Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 26

(Admonition 9.) In one way are the forward to be admonished, in another the fainthearted. For the former, while they greatly presume upon themselves, disdain others by upbraiding them; but the latter, while they are too conscious of their own weakness, for the most part fall into despair. The former reckon singularly supreme all the things they do; the latter deem vehemently despicable the things they do, and therefore are broken in despair. The works of the forward, therefore, are to be subtly examined by him who reproves, so that in that wherein they please themselves they may be shown to displease God. For then we better correct the forward, when we show that what they believe themselves to have done well was done ill; so that whence glory is believed to be gained, thence a profitable confusion may follow.

But sometimes, when they in no wise recognise that they perpetrate the vice of forwardness, they come more compendiously to correction, if they are confounded by the reproach of another and more manifest fault sought out from the side; so that from the very thing they cannot defend, they may recognise that they wrongly hold what they defend. Whence, when Paul saw the Corinthians forwardly puffed up against one another, so that one said he was of Paul, another of Apollo, another of Cephas, another of Christ (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4), he brought into the midst the fault of incest, which among them had both been perpetrated and remained uncorrected, saying: It is heard that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not among the heathens, that one should have his father's wife.

'And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you' (1 Cor. 5:1-2). As if he plainly said: Why do you, out of insolence, call yourselves the men of this teacher or that, when by the laxity of your negligence you show yourselves to belong to no one? On the contrary, we more fittingly lead the faint-hearted back to the path of good conduct if we seek out certain of their good qualities alongside their faults, so that while we rebuke and correct some things in them, we may embrace and praise others; that the praise they hear may nurture their tenderness, which the fault reproved chastises. And for the most part we make more useful progress with them if we also call to mind the things they have done well.

And if certain things have been done by them in a disordered manner, we do not reprove them as though already committed, but rather forbid them as things that ought not yet to be committed; so that the favour we bestow may increase those things we approve, and, against the things we censure, a modest exhortation may gain the more strength among the faint-hearted. Hence the same Paul, when he perceived that the Thessalonians, who persevered in the preaching they had received, were troubled by a certain faint-heartedness, as if concerning the nearness of the world's end, first praises in them what he sees to be strong, and afterward, admonishing cautiously, strengthens what is weak. For he says: 'We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you toward each other abounds;'

'so that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith' (2 Thess. 1:3-4). And when he had set forth these gentle heralds of their life, a little after he added, saying: 'Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that you be not soon shaken from your mind, nor be terrified, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as if sent from us, as though the day of the Lord were at hand' (2 Thess. 2:1-2). For the true teacher so acted that first they who were praised might hear what they recognized in themselves, and afterward, being exhorted, what they should follow; so that the praise set before them might make firm their mind, lest the admonition joined thereto should shake it; and that those whom

he had known to be disturbed by the suspicion of the nearness of the end, he no longer reproved as though moved, but, as if not knowing what had happened, still forbade them to be disturbed; so that, while they believed themselves unknown to their preacher in that very fickleness of agitation, they might the more fear to become reprehensible in proportion as they feared to be known by him.