Although therefore we have nothing certain even concerning our own stability, we who without ceasing are shaken amid the waves of the world, enduring stormy onslaughts—yet if anyone has such great confidence in the immobility of his own firmness, let him at least, being anxious, dread lest he himself be a scandal to others' eyes, and be terrified by the voice of the Lord threatening: 'Woe,' he says, 'to this world because of scandals: nevertheless woe to that man through whom the scandal comes.' If we fear and revere these threatenings of the Lord with a religious heart, let us dread danger to ourselves more on account of others than of ourselves, we who are bound by mutual advantages by the Apostle Paul. 'Each one,' he says, 'not considering the things that are his own, but those of others.' And again:
'Let no man seek what is his own, but what is another's.' But someone, seizing from Paul himself something to object, says: 'Each one of us shall render account to God for himself, and each shall bear his own burden.' He therefore who is unwilling to render account for another, ought not to be an unlawful partaker in that man's affairs or business; and he who strives to stand free or immune with regard to another's burdens, let him hold nothing of another's beneath him on the contrary condition. For necessarily he is subjected to the accounting of another who has handled another's business.
It behooves him to be bound by loss or by the expenditure of the burdens, with whom, under unsafe custody, a brother's goods have perished; for whatever in our house shall have been under less suitable guard, or robbers shall have broken into, is ours, and there is exacted from us whatever through our own inertia has been ill committed to us. Then indeed we are free from one another, if nothing of another's matter is reserved with us. Perhaps someone will say: 'Then ought we not even to come together to the house of prayer, lest anyone scandalize anyone?' Of heretical profession is this calumnious contradiction, which prescribes from good things so as to assert evil, and prejudges concerning sanctity so as subtly to introduce uncleanness, makes calumnies out of the lawful so that it may obtain the unlawful.
On which account the Apostle Paul beforehand prescribes against this heresy, saying: 'Nevertheless neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord.' Far, far be it that women should everywhere be prescribed, or that permission be everywhere granted. They have their own places—about the husband, about the children, about the brothers, about the parents, about the servants, and in the house of prayer only alongside all the clergy. But in a single dwelling, without kinship, they do not fittingly have companions. This is the balance that stands firm. But whatever inclines the balance cannot stand, for the Scripture says: 'Thou shalt not decline to the right hand nor to the left,' and the Lord in the Gospel: 'What is more than this is of evil.' Learn now the measure of temperance, thou who through license seekest excess.
Love women amid the sacred solemnities, and hold them in hatred in private communion, if you wish to hold Solomon's teaching: 'There is a time,' he says, 'for loving and a time for hating.' Then, therefore, are the associations of woman to be condemned, when there is carried on a frequenting of carnal cares in continual unanimity, since amid its cares the flesh ever provokes the incitements of desire, and there begets the fomentations of sinning, where, while handling its own conveniences of temporal life, it shall have felt itself a little relaxed in its thoughts—even as Solomon asserts, saying: 'The earthly thought presses down the mind that thinks on many things.'
But in the assembly of sacred things, where the spirit rules, the handmaid, knowing her own self, loses the exercise of her own pleasure, loses also her luxury while heavenly things are handled, while the holy mysteries are celebrated: the whole of humanity is engaged, where all things are not human but divine; where veneration, or dread and trembling, is struck into all minds, the carnal substance is truly buried. Even amid the very traffickings of the flesh many neglect the pleasure of the body, when soldiers meditate the exercises of their years' service, or the forum resounds with lawsuits, or the auditoriums re-echo with letters, or merchants urgently apply themselves to their commerce, or craftsmen are bent upon the crafts themselves:
how much more where not the carnal work of men, but the spiritual work of angels, is carried on? There the assaults can avail nothing, where even the demons themselves yield, and no distinction of any sex is permitted to be considered, where neither age nor rank, but only equality reigns: and, that I may say it more fully, all there receive such perceptions that even conjugality itself is unknown, where Christ is spoken, heard, attended to, and through all things and in all men He alone is the whole—the Apostle testifying and saying: 'Where there is,' he says, 'neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, male nor female, servant nor free, but all things and in all men Christ.'
To celebrate plainly this assembly with women is a glory, in which there is no discrimination of quality, wherein it is permitted only to make all equal without any difference, so that not even in baptism itself does anyone's nakedness blush, where the infancy of Adam and Eve is renewed, and one does not expose but rather receives a tunic. But if even there be someone worse than the devil, who is smitten by the sight of women, yet our congregation is blamed by no one, which is gathered for the sake of heavenly, not of earthly, things. Let anyone who has been there wicked with lustful gazes see to it for himself; in no way does he harm another, who has come forward not to a man but to Christ for the sake of salvation.
Nay more, I will exclude the contradictors by their own contradictions, so that they may yield not to my but to their own propositions. If amid the sacred festivals the common assembly can be scandalized, where the tempter, the devil himself, trembles, who there promises that he is stable, where the tempter boldly meets him? And if we are endangered there, where God's precepts gather us together, what do we do where God's commands separate us? And if we are troubled there, where by God's will we are fortified, how much more where we have not only the devil but even the Lord against us? For with sacrosanct commands divine protection is ministered to us, even as Isaiah says: 'The law,' he says, 'He gave for a help'; but without the divine commands there can be no safeguard.
It is one thing that God commands to be done, and another to resist His will: whose commandments are so to be kept that, if He shall have commanded anything which according to men seems unjust, it is to be believed just and done; and if He shall have commanded a just thing, it is to be reckoned just and done: since what He commands cannot be without victory—He who is powerful to call injustice justice by justifying it, and to prove perverse justice injustice by reproving it, whose will alone is also true justice. For if the whole of whatever we do we do only for this, that we may please the Lord, surely this alone will be just, whatever God, whom we are eager to please, shall have willed and commanded and approved.
For since servants cannot of themselves know what pleases their masters, unless they follow their masters' commands—and men indeed are but men, and since men themselves cannot ascertain the wills of men like themselves, unless they have received what they are to observe—much more can mortals not comprehend the justice of the immortal God, unless He Himself deign to show the tokens of His acts of justice, even as Solomon approves, saying: 'For what man shall be able to know the counsel of God? or who shall be able to think what God willeth? For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight uncertain. For the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that thinks on many things.'
'With difficulty do we estimate the things that are on earth, and the things that are in our sight we find with labor: but the things that are in the heavens, who shall search out? And who shall know thy mind, unless thou give wisdom and send thy Holy Spirit from on high? And so the paths of those who are on earth are corrected, and men have learned the things that please thee, and by wisdom are they healed.' Those walking in darkness cannot show a light to themselves, unless a light freely offer itself to those who do not see it. Thus human blindness does not direct its way to God, unless He Himself show the lamp of the law. Whence David thus speaks, saying: 'Thy word,' he says, 'is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.' And again:
'The precept of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes.' This, then, is light-bearing—whatever shall have been intimated by God: and this is worthy of God, which God Himself confesses to be acceptable to His own will, that He may exercise dominion through all things. Otherwise neither should we be enrolled as servants, nor should He Himself be held as Lord, if we were permitted to expend our servitude according to our own will, and were to choose the exercises of justice by our own judgment and not by God's. Such men Paul the Apostle renders vain, saying: 'Being ignorant,' he says, 'of the justice of God, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to the justice of God.' Let there now be removed from our midst these ambages so vain and complaints emptily calumnious.
For spiritual acts we do not fear, with God's help, to be united with women, we who believe that through God's command we work justice, from which we know that defenses are supplied to us. But privately, hospitality is to be kept most especially separate from continent clergy and from virgins, because what God judges unjust cannot be just. Yet cohabitation, even though in the cohabitation itself no base habit be known, inflames, because it is impossible for integrity to attain to victories which strives to fight against God's commands. For as much as the law suggests aid to the obedient, so much does it incite—nay rather, sin—to the disobedient, as the Apostle says: 'The virtue,' he says, 'of sin is the law.'
He therefore who commanded us to triumph with women in His sacred rites, He Himself bids us to beware privately of feminine combats. There are indeed other necessities which compel us to see women even privately, but these too command the efficacy of the divine precept or work, that we should visit, that we should furnish consolations, that we should wholesomely impart life-giving exhortations: nor yet in these duties is less care to be exercised for our own morals, that the tokens of purity may shine forth in our operation. Let there not be lacking a severity that under a cleric may be able to restrain the woman, so that she may receive our very consolation with trembling, and so feel the affection of the visitation that she may venerate the cleric.
And lest it be too tedious to range through the several matters, the whole of whatever we do can be honorable, if the signs of honorableness ever shine forth in us, even as Paul the Apostle embraced all things, saying: 'Let all your things be done honorably.' And again: 'As we have charged you,' he says, 'walk honorably.' Not well does anything succeed that is done at random, and that which is done as holy is not holy, unless what is holy be performed in a holy manner, even as Solomon asserts, saying: 'For they who shall have kept just things justly shall be justified.' Sincerely, therefore, is sincerity itself to be preserved, and everything that belongs to our vow is to be signed also in act, lest our vows commend one thing and our acts insinuate another.
On every side the disposition of the will must be tested, and on every side the course of each contest must be brought to completion, lest something be lacking for the triumph if the struggle be not fought out more fully. Hence the apostle Paul introduces proofs drawn from contests: 'But he too who strives in the games,' he says, 'is not crowned unless he strive lawfully.' And again, 'Know you not,' he says, 'that they who run in the stadium all indeed run, but one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain. And everyone who strives in the contest refrains himself from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one.'
It is therefore the fullness of holiness and the perfect palm of victory, that on every side one should keep about oneself nothing that one must refuse, lest by holding fast to what one professes to hate, one seem to love it. But if anyone say, 'I hold my adversary captive, that I may ever mock him,' let him beware lest perchance the captive begin to prevail against him. Never is a robber held shut in securely with a treasure, nor, dwelling within a single cage with a wolf, is a lamb safe. He willed himself to be pierced who led his own enemy within his gates; and he set an inward sword beneath himself who unbarred the place of his dwelling to the incursions of the adversary; and he who is bold to keep company with a stumbling-block says without cause, 'I wish to be at peace with the devil,' against the apostle who says:
'Give no place to the devil.' By every means, therefore, must that place be fortified where the treasure has been hidden, lest through a single cavern the robber undermine the whole wall. For if, assailing from without, he is scarcely driven off from the walls, how much shall he prevail if within the walls he take up a dwelling? And if those who shut him out are sometimes taken by him, how much more he who of his own accord opened him an entrance—since Solomon says: 'If the just man is scarcely saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?' All chinks, therefore—I will not say gates—must be closed, lest through one opening the whole camp be penetrated; and all the fortifications must be set in order, lest through a small unfortified spot the whole city fall, as Solomon repeats, saying:
'He that despises small things shall fall little by little.' But I am amazed at the judgment of this perversity, that by clerics a woman rather than a man is chosen for companionship. Is a woman as much the more useful to a cleric's needs, as a continent man or boy is profitable to a continent man? Or will that be a seemly usefulness which an unseemly companionship produces? And where will be that which Solomon says: 'Every living thing loves its like'? And again: 'The birds resort to their like.' But even were a woman deemed more useful, one ought not to prefer carnal advantages to the benefits of spiritual profit; and it was more expedient to endure any useless man for the safeguarding of one's reputation, than to have the good services of a woman together with a most shameful reputation.
This Solomon compares, saying: 'Better,' he says, 'is the iniquity of a man than a woman doing good.' Artful, therefore, are ever the benefits of the devil, whereby, exercising the ingenuity of his craftiness, he aids with deceitful conveniences those devoted to holiness, in order that he may destroy them; and among the continent, supplying, as though they were necessary advantages, mutual helps, he first drives a man and a woman alike to dwell together, so that, after he has made them inseparable, he may through their mutual comforts slay them—men who gave their simple souls to the keeping of chastity's vows—and, withdrawing for a while the weapons of his assault, like a peaceable well-wisher he suggests arguments of holiness, until for a longer season he may nourish between the two a hostile friendship.
He makes them affable to one another and eager to serve each other; and, a hostile flatterer, removing every hindrance, he delights to lend his effectiveness to their conveniences, so that, commending them to one another by every kind of dependence, he may make them hang upon each other by their accustomed consolation. He wishes to hinder them in nothing, lest he separate them either spiritually or carnally. He makes them live unshaken, lest the very beginnings of their fellowship—the compacts begun at an untimely season—be disturbed. To such a degree, providing all things, does he invite, foster, and support them toward the perfection of holiness, that they reckon to be God's gifts those very adverse things by which they are led on to perish, not knowing that God never aids what He forbids.
To such an extent, coaxing them, does the devil prepare a false security of holiness, that being joined they deem themselves rather to persist unmoved as regards lust than were they parted; and leading them on with all tranquillity, he troubles them with no storms or billows, and, as it were in mid-sea, he induces them, grown less cautious, to loosen their sails and not to seek the helm, that he may sink them—stirred up by a sudden tempest and made shipwrecks by an unlooked-for commotion. This gentleness he shows at first, that he may allure two ships to come together; and when he has made them joined, he may with sudden whirlwinds dash them against each other and break them:
And these blandishments he uses: with all his darts withdrawn, restraining adversities, suggesting prosperous things; and for so long he keeps the slumbering fire hidden without any flames, until, joining the two torches, he kindles both at once; and for so long he forbears to apply the weapons of his savagery, until, like a skilled hunter, he binds fast with the fetters of his snare what he is about to slay. But when he has bound them, fettered with an indissoluble chain, then, like a gladiator-trainer, he straightway compels the two gladiators to arm against each other, and, goading their limbs again and again, at once fits the swords, at once kindles frenzy, and, thrusting them into wound-dealing embraces, slays both together at a single stroke.
Thus he unfolds what before he seemed to bestow; thus out of simple charity he forges an unlawful love; thus through holiness he brings in destruction; while he is content to yield, so is he able the more strongly to seize; and while, submissive, he suffers himself to be shown as conquered, so he glories the more fully in conquering. His wiles the apostle Paul thus understands, saying: 'For we are not ignorant of his devices.' Ill, therefore, are they at peace in this partnership who are led into wars by the devil's peacemaking, and they advance not rightly in holiness, for whom the very advance is contrived to their harm by the enemy's craft; nor do they strive to climb the ladder of continence by a straight course—men whom the adversary labors to draw out to the summit, that from on high he may cast them down.
But needs must they be dashed down in ruinous falls who have kept to a slippery way, concerning which Solomon thus proclaims, saying: 'There is a way that seems to men to be right; but its end comes into the depth of hell.' But they say:
'If clerics are censured for this association, then along with us must also be censured very many of the saints—whether Elijah, who lodged with a widow, or the apostles, who led women about with them as companions, like John, who took the Lord's mother to himself at the Lord's own bidding; or the Lord Himself, to whom certain devout women furnished sustenance from their own means, whom Martha too served at table, and who spoke alone, sitting at the well, with the foreign Samaritan woman, or upon whom, as He reclined, a woman washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.'
Crafty pleaders and deceitful experts in law, who, while they long to transgress, pervert the disputes and pleadings of cases, and even the laws themselves; and, when they will not be curbed by the fitting injunctions of the laws, in order to mock the judges they cast up unsuitable examples as though they were like surmises of law. Such men are exposed by the very shrewdness of the law through Solomon: 'A sinful man,' he says, 'shuns reproof, and finds a comparison to suit his own will.' Such men, therefore, are to be refuted not first by discourse but first by reproof, that they be not instructed by expounded discourses before they have lost that which they had found for the solace of their defense—even as Solomon teaches us against men of this kind, saying:
'Answer not,' he says, 'a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him; but answer a fool against his folly, lest he seem to himself to be wise.' Great men indeed, who compare themselves to the saints, and surpassing is our manner of life, which may seem equal to the prophets or apostles! For an occasion of our own wantonness we are perversely unwilling to imitate the saints, and among our other deeds we are unwilling to follow the footsteps of the just. In some matters we excuse ourselves as too weak to imitate the deeds of our elders, and in others we declare ourselves equal to our elders—although Elijah himself, set in distress, confesses himself before God unequal to his fathers: 'Am I,' he says, 'better than my fathers?'
This Elijah in his weakness is constrained to cry out concerning his forefathers—and do we not hesitate to equal our own virtue to Elijah, or to the prophets and apostles and the Lord? I plainly behold covetousness so trodden down among us, even as the apostles left behind all their possessions. I behold gluttony and drunkenness so absent from our banquets, even as the apostles, having nothing, were often forced to hunger. I recognize that fasting, thirst, hunger, nakedness, for the sake of the ministry of doctrine alone, so prevail everywhere in us, even as we read that they triumphed in the apostles. And it is proved among us that the same exercises of virtues glow, at which all vices trembled in the apostles.
Plainly we practice the Lord's forty-day fast, and the prayers and vigils with which He, through the wildernesses, broke even the silences of the night. Do we frequent like contests against the wrestlings of the vices, and do we so bear ourselves in strictness, authority, vigils, sufferings, toil, hardship, affliction, abstinence—by which sins are trodden down—that no one may suspect any evil of us? By these things the apostle Paul glories that his conscience became known to all.
'In all things,' he says, 'commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in distresses, in necessities, in straits, in stripes, in imprisonments, in prisons, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the armor of justice on the right hand and on the left.' For these imitations we are too weak; but for leading women about we claim for ourselves the ability of matching the imitation.
But even if anyone should have boasted that he fulfilled all their deeds, still no one's persuasion could sway me to believe that there are now other apostles, against the apostle Paul's declaration: 'Are all,' he says, 'apostles? Are all prophets?' If Christ dared to compare Himself with God—He who says, 'The Father is greater than I'—or if the apostles dared to make themselves equal to Christ, then let a like fortitude also make us today equal to the apostles! O wretched humanity, in this equality do you not fear to be struck with lightning—you who do not scruple to borrow, from the Son of God or from the sons of thunder, examples for your sins as though they were alike?
Since it is the swollen boasting of pride to wish oneself enrolled as comparable even to the least of the Church—whereas Paul admonishes and says: 'each esteeming the other as better than himself.' And lower down he added, saying: 'Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though He was established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.' Assuredly one must think more humbly of our own powers, nor is our weakness to be compared with the fortitude of the saints, even as the apostle Paul sets before us instruction concerning himself, and says:
'For we dare not,' he says, 'match or compare ourselves with certain who commend themselves; but we, measuring ourselves by ourselves, commending ourselves to ourselves, glory not beyond measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God has measured to us.' But indeed let us consider what he again said: 'I have labored more than all of them.' Nothing better, nothing more fitting is set before me whereby I may prevail, than that, concerning the very man from whom I am confronted, I myself should confront them. Certainly he labored more than all, and yet he trembled to imitate his colleagues in leading women about, lest he expose himself to the uncertainty of carnal temptation. Whence he himself thus rendered his reason, saying:
'I,' he says, 'so run, not as at an uncertainty; so I fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate.' To this man, then, compare yourself, you who boast that you are an apostle, and from him learn what you should fear—he who cries out and says: 'I beseech you, be imitators of me.' He was unwilling, therefore, to have confidence in leading women about—he who was not ignorant how greatly some virtues differ from other virtues, and one brightness is of the sun, another of the moon, and yet another of the stars—having made the comparison from the ecclesiastical charisms, he had made it plain.
But we, on the contrary, flatter ourselves with an apostolic equality, not at all attending to what the apostles and all the saints achieved by unconquered virtue; and we seek to break through a difficult road, when by easy ways a more level one is set before us—against Solomon who says: 'Trust not yourself to a toilsome way, lest you set a stumbling-block for your soul.' Nor does anyone consider that one man walks securely on slippery ground, while another, who is unequal to it, slips; one at a run climbs the mountains over the crags, while another, if he venture into the narrows, falls; to one it befalls to bring his vessels safely through the tempests, while to another such good fortune cannot come—which the apostle Paul decrees, saying:
'Every one,' he says, 'has his proper gift from God, one indeed thus, and another thus.' But those who prejudge me by the example of the saints—why are they unwilling to contemplate another example, which they should fear? And he who strives to be made equal to the apostles—why does he not rather set before himself, for his own dread, the adulterous elders in Daniel? These things, however, I do not put forward in order to contradict, as it were, the imitators of the apostles, but in order to confound those who set themselves on a level with the saints.
Nor do I deny that those are to be followed whom we all have received as teachers; but I contend against those who, desiring to distort the histories of the good to their own evil ends, reckon the law to favor them—like all who hasten to perish, who wish their disgraces to lie concealed under the pretext of the saints, so that under the imitation of their elders they may commit all manner of contrary deeds. These men the apostle Paul exposes and publishes, saying: 'But what I do, that I will also do, that I may cut off the occasion of those who desire an occasion, that wherein they glory they may be found even as we are. For such false apostles are deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.'