(Admonition 17.) In one way are the meek to be admonished, and in another the irascible. For sometimes the meek, when they preside, suffer the torpor of sloth as a neighbor set close beside them, and for the most part, by too great a relaxation of gentleness, they soften the vigor of strictness beyond what is necessary. But on the contrary the irascible, when they receive places of governance, are hurled by the impulse of anger into a madness of mind, and even confound the life of their subjects, the tranquility of quiet being disrupted. When fury drives them headlong, they know not whatever they do while angry, they know not whatever they suffer from themselves while angry. Sometimes even, what is graver, they think the goad of their anger to be the zeal of justice. And when vice is believed to be virtue, guilt is heaped up without fear.
Often, therefore, the meek grow torpid with the weariness of dissolution; often the irascible are deceived by the zeal of rectitude. To the virtue of the former, then, a vice is latently joined; but to the latter, their vice seems as it were a fervent virtue. Therefore the former are to be admonished to flee what is near beside them; the latter to attend to what is within themselves; the former to discern what they have not, the latter what they have. Let the meek embrace solicitude; let the irascible condemn their perturbation. The meek are to be admonished to study to have also the emulation of justice; the irascible are to be admonished to subjoin meekness to the emulation which they esteem themselves to have.
For therefore the Holy Spirit has been shown to us in a dove and in fire, because, namely, all whom he fills he displays both as meek with the simplicity of the dove, and as ardent with the fire of zeal. By no means, therefore, is he full of the Holy Spirit who either, in the tranquility of meekness, deserts the fervor of emulation, or again, in the ardor of emulation, loses the virtue of meekness. This perhaps we may better show if we bring into the midst the teaching of Paul, who to two disciples, endowed with a charity that was not diverse, nevertheless imparted diverse aids of preaching. For, admonishing Timothy, he says: 'Reprove, entreat, rebuke, in all patience and doctrine' (2 Timothy 4:2). He also admonishes Titus, saying:
'Speak these things, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority' (Titus 2:15). What is it that he dispenses his teaching with such art, that in setting it forth he proposes to the one authority, and to the other patience, except that he saw Titus to be of a meeker spirit, and Timothy to be a little more fervent? He inflames the one through the study of emulation; he tempers the other through the gentleness of patience. To the one he joins what is lacking; from the other he takes away what is in excess. The one he strives to impel with the goad; the other he moderates with the rein. For the great husbandman of the Church he had undertaken waters some shoots that they may grow as they ought; others, when he perceives them growing more than is just, he cuts back, lest either by not growing they bear no fruits, or by growing immoderately they lose the fruits they have put forth.
But far other is the anger which creeps in under the guise of emulation, other that which confounds a troubled heart even without the pretext of justice. For the former is disordered in that which it ought to do, but the latter is always inflamed in those things which it ought not. It is indeed to be known that in this the irascible differ from the impatient, that the latter do not tolerate what is inflicted by others, while the former even bring in the very things that might be tolerated. For the irascible often even pursue those who turn away from them, stir up occasion of brawling, and rejoice in the labor of contention; whom nevertheless we better correct if, in the very commotion of their anger, we turn aside.
For the perturbed know not what they hear, but when brought back to themselves they receive the words of exhortation the more freely, the more they blush at being tolerated so tranquilly. But to a mind drunk with fury, everything right that is said seems perverse. Whence to Nabal, drunk, Abigail laudably kept silent about his fault, which, when the wine was digested, she laudably told (1 Samuel 25:37). For therefore he was able to recognize the evil he had done, because being drunk he did not hear it. But when the irascible so assail others that they cannot be turned aside at all, they are to be struck not with open reproach, but with a certain caution of reverence in sparing them. This we better show if we bring into the midst the deed of Abner.
For when Asahel assailed him with the force of a rash headlong rush, it is written: 'Abner spoke to Asahel, saying: Withdraw, do not pursue me, lest I be forced to strike you to the ground. But he scorned to listen, and refused to turn aside. Therefore Abner struck him in the groin with the butt of his spear, and ran him through, and he died' (2 Kings 2:22-23). Now whose figure did Asahel bear, but of those whom a fury violently seizing hurries headlong? Such men, in that same onrush of fury, must be turned aside as cautiously as they are madly swept along.
Hence Abner too, whose name in our tongue means 'the father's lamp,' flees; because the teacher's tongue, which points to the supernal light of God, when it beholds someone's mind being carried through the precipices of fury, and dissembles to hurl back the darts of words against the angry man, as it were is unwilling to smite the pursuer. But when the wrathful in no way calm themselves by any consideration, and like Asahel do not cease to press on and rage, it is necessary that those who strive to restrain the raging in no wise rise up themselves in fury, but display whatever belongs to tranquillity; yet let them subtly put forth certain things by which they may prick the raging man's soul obliquely. Hence Abner too, when he stood against his pursuer, ran him through not with the straight but with the reversed spear.
For to smite with the point is to confront with the assault of open rebuke. To strike the pursuer with the reversed spear is to touch the raging man tranquilly by certain means, and to overcome him as it were by sparing him. But Asahel at once falls dead; because agitated minds, while they perceive themselves both spared and yet in their inmost parts touched under tranquillity by the reasonableness of the answers, straightway fall from that pride to which they had risen. Those, therefore, who recoil from the onrush of their own fervour under the blow of gentleness, die as it were without the sword.