On the Priesthood 1

By the blessed John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom: to the one who reproached him for having escaped the priesthood. Section I, 1.

A demonstration of the goodwill of the great Basil toward me. I have had many friends, both genuine and true, who knew the laws of friendship and kept them exactly;

but one of these many, surpassing them all in his love toward me, strove as hard to leave the rest behind as those others outdid the people who were merely casually disposed toward us.

He was one of those who had accompanied me through the whole of my life;

for we engaged in the same studies and had the same teachers; and we shared one eagerness and zeal for the discourses we labored over, and an equal desire arising from the very same pursuits.

For not only when we were attending our teachers, but also when, having left them, it was necessary to deliberate which way of life would be better for us to choose, even there we were seen to be of one mind.

And besides these things, other matters too kept this concord of ours unbroken and firm;

for neither could one of us pride himself over the other on account of greatness of homeland, nor was wealth excessive on my side while he lived in extreme poverty; rather, the measure of our means matched the equality of our purpose. Our lineage too was of equal honor, and everything ran together in agreement of mind.

What hindered him from dwelling together with me. But when it became necessary for that blessed man to pursue the life of the monks and true philosophy, this yoke of ours was no longer equal; rather, his scale rose light and aloft, while I, still fettered by the desires of this world, dragged mine down and forced it to remain below, weighing it down with youthful fancies. From that point on our friendship indeed remained firm as before, but our living together was cut off;

for it was not possible for those who did not pursue the same things to make their daily life in common.

But when at last I too raised my head a little out of the surge of worldly life, he received me with both his hands; yet even so we were not able to preserve our former equality.

For having gotten ahead of me in time and having shown great fervor, he was again borne above me and lifted to a great height.

Nevertheless, being good and prizing our friendship highly, he separated himself from all others and spent all his time with me—a thing he had desired even before, but, as I said, had been prevented from doing by my indolence.

For it was not possible for one who frequented the law court and was agog over the delights of the theater to associate often with one nailed to his books and never once setting foot in the marketplace.

For this reason he had previously been kept apart; but once he found me sharing the same condition of life, he all at once gave birth to the desire he had long been in travail with, and could not endure to be parted from me for even the smallest portion of the day. He kept urging that each of us leave his own house and that we both keep a common dwelling;

and he persuaded me, and the matter was in hand.

But my mother's continual entreaties hindered me from granting him this favor—or rather, from receiving this gift from him.

While I was deliberating these things, she took me by the right hand and led me into the room set apart for her; and seating me beside her on the bed on which she had given me birth, she let flow fountains of tears, and added words more pitiable than the tears, lamenting to me in this fashion:

“My child,” she said, “I was not permitted to enjoy your father's virtue for long, since this was God's will;

for his death, succeeding the pangs I bore for you, brought upon you orphanhood and upon me untimely widowhood, with all the hardships of widowhood that only those who have suffered them can rightly know.

For no words could reach the storm and surge that a young woman undergoes who has but lately come forth from her father's house, inexperienced in affairs, and is suddenly struck with uncontrollable grief and forced to bear cares too great for her age and her nature.

For she must, I think, both correct the slackness of servants and guard against their wrongdoing, fend off the schemes of kinsmen, and bravely bear the insolence and harshness of the public tax-collectors in the payment of the levies.

And if the deceased has departed leaving a child, even a girl will likewise give the mother much care—though one free from expense and dread; but a son fills her each day with countless fears and yet more cares.

I pass over the expenditure of money she is compelled to endure, in her desire to rear him in a manner befitting a free man.

Yet none of these things persuaded me to enter into a second marriage or to bring another bridegroom into your father's house;

but I remained in the tempest and the turmoil, and did not flee the iron furnace of widowhood, being helped first of all by the support from above.

And it brought me no small consolation amid those hardships continually to behold your face and to keep for myself a living image of him who had died, accurately reproduced in you.

For this reason, even while you were still an infant and had not yet learned to speak—the very time when children most delight their parents—you afforded me much comfort.

Nor indeed could you allege and reproach me that, though we bore widowhood nobly, we yet diminished your paternal estate because of the necessity of widowhood—which I know that many who have suffered misfortune in orphanhood have undergone.

For I kept this whole estate intact, and I left nothing lacking of what ought to be spent on your good name, spending out of my own means and out of what I brought with me from my father's house.

And do not suppose that I say these things now to reproach you;

rather, in return for all these things I ask of you one favor: not to cast me into a second widowhood, nor to rekindle the grief now laid to rest, but to wait for my end;

perhaps after a little while I shall depart.

For the young have hope of reaching even a long old age;

but we who have grown old await nothing other than death.

When, therefore, you have committed me to the earth and mingled my bones with your father's, then set out on long journeys and sail whatever sea you wish;

but as long as I draw breath, endure to dwell with me;

do not offend God in vain and without cause, by involving us, who have done you no wrong, in so many evils.

For if you have any ground to accuse me of dragging you into the cares of this life and forcing you to manage your affairs, then respect neither the laws of nature, nor your upbringing, nor custom, nor anything else, but flee from me as a plotter and an enemy;

but if we do everything to procure for you abundant leisure for your journey through this life—if nothing else, then at least let this bond hold you fast with us.

For though you say that countless people love you, no one will grant you such freedom to enjoy, since there is no one who cares for your good name on equal terms with me.” These things, and more than these, my mother said to me, and I to the [blessed Basil].

But he was not only not abashed by these words, but pressed all the more, demanding the very same things as before.

A deception practiced by us in his being seized. While we were in this state—he continually beseeching, and I not consenting—a rumor that suddenly arose threw us both into confusion;

and the rumor was that we were about to be promoted to the dignity of the priesthood.

Now I, as soon as I heard this report, was gripped by both dread and perplexity:

by dread, lest I be taken even against my will; by perplexity, often inquiring whence it had come to those men to conceive any such notion concerning us;

for, looking at myself, I found nothing worthy of that honor.

But this noble man, coming to me in private and conferring about these things as with one who had not heard the rumor, begged that even here we should be seen acting and deliberating in the same way as before;

for he said he would readily follow us by whichever of the two roads we should judge best, whether it were to flee or to accept.

Perceiving, then, his eagerness, and considering that I would bring loss upon the whole community of the Church if I were to deprive Christ's flock of one so young, so good, and so fit for the oversight of the many, on account of my own weakness, I did not disclose to him the mind I held about these things—though I had never before allowed any of my counsels to escape his notice. Instead, saying that deliberation about these matters must be deferred to another time, since it was not now pressing, I straightway persuaded him to take no thought about them, and gave him to be confident concerning me as one who would be of the same mind, if ever it should befall me to suffer any such thing.

But when no long time had passed and the day came on which we were to be ordained, and I was in hiding, he—knowing nothing of all this—was led off as if on some other pretext;

and he accepted the yoke, hoping—on the strength of what I had promised him—that we too would by all means follow, or rather supposing that we were already following him.

For some of those present there, seeing him chafing at his seizure, deceived him by crying out that it was absurd that the one reputed by all to be the bolder—they meant me—should yield with great mildness to the judgment of the fathers, while he, the far more sensible and reasonable, should behave boldly and vainly, prancing and recoiling and contradicting.

Yielding to these words, when he heard that I had escaped, he came in to me in deep dejection, sat down beside me, and wished indeed to say something; but held fast by perplexity and unable to set forth in words the violence he had endured, the very moment he opened his mouth he was prevented from speaking, his despondency cutting off his speech before it could pass his teeth.

Seeing him, then, all in tears and filled with great agitation, and knowing the cause, I laughed for very much delight, and seizing his right hand I forced a kiss upon it, and glorified God that my scheme had come to a fair and such an end as I had ever prayed for.

But when he saw that I was overjoyed and beaming, and perceived that he had previously been deceived by us, he was the more stung and chagrined.

Accusations from him on account of the deception. And once, when he had somewhat recovered from that tumult of soul, [he said]:

BASIL: “But even if you have spat upon what is mine,” he said, “and now hold me of no account—why, I know not—yet you ought at least to have taken thought for your own reputation.

But as it is, you have opened the mouths of all, and everyone says that you, in love with empty glory, have declined this ministry;

and there is no one to clear you of this charge.

For me it is no longer bearable even to enter the marketplace, so many are those who approach us and accuse us day by day.

For whenever they see me appear anywhere in the city, all who are on familiar terms with us take me aside and subject me to the greater part of the accusation;

for since I knew his mind,

they say—‘for surely none of his secrets could have escaped you’—I ought not to have concealed it, but ought to have shared it with us, and we would by all means not have been at a loss for a device to catch him.’

But I am ashamed and blush to tell them that I did not know you had long been planning these things, lest they suppose our friendship to be mere pretense.

For even if it is so—as indeed it is, and you yourself could not deny it from what you have now done to us—still it is well to hide our ills from outsiders, who hold at least a moderate opinion of us.

To speak the truth to them, then, and how matters stand with us, I shrink from doing;

and I am compelled henceforth to keep silent, to bow my head to the ground, to turn aside from those I meet, and to flee away.

For even if I escape the former condemnation, I must henceforth be judged guilty of falsehood;

for they will never be willing to believe me that you reckoned even Basil among the others to whom it was not lawful to know your affairs.”

“But of these things I make no great account, since this has become pleasant to you;

yet how shall we bear the rest of the shame? For some charge you with arrogance, others with vainglory;

while those of the accusers who are more unsparing lay both these charges against us at once, and add the insult done to those who honored us, saying that they suffered justly—and would have deserved even worse dishonor at our hands—because, passing over so many and so great men, they raised, all of a sudden, to such honor as they never even dreamed of attaining, mere striplings still wallowing yesterday and the day before in the cares of life, who for a brief while knit their brows, wrap themselves in dark clothing, and feign solemnity.

And those who from their earliest age to extreme old age have extended their ascetic discipline are among the ruled;

while over them rule their own children, who have not even heard the laws according to which this office must be administered.

Saying these things and more than these, they continually fasten upon us.

But what I am to say in answer to these things I do not know; and I beg of you—

for I think you did not flee this flight simply or at random, nor take upon yourself so great an enmity toward men so great, without some reasoning and reflection in coming to this; whence I conjecture that you have a ready argument for your defense.

Tell me, then, whether we shall be able to allege any just excuse to our accusers.

For of the wrongs I myself have suffered at your hands I demand no account—not of how you deceived me, not of how you betrayed me, not of all that you enjoyed at our hands throughout the former time.

For we, so to speak, carried our very soul and placed it in your hands;

but you used such craft against us as one would use to guard oneself against some enemies.

And yet you ought, if you knew this counsel to be profitable, not to have fled even its gain for yourself;

but if you knew it to be harmful, you ought also to have delivered us, whom you ever said you preferred above all, from the loss.

But you did everything to ensure that we should fall into it; and you had need of no guile or pretense at all toward one accustomed to say and do everything toward you without guile and in all simplicity.

Yet, as I said, I bring none of these charges now, nor do I reproach you for the desolation into which you have cast us by cutting off those gatherings of ours, from which we often reaped pleasure and no ordinary benefit.

But all this I let go, and bear it in silence and meekly;

not because you offended against us meekly, but because I laid down for myself this law, from that day on which I cherished your friendship: never to put you under the necessity of making a defense for whatever you might wish to grieve us with.

Since that you have brought upon us no small loss, you yourself also know, if indeed you remember the words always spoken about us, both by those outside and by ourselves;

and these were, that it was a great gain for us to be of one soul and to be fortified by our mutual friendship.

And all the others kept saying that our concord would bring no small benefit to many others as well; but I, for my part, as far as it lay with me, never imagined that we should afford benefit to any;

for I never conceived, so far as concerned me, that we should furnish profit to any;

rather I used to say that we should at least reap from it this no small gain: to become hard to overpower by those wishing to vanquish us.

And I never ceased reminding you of these things:

the times are difficult, those who plot against us are many, the genuineness of love has perished, and in its place has entered the destruction of envy; we pass through the midst of snares and walk upon the battlements of cities;

those ready to gloat over our ills, should any befall, stand thick about us from every side;

but there is none to share our pain—or at most exceedingly few.

See that we do not, by ever falling apart, incur much laughter, and a loss greater than the laughter.

‘A brother helped by a brother is like a strong city and like a kingdom secured with bars.’ Do not, then, dissolve this genuine bond, nor break the bar.

These things and more than these I kept saying continually, never suspecting any such thing, but supposing that your disposition toward us was altogether sound, and wishing, out of an abundance of caution, to tend even one who was sound;

but I was, as it seems, unwittingly applying remedies to one who was sick; and even so I, wretched man, gained nothing, nor did anything more come to me from this excessive foresight.

For having cast away all those considerations at once, and not even taking them into mind, you let us loose, like a ballastless ship, into a boundless sea, giving no thought to those savage waves which we must of necessity endure.

For if ever it should befall that calumny or mockery or some other insult and abuse were brought upon us from any quarter—and such things must often happen—to whom shall we flee for refuge? To whom shall we impart our despondency? Who will be willing to defend us, to check those who grieve us and make them grieve us no more, and to console us and prepare us to bear the rudeness of others? There is no one—now that you stand far off from this dreadful war, and cannot even hear the battle cry.

Do you know how great an evil you have wrought? Do you now at least, after striking, recognize that you have dealt us a mortal blow? But let these things be dismissed;

for it is no longer possible to undo what has been done, nor to find a way out for those in straits.”

“What shall we say to those outside? With what shall we answer their accusations?” Section V.

Our defense on this matter. JOHN: “Take courage,” said I;

“for not only am I ready to render account for these things, but also for those of which you have acquitted us; of these too I will try to give you an account, as best I am able.

And, if you please, I will make the beginning of my defense from these very things;

for I should indeed be absurd and exceedingly unfair if, while taking thought for the opinion of those outside and doing everything that they might cease to accuse us, I were unable to persuade the one dearest to me of all—who has shown such reverence toward us that he would not even be willing to bring a charge for the wrongs he says he has suffered, but, setting his own interests at nought, still takes thought for ours—that I do him no wrong; and were instead to appear as having treated him with a greater indolence than the zeal which he himself displayed toward us.

That it is possible to use deception toward a beneficial end. In what, then, have we wronged you?—since from this point too I have resolved to launch out into the sea of my defense.

Is it that we tricked you and hid our purpose from you? But it was for your gain, both of you who were deceived and of those to whom, by deceiving you, we betrayed you.

For if the evil of theft is evil through and through, and there is never a fitting occasion to use it, then we are ready to pay whatever penalty you yourself wish;

or rather, you will never bring yourself to exact a penalty from us, while we ourselves shall condemn ourselves to those things which judges decree against wrongdoers when the accusers convict them.

But if the act is not always harmful, but becomes bad or good according to the purpose of those who use it, then, leaving off accusing me of having deceived, show that we contrived this for an evil end;

for so long as this is absent, far from bringing reproaches and charges,

it would be just for those who wish to be fairly disposed even to commend the one who deceives.

For so great a gain has a well-timed deception, practiced with right intent, that many have often had even to pay a penalty for not having used it.

And if you please, examine the generals who have won renown from of old: you will find that most of their trophies were achievements of deception, and that these are praised more than those who conquered openly.

For the latter accomplish their wars with greater expenditure both of money and of lives, so that no more accrues to them from victory, but the victors fare no better than the vanquished, their armies consumed and their treasuries emptied.

Besides this, they do not even let them enjoy the whole of the glory that attends victory;

for no small part of it falls also to the lot of the fallen to reap, since they were victors in soul and defeated only in body—seeing that, had it been possible to be struck and not fall, and had death not come and stopped them, they would never have ceased from their ardor.

But the one who has been able to conquer by deception involves his enemies not only in calamity but in ridicule as well;

for it is not as there, where both sides carry off equal praise for their might; so here too they do not carry off equal praise for prudence; rather, the whole prize belongs to the victors, and—what is no less than this—they preserve for the city the pleasure of victory unalloyed.

For the prudence of the soul is not like the wealth of money and the multitude of bodies;

but those things, when one continually employs them in wars, are spent and abandon their possessors; whereas this, the more one stirs it up, the more it naturally increases.

And not in wars only, but in peace too, one would find the use of deception great and necessary;

and not only with respect to the affairs of the city, but also in the household—on the part of a wife toward a husband and a husband toward a wife, of a father toward a son and a friend toward a friend, and indeed of children toward a father.

For Saul's daughter, too, could not otherwise have rescued her husband from Saul's hands except by outwitting her father;

and her brother, wishing to save the one she had delivered, when he was again in danger, used the very same weapons as the woman.

“But none of these things applies to me,” he says;

“for I am neither an enemy nor a foe, nor one of those attempting to do wrong, but quite the contrary;

for, having entrusted my own affairs to your judgment, I always followed the very path that you commanded.”

That such a thing ought not even to be called deception, but stewardship. JOHN: “But, O admirable and most excellent friend, it was for this very reason that I myself said beforehand that not in war only, nor against enemies only,

but in peace too and toward those dearest to us it is good to use it. For that this is profitable not only to those who deceive but also to those who are deceived—go to one of the physicians and ask how they deliver the sick from their disease, and you will hear from them that they are not content with their art alone, but that there are times when, taking deception also to their aid and mixing in the help that comes from it, they have thus brought the sick back to health.

For when the fretfulness of the sick and the very intractability of the disease will not admit the physicians' counsels, then it is necessary to put on the mask of deception, so that, as upon a stage, they may be able to hide the truth of what is being done.

And if you wish, I too will recount to you one stratagem out of many which I have heard that the sons of physicians contrive.

A fever once fell upon a certain man all at once with great violence, and the flame mounted; and the sick man turned away from the things that could quench the fire, while he longed for, and pressed hard upon, all who came in to him, beseeching them to hand him much unmixed wine and to let him drink his fill of that deadly draught;

for it was bound not only to kindle the fever the more, but also to deliver the wretched man over to delirium, if anyone should yield to him in this gratification.

Here, when the art was at a loss and had no device but was utterly cast out, deception came in and displayed such power of its own as you shall presently hear from us.

For the physician, taking an earthen vessel just brought out from the furnace and dipping it in much wine, then drawing it up empty and filling it with water, ordered the little room where the sick man lay to be shaded with many curtains, lest the light should expose the trick; and gave it to him to drink as though it were filled with unmixed wine.

And he, before even taking it into his hands, being immediately deceived by the smell that assailed him, did not even endure to scrutinize what was given, but, persuaded by this and cheated by the darkness, and urged on by his craving, gulped down what was given with great eagerness;

and having drunk his fill, he straightway shook off the suffocating heat and escaped the danger that hung over him.

Do you see the gain of deception? And if one should wish to recount all the stratagems of physicians, the discourse would run out to an infinite length.

And not only those who heal bodies, but also those who care for the diseases of souls, one would find continually employing this remedy.

Thus did the blessed Paul win over those many myriads of the Jews;

with this purpose he circumcised Timothy—he who threatened the Galatians that Christ would profit nothing those who were circumcised;

for this reason he put himself under the Law—he who counted the righteousness from the Law to be loss after his faith in Christ.

For great is the power of deception—only let it not be brought forward with a treacherous intent;

or rather, such a thing ought not even to be called deception, but a kind of stewardship and wisdom and an art able to find many resources in straitened circumstances and to set right the errors of the soul.

For I, for my part, would not call Phinehas a murderer, even though with a single blow he slew two bodies;

just as neither would I so call Elijah, after the hundred soldiers and their captains, and the great torrent of blood which he caused to flow from the slaughter of those consecrated to the demons.

For if we should concede this, and if anyone should strip the deeds bare of the purpose of those who did them and examine them in themselves, he could even judge Abraham guilty of child-murder, and could indict that man's grandson and his descendant on charges of villainy and deceit;

for thus the one mastered the birthright of nature, and the other transferred the wealth of the Egyptians to the host of the Israelites.

But these things are not so—they are not so;

for not only do we acquit them of blame, but we even admire them for these very deeds, since God too praised them on account of these things.

For that man would justly be called a deceiver who uses the thing unjustly, and who, when he ought often to deceive and to confer the greatest benefits through this art, instead—

but the one who, dealing straightforwardly, has wrought great evils upon him who was not deceived.