The Instructor (Paedagogus) 1 part 7/15

"Be not a wine-drinker, nor stretch yourself out in revel-feasts and purchases of meats; for every drunkard and fornicator shall come to poverty, and every drowsy one shall be clothed in tatters."

For drowsy is everyone who is not awake unto wisdom, but is plunged into sleep by drunkenness.

"And the drunkard," it says, "shall be clothed in rags, and shall be put to shame by his drunkenness before the eyes of onlookers."

For the rents of the sinner are the tatters of the fleshly fabric, pierced through with pleasures, through which the shame within the soul—namely sin—is seen; on account of which the garment torn off and rotting away on all sides into many lusts is not easily saved, being severed from salvation.

To this Wisdom most admonishingly adds:

"Who has woe? Who has tumult? Who has strife? Who has unpleasant gossip? Who has bruisings without cause?" See the wine-lover wholly in rags, who disregards reason itself and has surrendered himself a captive to drunkenness—all that Scripture has threatened against him.

And again it adds to the threat:

"...in wines? Is it not of those who track out where drinking-bouts are held?" Here it declares the wine-lover already dead, as it were, by reason of his livid eyes—a sign that appears on the dead—proclaiming to him death in the Lord.

For the forgetfulness of those things that lead to the true life inclines toward corruption.

Fittingly, then, the Pedagogue most firmly forbids it, caring for our salvation:

"Why?" you will ask. "Because," He says, "your mouth will then speak crooked things, and you will lie down as one in the heart of the sea, and as a helmsman in a great tempest."

Hence poetry too, having profited from this, says:

"Wine, which has fury equal to fire, whenever it comes upon men, surges like the Libyan sea before the north wind or the south, and reveals all things hidden—a maker of errant speech."

"Wine is a slipping for the drunken; wine deceives the soul," and what follows.

Do you see the danger of shipwreck? The heart is flooded over by heavy drinking, and the multitude of wine-bibbing is likened to the menace of the sea, in which the body, submerged like a ship, has sunk into the deep of disorder, buried under the great waves of wine; and the helmsman, the human mind, is whirled about by the surge, overpowered by drunkenness, and reeling at sea, grows dizzy in the gloom of the storm, having missed the harbor of truth, until, dashed upon submerged rocks, he runs himself aground and is destroyed amid pleasures.

Fittingly, then, the Apostle also charges:

"Be not drunk with wine, in which is much profligacy (asotia)," hinting by the word "profligacy" at the unsavableness of drunkenness.

For although He made water wine at the wedding, He did not permit drunkenness; rather He gave life to the watery quality of the understanding—making the laborer of the law from Adam, filling the whole world with the blood of the vine, the drink of truth, the mingling of the old law and the new Word, granting it in godliness for the fulfillment of the time foreannounced.

Scripture, then, has named wine a mystical symbol of the holy blood; but exposing the stale dregs that come from wine, it says, "Wine is insolent, and drunkenness abusive."

It pleases right reason, then, that in winter one drink, because of the cold, only as far as not to shiver—for those to whom shivering comes easily—and at other seasons for the care of the inward parts.

For just as food is to be used for not being hungry, so drink is to be used for not being thirsty, while keeping careful guard against the slip.

For the entrance of wine is precariously slippery.

Thus our soul too would be pure and dry and full of light; and "a dry soul is a beam of light, the wisest and best."

By this it is also capable of contemplation, and is not waterlogged, made corporeal like a cloud by the exhalations that come from wine.

One must not, then, make a fuss after Chian wine when it is absent, nor after Ariusian when it is not at hand.

For thirst is an affection of some lack, and seeks the fitting remedy for its replenishment, not a pretentious drink.

But it is the overflowing appetite, through intemperance, that brings about the importing of wines from across the seas—the soul raving and, even before drunkenness, deranged in its desires.

For there is the fragrant Thasian and the sweet-scented Lesbian, and a certain sweet Cretan, and a pleasant Syracusan, and a certain Egyptian Mendesian, and the island Naxian, and yet another fine-bouqueted one of the land of the Italians—many such names.

But for the temperate fellow-drinker one wine suffices, the produce of one God.

For why should the local wine not suffice to fulfill the desire? Unless indeed they will also import their water, like the foolish kings—there is a river of India so called, the Choaspes, whose water, the Choaspian, is the finest for drinking—and so, just as they bring along their friends, they bring along their water too.

Here too the Holy Spirit pronounces woe upon the rich who give themselves to luxury, crying out through Amos:

"You who drink the filtered wine and lie on ivory couches," it says, and all that follows upon these, He brought in by way of reproach.

—to cast away the delight of flutes because of the unseemliness of the appearance—; one should drink with an undistorted face, not gulping greedily, nor forcing the eyes into unseemliness before drinking, drawing it down at one breath out of intemperance; nor drenching the chin or soaking the garment as the drink is poured in all at once, all but washing and rinsing their own face in the cups.

For the gurgling of the drink rushing down with much breath drawn in, as into an earthen vessel poured, while the throat resounds with the torrential gulping, is a shameful and unseemly spectacle of intemperance; and besides, the practice is harmful to the partaker—this love of drinking.

"Do not hasten to your hurt, my good man."

Your drink is not being snatched away;

it has been given to you and awaits you.

Do not be eager to burst yourself by gulping it down open-mouthed;

your thirst is satisfied even if you drink more slowly, gaining decorum, as the drink is distributed decorously.

For time does not take away what intemperance snatches in advance.

"In wine," it says, "do not play the man (be not valiant); for wine has ruined many."

Drunkenness is practiced especially by the Scythians, the Celts, the Iberians, and the Thracians—all warlike nations—and they have reckoned it a fine and blessed pursuit to pursue.

But we, the peaceable race, feasting for enjoyment and not for insolence, drink sober pledges of friendship, that thus our love-cups may truly be shown, in keeping with their name, to be tokens of love.

How do you suppose the Lord drank, when for our sakes He became man? As shamelessly as we? Was it not graciously? Was it not decorously? Was it not with deliberation? For know well, He too partook of wine;

for He too was man.

And indeed He blessed the wine, saying:

—the blood of the vine, the Word poured out for many unto the remission of sins—He allegorizes as the holy stream of gladness.

And that the one who drinks ought to be temperate, He showed clearly through what He taught at banquets.

And that what was blessed was wine, He showed again, saying to the disciples:

"I shall by no means drink of the fruit of this vine, until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father."

But that what was drunk by the Lord was wine, He again says concerning Himself, reproaching the hard-heartedness of the Jews:

"For the Son of Man came," He says, "and they say:

Behold, a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, a friend of tax-collectors."

Let this much be set forth by us also against those called the Encratites.

But the women, affecting forsooth decorum—lest by the broad cups they should spread out their lips and become split-mouthed as the mouth widens—drinking unseemly from alabaster jars quite narrow at the rim, throw back their heads and bare their necks, not decorously, as it seems to me, and straining the throat about the swallow, gulp it down, as it were laying bare to their fellow-drinkers all they can; and drawing up mannish belches—or rather slavish ones—they put on airs in their wanton luxury.

For no such noise is fitting for a rational man, and still less for a woman, to whom even the very consciousness of who she is brings shame alone.

"A drunken woman," it says, "is a great wrath"—as it were the indignation of God is a lustful, drunken woman.

Why? "Because she does not hide her own shame."

For a woman is quickly dragged down into disorder, even if she only yields her purpose toward pleasures.

And we have not forbidden drinking from alabaster jars;

but we cut off, as boastful, the practice of insisting on drinking only from these, advising people to use whatever is at hand without attachment, checking from afar, from above, their appetites that are slipping down.

Therefore the up-floating drawing-in of air that leads to belching is to be quietly let pass.

—both: the men provoked to spy, and the women drawing the men's gazes upon themselves.

We must always conduct ourselves decorously, as though the Lord were present, lest perhaps the Apostle, growing angry, should say to us, as to the Corinthians:

"When you come together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper."

It seems to me that the constellation called by the mathematicians "the Headless," reckoned before the wandering star, with its head sunken down into its breast, hints at gluttons and pleasure-lovers and those ready for drunkenness.

For indeed in these men the reasoning faculty is seated not in the head, but in the inward parts, enslaved to the passions, to desire and to anger.

So that, in the same manner as Elpenor broke his neck-bones falling down through drunkenness, so the brain of these men, reeling from above through drunkenness down upon the liver and the heart—that is, upon pleasure-seeking and anger—falls a fall greater than that by which the sons of the poets say Hephaestus was hurled to the ground from heaven by Zeus.

"Pain of sleeplessness," it says, "and bile and gripings are with an insatiable man."

For this very reason, then, the drunken excess of Noah has been put on record, that we may guard most especially against drunkenness, having a manifest and written image of the transgression—on account of which those who covered the unseemliness of the drunkenness are blessed before the Lord.

Most concisely, then, Scripture has embraced everything and said it all in one word:

"Wine is sufficient for a well-instructed man, and upon his bed he shall rest."

That one ought not to be eager about the costliness of vessels.

The use, then, of drinking-cups made of silver and gold, and of others set with precious stones, is unfitting—a mere deception of the eye.

For if one pours hot mixed drink into them, the vessels being heated through, the handling is painful; or if again one pours in cold, the material imparts its quality, spoiling the mixture, and the rich man's drink is harmful.

Away, then, with certain Thericlean cups and Antigonid goblets and tankards and "gluttons" and limpet-cups and the myriad kinds of drinking-vessels, and wine-coolers besides these and wine-pourers;

for gold and silver, both in private and in public, are altogether an enviable possession, exceeding need—rare to acquire, difficult to keep, and inconvenient to use.

Nay, indeed the elaborate vainglory over engraved glassware too, more prone to breakage through the very art, teaching us to be afraid and to drink at the same time, is to be circumscribed by our good order;

and silver couches and basins and saucers and platters and bowls; in addition to these, vessels of silver and gold, some for the service of food, others even for those other uses which I am ashamed to name; tables of cleavable cedar and citron-wood and ebony and ivory, wrought with art; couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, gold-spangled and overlaid with tortoise-shell; folding doors and purple bedspreads and others of hard-to-procure dyes—proofs of tasteless luxury, gains laden with envy and indolence: all are to be set aside, having no worthy seriousness whatsoever.

"For the time is shortened," as the Apostle says.

This remains: not to be fashioned ridiculously, as in processions some women are seen anointed on the outside in a manner strikingly aimed at solemnity, while inwardly they are wretched.

Making this very thing more plainly clear, he added:

"It remains that both those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who buy as though they possessed nothing."

And if these things are said even concerning marriage, regarding which God says "Be fruitful and multiply," how do you suppose tastelessness is to be banished by the Lord's own authority? Therefore also:

"Sell your possessions," says the Lord, "and give to the poor, and come, follow Me;"

—possessing as your own only the good that cannot be taken away: faith toward God, confession toward Him who suffered, beneficence toward men, a most precious possession.

And I welcome Plato too, who legislates outright that one ought neither to practice having silver wealth nor gold, nor even a useless vessel which is not, along with necessary use, also moderate—so that the same thing might be well-suited for many purposes—and that the accumulation of property be done away.

Most beautifully, then, the divine Scripture somewhere says, addressing itself to the self-loving and arrogant:

"Where are the rulers of the nations and those who lord it over the beasts of the earth, who make sport with the birds of heaven, who hoard up silver and gold in which men trusted, and there is no end of their getting; who fashion silver and gold and are anxious about it? There is no finding out of their works.

They have vanished and have gone down into Hades."

This is the wage of tastelessness.

For if indeed, when we farm, there is need of a mattock and a plough, yet no one would forge a silver hoe or a golden shovel, but we use for husbandry that which works the soil well, not that which is costly—what hinders those who contemplate the like from holding the same mind concerning household vessels too? Of these let need be the measure, not costliness.

The table-knife—will it not cut unless its handle be silver-studded or made of ivory? Or must Indian steel be forged for cutting a portion of meat, as if we were summoning some ally? And what then? If the wash-basin be of earthenware, will it not receive the rinsing of the hands? Nor the foot-bath the rinsing of the foot? Will the table also, made with feet of ivory, take it as an indignity to bear an obol's-worth of bread? Nor indeed will the lamp refuse to serve light because it is the work of a potter, not of a goldsmith.

And I say that the pallet, providing a reclining no whit worse than the ivory couch, and the goat's-hair rug, being quite sufficient to lie upon so as not to need purple or scarlet coverlets, is nonetheless condemned for its cheapness through the folly of luxury, that origin of evil.

See what great delusion this is, what false estimation of beauty.

The Lord ate from a cheap bowl, and made the disciples recline on the grass upon the ground, and washed their feet, having girded Himself with a towel—He, the undeceitful God and Lord of all things, not, forsooth, carrying about a silver foot-basin from heaven.

And He asked the Samaritan woman to give Him to drink as she drew with an earthen vessel from the well, not seeking the king's gold, but teaching that thirst is to be quenched with ease;

for He set need as His aim, not inexperience of the good (extravagance).

And He ate and drank at the banquets, not digging up the metals of the earth, nor using vessels reeking of silver and gold—that is, of rust—such rust as the puffed-up material exhales.

For, to speak generally, the foods and the garments and the vessels and all the other things throughout the household—in a word, all of them—ought to be in keeping with the Christian's circumstances, being made appropriate to the person, the age, the occupation, and the season.

For those who are servants of one God ought to show that both their possessions and the furnishings belonging to them are symbols of one good life; and each individual man, by undivided faith, by this single-faced steadfastness, ought to make the things that follow appear consequent upon and in harmony with that one disposition.

But the things which we both acquire without difficulty and use with ease, which we are content with and keep readily and share without trouble—these are better.

Better, surely, are the useful things; and better, doubtless, the cheaper than the costly.

On the whole, wealth not rightly steered is a citadel of vice; about which the many, being bleary-eyed, could never enter into the kingdom of the heavens, being sick concerning worldly things and living arrogantly through their luxuries.

—those who hasten toward salvation have grasped beforehand that all our acquisition is for the sake of use, and use for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one might secure even from a few things.

For vain are those who, through insatiableness, rejoice over their hoarded treasures;

"He who gathers wages," it says, "gathers them into a bag full of holes."

This is the one who gathers and shuts up the seed and is diminished—he who shares with no one.

It is a mockery and broad laughter that men should carry about silver urinals and glass chamber-pots, as though they brought along their own counselors, and that these senselessly wealthy women should make of gold the receptacles for their excretions, so that the rich women cannot so much as relieve themselves except pretentiously;

I would pray that throughout their whole life they might judge gold to be worth no more than dung.

But now the love of money has been found to be the citadel of vice, which the Apostle says is the root of all evils, after which some, reaching out, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

But the best wealth is poverty of desires and true magnanimity—not to be high-minded over wealth, but to despise it;

and to boast over one's vessels is altogether shameful;

for it is not at all just to be still in earnest about these things, which anyone who wishes may buy from the market; but wisdom is not purchasable with earthly coin nor in the market, but is sold in heaven, and is sold for righteous coin—for the incorruptible Word, the royal gold.

How one ought to relax at feasts.

Let revelry be far from our rational good cheer, and likewise the vain all-night carousals luxuriating in drunken insolence;

for revelry is a drunken pipe of distraction, an improviser of amorous restlessness.

But love (eros) and drunkenness, those irrational passions, have been settled far away from our own choir;

and the all-night vigil over drinking is a kind of fellow-reveler's insolence, summoning drunkenness and provocative of debauchery, a shameless boldness.

Those engaged in pipes and psalteries and choruses and dances and Egyptian castanets and such frivolities become quite disorderly and unseemly and uncultivated, resounding with cymbals and drums and clattered about with the instruments of delusion;

for simply, as it seems to me, such a banquet becomes a theater of drunkenness.

For the Apostle deems it right that we, having put off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light, walking decorously as in the day, not given to revelries and drunkenness, not to chamberings and licentiousness.

Let the syrinx (pan-pipe), then, be assigned to shepherds, and the flute to superstitious men hastening to idolatry.

For indeed truly these instruments are to be banished from the sober banquet, being more suited to beasts than to men, and to the more irrational among men.

For we have learned that deer are charmed by the pan-pipes and are led by the melody into the snares by the hunters when they are being hunted; and for mares being mated a kind of wedding-song is piped, the strain of the flute-melody;

the musicians have called this "the horse-rouser."

But absolutely every illiberal sight and hearing, and—to put it in a word—every sense of intemperance is shameful; that which is truly insensibility is to be thoroughly cut off, being on our guard against the pleasure that titillates and effeminates in the eyes and ears;

for, indeed, the manifold drugs of the Carian Muse, of broken-down melodies and mournful rhythms, corrupt the morals, dragging them down into passion by wanton and ill-contrived music.

Distinguishing the divine service from this revelry, the Spirit sings: "Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet," for indeed with the sound of the trumpet He will raise the dead;

"and praise Him with the harp"—let the harp be understood as the mouth, as it were struck with the plectrum of the Spirit;

"praise Him with timbrel and dance"—He means the Church, which meditates on the resurrection of the flesh in the resounding skin;

"praise Him with strings and organ"—He means our body as the instrument, and its sinews as the strings, by which it has received harmonious tension, and being struck by the Spirit gives forth human notes;

"praise Him with loud-sounding cymbals"—He calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth, which resounds when the lips are struck.

Therefore He cried out to humanity: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord," because He oversees every breath that He has made.

For truly the peaceful instrument is man, while as for the rest, if one busies oneself about them, one will find them warlike instruments, either inflaming the desires, or kindling the lusts, or maddening the passions.

Thus in their wars the Etruscans use the trumpet, the Arcadians the pan-pipe, the Sicilians the pectis, the Cretans the lyre, the Lacedaemonians the flute and the horn, the Thracians and Egyptians the drum, and the Arabs the cymbal;

but we make use of one instrument only, the peaceful Word alone, with which we honor God, no longer with the old psaltery and trumpet and drum and flute, which it was the custom for those trained in war and despising the fear of God to employ along with their strings at their festivals, so that by such rhythms they might rouse up the slackness of their spirit.

Let our kindly cheer over drink be twofold, according to the Law;

for if "you shall love the Lord your God," and then "your neighbor," let the first kindly cheer be toward God through thanksgiving and psalmody, and the second toward the neighbor through dignified conversation.

"For let the Word of the Lord dwell in you richly," as the Apostle says.

And this Word adapts and conforms itself to occasions, persons, and places; and it is now convivial.

For the Apostle adds again:

"in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, in grace singing in your hearts to God;"

"and whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father through Him."

This is our thankful revelry; and even if you wish to sing and play to the harp or lyre, there is no blame—you will imitate the righteous Hebrew king, thankful to God.

"Rejoice, you righteous, in the Lord; praise is fitting for the upright," says the prophecy; "give thanks to the Lord on the harp, sing to Him on the ten-stringed psaltery, sing to Him a new song."

And may not the ten-stringed psaltery signify the Word Jesus, made manifest by the element of the number ten?

And as it is fitting, before we partake of food, to bless the Maker of all things, so also over drink it is fitting to sing psalms to Him, as we partake of His creatures;

for the psalm is a melodious and temperate blessing.

The Apostle has called the psalm "a spiritual song."

And in all things, before we obtain sleep, it is holy to give thanks to God, having enjoyed His grace and lovingkindness, so that we may go to sleep also in a godly way.

"And give thanks to Him in songs of the lips," it says, "for at His command every good pleasure comes to pass, and there is no diminishing in His salvation."

But even among the ancient Greeks, at their convivial feasts and over the brimming cups, there used to be sung, after the image of Hebrew psalms, the song called the scolion, all together with one voice raising the paean, and sometimes too passing the songs round in turn with the toasts;

and the more musical among them sang even to the lyre.

But let the amorous songs be gone far away, and let the songs be hymns of God.

And what the singing choir is, the Spirit itself will declare to you:

"His praise is in the assembly of the saints; let them be glad in their King"

"for the Lord takes pleasure in His people."

For we must admit the temperate harmonies, driving away as far as possible from our robust understanding those truly liquid (effeminate) harmonies, which by ill-art in the bendings of the notes degenerate into softness and buffoonery;

but the austere and temperate melodies bid farewell to the haughty arrogances of drunkenness.

We must therefore leave the chromatic harmonies to the colorless (debauched) drunken revels and to flowery, courtesan-like music.

And men who mimic ludicrous—or rather contemptible—passions must be driven out of our commonwealth.

For since all words flow from the understanding and the character, it is impossible to put forth ludicrous words unless they are carried along from a ludicrous character.

For the saying, "There is no good tree that produces corrupt fruit, nor again a corrupt tree producing good fruit," would be fitting here also;

for speech is the fruit of the understanding.

If, then, the buffoons are to be banished from our commonwealth, far be it that we should allow ourselves to play the buffoon.

For it would be absurd to be found imitators of things which we are forbidden even to be hearers of;

and far more absurd still to be in earnest about becoming ludicrous oneself—that is, an object of insolence and a laughingstock.

For if we would not endure to be fashioned ludicrously, as some are seen in processions, how could we reasonably tolerate the inner man being fashioned into something yet more ludicrous? And if we would never willingly distort our face into something more ludicrous, how then could we make it our practice in our speech both to be and to appear ludicrous, mocking the most honorable of all possessions among men—reason (the Word)? To make a practice of these things is mockery, since not even the speech of buffoons is worthy of being heard, accustoming us through the very words to the shameful nature of the deeds. One should be gracefully witty, not buffoonish.

But even laughter itself must be bridled.

For laughter, when let out in the manner it ought, manifests decorum; but when it does not proceed in that way, it betokens want of self-control.

For simply, whatever natural things belong to men, these we ought not to do away with from them, but rather to set upon them a fitting measure and occasion.

For man is not to laugh at everything just because he is a laughing animal, since not even the horse, being a neighing animal, neighs at everything;

but as rational animals we ought to attune ourselves harmoniously, relaxing the austerity and over-tension of our seriousness in due measure, not loosening it out of tune.

For the orderly relaxation of the face, as of an instrument, in harmony, is called a smile—thus does cheerfulness reflect upon the countenance—the laughter of self-controlled people;

but the tuneless relaxation of the face, if it occurs in women, is termed a giggle—it is harlot's laughter; and if in men, a guffaw—this is suitor-like and insolent laughter.

"A fool lifts up his voice in laughter," says Scripture, "but a shrewd man scarcely smiles quietly."

By "shrewd" it here means the prudent man, the one disposed contrariwise to the fool.

But neither, on the other hand, ought one to be sullen, but rather thoughtful;

for I most heartily approve of that man who smiles with grave countenance—who "was seen to smile with grim countenance" toward those of grim aspect;