Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 311

Gregory to Domitian, metropolitan. On receiving the writings of your most sweet and most gracious Blessedness, I greatly rejoiced, because you were discoursing to me on many things from Holy Scripture. And since I found in them beloved fare, I ate them eagerly. Among them certain things drawn from outward and necessary matters were intermingled. You acted as though preparing a banquet for the mind, so that the dishes set before it might please the more by their variety. And although the outward matters, like humbler and meaner foods, have less savour, yet they were so prudently spoken by you that they are gladly taken; for even contemptible foods often become sweet from the seasoning of a good cook. But, the truth of the history being preserved, this—

—that which I had earlier said concerning the divine signification ought by no means to have been rejected. For although, since you so wish, its signification does not accord with your view, yet from those very surrounding contexts what has been said from it can without hesitation be maintained. For its ravisher is called a prince of the land (Gen. 34), by whom the devil is plainly designated: since our Redeemer says, Now shall the prince of this world be cast out (John 12:31). He also seeks a wife, because indeed the malignant spirit hastens to possess freely the soul which he has first corrupted by secret seduction. Whence Jacob's sons, vehemently enraged, take up the sword against the whole house of Shechem and his native land (Gen. 34);

—because they too are to be pursued by all who have zeal, those who become helpers of the malignant spirit. Upon these they first enjoin circumcision, and afterwards, when they are set in pain, they slay them. For very often severer masters, if they know not how to moderate their zeal, although through preaching they cut away the vices of corruption, yet when what had been perpetrated is already lamented by the offenders, they still rage on through the harshness of discipline and become the more hard. For those who had already cut off their foreskins ought by no means to have been put to death; because those who lament the fault of lust, and turn the will of the flesh into grief—

—ought not to feel the harshness of discipline from their masters, lest the Redeemer of the human race Himself be less loved, if for His sake the soul is worn down more than it ought. Whence also He says to those same sons of Jacob: You have troubled me, and made me hateful to the Canaanites (Ibid., 30). For when the masters still cruelly pursue that which the offenders are already lamenting, the very love of his Redeemer grows lukewarm in the weak mind, because it considers that it has lost itself there where it does not spare even itself. These things, then, I have said, that I might show from the surrounding contexts that the interpretation which I have set forth is not to be disapproved.

But those things which in the same passage were said by your Holiness for my consolation, I gladly accept, because in the understanding of Holy Scripture whatever does not resist sound faith ought not to be rejected. For just as out of one gold some make necklaces, others make rings, and others bracelets for adornment, so out of one understanding of Holy Scripture the several expositors compose, as it were, various ornaments through their innumerable interpretations, all of which nonetheless avail for the beauty of the heavenly bride. And I greatly rejoice that your most sweet Blessedness, even when occupied with secular affairs, vigilantly turns your genius back to the understanding of the sacred word.

For it is necessary that, if those affairs cannot altogether be avoided, these should not altogether be set aside. But I beg you through the Almighty Lord: to me, labouring amid such great waves of tribulations, stretch out the hand of prayer, that by your intercession I may be lifted up to the heights, who am pressed down to the depths by the weight of my faults. As for the emperor of the Persians, though I grieve that he was not converted, yet I altogether exult that you have preached the Christian faith to him; because, although he did not merit to come to the light, nevertheless your Holiness will have the reward of your preaching. For the Ethiopian too enters the bath black and comes out black, yet the bath-keeper receives his coins.

But concerning Maurice you speak well, that in his action I should recognize the statue from its shadow, that is, that I should weigh greater things in the least. In this, however, we trust him, because his soul is bound to us by oaths and hostages.