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| To Nepotian.
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Letter LII.
To Nepotian.
Nepotian, the nephew of Heliodorus (for whom see Letter
XIV.), had, like his uncle, abandoned the military for the clerical
calling, and was now a presbyter at Altinum, where Heliodorus was
bishop. The letter is a systematic treatise on the duties of the clergy
and on the rule of life which they ought to adopt. It had a great
vogue, and called forth much indignation against Jerome. Its date is
394 a.d.
1. Again and again you ask me, my dear Nepotian, in your
letters from over the sea, to draw for you a few rules of life, showing
how one who has renounced the service of the world to become a monk or
a clergyman may keep the straight path of Christ, and not be drawn
aside into the haunts of vice. As a young man, or rather as a boy, and
while I was curbing by the hard life of the desert the first onslaughts
of youthful passion, I sent a letter of remonstrance1314
to your reverend uncle, Heliodorus,
which, by the tears and complainings with which it was filled, showed
him the feelings of the friend whom he had deserted. In it I acted the
part suited to my age, and as I was still aglow with the methods and
maxims of the rhetoricians, I decked it out a good deal with the
flourishes of the schools. Now, however, my head is gray, my brow is
furrowed, a dewlap like that of an ox hangs from my chin, and, as
Virgil says,
The chilly blood stands still around my heart.1315
Elsewhere he sings:
Old age bears all, even the mind, away.
And a little further on:
So many of my songs are gone from me,
And even my very voice has left me now.1316
| 1316 Virgil, Ec. ix. 51,
54, 55. |
2. But that I may not seem to quote only profane
literature, listen to the mystical teaching of the sacred writings.
Once David had been a man of war, but at seventy age had chilled him so
that nothing would make him warm. A girl is accordingly sought from the
coasts of Israel—Abishag the Shunamite—to sleep with the
king and warm his aged frame.1317
Does it not
seem to you—if you keep to the letter that killeth1318
—like some farcical story or some
broad jest from an Atellan play?1319
| 1319 So called because
first devised in the Oscan town of Atella. | A chilly
old man is wrapped up in blankets, and only grows warm in a
girl’s embrace. Bathsheba was still living, Abigail was still
left, and the remainder of those wives and concubines whose names the
Scripture mentions. Yet they are all rejected as cold, and only in the
one young girl’s embrace does the old man become warm. Abraham
was far older than David; still, so long as Sarah lived he sought no
other wife. Isaac counted twice the years of David, yet never felt cold
with Rebekah, old though she was. I say nothing of the antediluvians,
who, although after nine hundred years their limbs must have been not
old merely, but decayed with age, had no recourse to girls’
embraces. Moses, the leader of the Israelites, counted one hundred and twenty years, yet sought no
change from Zipporah.
3. Who, then, is this Shunamite, this wife and maid, so
glowing as to warm the cold, yet so holy as not to arouse passion in
him whom she warmed?1320
Let Solomon,
wisest of men, tell us of his father’s favorite; let the man of
peace1321
recount to us the embraces of the man of
war.1322
“Get wisdom,” he writes,
“get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words
of my mouth. Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee: love her and
she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get
wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her and she
shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honor when thou dost
embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown
of glory shall she deliver to thee.”1323
Almost all bodily excellences alter with age, and while
wisdom alone increases all things else decay. Fasts and vigils and
almsdeeds become harder. So also do sleeping on the ground, moving from
place to place, hospitality to travellers, pleading for the poor,
earnestness and steadfastness in prayer, the visitation of the sick,
manual labor to supply money for alms-giving. All acts, in short, of
which the body is the medium decrease with its decay.
Now, there are young men still full of life and vigor
who, by toil and burning zeal, as well as by holiness of life and
constant prayer to the Lord Jesus, have obtained knowledge. I do not
speak of these, or say that in them the love of wisdom is cold, for
this withers in many of the old by reason of age. What I mean is that
youth, as such, has to cope with the assaults of passion, and amid the
allurements of vice and the tinglings of the flesh is stifled like a
fire among green boughs, and cannot develop its proper brightness. But
when men have employed their youth in commendable pursuits and have
meditated on the law of the Lord day and night,1324
they learn with the lapse of time, fresh
experience and wisdom come as the years go by, and so from the pursuits
of the past their old age reaps a harvest of delight. Hence that wise
man of Greece, Themistocles,1325
| 1325 A slip of the pen
for Theophrastus. | perceiving,
after the expiration of one hundred and seven years, that he was on the
verge of the grave, is reported to have said that he regretted
extremely having to leave life just when he was beginning to grow wise.
Plato died in his eighty-first year, his pen still in his hand.
Isocrates completed ninety years and nine in the midst of literary and
scholastic work.1326
I say nothing
of other philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenocrates,
Zeno, and Cleanthes, who in extreme old age displayed the vigor of
youth in the pursuit of wisdom. I pass on to the poets, Homer, Hesiod,
Simonides, Stesichorus, who all lived to a great age, yet at the
approach of death sang each of them a swan song sweeter than their
wont.1327
| 1327 Cicero, de Sen.
vii. | Sophocles, when charged by his sons
with dotage on account of his advanced years and his neglect of his
property, read out to his judges his recently composed play of
Œdipus, and made so great a display of wisdom—in spite of
the inroads of time—that he changed the decorous silence of the
law court into the applause of the theatre.1328
And no wonder, when Cato the censor,
that most eloquent of Romans, in his old age neither blushed at the
thought of learning Greek nor despaired of succeeding.1329
Homer, for his part, relates that from
the tongue of Nestor, even when quite aged and helpless, there flowed
speech sweeter than honey.1330
| 1330 Homer, Il. i. 249;
Cic. de Sen. x. |
Even the very name Abishag in its mystic meaning points
to the greater wisdom of old men. For the translation of it is,
“My father is over and above,” or “my father’s
roaring.” The term “over and above” is obscure, but
in this passage is indicative of excellence, and implies that the old
have a larger stock of wisdom, and that it even overflows by reason of
its abundance. In another passage “over and above” forms an
antithesis to “necessary.” Moreover, Abishag, that is,
“roaring,” is properly used of the sound which the waves
make, and of the murmur which we hear coming from the sea. From which
it is plain that the thunder of the divine voice dwells in old
men’s ears with a volume of sound beyond the voices of men.
Again, in our tongue Shunamite means “scarlet,” a hint that
the love of wisdom becomes warm and glowing through religious study.
For though the color may point to the mystery of the Lord’s
blood, it also sets forth the warm glow of wisdom. Hence it is a
scarlet thread that in Genesis the midwife binds upon the hand of
Pharez—Pharez “the divider,” so called because he
divided the partition which had before separated two peoples.1331
So, too, with a mystic reference to the shedding of blood, it
was a scarlet cord which the harlot Rahab (a type of the church) hung
in her window to preserve her house in the destruction of Jericho.1332
Hence, in another place Scripture says
of holy men: “These are they which came from the warmth of the
house of the father of Rechab.”1333
And in the gospel the Lord says:
“I am come to cast fire upon the earth, and fain am I to see it
kindled.”1334
This was the
fire which, when it was kindled in the disciples’ hearts,
constrained them to say: “Did not our heart burn within us while
He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the
Scriptures?”1335
4. To what end, you ask, these recondite references? To
show that you need not expect from me boyish declamation, flowery
sentiments, a meretricious style, and at the close of every paragraph
the terse and pointed aphorisms which call forth approving shouts from
those who hear them. Let Wisdom alone embrace me; let her nestle in my
bosom, my Abishag who grows not old. Undefiled truly is she, and a
virgin forever for although she daily conceives and unceasingly brings
to the birth, like Mary she remains undeflowered. When the apostle says
“be fervent in spirit,”1336
he means
“be true to wisdom.” And when our Lord in the gospel
declares that in the end of the world—when the shepherd shall
grow foolish, according to the prophecy of Zechariah1337
—“the love of many shall
wax cold,”1338
He means
that wisdom shall decay. Hear, therefore—to quote the sainted
Cyprian—“words forcible rather than elegant.”1339
| 1339 Cyprian, Ep. ad
Donatum. | Hear one who, though he is your brother
in orders, is in years your father; who can conduct you from the cradle
of faith to spiritual manhood; and who, while he builds up stage by
stage the rules of holy living, can instruct others in instructing you.
I know, of course, that from your reverend uncle, Heliodorus, now a
bishop of Christ, you have learned and are daily learning all that is
holy; and that in him you have before you a rule of life and a pattern
of virtue. Take, then, my suggestions for what they are worth, and
compare my precepts with his. He will teach you the perfection of a
monk, and I shall show you the whole duty of a clergyman.
5. A clergyman, then, as he serves Christ’s
church, must first understand what his name means; and then, when he
realizes this, must endeavor to be that which he is called. For since
the Greek word κλῆρος means
“lot,” or “inheritance,” the clergy are so
called either because they are the lot of the Lord, or else because the
Lord Himself is their lot and portion. Now, he who in his own person is
the Lord’s portion, or has the Lord for his portion, must so bear
himself as to possess the Lord and to be possessed by Him. He who
possesses the Lord, and who says with the prophet, “The Lord is
my portion,”1340
can hold to
nothing beside the Lord. For if he hold to something beside the Lord,
the Lord will not be his portion. Suppose, for instance, that he holds
to gold or silver, or possessions or inlaid furniture; with such
portions as these the Lord will not deign to be his portion. I, if I am
the portion of the Lord, and the line of His heritage,1341
receive no portion among the remaining
tribes; but, like the Priest and the Levite, I live on the tithe,1342
and serving the altar, am supported by
its offerings.1343
Having food
and raiment, I shall be content with these,1344
and as a disciple of the Cross shall
share its poverty. I beseech you, therefore, and
Again and yet again admonish you;1345
| 1345 Virgil, Æn.
iii. 436. |
do not look to your military experience for a standard of clerical
obligation. Under Christ’s banner seek for no worldly gain, lest
having more than when you first became a clergyman, you hear men say,
to your shame, “Their portion shall not profit them.”1346
| 1346 Jer. xii. 13, LXX. There is a play on the word κλῆρος, which means (1)
portion, (2) clergy. | Welcome poor men and strangers to your
homely board, that with them Christ may be your guest. A clergyman who
engages in business, and who rises from poverty to wealth, and from
obscurity to a high position, avoid as you would the plague. For
“evil communications corrupt good manners.”1347
You despise gold; he loves it. You
spurn wealth; he eagerly pursues it. You love silence, meekness,
privacy; he takes delight in talking and effrontery, in squares, and
streets, and apothecaries’ shops. What unity of feeling can there
be where there is so wide a divergency of manners?
A woman’s foot should seldom, if ever, cross the
threshold of your home. To all who are Christ’s virgins show the
same regard or the same disregard. Do not linger under the same roof
with them, and do not rely on your
past continence. You cannot be holier than David or wiser than Solomon.
Always bear in mind that it was a woman who expelled the tiller of
paradise from his heritage.1348
| 1348 Another allusion
to the word κλῆρος. | In case you
are sick one of the brethren may attend you; your sister also or your
mother or some woman whose faith is approved with all. But if you have
no persons so connected with you or so marked out by chaste behaviour,
the Church maintains many elderly women who by their ministrations may
oblige you and benefit themselves so that even your sickness may bear
fruit in the shape of almsdeeds. I know of cases where the recovery of
the body has but preluded the sickness of the soul. There is danger for
you in the service of one for whose face you constantly watch. If in
the course of your clerical duty you have to visit a widow or a virgin,
never enter the house alone. Let your companions be persons association
with whom will not disgrace you. If you take a reader with you or an
acolyte or a psalm-singer, let their character not their garb be their
adornment; let them use no tongs to curl their hair; rather let their
mien be an index of their chastity. You must not sit alone with a woman
or see one without witnesses. If she has anything confidential to
disclose, she is sure to have some nurse or housekeeper,1349
some virgin, some widow, some married
woman. She cannot be so friendless as to have none save you to whom she
can venture to confide her secret. Beware of all that gives occasion
for suspicion; and, to avoid scandal, shun every act that may give
colour to it. Frequent gifts of handkerchiefs and garters, of
face-cloths and dishes first tasted by the giver—to say nothing
of notes full of fond expressions—of such things as these a holy
love knows nothing. Such endearing and alluring expressions as
‘my honey’ and ‘my darling,’ ‘you who are
all my charm and my delight’ the ridiculous courtesies of lovers
and their foolish doings, we blush for on the stage and abhor in men of
the world. How much more do we loathe them in monks and clergymen who
adorn the priesthood by their vows1350
| 1350 The vow of celibacy
is probably intended. | while their
vows are adorned by the priesthood. I speak thus not because I dread
such evils for you or for men of saintly life, but because in all ranks
and callings and among both men and women there are found both good and
bad and in condemning the bad I commend the good.
6. Shameful to say, idol-priests, play-actors, jockeys,
and prostitutes can inherit property: clergymen and monks alone lie
under a legal disability, a disability enacted not by persecutors but
by Christian emperors.1351
| 1351 The disability
alluded to was enacted by Valentinian. | I do not complain
of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved a statute so harsh.
Cauterizing is a good thing, no doubt; but how is it that I have a
wound which makes me need it? The law is strict and far-seeing, yet
even so rapacity goes on unchecked. By a fiction of trusteeship we set
the statute at defiance; and, as if imperial decrees outweigh the
mandates of Christ, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. If heir
there must be, the mother has first claim upon her children, the Church
upon her flock—the members of which she has borne and reared and
nourished. Why do we thrust ourselves in between mother and
children?
It is the glory of a bishop to make provision for the
wants of the poor; but it is the shame of all priests to amass private
fortunes. I who was born (suppose) in a poor man’s house, in a
country cottage, and who could scarcely get of common millet and
household bread enough to fill an empty stomach, am now come to disdain
the finest wheat flour and honey. I know the several kinds of fish by
name. I can tell unerringly on what coast a mussel has been picked. I
can distinguish by the flavour the province from which a bird comes.
Dainty dishes delight me because their ingredients are scarce and I end
by finding pleasure in their ruinous cost.
I hear also of servile attention shewn by some towards
old men and women when these are childless. They fetch the basin, beset
the bed and perform with their own hands the most revolting offices.
They anxiously await the advent of the doctor and with trembling lips
they ask whether the patient is better. If for a little while the old
fellow shews signs of returning vigour, they are in agonies. They
pretend to be delighted, but their covetous hearts undergo secret
torture. For they are afraid that their labours may go for nothing and
compare an old man with a clinging to life to the patriarch Methuselah.
How great a reward might they have with God if their hearts were not
set on a temporal prize! With what great exertions do they pursue an
empty heritage! Less labour might have purchased for them the pearl of
Christ.
7. Read the divine scriptures constantly; never, indeed,
let the sacred volume be out of your hand. Learn what you have to
teach. “Hold fast the faithful word as you have been taught that
you may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and convince the
gainsayers. Continue thou in the things that thou hast learned and hast
been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;”1352
| 1352 Titus i. 9; 2 Tim. iii. 14. | and “be ready always to give an answer to
every man that asketh you a reason of the hope and faith that are in
you.”1353
Do not let your deeds belie your
words; lest when you speak in church someone may mentally reply
“Why do you not practise what you profess? Here is a lover of
dainties turned censor! his stomach is full and he reads us a homily on
fasting. As well might a robber accuse others of covetousness.”
In a priest of Christ mouth, mind, and hand should be at one.
Be obedient to your bishop and welcome him as the parent
of your soul. Sons love their fathers and slaves fear their masters.
“If I be a father,” He says, “where is mine honour?
And if I am a master where is my fear?”1354
In your case the bishop combines in himself many titles to your
respect. He is at once a monk, a prelate, and an uncle who has before
now instructed you in all holy things. This also I say that the bishops
should know themselves to be priests not lords. Let them render to the
clergy the honour which is their due that the clergy may offer to them
the respect which belongs to bishops. There is a witty saying of the
orator Domitius which is here to the point: “Why am I to
recognize you as leader of the Senate when you will not recognize my
rights as a private member?”1355
| 1355 Cicero, de Orat.
iii. 1. | We should
realize that a bishop and his presbyters are like Aaron and his sons.
As there is but one Lord and one Temple; so also should there be but
one ministry. Let us ever bear in mind the charge which the apostle
Peter gives to priests: “feed the flock of God which is among
you, taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly as
God would have you;1356
not for filthy
lucre but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God’s
heritage but being ensamples to the flock,” and that gladly; that
“when the chief-shepherd shall appear ye may receive a crown of
glory that fadeth not away.”1357
It is a
bad custom which prevails in certain churches for presbyters to be
silent when bishops are present on the ground that they would be
jealous or impatient hearers. “If anything,” writes the
apostle Paul, “be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the
first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one that all may
learn and all may be comforted; and the spirits of the prophets are
subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion but of
peace.”1358
“A wise
son maketh a glad father;”1359
and a
bishop should rejoice in the discrimination which has led him to choose
such for the priests of Christ.
8. When teaching in church seek to call forth not
plaudits but groans. Let the tears of your hearers be your glory. A
presbyter’s words ought to be seasoned by his reading of
scripture. Be not a declaimer or a ranter, one who gabbles without
rhyme or reason; but shew yourself skilled in the deep things and
versed in the mysteries of God. To mouth your words and by your
quickness of utterance astonish the unlettered crowd is a mark of
ignorance. Assurance often explains that of which it knows nothing; and
when it has convinced others imposes on itself. My teacher, Gregory of
Nazianzus, when I once asked him to explain Luke’s phrase σάββατον
δευτερόπρωτον
, that is “the second-first Sabbath,” playfully evaded my
request saying: “I will tell you about it in church, and there,
when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will to
know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent,
every one will put you down for a fool.” There is nothing so easy
as by sheer volubility to deceive a common crowd or an uneducated
congregation: such most admire what they fail to understand. Hear
Marcus Tullius, the subject of that noble eulogy: “You would have
been the first of orators but for Demosthenes: he would have been the
only one but for you.” Hear what in his speech for Quintus
Gallius1360
he has to say about unskilled
speakers and popular applause and then you will not be the sport of
such illusions. “What I am telling you,” said he, “is
a recent experience of my own. One who has the name of a poet and a man
of culture has written a book entitled Conversations of Poets and
Philosophers. In this he represents Euripides as conversing with
Menander and Socrates with Epicurus—men whose lives we know to be
separated not by years but by centuries. Nevertheless he calls forth
limitless applause and endless acclamations. For the theatre contains
many who belong to the same school as he: like him they have never
learned letters.”
9. In dress avoid sombre colours as much as bright ones.
Showiness and slovenliness are alike to be shunned; for the one savours
of vanity and the other of pride. To go about without a linen scarf on
is nothing: what is praiseworthy is to be without money to buy one. It
is disgraceful and absurd to boast of having neither napkin nor
handkerchief and yet to carry a well-filled purse.
Some bestow a trifle on the poor to receive a larger sum
themselves and under the cloak of almsgiving do but seek for riches.
Such are almshunters rather than almsgivers. Their methods are those by
which birds, beasts, and fishes are
taken. A morsel of bait is put on the hook—to land a married
lady’s purse! The church is committed to the bishop; let him take
heed whom he appoints to be his almoner. It is better for me to have no
money to give away than shamelessly to beg what I mean to hoard. It is
arrogance too to wish to seem more liberal than he who is
Christ’s bishop. “All things are not open to us
all.”1361
In the church one is the eye,
another is the tongue, another the hand, another the foot, others ears,
belly, and so on. Read Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians and
learn how the one body is made up of different members.1362
The rude and simple brother must not
suppose himself a saint just because he knows nothing; and he who is
educated and eloquent must not measure his saintliness merely by his
fluency. Of two imperfect things holy rusticity is better than sinful
eloquence.
10. Many build churches nowadays; their walls and
pillars of glowing marble, their ceilings glittering with gold, their
altars studded with jewels. Yet to the choice of Christ’s
ministers no heed is paid. And let no one allege against me the wealth
of the temple in Judæa, its table, its lamps, its censers, its
dishes, its cups, its spoons,1363
and the rest
of its golden vessels. If these were approved by the Lord it was at a
time when the priests had to offer victims and when the blood of sheep
was the redemption of sins. They were figures typifying things still
future and were “written for our admonition upon whom the ends of
the world are come.”1364
But now our
Lord by His poverty has consecrated the poverty of His house. Let us,
therefore, think of His cross and count riches to be but dirt. Why do
we admire what Christ calls “the mammon of
unrighteousness”?1365
Why do we
cherish and love what it is Peter’s boast not to possess?1366
Or if we insist on keeping to the letter
and find the mention of gold and wealth so pleasing, let us keep to
everything else as well as the gold. Let the bishops of Christ be bound
to marry wives, who must be virgins.1367
Let the
best-intentioned priest be deprived of his office if he bear a scar and
be disfigured.1368
Let bodily
leprosy be counted worse than spots upon the soul. Let us be fruitful
and multiply and replenish the earth,1369
but let us slay no lamb and celebrate no
mystic passover, for where there is no temple,1370
the law forbids these acts. Let us pitch tents in the seventh month1371
and noise abroad a solemn fast with the
sound of a horn.1372
But if we
compare all these things as spiritual with things which are
spiritual;1373
and if we allow with Paul that
“the Law is spiritual”1374
and call
to mind David’s words: “open thou mine eyes that I may
behold wondrous things out of thy law;”1375
and if on these grounds we interpret it
as our Lord interprets it—He has explained the Sabbath in this
way:1376
then, rejecting the superstitions of
the Jews, we must also reject the gold; or, approving the gold, we must
approve the Jews as well. For we must either accept them with the gold
or condemn them with it.
11. Avoid entertaining men of the world, especially
those whose honours make them swell with pride. You are the priest of
Christ—one poor and crucified who lived on the bread of
strangers. It is a disgrace to you if the consul’s lictors or
soldiers keep watch before your door, and if the Judge of the province
has a better dinner with you than in his own palace. If you plead as an
excuse your wish to intercede for the unhappy and the oppressed, I
reply that a worldly judge will defer more to a clergyman who is
self-denying than to one who is rich; he will pay more regard to your
holiness than to your wealth. Or if he is a man who will not hear the
clergy on behalf of the distressed except over the bowl, I will readily
forego his aid and will appeal to Christ who can help more effectively
and speedily than any judge. Truly “it is better to trust in the
Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord
than to put confidence in princes.”1377
Let your breath never smell of wine lest the
philosopher’s words be said to you: “instead of offering me
a kiss you are giving me a taste of wine.” Priests given to wine
are both condemned by the apostle1378
and
forbidden by the old Law. Those who serve the altar, we are told, must
drink neither wine nor shechar.1379
Now every intoxicating drink is in
Hebrew called shechar whether it is made of corn or of the juice
of apples, whether you distil from the honeycomb a rude kind of mead or
make a liquor by squeezing dates or strain a thick syrup from a
decoction of corn. Whatever intoxicates and disturbs the balance of the
mind avoid as you would wine. I do not say that we are to condemn what
is a creature of God. The Lord Himself was called a
“wine-bibber” and wine in moderation was allowed to Timothy
because of his weak stomach. I only require that drinkers should
observe that limit which their age, their health, or their constitution
requires. But if without drinking
wine at all I am aglow with youth and am inflamed by the heat of my
blood and am of a strong and lusty habit of body, I will readily forego
the cup in which I cannot but suspect poison. The Greeks have an
excellent saying which will perhaps bear translation,
Fat bellies have no sentiments refined.1380
| 1380 Cf.
Shakespeare:—
Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite
the wits. |
12. Lay upon yourself only as much fasting as you can
bear, and let your fasts be pure, chaste, simple, moderate, and not
superstitious. What good is it to use no oil if you seek after the most
troublesome and out-of-the-way kinds of food, dried figs, pepper, nuts,
dates, fine flour, honey, pistachios? All the resources of gardening
are strained to save us from eating household bread; and to pursue
dainties we turn our backs on the kingdom of heaven. There are some, I
am told, who reverse the laws of nature and the race; for they neither
eat bread nor drink water but imbibe thin decoctions of crushed herbs
and beet-juice—not from a cup but from a shell. Shame on us that
we have no blushes for such follies and that we feel no disgust at such
superstition! To crown all, in the midst of our dainties we seek a
reputation for abstinence. The strictest fast is bread and water. But
because it brings with it no glory and because we all of us live on
bread and water, it is reckoned no fast at all but an ordinary and
common matter.
13. Do not angle for compliments, lest, while you win
the popular applause, you do despite to God. “If I yet pleased
men,” says the apostle, “I should not be the servant of
Christ.”1381
He ceased to
please men when he became Christ’s servant. Christ’s
soldier marches on through good report and evil report,1382
the one on the right hand and the
other on the left. No praise elates him, no reproaches crush him. He is
not puffed up by riches, nor does he shrink into himself because of
poverty. Joy and sorrow he alike despises. The sun does not burn him by
day nor the moon by night.1383
Do not pray
at the corners of the streets,1384
lest the
applause of men interrupt the straight course of your prayers. Do not
broaden your fringes and for show wear phylacteries,1385
or, despite of conscience, wrap
yourself in the self-seeking of the Pharisee.1386
| 1386 Some irrelevant
sentences are found here in the ordinary text which are obviously an
interpolation. | Would you know what mode of apparel
the Lord requires? Have prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude.1387
Let these be the four quarters of
your horizon, let them be a four-horse team to bear you, Christ’s
charioteer, at full speed to your goal. No necklace can be more
precious than these; no gems can form a brighter galaxy. By them you
are decorated, you are girt about, you are protected on every side.
They are your defence as well as your glory; for every gem is turned
into a shield.
14. Beware also of a blabbing tongue and of itching
ears. Neither detract from others nor listen to detractors. “Thou
sittest,” says the psalmist, “and speakest against thy
brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things
hast thou done and I kept silence; thou thoughtest wickedly that I was
such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee and set them1388
in order before thine eyes.”1389
Keep your tongue from cavilling and
watch over your words. Know that in judging others you are passing
sentence on yourself and that you are yourself guilty of the faults
which you blame in them. It is no excuse to say: “if others tell
me things I cannot be rude to them.” No one cares to speak to an
unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils
upon the shooter of it. Let the detractor learn from your unwillingness
to listen not to be so ready to detract. Solomon
says:—“meddle not with them that are given to detraction:
for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction
of them both?”1390
—of the
detractor, that is, and of the person who lends an ear to his
detraction.
15. It is your duty to visit the sick, to know the homes
and children of ladies who are married, and to guard the secrets of
noblemen. Make it your object, therefore, to keep your tongue chaste as
well as your eyes. Never discuss a woman’s figure nor let one
house know what is going on in another. Hippocrates,1391
| 1391 The principal
physician of this name flourished in the fifth century, b.c. | before he will teach his pupils, makes
them take an oath and compels them to swear fealty to him. He binds
them over to silence, and prescribes for them their language, their
gait, their dress, their manners. How much more reason have we to whom
the medicine of the soul has been committed to love the houses of all
Christians as our own homes. Let them know us as comforters in sorrow
rather than as guests in time of mirth. That clergyman soon becomes an
object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to
go.
16. Let us never seek for presents and rarely accept
them when we are asked to do so. For “it is more blessed to give
than to receive.”1392
Somehow or other the very man who begs
leave to offer you a gift holds you the cheaper for your acceptance of
it; while, if you refuse it, it is wonderful how much more he will come
to respect you. The preacher of continence must not be a maker of
marriages. Why does he who reads the apostle’s words “it
remaineth that they that have wives be as though they had none”1393
—why does he press a virgin to
marry? Why does a priest, who must be a monogamist,1394
urge a widow to marry again? How can the
clergy be managers and stewards of other men’s households, when
they are bidden to disregard even their own interests? To wrest a thing
from a friend is theft but to cheat the Church is sacrilege. When you
have received money to be doled out to the poor, to be cautious or to
hesitate while crowds are starving is to be worse than a robber; and to
subtract a portion for yourself is to commit a crime of the deepest
dye. I am tortured with hunger and are you to judge what will satisfy
my cravings? Either divide immediately what you have received, or, if
you are a timid almoner, send the donor to distribute his own gifts.
Your purse ought not to remain full while I am in need. No one can look
after what is mine better than I can. He is the best almoner who keeps
nothing for himself.
17. You have compelled me, my dear Nepotian, in spite of
the castigation which my treatise on Virginity has had to
endure—the one which I wrote for the saintly Eustochium at
Rome:1395
—you have compelled me after ten
years have passed once more to open my mouth at Bethlehem and to expose
myself to the stabs of every tongue. For I could only escape from
criticism by writing nothing—a course made impossible by your
request; and I knew when I took up my pen that the shafts of all
gainsayers would be launched against me. I beg such to hold their peace
and to desist from gainsaying: for I have written to them not as to
opponents but as to friends. I have not inveighed against those who
sin: I have but warned them to sin no more. My judgment of myself has
been as strict as my judgment of them. When I have wished to remove the
mote from my neighbour’s eye, I have first cast out the beam in
my own.1396
I have calumniated no one. Not a
name has been hinted at. My words have not been aimed at individuals
and my criticism of shortcomings has been quite general. If any one
wishes to be angry with me he will have first to own that he himself
suits my description.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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