On the Governance of God 4 part 6/7

'Have mercy,' He says, 'on your own soul.' This is to say: have mercy, even you, on that soul which you see me moved to compassion for; have mercy at last on that for which I always feel compassion; have mercy at least on your own soul, since you perceive me to have mercy on another's. And after these things, O most wretched man, when God deals thus with you, do you not consent? He asks you to have mercy on yourself, and you will not? He pleads your own cause before you, and cannot obtain it from you? And how, whoever you are, O most wretched one, how will He hereafter hear you pleading in His judgment, when here you yourself have been unwilling to hear Him pleading for you? But no doubt the cause is great, on account of which you cannot hear God.

For there stand about you, as you lie sick, your kinsmen and your relatives; there stand about you wealthy matrons; there stand about you noble men; a multitude clothed in silk and gilded garments besets the bed of your infirmity. O how great a fruit of eternity it is to dispense one's own goods to such beggars! A worthy cause indeed, and just enough, that you should take away from your own soul what you may leave to such needy ones! But no doubt you are broken by mercy and overcome by the loving grief of your lamenting kinsfolk. There is a sure reason.

For you see men of most opulent and most splendid attire weeping for you, with sad countenance and festive dress presenting to you faces composed for mourning, buying your inheritance through their feigned solicitude. Whom would such devotion not move? Whom would such grief not move? Or how, when you see such things as these, would you not forget yourself? For you see wrung-out tears, feigned sighs, pretended anxiety—one that does not wish you to recover, but that awaits when you may die: you see the faces of all fixed upon you as though accusing the slowness of your death. O unhappy and most wretched you, whose final departure so great a number of kinsmen desires!

Except that I know and am sufficiently certain that the wishes of such people prevail nothing at all before God. For I might perhaps wonder that you were living, whom so many wish to die. And on account of these, whoever you are, on account of such people, do you desert your own soul, and say you believe in the judgment of God, when you despise His commands to this end, that you may leave your patrimony to such people? 'He has dispersed,' says the prophet, concerning him who believes God, 'he has dispersed, he has given to the poor: his righteousness endures for ever.' But the Saviour Himself also to all the rich: 'Sell what you possess and give alms.' And elsewhere: 'Sell what you have and give to the poor.' Does He say, 'give to your kinsmen,' does He say, 'to your relatives'? Not at all, but 'to the poor,' but 'to the needy':

Does He say, 'to a rich kinsman,' does He say, 'to any powerful man at all'? Not at all, but 'to the destitute,' but 'to the needy.' For when you shall have given your substance to your wealthy kinsmen, does your righteousness endure for ever? When you shall have increased their riches with your riches, will you have treasure in heaven? 'Woe,' says the prophet, 'to those who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.' God forbids that such men should even be praised by you, and do you not fear to enrich them? He does not wish words of commendation to be given to these, and do you even bestow talents on them? He forbids their life to be honoured with feigned speeches, and by you are their treasures and riches heaped up? XX.

But no doubt you dread the faces of the kinsmen sitting around, and you fear to offend those present and besetting your little couch. 'Do not fear them,' says the Lord through the prophet, 'nor be dismayed at their face, for they are a provoking house.' And therefore let even you be undaunted and steadfast: do not dread their faces nor be broken by their pressing about you. Despise those who covet your inheritance and are already dividing your substance among themselves, who love not you but your patrimony—nay, who curse you out of greed for your goods; for while they impatiently thirst after what is yours, they hate you, and, judging your very presence to be a rival and adversary to themselves, they reckon that your being alive is a bar and obstacle to their greed.

Despise therefore such people and count them as nothing. Let not their blandishments move you: they are poisons to you. Do not regard their flatteries: they are swords, the slayers of your throat, and indeed more foul than swords of iron and of enemies. For those men all can see, these the unwary do not see: the former, because they rage openly, are avoided; the latter, because they lie in ambush secretly, kill, and are the more dangerous for this, and worse with a new kind of doing harm, that with those swords of iron there is absolutely no one who would wish himself to be wounded, but with these many even wish themselves to be slain. A strange and inestimable deadly allurement of evil! With those swords whoever is struck is tormented alike with fear and with pain: with these whoever is slain takes delight.

Flee therefore this evil; flee the flatteries that lie in wait for you; flee the compliances harmful to you; flee the courtings that deceive you: these are the attentions that cut your throat, these are the things that drag you into death. Flee the blandishments of such people; flee their assiduity: these are your executioners and torturers, who in the present indeed court you, but in the future slay you, and, with hands as it were joined together and by a faction as if sworn to one another, strive to force and hurl you into the everlasting fires of Tartarus. And therefore do not fear them, do not be terrified: lift up your spirit and take on the force of holy authority. For if they strive so greatly that you may perish, why should you not strive with greater spirit that you may live? Take courage therefore, and with steadfast mind take thought for yourself.

Faithless enough and foolish enough is he who would rather provide for others that he may be wretched, than for himself that he may be blessed, and who, that he may cause others to abound in temporary delights, delivers himself up to be burned in everlasting fires. I. It does not escape me, my lady the Church, nurse of blessed hope, that these things which we have said in the foregoing little books displease certain of your sons who love Christ too little. But we do not weigh their wishes greatly, because it is no wonder that words spoken about God should not please those whom perhaps God Himself does not please, nor is it to be expected that those who love not salvation itself and their own souls should love the discourse that commends salvation and souls.

And so, as in other matters, so also in this part, the judgments and opinions of the saints alone suffice us: and since they feel the same as we do, we are assuredly certain that God Himself too feels with us, because, since the Spirit of God abides in His saints, without doubt God is there where that part shall have been from which the Spirit of God does not depart. Therefore the opinions of depraved men, that is, either of pagans or of worldlings, are either to be esteemed of little worth or to be made nothing of at all: because 'if I wished,' says the Apostle, 'to please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' That is harder and more troublesome, that certain of your sons, as I judge, under the title of religion dissent from religion, and have abandoned the world rather in dress than in disposition:

whose opinion, if I am not mistaken, holds and asserts this: that to every Christian man whatsoever, kinship at his departure is more to be considered than Christ. And because the opinion was utterly profane and detestable in itself, they attempt, as I think, to veil their most faithless preaching with a certain shadowy addition, saying that all who believe in God ought, only while sound and unharmed, to be dutiful to Christ, but that those already departing from the world ought to be mindful rather of carnal kinship than of the divine duty.

As though indeed Christian men ought to be different when they are sound and different when they are departing from this world, and all ought to show themselves as different men to Christ in health and different in death, different in their earlier life and different in their later. But if this is so, then one man is to have one Christ as a young man and another as an old man, and men must change in faith as often as they change in age. For if towards the worship of God one man is to be vigorous, another feeble, one sound, another sick, then just as the state of the human body shall have been unequal, so also will God Himself be changeable to a man, and as often as there is a contrary state of health in a man, so often also will there be a different religion:

as though indeed those who ought to belong to Christ while sound ought not to belong to Christ when dying. And where is that word: 'He who shall have persevered unto the end, he shall be saved,' or that oracle of the divine word in the sacred proverbs: 'Wisdom is sung at the departure'? By which it is surely shown that, although wisdom is wholesome at every age, yet chiefly all ought to be wise at their departure, because the prudence of a past age will not deserve to be praised at all unless it be closed with a good end; for wisdom is sung at the departure. Why did He not say that it is sung in boyhood, not in youth, not in the state of sound circumstances, not in the prosperities of favourable things? Because, of course, in all these, whatever is praised is uncertain.

For as long as anyone is subject to change, he cannot be praised with security; and therefore, as it says, wisdom is sung at the departure. For anyone departing from the uncertainties of dangers will earn a sure vote of approval, having escaped the variability of all things, because then praise is stable and firm, when the merit of the one praised can no longer perish. Wisdom, it says, is sung at the departure. What, I ask, is the wisdom of a Christian? What but the fear and love of Christ? 'For the beginning of wisdom,' it says, 'is the fear of the Lord'; and elsewhere: 'Perfect love casts out fear.' Therefore, as we see, the beginning of wisdom is in the fear of Christ, its perfection in love.

And so, if the wisdom of a Christian is the fear and love of the Lord, then at last we are truly wise if we always and above all things love God, and this both at every time and especially at our departure, because wisdom is sung at the departure. II. If therefore wisdom is chiefly sung at the departure for this reason, that God may be loved above all things, what madness then is it that anyone should say that Christ ought to be preferred to carnal kinship by the sound, but ought not by the dying? For why should the sound prefer Him, if the dying ought not to prefer Him? Or if anyone can religiously prefer his kinsmen and relatives to Christ in death, why should he not religiously prefer them even before?

Or if there is any hour in one's last life in which one ought to love others more than one's own self or than God, why should he not love them more even in his earlier life too? And thus it comes to pass that all things are dissolved and vanish and perish, and that no one holds anyone cheaper than his own self nor anyone lower than God. For if there is any time in which God can rightly be set after relatives or kinsmen by anyone, there is none in which He can rightly be preferred: but if, which is true, there is no time at all in which He ought not to be set before all, there is no time at all in which He can rightly be set after. None at all, and therefore not even in the last extremities, because the prophet says that even a just man is to perish on the day in which he shall have gone astray.

And so, if every error of one who errs is punished with destruction, and if the life of men is imperilled even by those errors by which human innocence is customarily and commonly defiled, what do we suppose will happen where sin is committed against God Himself by a detestable unbelief? For if, says the Apostle, every disobedience receives a just retribution of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? But no one neglects true salvation more than he who sets anything before God. For since our salvation is the gift and mercy of God, what reason for obtaining salvation is there for him who despises God Himself, in whose mercy our salvation consists?

Or since God is the Judge both of the living and of the dead, what hope will there be for him in God's judgment who has scorned Him by his own judgment even while dying—by whom he is immediately to be judged when dead? And therefore, as divine Scripture says, 'with what judgment he judges, in that he shall be judged concerning it,' that is: with what judgment he judges concerning God, by that same he himself shall be judged by God; nor will he be able to think it unjust if the Lord sets him after all in the future, who in the present himself sets God after all, nor may he complain if God esteems him more damnable than all, since he himself esteems God cheaper than all. III. But someone says that he does not do these things with the intention either of despising God or of counting Him cheap, but with the intention either of loving those whom he has made his heirs, or of honouring them.

Let us grant that it is so: this same excuse is at hand for almost all other most shameful and most criminal defendants as well. For fornicators too may say that they do not fornicate with the intention of despising God, because they are overcome by the heat of the body and by weakness. And murderers can affirm that they do not shed human blood out of contempt for God: for they render such crimes only to hatred or to greed. But what does this excuse profit the wicked, since indeed it makes no difference for what cause anyone says he sins, when every sin is an injury to the Godhead? Let us grant, nevertheless, as I said above, that it is

so, and that it is not out of contempt for God that anyone hands over his goods to another rather than to God, but that he is drawn to this either by honour for his heir or certainly compelled by love. But what do we make of this, that by this very thing his neglect of God and his contempt is the more proved? For if, O whoever you are, by the fact that you leave your own goods to your heirs or to whomsoever, you show that you both honour and love them, then certainly God, to whom you do not leave them, you show that you neither honour nor love. And by this, whatever you shall have said for yourself is against you, and your love and honouring of others pertains to the contempt and to the reproach of God. For since you leave to others for the reason that you honour them, God, to whom you do not leave, you certainly do not honour:

since you leave much to others because you love them, to God you certainly do not leave, precisely because you do not love. For behold, there stand by you, as you die and make your will, a man and God alike. The matter is open and not doubtful: whichever you shall have chosen, him you have preferred. If in the one there is honour alone, of necessity in the other there is found to be contempt. If the man who is preferred rejoices that he is loved by you, of necessity God, who is passed over, grieves that He is not loved. But you suppose, no doubt, that God does not need the munificence of man, and therefore, 'what need is there,' you say, 'that anything be bestowed upon Him by man, who Himself has given all things to all?' Whether the Lord needs our munificence or does not need it, or how He either needs or does not need it, we shall now see.

Meanwhile, since you yourself have not dared to deny that all things are supplied to all by Him, He is on this account without doubt the more worthy of our bounty, because He Himself has bestowed on us beforehand. On this account we more justly attempt to answer Him with services, in proportion as we are the more unequal to His benefits. For nature itself and the common custom of men bind all men by this as it were general law, that from those from whom we receive anything of generosity, we should owe them the more gratitude: for a bounty received constrains us to a return of the gift. For before the use and munificence of another's generosity, anyone is free, not burdened by the interest of benefits: but all are compelled by their very conscience to a repayment of the exchange, after they have begun to be debtors.

So therefore we owe this the more to God, that we have received all things from Him, and we are the less able to answer His benefits in this, that even if we desire to render back what we owe Him, nevertheless we repay out of His own. And by this there is no reason why anyone ought to please himself by his own bounty. Just as not all things are his own which he receives from his Lord, so not all things are his own which he renders. And therefore the penalty of treachery is indeed owed to him who shall have denied to God the things lent to him by that same God, but he who has repaid what he received cannot reckon it as bounty. IV. But God, you say, does not need requital. Nothing less than that He does not need it. For He does not need it according to His power, but He needs it according to His precept:

He does not need according to His majesty, but He needs according to His law, and in Himself indeed He does not need, but in many He needs: He does not seek munificence in Himself but seeks it in His own, and therefore He does not indeed need according to His omnipotence, but needs according to His mercy: He does not need in His deity for His own sake, but He needs in His compassion for our sake. For what does God say to the devout and bountiful stewards? 'Come, blessed ones, possess the kingdom of my Father, which was prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink,' and other things after this manner. And lest this should perhaps seem too little for the cause of which we now speak, He added a diversity of matters, saying to the greedy and unbelieving:

'Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you did not give me to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink.' Where are those who say that the Lord Jesus Christ does not need the service of our gifts? Behold, He mentions that He alike hungers and thirsts and shivers with cold. Let any one of these answer, whether He does not need who complains that He hungers, whether He does not need who testifies that He thirsts? I add something more: that Christ not only is in need along with the rest, but is much more in need than the rest; for in the whole number of the poor there is not one and the same poverty of all.

For there are certain men who, even if garments are lacking, do not lack food; many are in need of lodging but not in need of clothing; many lack a house but not substance; there are, finally, those who, even if many things are lacking, do not lack all things: Christ alone is the only one to whom there is nothing which is not lacking in the whole human race. None of His servants is in exile, none is tormented by cold and nakedness, with whom He does not shiver: He alone hungers with the hungry, He alone thirsts with the thirsty. And therefore, as far as pertains to His compassion, He is in need more than the rest; for every needy man is in need only for himself and in himself, Christ alone is the only one who begs in the entire body of all the poor. And since these things are so, what do you say, O man!

you who say that you are a Christian—when you see Christ in need, do you leave your resources to any who are not in need? Christ is poor, and do you heap up wealth for the rich? Christ hungers, and do you prepare delights for those who abound? Christ complains that even water fails Him, and by you are the cellars of drunkards filled with wine? Christ is worn out by the destitution of all things, and by you are stores gathered for the luxurious? Christ promises you everlasting rewards for the gifts given by you, and do you bestow all things on those who will render nothing? Christ sets before you both immortal goods for good deeds and eternal evils for evil ones, and are you neither swayed by heavenly goods nor moved by perpetual evils?

And do you say you believe in your Lord, whose recompense you do not desire and whose wrath you do not tremble at? V. You do not believe therefore, just as we have already said in the foregoing book; you do not believe, and although you feign religion by your garments, although you assert faith by your girdle, although you counterfeit sanctity by your cloak, you do not believe at all, you do not believe. And this I say as much to men of this sort as to women: they do not believe. Let any woman whatsoever clothe herself in the habit of a holy name and inscribe upon herself the title of sacred religion, yet if she takes thought for others out of her substance more than for herself, assuredly she does not believe.

For there is no believer who would prefer that his wealth benefit others rather than himself; there is no one who is content to purchase blessedness for others by his own misery; there is no one who, in order to procure fleeting delights for others, would desire to undergo everlasting want. And therefore whoever provides from his estate for others rather than for himself does not believe at all that what he has given to God will benefit himself. Let any such man tell me: why did he leave his goods to others? Was it not for this reason, that he did not doubt they would benefit the one to whom he left them? Yes, beyond all doubt.

Therefore, whoever you are, if you leave to another the things you leave because you are certain they will benefit the one to whom you leave them, then surely, if you believed that whatever you bestowed upon religious offerings would benefit you, you would beyond doubt assign it to yourself in particular; for the more you love yourself than those to whom you leave it, the more you would leave to yourself, if you judged, even by the slightest opinion, that these things would profit you. For you do not hate yourself so as to be unwilling to help yourself, but you do not believe that what you leave to the poor will benefit you. Hence it comes about that you provide for others rather than for yourself, because you do not believe that a religious work will benefit you. As you believe, therefore, so shall you receive. You value the Saviour at very little, and the Saviour values you at nothing;

you set Christ after others, and Christ sets you after all men; the Lord is worthless to you even in comparison with lost men, and you shall be reckoned among the last of those doomed to perish. VI. But perhaps you flatter yourself, as I said before, with some regard to a religious profession. You are the more a debtor, because by professing holiness you promise greater things, and therefore you shall bear the more punishment, because you have paid the less on your pledge. You promise grand things in appearance and restore nothing in fact; you are guilty of the crime of forgery, you lie to God in everything. Nor is it without reason that the sacred word testifies that judgment must begin from the temple of God; 'for judgment,' it says, 'from the house of the Lord.' And elsewhere too: 'begin,' it says, 'from my saints.' But let us return to what went before.

'Go,' says God to the greedy and unbelieving, 'go into the eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels.' But perhaps you think to be freed from this evil by certain bodily goods: you boast that you have loved chastity. But remember that those whom the Saviour delivered in the Gospel to immortal punishments, he did not brand with unchastity. Do you recall that sobriety was pleasing to you? Yet those of whom the Scripture speaks are not punished for the crime of drunkenness. You say you have fasted? Yet feasts did not make those men guilty. But no doubt it is a great cause for which you should please yourself with your abstinence and your fasting:

you fasted for this end, you lived sparingly and meagrely for this end—not that after your death you might feed the needy from your resources, but that you might increase the fortune of some heir with your riches. Great indeed are the fruits of abstinence you reap; for you ate less bread that another might have more gold. Frugality diminished your belly, that the treasure of some man, perhaps a wicked one, might grow. When therefore you come to the judgment of God, you will rightly be able to reckon up your fasting, saying: 'I fasted, O Lord, and I abstained, and long did I hold myself back from the fruit of every delight.' And the outcome proves it: for behold, now my heirs abound from my goods, they overflow with stores of immense riches.

And that you may presume something even from the Gospel reading, what the Saviour said of that rich man, you too can say of your heirs: 'they are clothed in purple and fine linen and feast splendidly,' they recline upon the talents I buried away, they press down heaped piles of silver and gold, and I prepared for them the very stuff of all these pleasures, they are stretched out amid the delights I left behind. I long abstained, that they might now be made drunk. My frugality is their debauch. The pavements of their overflowing dining-halls swim with wine, they make mud of noble Falernian, their tables and embossed vessels are perpetually soaked with unmixed wine, they are always wet. They revel among tapestries which I made, they play the wanton amid silks which I left behind.

And when you have said all these things on your own behalf, how shall you not be able to merit eternal reward from Christ, for whom you have prepared such abundance of so many delights among such saints?... VII. O how much better, whoever you are, how much better and more wholesome it would have been for you to have been poor and destitute rather than rich; for poverty could have commended you to God, but riches have made you guilty. More rightly, then, you would have been safe through want, than through your wealth to have burdened both yourself and others—yourself, that is, while you wickedly leave to others, and others, while they too wickedly possess what you left, and by a most inhuman use of it, and after themselves wickedly leave it to still others.

If then you wish, whoever you are, if you wish to be well provided for, if you wish to have eternal life and desire to see good days, leave your substance to the needy saints, leave it to the lame, leave it to the blind, leave it to the sick: let your resources be the nourishment of the wretched, let your wealth be the life of the poor, that their refreshments may be your rewards, that their refection may refresh you. For if they eat of your goods, you shall be filled; if they drink of yours, you shall quench the burning heat of your thirst; their clothing shall clothe you, their warmth shall delight you. Do not therefore think it a trifling or contemptible thing, if you leave your substance to the wretched and the needy: you make Christ your heir in them. And what shall I say of the name of Christ?

You indeed make Christ your heir, but you yourself shall receive the profits of the inheritance. For whatever you leave to Christ, through Christ you shall possess it all. But these things you, I suppose, judge to be trifles, and you despise them as if they were mere dreams and ravings; for you do not believe that Christ has spoken the truth. And the matter proves that you by no means believe him; for one who does not do his commandments even as a last resort either reckons them to be nothing at all or condemns them as false. In this indeed it befits all the saints to mourn and weep, that you and others like you believe no one less than Christ. If any tavern-keeper promised you something, you would not deny your trust to the one promising;

if some huckster or pickle-seller asked a loan of you, you would not distrust that he would repay what you had given: to liars, in short, and sometimes to perjurers, once a bond is made and a surety given, credit is extended. Christ has given you both a most faithful bond and the best of sureties—the bond, namely, in the Gospel, and as sureties his apostles, and if that is too little, the patriarchs, the prophets, his martyrs, and in short the whole series of the divine Scriptures: and do you not believe him, nor extend your trust to him? Whom, I ask, can you find among men so prodigal and so wretched, to whom you would deny credit under so many sureties?