Latin original · 18 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 188:530–188:547 (547 verses in all)
For although virginity is common to you with the purity of many virgins, yet not easily is one found who can be compared to you in the magnificence of your house and the splendour of your most ancient family. That you may not be proud of these things, nor ascribe to yourself even this very thing, that you have preferred Christ to them, He Himself is the true humility, the true charity, the true virginity. For a mind is free from all defilement which loves nothing, whether in itself or in its neighbour, except that which it does not doubt to be from God. For to love anything which is not of the work and Spirit of God is not chaste love; and it suffices the tempter to have violated sublime and illustrious souls by this illusion, so that those whom he has not driven to unlawful things, he may cast down by self-pleasing to exaltation. CHAPTER
XIX. That without charity, which seeks not the things that are its own, nothing profits. — Concerning this charity, without doubt, the Apostle was speaking, and with the subtlest distinctions he refined its property, saying: If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing (1 Cor. 13:1-3).
In the formula of which definitions we should labour much in obscurity, unless what follows demonstrated of what sort this charity was, to which alone so many labours of works, so many merits of virtues, would not perish. For grant that a manifold skill of speaking, which had attained not only to every art of human eloquence, but even to the faculty of angelic speech, if it lacked charity, would be comparable to the useless sound of brass and to the tinkling of cymbals; grant that one having prophecy and knowledge, having faith that commands demons, is nothing, because he is void of charity;
but that even he could be a stranger to it, who has distributed his goods for the sustenance of the poor, or who has delivered his body to be scorched by fire for the confession of Christ, would seem incredible, had not blessed Paul said this. Yet when he described the members of this same charity, and taught what this virtue was, without which no virtues can profit, he said: Charity, he says, is patient, is kind; charity envies not, deals not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeks not the things that are its own (1 Cor. 13:4-5), and so forth. CHAPTER XX. That the vain glory of one's own merit is more harmful than any sin.
— Inflation, therefore, and ambition, and the proud defence of one's own goods, can destroy almsgivings, can make martyrdoms void; if one pours out great wealth for love of human praise, and undergoes cruel torments, not by that fortitude which God bestows, but by that which he has presumed of himself. For this is to trust in one's own confidence, this is to court vain glory by whatever expenditures, this, finally, is to be unwilling to have the things that are God's, and to establish one's own merit there where the divine help has ceased. This pride, more harmful than any sin, is more insane than any kind of giving. For from any lapses of transgression one easily rises again, when the fallen one asks aid from his Restorer.
But for this ruin nothing avails, because either the proud man with difficulty acknowledges his sin, or even if he has understood it, he does not run to the physician, but promises himself a remedy from himself; nor does the cure ever advance there, where the disease is the very medicine. CHAPTER XXI. That the poison of pride is excluded only by humility and charity, which embrace one another. — But this most corrupt state of that pestilence the spirit of true humility and of true charity excludes; for in nothing are these virtues divided from one another, and the connexion of both is so undivided that whoever is built up in one of them is at the same time sought in both. For as humility is a part of charity, so charity is a part of humility.
And if we recall those things which the Apostle defined to be unfruitful without the good of charity, we shall find that these same have a similar quality, if true humility be lacking to them. For what fruit will knowledge have with inflation, or faith with human glory, or bounty with boasting, or martyrdom with self-exaltation? Whence, because both humility and charity tend toward the destruction of pride, let whatever has been argued of the one be held to be said of both. CHAPTER XXII. That nothing good is of ourselves, since not even right prayer itself is. — It now remains, O most sacred virgin of God, that with sober and chaste judgment you examine the recesses of your holy heart, and, the sting of all self-exaltation being blunted,
investigate in yourself and discern what and what sort of gifts your Bridegroom has bestowed on you; which it was not fitting for me to recount, lest I should either weave together too many, or run through too few. For even true praise would be burdensome to your modesty, and I should myself act against my own discourse, if, having persuaded anyone to abstinence from human glory, I should incite you to the same by my extolling. Enter, therefore, the very hall of your mind: and in the secret chamber of your most pure conscience, look about at what sort of ornaments are laid up for you: and whatever you find there splendid, whatever fair and precious, doubt not that it is of the divine work and gift, so that in all the goods of your riches you may acknowledge both the grace of the Giver and the right of proprietorship.
For you have received what you have; and whatever has accrued to you by the diligence of your labour has been increased to you through Him by whom it had been begun. And so you must use those things which God has bestowed: and from Him it must always be sought that you may abide faithfully and knowingly in His gifts. For what good can there be to us without Him, since even that we may pray rightly is of Him, as the Apostle says: For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with unspeakable groanings. And He who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit desires, because He makes intercession for the saints according to God (Rom. 8:26-27). And lest there be any doubt of what spirit he was speaking, he had already said above:
For you have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you have received the spirit of the adoption of sons, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. For the Spirit Himself bears witness to our spirit that we are the sons of God. And if sons, then heirs; heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together (Rom. 8:15-17). CHAPTER XXIII. That every right affection, thought, and word of ours is from God. — The Holy Spirit therefore fills His instrument, and, as the strings of a lyre, the finger of God touches the hearts of the saints.
He who, on that day of Pentecost, that He might flow into the apostles and the believing people, as had been promised by the Lord, appeared in the form of fiery tongues, and made those upon whom He rested to speak in the languages of all nations; so that there might be no doubt that through His inspiration a profitable affection and reasonable speech are ministered to the minds of the faithful; just as the Lord Himself intimated to His disciples and said: But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what you shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of the Father who speaks in you (Matt. 10:19-20).
And lest we should believe that this comes to pass only in a time of great tribulations, and is not granted in peace, let us hear the Apostle declaring that even our very thoughts, unless they have been implanted in us by God, cannot be right. 'Such confidence,' he says, 'we have through Christ toward God; not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God' (2 Cor. 3:4-5). CHAPTER XXIV. Whatever of virtue and charity the saints possess here, they have from God; since also in heaven whatever they are to possess will be from Him; from Him the portion, from whom will come the fullness.
Wherefore, since the minds of the saints have from God their profitable meditation, right petition, and effective action; since from God comes firmness in faith, patience in tribulation, victory in persecution; great is the felicity in true humility, whose love is God, whose wisdom is God, whose counsel is God, whose fortitude is God. Nor is it to be doubted that this subjection is already in great part established in the fellowship of that future blessedness, where God shall be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28); which therefore cannot in this life be obtained in full, since our mortal has not yet put on immortality, nor has corruption passed into incorruption; the flesh still lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh;
nor is there found in any man such concord that the law which is implanted in the members does not resist the law of the mind. On which account there is spoken in the person of all the saints that which the apostle John says: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us' (1 John 1:8). Yet the same John also says: 'He who is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God' (1 John 3:9). Both, therefore, are true: for both no one is without sin, inasmuch as no one is without the law of sin; and he who is born of God does not commit sin, because through the law of the mind, that is, through the charity which is the seed of God, he does not commit sin.
For 'charity covers a multitude of sins' (1 Pet. 4:8); and without it no good profits anything, whereas by it every sin is blotted out. Therefore, while 'the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that ponders many things' (Wisd. 9:15), it is indeed not yet obtained that God should be all in all, since no one is without the sting of temptation and without the uncertainty of mutability: but because 'every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights' (James 1:17), without doubt the portion of all virtues is had from thence, whence the fullness shall be had; and each one is the more blessed, and the more united to God, the more there shall be in him of divine grace than of human action.
Bless the Lord, therefore, at all times, and let His praise be ever in your mouth (Ps. 33:2); but let your soul rest content in nothing save to be praised in the Lord. The proud indeed will oppose, but the meek shall hear these things and rejoice (ibid., 3). The following little work, inscribed to our Leo with these words, 'A Disputation of the most holy Pope Leo against the heretics,' was found — when at our urging the works of the same were being sought in the Ambrosian Library — in a manuscript codex marked with the letter I, number 119; and since it was believed to be unpublished, a copy of it diligently transcribed was sent to us. This same little work, contained in the same library under the same title, is mentioned by Ludovico Muratori in volume II of the Antiquities of the Middle Ages, dissertation
44, page 928, where, however, indicating a codex marked with the letter P and number 154, he seems to point to a different copy — unless perhaps these marks were afterwards altered. He too believed the little work to be unprinted; but whether it be Leo's he left in doubt. The same work, likewise under Leo's name, we found in an ancient Paduan manuscript of the Hermit Fathers of Saints Philip and James, appended to certain works of St. Cyprian, and with the assistance of Father Master Antonio Manenzio we were even able to collate it. There, however, this inscription is read: 'A Breviary of Pope Leo against heretics or schismatics.' Under the same title of Breviary, but without the author's name, Jacobus Sirmondus had formerly found this same treatise together with the works of Leo, in P.