Since the Lord admonishes and says: 'You are the salt of the earth,' and since He bids us to be simple toward innocence and yet, with simplicity, prudent—what else, most beloved brethren, befits us than to be provident, and, watching with anxious heart, both to understand and to guard against the snares of the crafty enemy, lest we who have put on Christ, the wisdom of God the Father, should be seen to have too little wisdom in safeguarding our salvation? For persecution is not alone to be feared, nor those things which, by open assault, rage against the overthrowing and casting down of the servants of God; caution is easier where the danger is manifest, and the mind is beforehand prepared for the struggle when the adversary confesses himself.
More to be feared and more to be guarded against is the enemy when he creeps up secretly, when, deceiving under the appearance of peace, he steals on by hidden approaches—whence also he took the name of serpent. This is ever his cunning; this is the dark and lurking deceit of circumventing man. So from the very beginning of the world he deceived, and, flattering with lying words, beguiled the inexperienced soul by incautious credulity. So, attempting to tempt the Lord Himself, as though he might creep up and deceive again, he approached secretly; yet he was understood and beaten back, and therefore laid low, because he was recognized and detected.
Whence an example is given to us, to flee the way of the old man, to plant our steps in the footprints of the conquering Christ, lest, incautious, we be rolled back anew into the snare of death, but, provident against danger, may attain the immortality we have received. But how can we attain immortality, unless we keep those commandments of Christ by which death is overcome and conquered, He Himself admonishing and saying: 'If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments,' and again: 'If you do what I command you, I now call you not servants but friends'? These finally He calls strong and stable; these founded upon the rock with a robust mass; these solidified against all the storms and whirlwinds of the world with an immovable and unshaken firmness.
'He who hears,' He says, 'My words and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds came and beat upon that house, and it did not fall; for it was founded upon the rock.' We ought therefore to insist upon His words; whatever He both taught and did, we ought to learn and to do. Otherwise, how does he say he believes in Christ, who does not do what Christ commanded to be done? Or whence shall he attain to the reward of faith, who is unwilling to keep the faith of the commandment? He must needs waver and wander, and, snatched away by the spirit of error, be blown about like dust which the wind drives away; nor by his walking will he advance to salvation, who does not hold the truth of the way of salvation.
But we must guard not only against those things which are open and manifest, but also against those which deceive by the subtlety of crafty fraud. And what indeed is more crafty, or what more subtle, than that the enemy, detected and laid low by the coming of Christ—after the light came to the nations and the saving radiance shone forth for the salvation of men, so that the deaf admitted the hearing of spiritual grace, the blind opened their eyes to the Lord, the weak grew strong again with eternal health, the lame ran to the Church, the dumb prayed with clear voices and entreaties—that he, seeing the idols forsaken and his seats and temples deserted through the great number of believers, devised a new fraud, to deceive the incautious under the very title of the Christian name?
He invented heresies and schisms, by which he might subvert faith, corrupt truth, rend unity. Those whom he cannot hold fast in the blindness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives by the error of a new path.
He snatches men from the Church herself, and while they seem to themselves to have already drawn near to the light and escaped the night of this world, he pours over them, unawares, yet other darkness; so that, though they do not stand fast in the Gospel of Christ nor in the keeping of His commands and law, they still call themselves Christians, and walking in darkness they imagine themselves to possess the light, while the Adversary flatters and deceives them—he who, according to the word of the Apostle, transfigures himself as an angel of light and equips his ministers as ministers of righteousness, who put forward night for day, destruction for salvation, despair under the cloak of hope, treachery under the pretext of faith, Antichrist under the name of Christ; so that, while they lie with the look of truth, by their subtlety they make the truth of no effect.
This comes to pass, dearly beloved brethren, because men do not return to the origin of truth, nor seek the Head, nor keep the teaching of the heavenly Master. Yet if anyone consider and examine these things, there is no need of a long treatise or of arguments: the proof for faith lies ready in a brief summary of the truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: 「I say to you,」 He says, 「that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven.」 Upon one He builds His Church; and although after His resurrection He bestows an equal power upon all the Apostles and says:
「As the Father has sent Me, so also I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit: if you forgive anyone his sins, they shall be forgiven him; if you retain anyone's sins, they shall be retained」—nevertheless, that He might make manifest the unity, He by His own authority disposed the origin of that same unity as beginning from one. The other Apostles, to be sure, were also that which Peter was, endowed with an equal share both of honor and of power; but the beginning proceeds from unity, that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one. This one Church the Holy Spirit also designates in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of the Lord, and says: 「My dove is one, my perfect one is one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her who bore her.」 Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church believe that he holds the faith?
Does he who struggles and resists against the Church trust that he is in the Church? Since the blessed Apostle Paul too teaches this very thing, and shows forth the mystery of unity, saying: 「One body and one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God.」 This unity we ought firmly to hold and to vindicate, above all we bishops who preside in the Church, that we may prove the episcopate itself also to be one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood by a lie; let no one corrupt the truth of the faith by a treacherous transgression. The episcopate is one, a part of which is held by each in its entirety.
The Church is one, which is spread more widely into a multitude by the increase of her fruitfulness—just as the rays of the sun are many but the light is one, and the branches of a tree are many but the trunk is one, founded upon a tenacious root; and when from one spring many streams flow down, although a multiplicity seems poured out by the abundance of the overflowing supply, yet the unity is preserved in the source. Pluck a ray from the body of the sun: the unity of the light admits no division. Break a branch from the tree: the broken branch will not be able to bud. Cut off a stream from the spring: the part cut off dries up. So also the Church of the Lord, suffused with light, stretches forth her rays over the whole world; yet the light that is everywhere diffused is one, and the unity of the body is not divided.
By her abundant fertility she extends her branches over the whole earth; she spreads wide her copiously flowing streams: yet there is one Head and one Source, and one Mother, rich in the increase of her fruitfulness. From her womb we are born, by her milk we are nourished, by her Spirit we are animated. The Bride of Christ cannot be made an adulteress; she is undefiled and chaste. She knows one home; with chaste modesty she guards the sanctity of one chamber. She keeps us for God; she assigns to the kingdom the sons whom she has begotten. Whoever, severed from the Church, is joined to an adulteress, is cut off from the promises of the Church; nor will he who has forsaken the Church of Christ come to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger, he is profane, he is an enemy. He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother.
If anyone could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he too who is outside the Church escapes. The Lord warns and says: 「He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who gathers not with Me scatters.」 He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ acts against Christ; he who gathers elsewhere, apart from the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says: 「I and the Father are one.」 And again it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: 「And these three are one.」 And does anyone believe that this unity, which proceeds from the divine steadfastness and coheres in the heavenly mysteries, can be sundered in the Church and separated by the divorce of clashing wills?
He who does not hold this unity does not hold the law of God, does not hold the faith of the Father and of the Son, holds neither life nor salvation. This mystery of unity, this bond of inseparably cohering concord, is shown forth when in the Gospel the tunic of the Lord Jesus Christ is not at all divided nor rent, but, when lots were cast for the garment of Christ as to who should rather put on Christ, the garment is received whole and the tunic is possessed uncorrupted and undivided. The divine Scripture speaks and says: 「But concerning the tunic, because it was not sewn together from the upper part but woven throughout, they said to one another: Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be.」
That tunic bore a unity coming from the upper part, that is, coming from heaven and from the Father, which could not at all be rent by him who received and possessed it, but obtained its whole, entire, and solid firmness inseparably, once for all. He cannot possess the garment of Christ who rends and divides the Church of Christ. On the contrary, when at the death of Solomon his kingdom and people were to be rent asunder, the prophet Ahijah, meeting King Jeroboam in the field, tore his own garment into twelve pieces, saying: 「Take to yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord:」
『Behold, I rend the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and I will give you ten scepters; and two scepters shall be his, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen, that I may set My name there.』」 When the twelve tribes of Israel were being rent asunder, the prophet Ahijah tore his own garment. But because the people of Christ cannot be rent, His tunic, woven throughout and cohering, was not divided by those who possessed it: undivided, joined, and connected, it shows forth the cohering concord of our people who have put on Christ. By the sacrament of the garment and by a sign He declared the unity of the Church.
Who then is so wicked and treacherous, who so frenzied by the madness of discord, as either to believe that the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ, can be rent, or to dare to rend it? He Himself warns in His Gospel and teaches, saying: 「And there shall be one flock and one shepherd.」 And does anyone suppose that in one place there can be either many shepherds or several flocks? The Apostle Paul likewise, impressing upon us this same unity, beseeches and exhorts, saying: 「I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.」 And again he says:
「Forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.」 Do you think that you can stand and live while withdrawing from the Church, building for yourself other seats and separate dwellings? For it was said to Rahab, in whom the Church was prefigured: 「Your father and your mother, and your brothers, and all the house of your father you shall gather to yourself into your own house; and everyone who shall go forth out of the door of your house, his blood shall be upon his own head.」 Likewise the sacrament of the Passover contains in the law of Exodus nothing other than that the lamb, which is slain as a figure of Christ, be eaten in one house. God speaks, saying: 「In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not cast the flesh forth out of the house.」
The flesh of Christ and the holy thing of the Lord cannot be cast forth outside, nor is there for believers any other house save the one Church. This house, this dwelling of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and proclaims in the Psalms, saying: 「God, who makes those of one mind to dwell in a house.」 In the house of God, in the Church of Christ, those of one mind dwell, and abide in concord and singleness of heart. For this reason also the Holy Spirit came in a dove:
It is a simple and joyous creature, not bitter with gall, not fierce with bites, not violent with the tearing of talons; it loves the dwellings of men, it knows the fellowship of one house; when they breed, they bring forth their young together; when they go forth, they cleave to one another in flight; they pass their life in a common companionship; with the kiss of the mouth they acknowledge the concord of peace; in all things they fulfill the law of unanimity. This is the simplicity that must be known in the Church; this is the charity to be obtained: that the love of the brotherhood may imitate the doves, that meekness and gentleness may be made equal to lambs and sheep. What does the ferocity of wolves do in a Christian breast, and the rage of dogs, and the deadly venom of serpents, and the bloody savagery of beasts?
We should rejoice when such men are separated from the Church, lest with their savage and venomous contagion they prey upon the doves and the sheep of Christ. Bitterness cannot cohere and be joined with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with fair weather, strife with peace, sterility with fruitfulness, drought with springs, tempest with tranquillity. Let no one think that the good can depart from the Church: the wind does not snatch away the wheat, nor does the storm overturn the tree founded upon a solid root; it is the empty chaff that is tossed about by the tempest, the feeble trees that are overthrown by the onset of the whirlwind. These the Apostle John execrates and strikes, saying: 「They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.」
Hence heresies have both frequently arisen and continue to arise, while the perverse mind has no peace, while discordant treachery does not hold to unity. But the Lord permits and suffers these things to happen, the freedom of one's own will remaining, so that, while the discernment of truth tests our hearts and minds, the unbroken faith of the approved may shine forth in clear light. Through the Apostle the Holy Spirit forewarns and says: 「There must be also heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you.」 Thus the faithful are tested, thus the treacherous are unmasked; thus even before the day of judgment, here already too the souls of the just and of the unjust are separated, and the chaff is parted from the wheat.
Hence come those who of their own accord set themselves up among rash conspirators, without divine appointment; who constitute themselves as overseers without any law of ordination; who, with no one giving the episcopate, assume to themselves the name of bishop. These the Holy Spirit designates in the Psalms as sitting in the seat of pestilence, plagues and pests of the faith, deceiving with the mouth of a serpent and craftsmen at corrupting the truth, spewing deadly poisons from their pestiferous tongues; whose speech creeps like a cancer, whose discourse pours mortal venom into the breasts and hearts of individuals. Against such the Lord cries out, He restrains and recalls His erring people from them, saying: 「Do not listen to the words of the false prophets, for the visions of their own heart deceive them.」
「They speak, but not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who cast away the word of God: Peace shall be to you and to all who walk in their own desires; upon everyone who walks in the error of his own heart no evil shall come. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. If they had stood in My substance and heard My words, and if they had taught My people, I would have turned them from their evil thoughts.」 These same men the Lord again designates and brands, saying: 「They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves worn-out cisterns that cannot hold water.」 Whereas there can be no baptism other than the one, they imagine that they baptize; having deserted the fountain of life, they promise the grace of the living and saving water.
There men are not washed but rather defiled; their sins are not purged but rather heaped up. That birth begets sons not for God but for the devil. Born through falsehood, they do not receive the promises of truth; procreated out of treachery, they lose the grace of faith. They cannot come to the reward of peace who have broken the peace of the Lord by the madness of discord. Nor let certain men deceive themselves by a vain interpretation, in that the Lord has said: 「Wherever two or three are gathered in My name, I am with them.」 The corrupters of the Gospel and false interpreters put forward the last words and pass over what comes before, mindful of one part and craftily suppressing a part: as they themselves are severed from the Church, so they sunder the meaning of a single passage.
For when the Lord was urging unanimity and peace upon His disciples, He said: 「I say to you, that if two of you shall agree on earth concerning anything whatsoever you shall ask, it shall be done for you by My Father who is in heaven. For wherever two or three are gathered in My name, I am with them.」—showing that most is granted not to a multitude but to the unanimity of those who pray. 「If two of you,」 He says, 「shall agree on earth」: He set unanimity first, He sent concord of peace before all else; that we should agree, He faithfully and firmly taught. But how can he agree with anyone who does not agree with the body of the Church itself and with the whole brotherhood?
How can two or three be gathered in the name of Christ who are manifestly separated from Christ and from His Gospel? For it is not we who have withdrawn from them, but they from us; and since heresies and schisms have afterward arisen, while they set up for themselves separate conventicles, they have forsaken the Head and origin of truth. But the Lord speaks concerning His Church, and speaks to those who are in the Church, that if they themselves be in concord, if according to what He commanded and counseled two or three—though gathered—pray unanimously, then, though they be but two or three, they may obtain from the majesty of God what they ask.
「Wherever two or three are gathered, I,」 He says, 「am with them」—with the simple, that is, and the peaceable, with those who fear God and keep the commandments of God. He said that He would be with these two or three, even as He was with the three young men in the furnace of fire; and because they remained simple toward God and of one mind among themselves, He animated them, surrounded by the flames, with the spirit of dew. So too, when the two Apostles were shut up in prison, because they were simple, because they were of one mind, He Himself was present; He Himself, when the bars of the prison were loosed, set them again in the market-place, that they might deliver to the multitude the word which they faithfully preached. Since, then, He lays it down among His precepts and says:
「Where two or three shall be, I am with them」—He who instituted and made the Church does not divide men from the Church, but, rebuking discord in the treacherous and commending peace to the faithful by His own voice, He shows that He is rather with two or three praying unanimously than with a multitude of dissidents, and that more can be obtained by the harmonious prayer of a few than by the discordant petition of many. Therefore also, when He gave the law of prayer, He added, saying: 「And when you stand for prayer, forgive if you have anything against anyone, that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your sins.」
And He calls back from the altar him who comes to the sacrifice with dissension, and bids him first be reconciled with his brother, and then, returning in peace, offer his gift to God; for neither did God regard the offerings of Cain, since he could not have God appeased who, through the discord of envy, did not have peace with his brother. What peace, then, do the enemies of the brethren promise themselves? What sacrifices do the rivals of the priests believe that they celebrate? Do they imagine that Christ is with them when they are gathered, who are gathered outside the Church of Christ? Such men, even if they be slain in confession of the Name, this stain is not washed away even by their blood: the inexpiable and grievous fault of discord is not purged even by suffering. He cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church:
he will not be able to attain to the kingdom who has forsaken her who is to reign. Christ gave us peace; He commanded that we be in concord and of one mind; He charged us to keep the covenants of love and charity uncorrupted and inviolate. He cannot show himself a martyr who has not kept brotherly charity. This Paul the Apostle teaches and bears witness, saying: 「And though I have faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing; and though I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing.」
「Charity is magnanimous, charity is kind; charity envies not, is not puffed up, is not provoked, deals not perversely, thinks no evil; it loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity shall never fail.」 「Never,」 he says, 「shall charity fail.」 For it shall be forever in the kingdom; it shall endure unto eternity in the unity of a brotherhood cohering with itself. Discord cannot attain to the kingdom of heaven; he who has violated the love of Christ by treacherous dissension shall not be able to belong to the reward of Christ, who said: 「This is My commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.」 He who has not charity has not God. This is the word of the blessed Apostle John:
「God,」 he says, 「is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.」 They cannot abide with God who have been unwilling to be of one mind in the Church of God. Though they burn, given up to flames and fires, or, exposed to beasts, lay down their lives, that will not be the crown of faith but the penalty of treachery; nor a glorious end of religious virtue, but the destruction of despair. Such a one can be slain, but he cannot be crowned. So he professes himself to be a Christian in the same way that the devil too often pretends to be Christ—the Lord Himself forewarning and saying: 「Many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many.」
As that one is not Christ, although he deceives in the name, so neither can he seem to be a Christian who does not remain in His Gospel and in the truth of faith. For to prophesy and to cast out demons and to do great works of power upon earth is indeed a sublime and admirable thing; yet whoever is found amid all these does not attain the heavenly kingdom unless he walk by the observance of the right and just path. The Lord declares and says: 「Many will say to Me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name done great works of power? And then I will say to them: I never knew you; depart from Me, you who work iniquity.」
Righteousness is needful, that one may be able to merit God the Judge; His precepts and admonitions must be obeyed, that our deserts may receive their reward. The Lord, in the Gospel, when by a brief summary He directed the way of our hope and faith, said: 「The Lord your God, the Lord is one」; and: 「You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength.」 This is the first, and the second is like to it: 「You shall love your neighbor as yourself.」 On these two precepts hang the whole law and the prophets. By His teaching He taught at once both unity and love; in two precepts He enclosed all the prophets and the law.
But what unity does he preserve, what love does he guard or even think of, who, frenzied by the madness of discord, rends the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the peace, scatters charity, and profanes the sacrament? This evil, most faithful brethren, had begun long ago, but now the hostile ruin of this same evil has grown, and the venomous destruction of heretical perversity and of schisms has begun more and more to rise up and spring forth—because thus, too, it had to be at the setting of the world, the Holy Spirit foretelling and forewarning us through the Apostle: 「In the last days,」 he says, 「there shall come perilous times: men shall be lovers of themselves, proud, swollen, covetous, blasphemers,」
「disobedient to parents, ungrateful, impious, without natural affection, without faithfulness to covenant, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, not loving the good, traitors, insolent, puffed up with stupor, lovers of pleasures more than of God, having a deformation of religion, but denying the power thereof.」 Of these are they who creep into houses and make prey of silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. And as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so these too resist the truth; but they shall not prosper greatly, for their folly shall be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
All things that were foretold are being fulfilled, and, with the end of the world now drawing near, they have come as a testing both of men and of the times alike. As the Adversary rages more and more, error deceives, stupor exalts, envy inflames, cupidity blinds, impiety depraves, pride puffs up, discord exasperates, anger casts headlong. Yet let not the exceeding and abrupt treachery of many move or disturb us, but rather let it strengthen our faith by the truth of the thing foretold. As certain ones have begun to be such, because these things were foretold beforehand, so let the rest of the brethren beware of such men, because these things too were foretold beforehand, the Lord instructing and saying: 「But beware: behold, I have foretold you all things.」
Avoid, I beseech you, men of this sort, and ward off their pernicious conversations from your side and your ears as a contagion of death, as it is written: 「Hedge your ears with thorns, and refuse to hear a wicked tongue.」 And again: 「Evil communications corrupt good dispositions.」 The Lord teaches and admonishes that we should withdraw from such: 「They are blind,」 He says, 「leaders of the blind. And the blind leading the blind, both shall fall into the pit.」 Such a one must be turned away from and fled, whoever has been separated from the Church. A man of this kind is perverse, and sins, and is condemned by his own self. Does he think himself to be with Christ who acts against the priests of Christ, who severs himself from the fellowship of His clergy and people?
That man bears arms against the Church; he fights against the appointment of God. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, treacherous instead of faithful, sacrilegious instead of religious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother—despising the bishops and forsaking the priests of God, he dares to set up another altar, to make another prayer with unlawful words, to profane the truth of the Lord's offering by false sacrifices; and he does not know that whoever strives against the ordinance of God is punished by divine chastisement for the audacity of his rashness. So Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who attempted to claim for themselves, against Moses and Aaron the priest, the liberty of sacrificing, straightway paid the penalties for their attempts.
The earth, its bonds broken asunder, opened its bosom into the deep; the gaping chasm of the receding ground swallowed them up as they stood and lived; and the wrath of the indignant God struck not only those who had been the instigators, but also the other two hundred and fifty partners and companions of that same madness, who, banded together with them, had alike been brought to such audacity—a fire going forth from the Lord consumed them with hastened vengeance, admonishing and showing that whatever the wicked attempt by human will to destroy the ordinance of God is done against God.
So too King Uzziah, when, bearing the censer and violently usurping to himself a sacrifice against the law of God, he was unwilling, though the priest Azariah resisted him, to obey and to yield, was confounded by divine indignation and stained on his forehead with the blotch of leprosy—marked in that part of the body, the Lord being offended, where those are signed who win the Lord's favor. And the sons of Aaron, who laid upon the altar strange fire which the Lord had not commanded, were straightway extinguished in the sight of the avenging Lord. These, to be sure, they imitate and follow who, despising the tradition of God, reach after strange doctrines and introduce teachings of human institution; whom the Lord rebukes and chides in His Gospel, saying:
「You reject the commandment of God, that you may establish your own tradition.」 This crime is worse than that which the lapsed appear to have committed, who nevertheless, placed in penitence for their crime, beseech God with full satisfactions. There the Church is sought and entreated; here the Church is fought against. There there may have been compulsion; here the will is held fast in wickedness. There he who has lapsed harmed only himself; here he who has attempted to make a heresy or schism has deceived many by drawing them along with himself. There is the loss of one soul; here the peril of very many.
Certainly he who is here both understands that he has sinned, and laments and bewails it; but that other, swelling in his sin and pleasing himself in his very transgressions, separates the sons from their Mother, lures the sheep away from their shepherd, disrupts the sacraments of God. And whereas the lapsed has sinned but once, the other sins daily. Finally, the lapsed, having afterward attained martyrdom, may receive the promises of the kingdom; but the other, if he be slain outside the Church, cannot attain to the rewards of the Church. Nor let anyone wonder, dearly beloved brethren, that even some of the confessors proceed to such things, and that thence too certain ones commit sins so nefarious, so grievous.
For confession does not make one immune from the snares of the devil, nor does it defend one with perpetual security against temptations and dangers and the worldly assaults and onsets of one still placed in the world; otherwise we should never afterward see in the confessors the frauds and debaucheries and adulteries which we now, seeing them in certain men, groan over and grieve. Whoever that confessor be, he is not greater or better than Solomon, or dearer to God; and yet Solomon, so long as he walked in the ways of the Lord, retained the grace which he had received from the Lord, but after he forsook the way of the Lord, he lost also the grace of the Lord. And therefore it is written: 「Hold fast what you have, lest another receive your crown.」
And surely the Lord would not threaten that the crown of righteousness could be taken away, except that, when righteousness withdraws, the crown also must needs withdraw. Confession is the beginning of glory, not yet the merit of the crown; it does not perfect the praise, but initiates the dignity; and since it is written, 「He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved,」 whatever comes before the end is a step by which one ascends to the summit of salvation, not the boundary at which the very height of the pinnacle is already held. He is a confessor: but after confession the peril is greater, because the Adversary is the more provoked. He is a confessor: for this reason he ought all the more to stand with the Gospel of the Lord, since through the Gospel he has obtained glory from the Lord. To whom much is given, of him much is required.
And from him to whom more dignity is ascribed, more service is required of him. Let no one perish through a confessor's example; let no one learn injustice, no one insolence, no one treachery from a confessor's manners. He is a confessor: let him be humble and quiet, let him be modest in his conduct with discipline, so that he who is called Christ's confessor may imitate the Christ whom he confesses. For since He says, 'Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted,' and He Himself was exalted by the Father because the Word and Power and Wisdom of God the Father humbled Himself upon the earth, how can he love arrogance who has both commanded humility to us by His law and Himself received from the Father the most exalted name as the reward of humility? He is a confessor of Christ:
but only provided that the majesty and dignity of Christ be not afterward blasphemed through him. Let the tongue that has confessed Christ not be slanderous, not turbulent; let it not be heard clamoring with reproaches and quarrels; let it not, after words of praise, dart the serpent's venom against the brethren and the priests of God. But if he afterward proves blameworthy and detestable, if he squanders his confession by an evil way of life, if he stains his life with foul defilement, if at last, forsaking the Church wherein he was made a confessor and rending the concord of unity, he changes his first faith by a later treachery, he cannot flatter himself on account of his confession as though chosen for the reward of glory, since from this very thing the merits of punishment have rather increased.
For the Lord chose even Judas among the apostles, and yet Judas afterward betrayed the Lord. Nevertheless the firmness and faith of the apostles did not on that account fall, because the traitor Judas defected from their fellowship. So too here the holiness and dignity of the confessors was not at once diminished, because the faith of some was broken. The blessed apostle speaks in his epistle, saying: 'For what if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Has their unbelief made void the faith of God? God forbid: for God is true, but every man a liar.'
The greater and better part of the confessors stands firm in the strength of its faith and in the truth of the Lord's law and discipline; nor do they depart from the peace of the Church, those who remember that they obtained grace in the Church by God's gracious favor; and by this very thing they win fuller praise for their faith, in that, separated from the treachery of those who had been joined to them in the fellowship of confession, they withdrew from the contagion of the crime. Truly enlightened by the light of the Gospel, irradiated by the pure and shining light of the Lord, they are as praiseworthy in preserving the peace of Christ as they were victorious in the encounter with the devil.
Indeed I desire, most beloved brethren, and I likewise counsel and urge, that, if it can be done, none of the brethren perish, and that our rejoicing mother enfold in her bosom the one body of a consenting people. Yet if she cannot recall by wholesome counsel to the way of salvation certain leaders of schisms and authors of dissension who persist in blind and obstinate madness, may the rest at least—whether caught by simplicity, or led astray by error, or deceived by some cunning of a beguiling craft—loose yourselves from the snares of deceit, free your wandering steps from errors, and recognize the straight path of the heavenly way. It is the voice of the attesting apostle:
'We command you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from all brethren who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.' And again he says: 'Let no one deceive you with empty words: for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience. Be not therefore partakers with them.' One must withdraw from offenders, indeed must flee from them, lest while anyone joins himself to those who walk wickedly and proceeds along the paths of error and crime, straying from the way of the true road, he too be held bound by an equal guilt. There is one God, and one Christ, and one Church of His, and one faith, and one people joined by the glue of concord into a solid unity of body.
Unity cannot be cleft, nor can one body be parted by the sundering of its frame, nor torn into fragments with its entrails rent asunder. Whatever has departed from the parent stock will not be able to live and breathe apart; it loses the substance of salvation. The Holy Spirit warns us and says: 'What man is he that desires life and loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.' The son of peace ought to seek peace and pursue it; he who knows and loves the bond of charity ought to keep his tongue from the evil of dissension. Among His own divine commands and salutary teachings, the Lord, now near to His passion, added, saying:
'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.' This inheritance He gave us; all the gifts of His promise and the rewards He pledged in the keeping of peace. If we are heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers. 'Blessed,' He says, 'are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.' The sons of God must be peacemakers, gentle of heart, simple of speech, harmonious in affection, faithfully clinging to one another by the bonds of unanimity. This unanimity once existed under the apostles: thus the new people of believers, keeping the Lord's commands, held fast their charity. The Scripture proves it which says: 'And the multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and one mind.' And again:
'And they all continued with one accord in prayer, together with the women and Mary who had been the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.' And therefore they prayed with effectual prayers; therefore they could obtain with confidence whatever they asked of God's mercy. But in us unanimity has so dwindled that even the bounty of good works has been broken. In those days men sold their houses and farms, and laying up treasures for themselves in heaven, offered to the apostles the proceeds to be distributed for the use of the needy. But now we do not even give tithes from our patrimony, and whereas the Lord bids us sell, we rather buy and increase. So in us the vigor of faith has withered, so the strength of believers has grown faint. And on that account the Lord, looking upon our times, says in His Gospel:
'When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth?' We see happening what He foretold. In the fear of God, in the law of righteousness, in love, in good works, there is no faith. No one ponders the dread of things to come; no one considers the day of the Lord and the wrath of God and the punishments to come upon the unbelieving and the eternal torments appointed for the faithless. Whatever our conscience would fear if it believed—because it does not believe, it does not fear at all. But if it believed, it would also beware; if it took heed, it would also escape. Let us rouse ourselves as much as we can, most beloved brethren, and breaking off the sleep of our old sloth, let us watch to observe and perform the Lord's precepts. Let us be such as He Himself commanded us to be, saying:
'Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you yourselves like men who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord at His coming shall find watching.' We ought to be girded, lest when the day of our marching forth comes, it find us hampered and entangled. Let our light shine in good works and gleam, so that it may lead us out of this night of the world into the light of eternal brightness. Let us always, anxious and wary, await the sudden coming of the Lord, so that when He knocks, our faith may keep watch and receive from the Lord the reward of vigilance. If these commands are kept, if these admonitions and precepts are held fast,