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| Chapter XVII. To whom the method of perfection should be laid open.
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Chapter XVII.
To whom the method of perfection should be laid
open.
Take care too, when your
riper age leads you to teach, lest you be led astray by the love of
vainglory, and teach at random to the most impure persons these things
which you have learnt not so much by reading as by the effects of
experience, and so incur what Solomon, that wisest of men, denounced:
“Attach not a wicked man to the pastures of the just, and be not
led astray by the fulness of the belly,” for “delicacies
are not good for a fool, nor is there room for wisdom where sense is
wanting: for folly is the more led on, because a stubborn servant is
not improved by words, for even though he understands, he will not
obey.” And “Do not say anything in the ears of an imprudent
man, lest haply he mock at thy wise speeches.”1926
| 1926 Bible:Prov.23.9">Prov. xxiv. 15; xix. 10; xviii. 2; xxix.
19; xxiii. 9 (LXX.). | And “give not that which is holy to
dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest haply they trample
them under foot and turn again and rend you.”1927
It is right then to hide the mysteries
of spiritual meanings from men of this sort, that you may effectually
sing: “Thy words have I hid within my heart: that I should not
sin against Thee.”1928
But you will
perhaps say: And to whom are the mysteries of Holy Scripture to be
dispensed? Solomon, the wisest of men, shall teach you: “Give,
says he, strong drink to those who are in sorrow, and give wine to
drink, to those who are in pain, that they may forget their poverty,
and remember their pain no more,”1929
i.e., to those who in consequence of the punishment of their past
actions are oppressed with grief and sorrow, supply richly the joys of
spiritual knowledge like “wine that maketh glad the heart of
man,”1930
and restore them
with the strong drink of the word of salvation, lest haply they be
plunged in continual sorrow and a despair that brings death, and so
those who are of this sort be “swallowed up in overmuch
sorrow.”1931
But of those who
remain in coldness and carelessness, and are smitten by no sorrow of
heart we read as follows: “For one who is kindly and without
sorrow, shall be in want.”1932
With all
possible care therefore avoid being puffed up with the love of
vainglory, and so failing to become a partaker with him whom the
prophet praises, “who hath not given his money upon
usury.”1933
For every one
who, from love of the praise of men dispenses the words of God, of
which it is said “the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver
tried by the fire, purged from the earth, refined seven
times,”1934
puts out his
money upon usury, and will deserve for this not merely no reward, but
rather punishment. For this reason he chose to use up his Lord’s
money that he might be the garner from a temporal profit, and not that
the Lord, as it is written, might “when He comes, receive His own
with usury.”1935
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