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| Chapter XXVII. Wonderful Piety of Martin.
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Chapter XXVII.
Wonderful Piety of Martin.
No one ever saw him
enraged, or excited, or lamenting, or laughing; he was always one and
the same: displaying a kind of heavenly happiness in his countenance,
he seemed to have passed the ordinary limits of human nature. Never was
there any word on his lips but Christ, and never was there a feeling in
his heart except piety, peace, and tender mercy. Frequently, too, he
used to weep for the sins of those who showed themselves his
revilers—those who, as he led his retired and tranquil life,
slandered him with poisoned tongue and a viper’s mouth. And truly
we have had experience of some who were envious of his virtues and his
life—who really hated in him what they did not see in themselves,
and what they had not power to imitate. And—O wickedness worthy
of deepest grief and groans!—some of his calumniators, although
very few, some of his maligners, I say, were reported to be no others
than bishops! Here, however, it is not necessary to name any one,
although a good many of these people are still venting42
| 42 Lit. “are barking
round about.” | their spleen against myself. I shall deem it
sufficient that, if any one of them reads this account, and perceives
that he is himself pointed at, he may have the grace to blush. But if,
on the other hand, he shows anger, he will, by that very fact, own that
he is among those spoken of, though all the time perhaps I have been
thinking of some other person. I shall, however, by no means feel
ashamed if any people of that sort include myself in their hatred along
with such a man as Martin. I am quite persuaded of this, that the
present little work will give pleasure to all truly good men. And I
shall only say further that, if any one read this narrative in an
unbelieving spirit, he himself will fall into sin. I am conscious to
myself that I have been induced by belief in the facts, and by the love
of Christ, to write these things; and that, in doing so, I have set
forth what is well known, and recorded what is true; and, as I trust,
that man will have a reward prepared by God, not who shall read these
things, but who shall believe them.43
| 43 It seems
extremely difficult (to recur to the point once more), after reading
this account of St. Martin by Sulpitius, to form any certain conclusion
regarding it. The writer so frequently and solemnly assures us of his
good faith, and there is such a verisimilitude about the style, that it
appears impossible to accept the theory of willful deception on the
part of the writer. And then, he was so intimately acquainted with the
subject of his narrative, that he could hardly have accepted fictions
for facts, or failed in his estimate of the friend he so much admired
and loved. Altogether, this Life of St. Martin seems to bring
before us one of the puzzles of history. The saint himself must
evidently have been a very extraordinary man, to impress one of the
talents and learning of Sulpitius so remarkably as he did; but it is
extremely hard to say how far the miraculous narratives, which enter so
largely into the account before us, were due to pure invention, or
unconscious hallucination. Milner remarks (Church History, II.
193), “I should be ashamed, as well as think the labor ill spent,
to recite the stories at length which Sulpitius gives us.” See,
on the other side, Cardinal Newman’s Essays on Miracles,
p. 127, 209, &c. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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