days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of
strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and
sorrow.”3107
Happy is he and
to be held worthy of the highest bliss whom old age shall find a
servant of Christ and whom the last day shall discover fighting for the
Saviour’s cause. “He shall not be ashamed when he speaketh
with his enemies in the gate.”3108
On his
entrance into paradise it shall be said to him: “thou in thy
lifetime receivedst evil things but nowhere thou art
comforted.”3109
The Lord will not
avenge the same sin twice. Lazarus, formerly poor and full of ulcers,
whose sores the dogs licked and who barely managed to live, poor
wretch, on the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, is now
welcomed into Abraham’s bosom and has the joy of finding a father
in the great patriarch. It is difficult nay impossible for a man to
enjoy both the good things of the present and those of the future, to
satisfy his belly here and his mind yonder, to pass from the pleasures
of this life to the pleasures of that, to be first in both worlds, and
to be held in honour both on earth and in heaven.
7. And if in your secret thoughts you are troubled
because I who give you this advice am not myself what I desire you to
be, and because you have seen some
after beginning well fall midway on their journey; I shall briefly
plead in reply that the words which I speak are not mine but those of
the Lord and Saviour, and that I urge upon you not the standard which
is possible to myself but the ideal which every true servant of Christ
must wish for and realize. Athletes as a rule are stronger than their
backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his
efforts. Look not upon Judas denying his Lord but upon Paul confessing
Him. Jacob’s father was a man of great wealth; yet, when Jacob
went to Mesopotamia, he went alone and destitute leaning upon his
staff. When he felt weary he had to lie down by the wayside and,
delicately nurtured as he had been by his mother Rebekah, was forced to
content himself with a stone for a pillow. Yet it was then3110
that he saw the ladder set up from earth to
heaven, and the angels ascending and descending on it, and the Lord
above it holding out a helping hand to such as fall and encouraging the
climbers to fresh efforts by the vision of Himself. Therefore is the
spot called Bethel or the house of God; for there day by day there is
ascending and descending. When they are careless, even holy men lose
their footing; and sinners, if they wash away their stains with tears
regain their place. I say this not that those coming down may frighten
you but that those going up may stimulate you. For evil can never
supply a model and even in worldly affairs incentives to virtue come
always from the brighter side.
But I have forgotten my purpose and the limits set to my
letter. I should have liked to say a great deal more. Indeed all that I
can say is inadequate alike to satisfy the seriousness of the subject
and the claims of your rank. But here is our Ausonius beginning to be
impatient for the sheets, hurrying the secretaries, and in his
impatience at the neighing of his horse, accusing my poor wits of
slowness. Remember me, then, and prosper in Christ. And one thing more;
follow the example set you at home by the holy Vera,3111
| 3111 Of this lady nothing
is known. | who like a true follower of Christ does
not fear to endure the hardships of pilgrimage. Find in a woman your
‘leader in this high emprise.’3112
| 3112 Words of Virg. A.
i. 364, relating to Dido. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
