On pursuing contempt of the world and the love of heavenly goods. I. What is best in the world? To please its Author. What is His will? To be pleasing in what He has commanded, that is, to live rightly and to seek the eternal piously: for piety and equity are the will of the pious and the upright. How is this attained? By zeal. We must therefore be zealous in piety and equity. What helps to preserve this? Understanding, which, sifting all other things and finding nothing firm to which it may cleave, is turned by reason from the things the world holds to the one thing that is eternal. For the world will pass away, and it passes daily, and is whirled toward its end (for what does it hold that it does not assign to an end?), and it is in a way propped up on pillars of vanity.
But when the end of vanity is at hand, then it will fall and will not stand. But what does not flow away is not spoken of as belonging to the world. By death therefore and by its setting all things pass and do not abide. What then ought the wise man to love? A dead image, partly mute and partly sounding, which he sees and does not understand? For if he understood, perhaps he would love; but even in this he offends, in that he does not show himself. For who understands either himself or another—the flower of the earth, and earth made from earth—by what dignity the earth and dust, soon to be, makes itself the Son of God and a dweller in heaven, and, save with the soul as mediator, will never profit at all? II.
If anyone understands this—to whom God has granted it—by what life he ought to live, that from being mortal he may become eternal, from being foolish wise, from being earthly heavenly, let him first have a pure sense which he may use for living well, and let him see not what he is, but what he shall be. For he shall be that which he is not; and through the things which he sees, let him think on the things which he does not see, and let him strive to be what he was created, and by his own endeavor let him call upon the grace of God: for it is impossible for anyone by himself alone to attain what he lost in Adam. But what does it profit to receive sense and not to use it well? He uses it well who so lives that he never repents nor will have to repent; for late repentance convicts a bad use, and a good conscience commends one's life.
What then does a pure sense know to love? Surely that which made love itself and all other things, and which ever abides and never grows old. Nothing else outside is to be loved according to the rule of truth, save the eternal, and the eternal will, which is inspired and animated by the eternal—wondrous, ineffable, invisible, incomprehensible, filling all things and surpassing all, present and yet fleeing. Here the wise man ought to love nothing that does not endure; for eternal things are there with the Eternal, and perishable things here with the mortal.
It is therefore perilous to dwell among deceiving and false things, and not to see the true things which you ought to love, and moreover to see the things which by fleeing provoke, and as in a dream persuade you to sin with them, and with an idle thing smile upon you with flatteries, and which—as though they ought rightly to be loved, yet as if they were not—lead you astray. III. It is therefore agreed that he who dwells among deceivers ought to be solicitous, as one who will not escape unless he flee them, and cautiously, even if he act well. How shall we flee the world, which we ought not to love, we who are in the world, and who are taught to die to it; and on the contrary, with a certain envious desire we shut within us him whom we ought to have trodden as it were under our feet?
He treads down the world who conquers himself, who dies to his vices before nature, in mind as much as in body: no one sparing himself can hate the world; for in himself alone does he either love or hate the world. He who is dead to the pleasures of the body has nothing of the world that he may love. With such a death let us die, for that bodily death holds all, but this one holds few. For it belongs to few so to live, as though they were dying daily;
and since he has not always been, nor can be in the world, but only for a certain brief span between, each one ought so to live as though he died daily, that he may think only on the eternal and heavenly things, in which—if he have deserved it—he shall be eternal and heavenly, uncertain of this death. For the things which were before the world, those same shall be also after the world, and forever, and even now they are, but they do not appear, and they are so hidden from us that it is not lawful to speak of them to men: for they neither ascend into the heart nor into the ears of man, nor do they enter, nor can they be perceived by human sight (Isa. 64:4; 1 Cor. 2:9). O how lamentable a condition!
The things which we ought to have loved are so sequestered from us, so unfamiliar and unknown, that as long as we are men, and set in this prison-house of the body, it is altogether impossible for us to see, hear, or think those things which are the true and eternal goods. What then shall we do? Let us love and seek even the unknown things, lest perchance we forever remain ignorant of them and lose them; for he was born without cause who shall be ignorant of those everlasting things forever, and shall not know those eternal things to all eternity. O wretched man that you are! What you see you ought to hate, and what it befits you to love, you know not. As your own life speaks to you, you are ensnared, willing or unwilling; in yourself you have wherewith you are fettered; in yourself you have not wherewith you may be loosed.
Will you beware of yourself, O wretch, and not trust in yourself, you who are ensnared by yourself, nor loosed by yourself? Having eyes, you are bound up blind, and willingly are led to death. IV. O intolerable blindness! O incomparable grief! O most unhappy misery! He who favors his adversaries, who willingly gives himself over to persecutors who never spare him, who joyfully consents to those who bind him and deliver him to death. Who ever goes gladly to death? Who is led willingly to be slaughtered or beheaded? Woe to you, human misery! Would that you were only slaughtered or beheaded, and not tormented forever. What is blinder than you, O wretched humanity! who so err while seeing, though you see as far as heaven, no farther; this side of heaven you have wisdom, beyond heaven you have none.
Hard and incomprehensible ignorance, who shall recount to you the unutterable things? Unhappy humanity, what shall come to your aid? Hear what the Wise One said: To whom few things do not suffice, more things will not profit. You have heard, I believe, the Lord saying in the Gospel: Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire (Matt. 25:41); and you know on what account one goes into the fire, wretched man. Be merciful; perhaps you will thus be able to draw yourself away from the offspring of perdition: spare not your food, spare not your frail clothing, prefer not your own things to yourself; love yourself more than your possessions; love your soul more than your goods: for you yourself alone are wretched, and not your goods; you ought to love yourself more than what is another's. For what is yours, save your soul? Do not therefore lose your soul for nothing.
Spare not perishable things, lest you lose the eternal; the whole world is another's to you; you who were born naked, naked shall you be buried. O irremediable madness! Why do you love another's perishable thing with so great a love, that you lose your own eternal thing forever? Consider therefore death, which gives an end to the pleasures of the world, and see whither the pleasant joy of the rich has gone. Luxury, jest, lust, wantonness have fallen silent; and the naked corpse, to be dissolved by worms and rottenness, the slime has received, while the most wretched soul is given over to eternal pains. What is more deplorable than this condition? What more unhappy than this misery—who pursues the vain things of this life unto corruption and everlasting destruction.
Truly the suffering of one hour was better than the late repentance of eternal time. Fear therefore death on this side of heaven; beyond heaven, the eternal fire; this which you see, that which you do not see, yet believe Him who has seen it. For our Lord Jesus Christ is truthful, to whom be honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.