O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how unfathomable his ways! And elsewhere: We know in part and we prophesy in part; and: Now we see through a glass, in a riddle; and to the Romans: O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? From all of which we are taught that the righteousness of God alone is perfect—he who maketh his sun to rise upon the just and the unjust, and giveth the late and the early rain to the deserving and the undeserving alike, who from the villages, the corners, and the streets invites to the wedding, and seeks the sheep which, following the example of the penitent son, could not or would not return of itself, and finds it, and having found it carries it back on his shoulders. For it had labored much in straying.
But that we may be taught that envy can befall even the saints and that pure mercy is left to God alone, let us consider the example of the sons of Zebedee, on whose behalf, when their mother, moved by the affection of piety, had asked for things too great, the remaining ten disciples were indignant. And Jesus, calling them, said: You know that the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them, and they that are greater exercise power over them. It shall not be so among you; but whosoever of you would be greater, let him be your minister, and whosoever would be first among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Let it seem to no one dangerous, to no one blasphemous, that we have said the evil of envy could creep in even among the apostles, since we suppose this even of the angels. For the stars are not clean in his sight, and against his angels he perceived something perverse; and in the Psalms it is said: In his sight shall no living being be justified. He does not say 'no man shall be justified,' but 'no living being'—that is, not the evangelist, not the apostle, not the prophet—and, to ascend to greater things—not the angel, not the thrones, not the dominions, not the powers, nor the other virtues. God alone it is, in whom sin does not fall;
the rest, since they are of free will—according to which man too was made in the image and likeness of God—can bend their will to either side. But if thou art not led by this reasoning, be moved at least by the authority of that parable in which throughout the whole day laborers are sent into the vineyard. And in the first hour Adam, Abel, Seth are called; in the third, Noah; in the sixth, Abraham; in the ninth, Moses; in the eleventh, the people of the Gentiles, to whom it is said: Why stand ye here all the day idle? And he answered: No man hath hired us. And that the coming of our Savior is at the last hour, John the apostle is witness, saying: Brothers, it is the last hour.
For, as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now many antichrists have arisen, wherefore we know that it is the last hour. If this interpretation displeases, I follow wherever thou leadest, provided only that thou confess those who were called first to be righteous. And when I have obtained this, I shall bring in the following: how then did the righteous murmur against the householder, saying: These last who came and worked one hour, thou hast made equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the heat?
They seem indeed to speak justly, that the wage of him who has sweated from the first hour until nightfall ought not to be equal to that of him who has been engaged in labor for one hour; but this very righteousness has envy within it, in that it envies another's felicity. In fact the Lord too rebukes in them an envious eye, saying: Or is thine eye evil, because I am good? Hence too by the apostle God alone is called righteous, alone immortal—not that the angels are unrighteous and mortal, but that he himself is immortal and righteous, and when all righteousness is set beside him it is found to be iniquity. But that in this same parable which we have now proposed thou mayest understand the injustice of the hired men, attend a little.
He who was hired at the first hour deserves more than he who was sent into the vineyard at the third hour; again, the laborer of the third hour surpasses the laborer of the sixth hour, and he of the sixth hour outdoes the laborer of the ninth hour. How then do they all envy the last and not require the same righteousness in themselves? Thou who wast hired at the ninth hour, why enviest thou him who was sent into the vineyard at the eleventh hour? Whatever thou answerest, though thou assert the labor to be different, so that thou mightest deserve a greater reward for the different labor, thou wilt lie under the same verdict as the man of the sixth hour. And thou who wast hired at the sixth hour enviest the last: why should he obtain a denarius with thee—that is, an equal salvation—though the glory of salvation differ according to labor.
The same the third can say of thee, and the first again of the third; but they themselves, on account of unequal labor and the diverse intervals of calling, willingly accept an equal reward among themselves; only in the last laborer—that is, in the salvation of the Gentiles—do they disagree and do injury to the Lord and are convicted of envy under all the parables. I do not doubt that the discourse of our littleness seems rough to thee; but I have often pleaded that speech cannot be polished except that which one's own hand has filed. Therefore pardon my aching eyes—that is, pardon the one dictating—especially since in ecclesiastical matters words are not sought, but the sense; that is, life must be sustained by bread, not by husks. XXII. TO EUSTOCHIUM.
Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear, and forget thy people and thy father's house; and the king shall desire thy beauty. In the forty-fourth psalm God speaks to the human soul, that after the example of Abraham, going out from his land and his kindred, it may leave the Chaldeans—who are interpreted 'as it were demons'—and dwell in the region of the living, which elsewhere the prophet sighs for, saying: I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. But it does not suffice thee to go out from thy homeland, unless thou forget thy people and thy father's house, and, the flesh despised, be joined to the embraces of the Bridegroom. Look not back, it says, nor stay in all the surrounding region; save thyself in the mountain, lest perchance thou be overtaken.
It is not expedient, having laid hold of the plow, to look backward, nor to return from the field to the house, nor, after Christ's tunic, to go down under a roof to take up another garment. A great marvel: the father exhorts his daughter: 'Remember not thy father.' You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do—so it is said to the Jews; and elsewhere: He who commits sin is of the devil. Begotten first from such a parent, we are black; and after repentance, the summit of virtue not yet ascended, we say: I am black and beautiful, O daughter of Jerusalem. I have gone out from the house of my infancy, I have forgotten my father, I am born again in Christ. What reward do I receive for this? There follows: And the king shall desire thy beauty. This therefore is that great sacrament:
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two—in one flesh? No longer, as there, in one flesh, but in spirit. Thy Bridegroom is not arrogant, not proud: he took an Ethiopian woman to wife. As soon as thou desirest to hear the wisdom of the true Solomon and comest to him, he will confess to thee all that he knows, and the king will bring thee into his chamber; and, wondrously, thy color being changed, that saying will suit thee: Who is this that cometh up made white?
These things, my lady Eustochium—for I ought indeed to call the bride of my Lord 'lady'—I have set down so that from the very beginning of the reading thou mightest recognize that I am not now going to speak the praises of virginity, which thou hast most excellently approved by following it, nor to enumerate the annoyances of marriage—how the womb swells, the infant wails, the rival tortures, the care of the household distracts, and how death at last cuts off all that are reckoned goods (for married women too have their own order, honorable marriage and the undefiled bed)—but that thou mightest understand that in going out from Sodom thou must fear the example of Lot's wife.
In this little book there is no flattery—for a flatterer is a fawning enemy—nor will there be any pomp of rhetorical speech to set thee already among the angels and, the blessedness of virginity being displayed, to subject the world beneath thy feet. I do not wish pride to come to thee from thy resolve, but fear. Thou walkest laden with gold; the robber is to be avoided. This life is an arena for mortals: here we contend, that elsewhere we may be crowned. No one walks secure among serpents and scorpions. My sword, saith the Lord, is drunk in heaven; and dost thou reckon there is peace on earth, which brings forth thorns and thistles, which the serpent devours?
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of this world and of these shadows, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. We are surrounded by great hosts of enemies; all things are full of foes. The flesh, frail and soon to be ashes, fights alone against many. But when it has been dissolved and the prince of this world comes and finds in it nothing, then secure thou shalt hear through the prophet: Thou shalt not fear the terror of the night, the arrow flying by day, the business walking in the darkness, the assault of the noonday demon. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come near thee.
But if their multitude troubles thee, and thou beginnest to burn at every incitement of the vices, and thy thought says to thee: 'What shall we do?', Elisha will answer: Fear not, for there are more with us than with them; and he will pray and say: Lord, open the eyes of thy handmaid, that she may see. And when thine eyes are opened thou shalt see a fiery chariot, which after the example of Elijah lifts thee to the stars; and then thou shalt joyfully sing: Our soul like a sparrow has been snatched from the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are set free. As long as we are contained in this frail little body, as long as we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and the spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, there is no certain victory.
Our adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking to devour something. Thou hast set, says David, darkness, and it became night: in it all the beasts of the wood shall pass through, the young lions roaring to snatch and to seek from God food for themselves. The devil does not seek unbelieving men, not those who are without and whose flesh the king of Assyria burns in the pot: he hastens to snatch from the Church of Christ. His choice foods, according to Habakkuk, are the elect: he desires to overthrow Job, and, Judas devoured, he demands power to sift the apostles. The Savior came not to send peace upon the earth, but a sword. Lucifer has fallen, who rose in the morning; and he who was nurtured in the paradise of delights deserved to hear:
If thou be lifted up on high like the eagle, thence will I drag thee down, saith the Lord. For he had said in his heart: Above the stars of heaven will I set my throne, and I will be like the Most High. Whence daily God speaks to those who descend by the ladder of the dreaming Jacob: I have said: Ye are gods and all sons of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. For the devil fell first; and, since God stands in the synagogue of gods and in the midst discerns among the gods, the apostle writes to those who cease to be gods: For whereas there are among you dissensions and rivalries, are ye not men and walk according to man?
If Paul the apostle, a vessel of election and prepared for the gospel of Christ, on account of the goads of the flesh and the incitements of the vices, buffets his body and brings it into subjection, lest, preaching to others, he himself should be found a castaway, and yet sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind and leading him captive into the law of sin; if, after nakedness, fastings, hunger, prison, scourgings, and torments, turning upon himself he cries out: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?—dost thou think thou oughtest to be secure? Beware, I pray, lest at some time God say of thee: The virgin of Israel is fallen; there is none to raise her up. I speak boldly: though God can do all things, he cannot raise up a virgin after her ruin.
He is able indeed to deliver from punishment, but he is not able to crown the corrupted. Let us fear that prophecy, lest it be fulfilled even in us: And the good virgins shall fail. Observe what it says: And the good virgins shall fail—because there are also evil virgins. He who has looked, it says, upon a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Virginity therefore perishes even in the mind. These are the evil virgins, virgins in flesh, not in spirit, foolish virgins, who, having no oil, are shut out from the Bridegroom. But if even those virgins are virgins, yet on account of other faults are not saved by the virginity of their bodies, what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ and turned the temple of the Holy Spirit into a brothel? Straightway they shall hear:
Come down, sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans; thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstone, grind meal, uncover thy veil, bare thy legs, pass over the rivers, and thy shame shall be revealed and thy reproaches shall appear—and this after the marriage-chambers of the Son of God, after the kisses of her Kinsman and Bridegroom, of whom once the prophetic word sang in harmony: The queen stood at thy right hand in gilded raiment, encompassed with variety. She shall be stripped, and her hinder parts shall be set before her own face; she shall sit by the waters of the wilderness, and, her base laid down, shall spread her feet for every passer-by, and shall be polluted even to the crown of her head.
It had been better for a person to have undergone marriage, to have walked over the plains, than, striving toward the heights, to fall into the depth of hell. Let there not be made, I beseech thee, a city harlot of faithful Zion, lest after the lodging of the Trinity there demons dance and sirens nest and hedgehogs. Let not the breast-band be loosened; but as soon as lust has tickled the sense, as soon as the alluring fire of pleasure has flooded us with sweet warmth, let us break out into a cry: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what the flesh may do to me. When the inner man has begun for a little to waver between vices and virtues, say: Why art thou sorrowful, O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me?
Hope in the Lord, for I will yet praise him, the salvation of my countenance and my God. I do not wish thee to let the thought grow; let nothing Babylonian, nothing of confusion grow up in thee. While the enemy is small, kill it; let wickedness be crushed in the seed. Hear the psalmist speaking: O wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who shall repay thee thy recompense; blessed is he who shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock. Because therefore it is impossible that the familiar warmth of the marrow should not rush upon the sense of man, he is praised, he is proclaimed blessed, who, as soon as he begins to think, kills the thoughts and dashes them against the rock; and the rock is Christ.
O how often, when I was established in the desert, in that vast solitude which, scorched by the sun's heat, affords the monks a grim dwelling, did I imagine myself amid the delights of Rome! I sat solitary, because I was filled with bitterness. My deformed limbs bristled in sackcloth, and my squalid skin had taken on the filth of Ethiopian flesh. Daily tears, daily groans; and if ever, as I fought against it, encroaching sleep overwhelmed me, I bruised my bare bones, scarcely clinging together, against the naked ground. Of food and drink I say nothing, since even the sick use cold water, and to have taken anything cooked is luxury. That very man, therefore—I who out of fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, the companion only of scorpions and wild beasts—often found myself amid the choirs of maidens.
My face was pale with fastings, and my mind seethed with desires in a cold body; and before its man, already as good as dead, the fires of lust alone boiled. Therefore, destitute of all help, I lay at the feet of Jesus, watered them with tears, wiped them with my hair, and subdued my rebellious flesh by weeks of abstinence. I am not ashamed of my misery; rather I lament that I am not what I once was. I remember that, crying out, I often joined day to night, nor ceased from beating my breast until, at the Lord's rebuke, tranquillity returned. I dreaded even my own little cell, as though it were privy to my thoughts; and, angry with myself and stern, I went alone into the deserts.
Wherever I discerned the hollows of valleys, the rugged mountains, the sheer crags, there was the place of my prayer, there the workhouse of my most wretched flesh; and, as the Lord himself is my witness, after many tears, after fixing my eyes upon heaven, I sometimes seemed to myself to be present among the hosts of angels, and, glad and rejoicing, I sang: After thee we run to the odor of thy ointments. But if those men endure these things, who, their bodies consumed, are assaulted by thoughts alone, what does the girl suffer who enjoys delights? Surely that word of the apostle: living, she is dead. If therefore there can be any counsel in me, if experience is to be trusted, this first I advise, this I beseech, that the bride of Christ flee wine as poison.
These are the first weapons of demons against youth. Not so does avarice shake us, does pride puff us up, does ambition delight us. Easily do we lack other vices; this enemy is shut up within. Wherever we go, we carry the foe with us. Wine and youth are a twofold kindling of pleasure. Why do we add oil to the flame? Why do we minister the fuel of fires to the burning little body? Paul to Timothy: Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thy frequent infirmities. See for what causes the drinking of wine is granted: hardly does stomach-ache and frequent infirmity deserve this.
And lest perhaps we flatter ourselves on account of illnesses, he charged that only a little should be taken, by the counsel of a physician rather than of an apostle—though the apostle too is a spiritual physician—and lest Timothy, overcome by weakness, should be unable to have the movements needed for preaching the gospel. Otherwise he remembered that he had said both: Wine, wherein is riot; and: It is good for a man not to drink wine and not to eat flesh. Noah drank wine and was made drunk in the world still raw; and then he first planted a vineyard: perhaps he did not know that wine intoxicates. And that thou mayest understand the sacrament of Scripture in all things—for the word of God is a pearl and can be pierced on every side—after the drunkenness followed the baring of the thighs, lust joined to excess.
First the belly, and straightway the rest; for the people ate and drank, and rose up to play. Lot, the friend of God, saved on the mountain and, out of so many thousands of people, found the only righteous one, is made drunk by his daughters; and although they supposed the race of men had failed and did this rather out of desire for offspring than of lust, yet they knew that a righteous man would not do this unless drunk; in short, he did not know what he had done. And—though the will be not in the crime, the error is in the fault—thence are born the Moabites and Ammonites, enemies of Israel, who unto the fourteenth generation and even for ever do not enter the Church of God.
Elijah, when he was fleeing from Jezebel and lay weary under a juniper, is roused by an angel coming to him and it is said to him: 'Arise and eat.' And he looked, and behold, at his head a loaf of spelt bread and a jar of water. Truly God was not able to send him seasoned wine and food of oil and flesh of pounded meat? Elisha invites the sons of the prophets to a meal, and, feeding them with wild herbs, hears the harmonious cry of the diners: Death is in the pot, O man of God. He was not angry with the cooks—for he was not accustomed to a more sumptuous table—but, meal being cast in over it, he sweetened the bitterness by that same power of the Spirit by which Moses had changed the water of Marah.
Moreover, as to those who had come to seize him, blinded alike in eyes and mind, when he had led them, unwitting, into Samaria, with what feasts he commanded them to be refreshed, hear: Set before them bread and water, that they may eat and drink and be sent back to their master. A more opulent table could have been brought over to Daniel from the king's dishes, but Habakkuk carries the harvesters' meal—rustic, I suppose. And therefore he was called 'a man of desires,' because he did not eat the bread of desire nor drink the wine of concupiscence. Innumerable are the things sprinkled through the divine Scriptures which condemn gluttony and commend simple foods;
but since it is not now my purpose to dispute concerning fasts, and to pursue all things belongs to its own title and volume, let these few out of many suffice. Otherwise, from the example thou wilt be able to gather for thyself, how the first man from paradise, obeying his belly rather than God, was cast down into this valley of tears, and how Satan himself tempted the Lord with hunger in the desert, and how the apostle cries out: Meat for the belly and the belly for meat, but God shall destroy both it and them; and of the luxurious: whose God is their belly. For each one worships that which he loves. Wherefore it must be carefully provided that hunger bring back those whom satiety expelled from paradise.
But if thou shouldst wish to answer that thou wast begotten of a noble stock, ever amid delights, ever upon down cushions, and canst not abstain from wine and richer foods, nor live more strictly by these laws, I shall reply: Live then by thine own law, thou who canst not by God's. Not that God, the Creator and Lord of all, delights in the rumbling of our intestines, the emptiness of the belly, and the burning of the lungs, but that otherwise chastity cannot be safe. Job, dear to God and by his own testimony blameless and simple, hear what he supposes concerning the devil: His strength is in his loins and his power is in his navel. By modified names the genitals of man and woman are honorably called. Hence too from the loins of David it is promised that one shall sit upon his throne;
And seventy-five souls entered Egypt, who had come forth from the thigh of Jacob; and after the breadth of his thigh withered when he wrestled with God, it ceased from the work of begetting children. And he who is about to keep the Passover is commanded to do so with his loins girded and mortified; and to Job God says, 'Gird up your loins like a man'; and John is bound with a leather belt; and the apostles are commanded to have their loins girded and to hold in their hands the lamps of the Gospel. But to Jerusalem, who is found sprinkled with blood in the field of error, it is said in Ezekiel, 'Your navel was not cut.' Thus the whole strength of the devil against men lies in the loins, and all his might against women lies in the navel. Do you wish to know that it is as we say? Take the examples.
Samson, stronger than a lion, harder than a rock, who alone and unarmed put to flight a thousand armed men, grew soft in the embraces of Delilah. David, chosen according to the heart of the Lord, who with holy lips had often sung of the Christ who was to come, after walking upon the roof of his house was captured by the nakedness of Bathsheba, and joined murder to adultery. Here too note briefly that no gaze, even in one's own house, is safe. Therefore, repenting, he speaks to God: 'Against you only have I sinned, and done evil before you.' For as a king he feared no other. Solomon, through whom Wisdom herself sang, who discoursed from the cedar of Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows out of the wall, departed from the Lord, because he was a lover of women.
And lest anyone should trust even in the closeness of his own blood, Amnon's brother burned with an unlawful passion for his sister Tamar. It grieves me to tell how many virgins fall each day, how many the mother Church loses from her own bosom, over how many stars the proud Enemy sets his throne, how many rocks the serpent hollows out to dwell in their crevices. You may see many women, widowed before they were wed, cloaking an unhappy conscience only with a false garment; unless the swelling of the womb or the wailing of infants betrays them, they walk about with head erect and skipping feet. Others indeed drink potions to make themselves barren, and commit murder upon a human being not yet conceived.
Some, when they perceive that they have conceived through crime, contrive poisons to procure abortion, and frequently they themselves also die together with the child and are led down to hell guilty of three crimes: as suicides of themselves, adulteresses against Christ, and murderers of a child not yet born. These are they who are wont to say: 'To the pure all things are pure. My conscience is enough for me. God desires a pure heart. Why should I abstain from the foods which God created for use?' And whenever they wish to appear charming and witty and have gorged themselves with wine, joining sacrilege to their drunkenness, they say: 'Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ!' And when they see a woman sad and pale, they call her wretched and a nun and a Manichean; and quite consistently so, for according to such a resolve, fasting is heresy.
These are they who parade notably through the public streets and with stealthy glances of the eyes draw after them a throng of young men, and to whom it is always said through the prophet, 'The face of a harlot has become yours; you have become shameless.' Let there be only a little purple in their dress, and the hair loosely bound so that the locks may fall down; a cheaper slipper, and a veil fluttering about the shoulders; tight sleeves clinging to the arms, and a mincing gait with loosened knees: this is their whole virginity. Let them have their own admirers of this sort, and let them perish more profitably under the name of virgin: gladly do we fail to please such women. It shames me to say—O the wickedness!—it is grievous, but true: whence has the plague of 'beloved sisters' entered into the churches? Whence, without marriage, another name for wives?
Nay rather, whence this new kind of concubines? I will say more: whence these harlots of a single man? They are kept in the same house, in one bedroom, often even in one small bed, and they call us suspicious if we form any judgment. A brother forsakes his virgin sister, a virgin scorns her unmarried brother, and, though they pretend to be of the same resolve, they seek spiritual solace from strangers, that at home they may have carnal intercourse. Men of this kind God rebukes in the Proverbs of Solomon, saying: 'Can a man bind fire in his bosom and his garments not be burned? Or will he walk upon coals of fire and his feet not be scorched?'