a captive, bound, and a slave, yet, because he was a philosopher, he was greater than the man who bought him. We read that a certain man of Gades came from the farthest edge of the world to behold Titus Livius, who flowed like a milky fountain of eloquence; and him whom Rome had not drawn to look upon herself, the fame of a single man led hither. That age had a marvel unheard of in all the centuries and to be celebrated: that a man having entered the whole world sought another beyond the world. Apollonius—whether he was, as the common people say, a magician, or, as the Pythagoreans hand down, a philosopher—entered among the Persians, crossed the Caucasus, and passed through the Albanians, Scythians, Massagetae, penetrated the most opulent kingdoms of India, and at last, by the very broad river Phison
having crossed it, he came to the Brahmans, that he might hear Hiarcas, seated on a golden throne and drinking from the fountain of Tantalus, teaching among a few disciples about nature, about morals, and about the courses of the stars; thence, returning through the Elamites, Babylonians, Chaldaeans, Medes, Assyrians, Parthians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Arabs, and Palestine, he went on to Alexandria and betook himself to Ethiopia, that he might see the Gymnosophists and the most famous Table of the Sun in the sand. Everywhere that man found something to learn, so that, ever advancing, he ever became better than himself. Philostratus wrote most fully on this subject in eight volumes. Why should I speak of the men of the world, when the apostle Paul, the vessel of election and teacher of the Gentiles, who speaks out of the consciousness of so great a guest within him:
'Do you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?'—after Damascus and Arabia had been traversed, went up to Jerusalem that he might see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days—for by this mystery of the hebdomad and the ogdoad the future preacher to the Gentiles was to be instructed—and again, after fourteen years, taking Barnabas and Titus, he laid before the apostles the Gospel, lest perchance he should be running or should have run in vain. The living voice has I know not what of hidden energy, and, poured from the author's own mouth into the ears of the disciple, sounds forth more forcibly. Whence Aeschines too, when he was in exile at Rhodes and that oration of Demosthenes which he had delivered against him was being read, while all marvelled and praised it, sighing, said:
'What, if you had heard the beast himself sounding forth his own words?' Nor do I say this as though there were anything in me such as you either could or would wish to learn, but that your ardour and your zeal for learning ought to be commended of themselves, even apart from us; a teachable disposition is praiseworthy even without a teacher. We consider not what you may find, but what you may seek. Soft wax, easy to be moulded, even if the hand of the artist and modeller pause, is nevertheless potentially the whole of whatever it can become. Paul the apostle glories that he learned the law and the prophets at the feet of Gamaliel, so that, armed with spiritual weapons, he might afterwards say with confidence:
'For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down reasonings and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, and being in readiness to subdue all disobedience.' He instructs Timothy, learned from infancy in the sacred writings, and exhorts him to the study of reading, that he neglect not the grace which was given him by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. He charges Titus that, among the other virtues of a bishop, whom he has portrayed in a brief discourse, he should also choose in him the knowledge of the Scriptures: 'holding fast the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able both to exhort in sound teaching and to confute the gainsayers.'
For holy rusticity profits only itself, and, as much as it edifies the church of Christ by the merit of its life, so much it harms it, if it does not resist the gainsayers. Malachi the prophet, nay rather the Lord through Malachi, says: 'Ask the priests concerning the law'—so far is it the office of a priest, when asked, to answer concerning the law. And in Deuteronomy we read: 'Ask your father, and he will declare to you; your elders, and they will tell you.' In the hundred and eighteenth psalm also: 'Your ordinances were the subjects of my song in the place of my pilgrimage.' And in the description of the just man, when David compared him to the tree which is of life in paradise, among his other virtues he added also this:
'His delight was in the law of the Lord, and in His law will he meditate day and night.' Daniel at the end of his most sacred vision says that the just shall shine as the stars, and the understanding—that is, the learned—as the firmament. Do you see how far holy rusticity and learned righteousness differ from one another? The one are compared to the stars, the others to the heaven—although according to the Hebrew truth both may be possible; for thus we read among them: 'They that shall be learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that instruct many unto righteousness as the stars for perpetual eternities.' Why is Paul the apostle a vessel of election? Surely because he is a vessel of the law and an armoury of the holy Scriptures.
The Pharisees are amazed at the Lord's teaching; they marvel in Peter and John how they know the law, since they had not learned letters. For whatever exercise and daily meditation in the law is wont to bestow upon others, the Holy Spirit was suggesting to them; and they were, as it is written, taught of God. The Saviour had completed twelve years, and in the temple, questioning the elders concerning matters of the law, He rather teaches while He prudently questions. Unless perhaps we call Peter a rustic, and John too a rustic, each of whom could say: 'Though rude in speech, yet not in knowledge.' John a rustic, a fisherman, unlearned? And whence, I pray, comes that: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'?
Logos in Greek signifies many things—for it is word, and reason, and reckoning, and the cause of each single thing, through which are the several things that subsist; all of which we rightly understand. This Plato knew not, this the eloquent Demosthenes was ignorant of. 'I will destroy,' He says, 'the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject.' True wisdom destroys false wisdom, and, although the foolishness of preaching be in the cross, yet Paul speaks wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world nor of the princes of this world, who are brought to nought, but he speaks the wisdom of God in a mystery, hidden, which God foreordained before the ages. The wisdom of God is Christ; for Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
This wisdom is hidden in a mystery, of which even the title of the ninth psalm is inscribed beforehand, 'concerning the hidden things of the Son'—in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden, and who, hidden in a mystery, was foreordained before the ages, and foreordained too and prefigured in the law and the prophets. Whence the prophets also were called seers, because they saw Him whom the rest did not see. 'Abraham saw His day and was glad.' The heavens were opened to Ezekiel, which had been closed to a sinful people. 'Reveal,' says David, 'my eyes, and I will consider the wondrous things of your law'; for the law is spiritual and needs revelation, that it may be understood, and that with unveiled face we may contemplate the glory of God.
In the Apocalypse a book is shown sealed with seven seals; and if you give it to a man who knows letters, that he may read it, he will answer you: 'I cannot, for it is sealed.' How many today, thinking that they know letters, hold the sealed book and cannot open it, unless He unseal it who has the key of David, who opens and none shuts, who shuts and none opens! In the Acts of the Apostles the holy eunuch—nay rather a man, for so the Scripture surnames him—when he was reading Isaiah, being asked by Philip, 'Do you think you understand what you are reading?' answered: 'How can I, unless someone teach me?'
I, to speak of myself for the moment, am neither holier than this eunuch nor more zealous, who came from Ethiopia, that is from the farthest ends of the world, to the temple, left the royal court—and so great was his love of divine knowledge that he read the sacred writings even in his chariot—and yet, when he held the book and conceived the words of the Lord in thought, turned them over with his tongue, sounded them upon his lips, he was ignorant of Him whom, without knowing it, he was venerating in the book. Philip came, showed him Jesus who lay hidden and shut up in the letter, and—O the wondrous power of the teacher!—in that same hour he believes, is baptized, is faithful and holy, and becomes a master from a disciple: he found more at the desert fountain of the church than in the gilded temple of the synagogue.
These things I have touched on briefly—for the narrow limits of a letter did not allow me to wander farther afield—that you might understand that in the holy Scriptures you cannot enter without a forerunner and one who shows you the path. I say nothing of grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometers, dialecticians, musicians, astrologers, physicians, whose knowledge is most useful to mortals and is divided into three parts: theory, method, and practice. I will come to the lesser arts, and those which are administered not so much by discourse as by the hand. Farmers, masons, artisans, hewers of metals and of woods, wool-workers too and fullers, and the rest who fabricate various furnishings and cheap little wares, cannot be what they wish without a teacher.
What belongs to physicians, physicians promise; craftsmen handle the craftsman's work. The art of the Scriptures alone is that which all men everywhere claim for themselves: 'we, learned and unlearned alike, write poems everywhere.' This the chattering old woman, this the doting old man, this the wordy solecist, this all men presume upon; they mangle it, they teach it before they learn it. Some, with knitted brow, weighing grand words, philosophize about the sacred writings among silly women; others learn—for shame!—from women what they may teach to men, and, as if this were too little, with a certain glibness of words, nay rather with audacity, they expound to others what they themselves do not understand.
I say nothing of men like myself, who, if perchance they come to the Holy Scriptures after secular literature and have charmed the ears of the people with polished speech, suppose that whatever they say is the law of God, and do not deign to learn what the prophets and the apostles meant, but fit incongruous proof-texts to their own meaning — as though it were a grand thing, and not rather a most corrupt manner of speaking, to distort the sense and to drag the reluctant Scripture to one's own will. As if we had not read the Homer-centos and the Virgil-centos, and as though we might not likewise call Maro himself a Christian though he lived without Christ, because he wrote: 'Now returns the Virgin, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new offspring is sent down from heaven on high'; and the father speaking to the son:
'Son, my strength, my great power, you alone'; and after the words of the Saviour on the cross: 'Such things he pondered, uttering them, and remained fixed.' These are childish tricks, like the game of mountebanks: to teach what you do not know — nay, to speak with Clitomachus, not even to know this, that you do not know. To be sure, Genesis is most plain, in which is written of the creation of the world, of the beginning of the human race, of the division of the earth, of the confusion of tongues, and of the going of the Hebrews down into Egypt. Exodus lies open, with its ten plagues, with the Decalogue, with its mystical and divine precepts. Ready to hand is the book of Leviticus, in which each single sacrifice — nay, almost each single syllable, and the vestments of Aaron and the whole Levitical order — breathes heavenly mysteries.
And Numbers — does it not contain the mysteries of all arithmetic, and the prophecy of Balaam, and the two-and-forty stations through the wilderness? Deuteronomy too, the second law and the prefiguration of the law of the Gospel — does it not so hold the things that are earlier, that yet all things are new out of the old? Thus far Moses, thus far the Pentateuch, in whose five words the apostle glories that he would rather speak in the Church. Job, the pattern of patience — what mysteries does he not embrace in his discourse? He begins in prose, glides into verse, and ends in prose; and he sets forth the propositions of all dialectic, defining by statement, assumption, proof, and conclusion.
Every single word in it is full of meanings; and, to be silent about the rest, he so prophesies the resurrection of bodies that no one has written of it either more plainly or more guardedly: 'I know,' he says, 'that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last day I shall rise again from the earth; and again I shall be encompassed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself am to see, and my own eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is laid up in my bosom.' I come to Joshua son of Nun, a type of the Lord not only in his deeds but also in his name: he crosses the Jordan, overthrows the kingdoms of the enemy, divides the land among the victorious people, and through each of the cities, hamlets, mountains, rivers, torrents, and boundaries he describes the spiritual kingdoms of the Church and of the heavenly Jerusalem.
In the book of Judges, as many as are the leaders of the people, so many are the figures. Ruth the Moabitess fulfils, concerning a Moabitess, the prophecy of Isaiah who says: 'Send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the earth, from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion.' Samuel, in the death of Eli and in the slaying of Saul, testifies that the old law is abolished; and again, in Zadok and in David, the mysteries of the new priesthood and the new kingdom. The Books of Kings — that is, the third and fourth Book of Kings — describe from Solomon to Jechoniah, and from Jeroboam son of Nebat to Hoshea who was led away into Assyria, the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel. If you look at the history, the words are simple; if at the meaning hidden in the letter, the fewness of the Church and the wars of the heretics against the Church are recounted.
The twelve prophets, compressed into the narrow bounds of a single volume, prefigure much else than what they sound in the letter. Hosea again and again names Ephraim, Samaria, Joseph, Jezreel, and a harlot wife, and the children of fornication, and an adulteress shut up in her husband's chamber, sitting a widow for a long time, and under the garb of mourning awaiting her husband's return to her.
Joel, son of Pethuel, describes the land of the twelve tribes laid waste and consumed by the caterpillar, the cankerworm, the locust, and the mildew; and how, after the overthrow of the former people, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon the servants and handmaids of God — that is, upon the names of the hundred and twenty believers — and would be poured out in the upper room of Zion; which hundred and twenty, rising little by little and by increments from one up to fifteen, make up the number of the fifteen degrees which are mystically contained in the Psalter. Amos, a shepherd and rustic gathering blackberries from the brambles, cannot be expounded in a few words. For who could worthily set forth the three and four transgressions of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Idumaea, of the children of Ammon and Moab, and in the seventh and eighth degree those of Judah and Israel?
He speaks to the fat kine that are in the mountain of Samaria, and testifies that both the greater and the lesser house shall fall. He himself beholds the maker of the locust, and the Lord standing upon a plastered or adamantine wall, and drawing the hook of the fruits — punishments for sinners, and a famine upon the land: not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. Obadiah, whose name is interpreted 'servant of the Lord,' sounds forth against Edom, that bloody and earthly one, ever the rival of his brother Jacob, and smites him with a spiritual spear. Jonah, the fairest dove, prefiguring by his shipwreck the Passion of the Lord, calls the world back to repentance, and under the name of Nineveh proclaims salvation to the Gentiles.
Micah of Moresheth, coheir with Christ, announces the devastation of the daughter of the robber and sets a siege against her, because she has smitten upon the cheek the judge of Israel. Nahum, the consoler of the world, rebukes the city of bloods, and after its overthrow says: 'Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that brings good tidings and proclaims peace.' Habakkuk, a strong and unbending wrestler, stands upon his watch and fixes his step upon the fortress, that he may contemplate Christ upon the cross and say: 'His power covered the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise; and his brightness shall be as the light; horns are in his hands, there is his strength hidden.'
Zephaniah, the watchman and knower of the Lord's secrets, hears a cry from the fish-gate, and a wailing from the second quarter, and a great crashing from the hills. He also proclaims a howling to the inhabitants of the Mortar, because all the people of Canaan has fallen silent, and all who were wrapped in silver have perished. Haggai, festive and joyful, who sowed in tears that he might reap in gladness, rebuilds the ruined temple and brings in God the Father speaking: 'Yet one little while, and I will shake the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations shall come.'
Zechariah, mindful of his Lord, manifold in his prophecy, beholds Jesus clothed in filthy garments, and the stone with seven eyes, and the golden candlestick with as many lamps as eyes, and two olive-trees also to the left of the lamp and to the right; so that after the red, dappled, white, and black horses, and the chariots scattered from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, he may prophesy the poor King and proclaim him sitting upon a colt, the foal of an ass under the yoke. Malachi openly, and at the end of all the prophets, speaks of the casting-off of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles: 'I have no pleasure in you,' says the Lord of hosts, 'and I will not accept a gift from your hand.'
'For from the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place a pure oblation is sacrificed and offered to my name.' Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel — who could either understand or expound them? Of whom the first seems to me to weave not a prophecy but a Gospel; the second joins together the rod of an almond-tree, and the seething pot from the face of the north, and the leopard stripped of its colours, and a fourfold alphabet in diverse metres; the third holds his beginnings and his end wrapped in such great obscurities that among the Hebrews those very portions, together with the beginning of Genesis, are not read before the age of thirty;
but the fourth — who is also the last among the four prophets — knowing the times and a lover of the history of the whole world, in clear speech declares the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, overthrowing all the kingdoms. David, our Simonides, our Pindar and Alcaeus, our Horace too, our Catullus and Serenus, sings Christ upon his lyre, and on the ten-stringed psaltery raises him rising from the dead. Solomon, the peaceful and beloved of the Lord, amends morals, teaches nature, joins the Church to Christ, and sweetly sings the epithalamium of the holy nuptials. Esther, in a type of the Church, frees the people from peril; and, Haman being slain — whose name is interpreted 'iniquity' — she hands down to posterity the portions of the banquet and a festal day.
The book of Chronicles — that is, the epitome of the Old Testament — is so great and of such a kind that whoever, without it, should wish to arrogate to himself a knowledge of the Scriptures, makes a mockery of his own self. For through the several names and the joinings of words, both the histories passed over in the Books of Kings are touched upon, and innumerable questions of the Gospel are explained. Ezra and Nehemiah — that is, 'the helper' and 'the consoler from the Lord' — are compressed into a single volume: they restore the temple, build up the walls of the city; and all that throng of the people returning to their homeland, and the register of priests, Levites, Israelites, and proselytes, and the works of the walls and towers divided among the several families, display one thing in the bark and hold another in the marrow.
You see that, carried away by love of the Scriptures, I have exceeded the measure of a letter, and yet have not filled out what I wished. We have heard only what we ought to know and what we ought to desire, so that we too may be able to say: 'My soul has longed to desire your judgments at all times.' For the rest, that saying of Socrates is fulfilled in us: 'This only I know, that I know nothing.' I shall touch briefly also upon the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John — the four-horsed chariot of the Lord and the true Cherubim, which is interpreted 'multitude of knowledge' — are all eyes throughout their whole body, sparks flash, lightnings dart, they have feet that are straight and stretching upward, backs winged and flitting everywhere.
They hold one another and are interwoven with each other, and are turned as a wheel within a wheel, and go wherever the breath of the Holy Spirit leads them. The apostle Paul writes to seven churches — for the eighth, to the Hebrews, is by very many placed outside the number — he instructs Timothy and Titus, and pleads with Philemon on behalf of a runaway servant. Concerning this I think it better to be silent than to say too little. The Acts of the Apostles seem indeed to sound a bare history and to weave the infancy of the nascent Church; but if we have learned that their writer is Luke the physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, we shall observe likewise that all his words are medicines for the languishing soul.
James, Peter, John, Jude have published seven epistles, at once mystical and terse, both short and long: short in words, long in meanings, so that rare is he who does not grow dim-sighted in reading them. The Apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as it has words. I have said too little, and every praise is beneath the merit of the volume; in each single word manifold understandings lie hidden. I beg you, dearest brother, to live among these things, to meditate upon them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else — does it not seem to you already a dwelling-place of the kingdom of heaven here on earth?
I would not have you be offended in the Holy Scriptures at their simplicity and, as it were, the meanness of the words, which have been so brought forth either through the fault of the translators or of set purpose, so that they might the more easily instruct an unlettered congregation, and that in one and the same sentence the learned might hear one thing, the unlearned another. I am not so shameless and dull as to promise that I know these things and gather their fruits on earth, whose roots are fixed in heaven; but I confess that I wish it, and I profess that I strive after it: refusing to be a master, I promise to be a companion. To him who asks it is given, to him who knocks it is opened, he who seeks finds. Let us learn on earth those things whose knowledge shall endure for us in heaven.
I shall welcome you with open arms; and — that I may blurt out something ineptly and after the bombast of Hermagoras — whatever you shall inquire, I will endeavour to know it along with you. You have here a most loving brother of yours, Eusebius, who has doubled for me the grace of your letter by reporting the uprightness of your character, your contempt of the world, your fidelity in friendship, your love of Christ. For your prudence and the charm of your eloquence, even without him your very letter proclaimed. Hasten, I beg you, and rather cut than untie the cable of the little boat that clings in the shallows. No one about to renounce the world can well sell the things he has despised in order to sell them. Whatever of your own you shall have laid out in expenses, count it as gain. It is an ancient saying:
To the miser what he has is as lacking as what he does not have; to the believer the whole world is a wealth of riches, but the unbeliever is in want even of a farthing. So let us live as having nothing and yet possessing all things. Food and clothing are the riches of Christians. If you have your property in your own power, sell it; if you do not, cast it away. To him who takes your tunic, your cloak also is to be left. To be sure — unless you, ever putting things off till tomorrow and dragging out day after day, cautiously and step by step sell your little possessions — Christ has nothing whence to feed his poor. He has given all to God who has offered himself. The apostles left only a boat and their nets: the widow casts two mites into the treasury and is preferred to the riches of Croesus. He easily despises all things who always thinks of himself as about to die.
LETTER 54. TO FURIA, ON PRESERVING WIDOWHOOD. You beseech me by letter and suppliantly entreat me to write back to you — nay, to write to you — how you ought to live and to preserve the crown of widowhood with the good name of chastity unimpaired. My mind rejoices, my inmost being exults, my affection is stirred that you desire to be, after your husband, what your mother Titiana of holy memory was for a long time under her husband. Her prayers and supplications have been heard; she has obtained in her only daughter what she herself possessed while living.
You have besides the great privilege of your lineage, that from Camillus onward either none or scarcely any of your family is recorded to have known a second union; so that you are not so much to be praised if you persevere as a widow, as to be execrated if, being a Christian, you should not keep that which through so many ages heathen women have guarded. I say nothing of Paula and Eustochium, the flowers of your stock, lest I should seem, under the occasion of exhorting you, to be praising them; and I pass over Blesilla, who, following her husband — your brother — in a short span of life fulfilled the seasons of many virtues. And would that men might imitate the glories of women, and that wrinkled old age might render what youth freely offers! Knowing and seeing, I put my hand into the flame:
the brows will be drawn together, the arm stretched out, and angry Chremes will rage with swollen mouth. The nobles will rise up, and against my letter the patrician throng will thunder, crying out that I am a sorcerer, that I am a seducer, and that I ought to be carried off to the furthest lands. Let them add, if they will, 'a Samaritan' too, that I may recognize the title of my Lord. Certainly I do not divide the daughter from her parent, nor do I say that word of the Gospel: 'Let the dead bury their dead.' For he lives who believes in Christ, and he who believes in him ought, even as He walked, so himself also to walk. Let envy depart, which the inborn tooth of the slanderous ever fixes upon the Christian name, so that, while they fear reproaches, they may not be roused to virtues.
Apart from letters we do not know one another, and the sole cause is that of piety, where there is no acquaintance of the flesh. Honour your father, but only if he does not separate you from your true Father. Know the tie of blood so long as he knows his own Creator; otherwise David will straightway sing to you: 'Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house; and the King shall desire your beauty, for he is the Lord your God.' A great reward for forgetting a parent: 'the King shall desire your beauty.' Because you have hearkened, because you have seen, because you have inclined your ear, and have forgotten your people and your father's house, therefore the King shall desire your beauty, and shall say to you: 'You are all fair, my neighbour, and there is no blemish in you.'