Tractates 1 part 5/14

And indeed, though there be very many resources lying idle in abundance, he denies to men what he cannot deny to the birds, the serpents, the wild beasts. It is sheer madness to begrudge the benefactions of nature. Another from this seizes the supply of all goods, watches for the time of selling, lesser in measure, greater in price: he denies that he has anything to sell, that he may be entreated, that he may cut throats: and would that the goods were sold unspoiled. Moreover he groans if the year is barren, much more if it has been fruitful: there, because he sells little; here, because he is not the only one. Do you wish to know with what darkness he is wrapped? He is angry with God, if he does not always grow rich by public mournings. Well, well: when one seeks gold, he finds a sword. V.

Amid these things no one considers the condition of human frailty, no one the enemy, no one the treasury, no one the robber, no one the household servant—who, from his knowledge of secrets, is worse than all—no one the impending flames of the day of judgment, through which we shall all pass naked. That alone is worshiped of which it is said: The idols of the nations are silver and gold (Psalm 113:4; Psalm 135:15), for which a man is either slaughtered or slaughters. Yet I would wish to know what pleasure so great a madness of it has, what it bestows on its worshiper. It does not quench a fever, it does not dispel diseases, it does not heal wounds, it does not take away pains, it does not repel death—except that it kills the healthy:

nor is it ever certainly eaten, nor drunk, nor will it descend into hell with its plunderer; only it casts down the unhappy eyes and the empty conscience to this dire lust of malign glitter, with the hope of obtaining it, lest a man should seem to have been slain for nothing. VI. But we have made our discourse not to the avaricious but about the avaricious, brethren: otherwise it would have been needful to plead to a conclusion by divine examples alone, if there were any such here. But because in you there abides and glories faith and piety, which is the fit expeller of avarice, you are all worthy not so much to have gold and silver as to be it;

for you are God's living gold, you are Christ's silver, you are the riches of the Holy Spirit; you, if you have despised earthly metals, are far beyond these the treasure of your own life. For you that ethereal city, built of gold, is destined: there is no delay for those who wish to enter; the twelve gates stand open, the dwellings prepared are without number; let no one be anxious about a habitation. It will be a notable mark of our glory, if by the happiness of our number we make the city of God too narrow. Therefore be without care: nothing is ever lacking in it, nothing is taken away from its estate or declines: all good things, and everlasting, abound everywhere.

Surely—and this is the chief thing—no one is in want, no one envies, no one is the object of care, no one snatches, no one proscribes, no one slaughters, no one dies: all are happy, all of one mind, all immortal, all are forever equal: what belongs to one belongs to all, what belongs to all belongs to each. Do you wish to know what blessedness reigns there? No one hides his own garment, no one his own pearls, no one precious stones, no one gold, no one silver, and yet no one fears theft. TRACTATE X. On Avarice II. I. Avarice—how easily it is convicted by all; would that it could as easily not be loved! For it is a crafty and a sweet evil, and ever hostile to all men. In short, on those who have no riches it casts the desire of having them;

from those who have, it takes away satiety. Thus it hurls all into frenzy by one and the same storm, so that you cannot tell where it is greater. It is, moreover, like a fire feeding on dry fuel, which, unless they end, is not ended. The middling sort cultivate it by frauds, the rich by violent excess, judges by favor, the eloquent by a mercenary and double tongue, kings by pride, merchants by cunning, the poor by empty wishing, the worshipers of God by feigned hatred, but whole peoples and entire nations by the sword. Throughout the whole world it riots in madness, seething with new and varied arts: never quiet, not by day, not by night, not in war, not in peace: never sated: the more wretched for the enormity of its gains. It is a new kind of calamity, which only grows, and knows not how to grow old.

Neither does parents' affection break it, nor the sweetness of children, nor conjugal love, nor dear kinship, nor the right of friendship, nor the tender orphan, nor harsh widowhood, nor pitiable poverty, nor the contemplation of God: for behold, to all these, as far as it can, by various arts it either flatters or does harm, if they have anything—only that it may take it away. But whom would it spare, which hastens to die at every moment, even for a frivolous and shameful gain? II. Why then, wretched man, kindled with vain desire for the metal of gold and silver, are you tormented with vain care? Why do you heap up great piles of talents? Why, with sleepless and empty anxiety, do you guard untouched, granting nothing of it even to yourself, things that are to remain here?

Besides, you complain of want, you who do not know what you have. Whatever you do, you will carry none of these things with you to the regions below; for what belongs to nature can be transferred from place to place, but cannot be taken from it. In short, the gold and silver that is dug up deep from the bowels of the earth is again entrusted to the earth to be hidden: for it is a thing of which to have it is a false joy, and to make it public a most certain peril. But there is no need to go through them one by one; since by a single example all its evils are known, the Prophet saying: The idols of the nations are silver and gold (Psalm 113:4). Whence it appears that he who loves gold and silver not only worships gods, but imitates their manners and acts—a thing easy to prove.

Meanwhile let us look at those things that are ours. III. Gold and silver, O Christian, if the truth must be told, you execrate in the idols of the sun, but not in your own inner chambers; for there too, in the countless gold and silver coins, as it were in temples, struck by the rounded mint, you recognize that the faces and emblems of kings are likewise present; and nothing else differs, except that in your house they are small, in the temple larger: which, if you spend them, are money, if you keep them, are images. As Christ's handmaid you reject the false idol: believe me, you worship in yourself the one whose ornament, whose image you do not lay aside.

You go forth to the Church of God, your whole body gilded with varied workmanship, laden with execrable metal, everywhere delicate, mighty beneath your necklaces. In short, by the very stiffness of your adornment you do not bend in prayer, you do not stretch out your hands, you disdain to prostrate a bosom swollen with necklaces. To be sure, you bow your neck—not by religion, but by the weight. When will you make your confession, you who are more anxious for adornment than for salvation? And what do you believe you can obtain from God, you who entreat Him by that very thing through which He is angered? Open at last the eyes of your heart, and you will find that you rather insult Him than ask of Him. Finally, brethren, she cannot fear her husband who does not fear Christ. IV.

It is a game indeed, that spouses, resisting the most holy yoke of marriage, each striving for himself out of excessive love, lie in wait one for the other's inheritance; that parents hate their children and children their parents; that friendship plays upon the face rather than dwelling in the heart; that the whole human race delights in its own ruin and its own calamities, holding the soul cheaper than money. Hence it comes that justice, honesty, piety, faith, and truth perish;

that God Himself suffers insult at every moment, whose precepts are despised, before whom the worship and the love of the world are preferred; for whoever's heart insatiable greed has filled with its pestilent flame willingly admits any expiation, crime, disgrace, or wickedness. V. But these things are not spoken against you, brethren, whose generosity is known in all the provinces, whose pious seeds are scattered, as it were, throughout the limbs of the whole world. By you many have been redeemed, many freed from deadly decrees; many, stripped by harsh conditions, give thanks. Your houses stand open to all strangers; under you no one, living or dead, was ever long seen naked. Already our poor no longer know how to beg for food.

Now widows and the destitute draw up wills. I could say much more in praise of this your blessedness, were you not my own. Yet one thing for joy I cannot keep silent: lending to the poor, you transfer all the riches wrested from avarice into your account without envy. For what can be richer than a man whose debtor God declares Himself to be? who is blessed unto the ages of ages. TREATISE XI. On Avarice III. I. Rightly, brethren, as you have heard, God hates avarice: for it is a bottomless lust, a blind greed, a raging tempest, a rapacity without end, an anxiety without rest, never attaining its own desires, because it knows not how to be satisfied;

it breaks faith, neglects charity, denies justice, recognizes no natural affections, despises divine laws, shuts out human laws by cunning arguments, and would seize the whole world if it could. Do you wish to know what kind of calamity it is? Truly it rages more against the one who has loved it than against the one who has conquered it, who shall possess life eternal. TREATISE XII. On the Spirit and the Body. I. If anyone, in his zeal either to know or to assail the sacred law, by repeated reading should often turn over the book of Moses concerning the nature of nativity, perhaps—as wits are wont, daily glad in the cunning contentions we see—he may raise against us a slanderous question out of the saying of the Apostle, who says:

'The first man is of the slime of the earth, the second man from heaven' (1 Cor. 15:47). Since there is no doubt that only one man was fashioned by God from the slime of the earth, and that from his side a woman, his conjugal solace, was drawn forth (Gen. 2), from whom the whole human race has flowed; whereas the heavenly man (in Genesis) is in that same place neither mentioned, nor can he be shown to have been made or born. To this is added the very preposterous order of the account; for it is a discordant and absurd thing that the second should be immortal and that the one who is mortal should be first, since immortality does not in itself admit the order of time, while mortality does: or, if the heavenly is first, what need was there that the earthly too should be made? That saying of the Gospel may likewise be assailed by a fitting line of argument;

for it is written: 'No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of man, who was in heaven' (John 3:13). How could the Son of man, or of what man, be born in heaven so as to descend from heaven, since both the possession and the nature of humanity are far removed from heaven? Come, rouse your understanding, reader, and you will find the truth. He who was in heaven descended from heaven: he who descended is the very same who ascended into heaven, the Son of man, who was in heaven (Eph. 4:9-10). 'Son of man' by name, not by nature: for the Lord did not twice put on flesh, but it was fitting that He be thus proclaimed, because before He was that which He had willed Himself to become, He made it known beforehand both by figures and by frequent oracles.

Therefore the Son of God pertains to His ineffable origin, the Son of man to the mystery; the secret of which mystery I shall endeavor to open by evident reasoning, as by a kind of key: so that anyone may most easily recognize both the providence of God, and the force of the union of flesh and soul, and where the supreme good of man is placed. II. After God, brethren, with wondrous skill had perfected this world—as it were a house for the future human race—fitted out and adorned in manifold ways with diverse elements, resources, living creatures, foods, and benefits, great and very many, so that no complaint might remain for its inhabitant;

then to His own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26) He made for Himself a sentient and intelligent likeness: for taking up the slime of the earth He shaped man, and breathed into him the soul by which we draw breath, from the proper fountain of His own Spirit; to whom from the soil ('humus') man gave the name 'man' ('homo'): I believe, as the thing itself teaches, that by contemplating his Maker and his material he might ever both reverence and venerate his own Artificer. After this He placed under him all the good things of the world (Gen. 2): and because he was now endowed with wisdom, furnished with senses to choose death or life, and admonished by the instruction of a precept, He committed him to his own free will.

But that envious accuser, who, because he creeps stealthily, received the name of serpent, inflamed with detestable envy, since he could not prevail against him by himself, fawning under a borrowed form, through the woman by persuasion to the transgression of God's precept pitiably slew him: and thereafter the whole human race, undone by this hereditary condition, perished uniformly. Nor was there any place for any consolation: for, as still even now, toil, groaning, impiety, grief, sickness, and misery consumed the living man; while as for the dead, the devouring earth destroyed forever the body and that most flourishing form; and the implacable hell afflicted with perpetual punishment the soul also, relegated to its dreadful darkness in an everlasting prison.

Neither those above nor those below spared the image of God: for death had claimed for itself the whole dominion. III. While these things were long held thus, that most skillful Artificer of all things, the Son of God, whose wisdom has no end nor His strength any measure, out of love for His own image descended from heaven: He illumines the lodging of a virginal womb, and there encloses God within a man. He uses both the form and the condition of mortality. He teaches that justice is the purchaser of immortality: by His deeds He fulfills His precepts. Lastly He took upon Himself death, that, having conquered it, rising again He might both bring to man, through the man whom He bore, the hope of conquering death, and admit him to the rewards of immortality.

Thus it came about that, as through the condemnation of one, condemnation came upon all men, so through the justification of one, justification unto eternal life ran down upon all men (Rom. 5:18). Do you not now see plainly that in the taking up of man there was providence, in the passion the mystery, in the resurrection the supreme good? IV. Here now first of all we ought to know that the fabric of man is composed of two diverse and opposing parts, joined together by a discordant concord, and that the soul is hedged about by the lineaments of the body. Whence two lives also have been assigned to us by God: one, by which, unknowing, we are poured forth by nature under a law common with the beasts—which is bodily and therefore also brief;

but the other is of the soul, which we ourselves procure for ourselves in this life by faith from the living flood of the sacred font, a noble and eternal life: because the soul that has conquered the world by acknowledging and keeping the true religion and true justice must needs, as the reward of its labor, enjoy the immortal blessedness of immortality. Hence it is that within man a hidden war rages at every moment, as each part strives to subjugate the other, the Apostle thus saying: 'The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary to one another' (Gal. 5:17). V.

On the one side the flesh, overflowing entirely with delights, wreathed with the varied gifts of the seasons, promises manifold and abundant riches, displays them, casts them before you, gives them, sets forth its own beauty: and its face, into whatever shapes it pleases—ever uncertain with the mirror's flattery—it daily changes with foreign colors: groomed by the labor of the gullet, gleaming from the bath, smeared with ointments, varied in dress, all bedecked with necklaces, merry with the throng of banquets, soaked with wine, wreathed with gems and flowers, wanton with the festivity of glances and jests, blind with avarice, stirred up with lust, proud upon the feathered sepulcher of the soft and yielding couch: it flaunts itself wantonly through groves, springs, meadows, the baths of Baiae, cities, and countryside:

hedged about with all manner of pleasures, it invites into desire of itself both sexes, all souls, all ages, with this song: 'Short and tedious is the time of our life: and there is no refreshment in the end of a man: and no one has been known to return from the dead: for we were born of nothing, and after this we shall be as if we had not been: and there is no returning of our end, for it is sealed up, and no one comes back' (Wis. 2:1ff.). And further on: 'Come therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use the creature as in youth, swiftly: let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let no flower of the season pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither.'

'Let there be no meadow that our luxury does not pass through. Everywhere let us leave signs of our merriment: for this is our portion, and this our lot' (Wis. 2:6ff.). VI. On the other side the spirit, like some most expert commander, foretells the flight of all these things: that one must stand most readily under arms, watch diligently, fortify the camp on every side, defend the royal standards strongly and tenaciously; that heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and all dangers must be borne with equanimity; that the world must be trodden underfoot by renunciation, and that death itself, upon which everlasting blessedness follows, is rather the reward of victory than death. With a brilliant discourse through John it thus preaches: 'Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world.'

'If anyone loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him: for all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but from the concupiscence of the age: and the world passes away, and its concupiscence. But he who does the will of God abides forever, just as God also abides forever' (1 John 2:15ff.). VII. But the augur says: if it is so, why is it that it is overcome chiefly in its own self? First, because the human race consents more to pleasure than to virtue: then, because it loves delights more than labor. To this is added that it finds the goods of the flesh, and does not seek them out:

and it prefers, by the more powerful inclination, even small present goods to immense but delayed goods. But the goods of the spirit are not only invisible, delayed, and hidden, but also placed at so great a height that they cannot be attained by anyone except with the utmost difficulty, with great labors and perils. Add that the former dwells in the native soil alone, while the latter is a stranger. The former, without any contemplation of merits, indiscriminately heaps its gifts upon any and all, chiefly upon the unworthy, that it may gather crowds to itself: the latter never rewards anyone, unless first as victor he pass beyond the jurisdiction of death.

This is what brings it about that, whether through fear or through unbelief, we set things present before things future, evil before good, frail before solid, false before true, earthly before heavenly, temporal before eternal. VIII. O blind mind of men! Why do you sport, deluded by the fleeting allurement of present carnal things? Why do you compel the better to lie subject to the worse? Since indeed you know it is written: 'All flesh is grass, and its glory as the flower of grass' (Isa. 40:6); if you take care for it, you acknowledge yourself to be a beast. Or do you love its strength? Any pain breaks and overthrows it. Or its beauty? It is a light and changeable thing, and one that may most easily be destroyed by a single fever or any injury whatever.

Behold, the eyes, its stewards or governors, extinguished by some stroke, sink down. Is it not a living corpse? Behold, the wasting lung, eaten away by fatty discharges, with detestable emaciation lays bare all the bones of its bearer. Will not that fleshless, palpable shadow shudder even at itself in a manner? It is long to go through each thing one by one. Behold, some destructive disease lays the whole frame low upon the bed. Behold, the tempest of death presses in on every side. Will not she who was the mistress of pleasures at once become the prey of diseases? Lastly death claims for itself the prostrate remains, and is moreover about to bring upon it the punishments of Gehenna.

Then that carnal mind is ended, and to the bloodless body none of all those ornaments now bring any aid, except that they are snatched away by false mourners from one who is still living. IX. Wherefore, brethren, as true Christians, like guests and strangers, abstain from carnal desires, which war against the soul (1 Pet. 2:11): nor let your affection be broken because you do not know its secret and its form; for if on that account you despise it, because you do not see it, you will likewise be able to despise God too, who is invisible; for whoever does not love His likeness, it follows that he hates the truth. Hence it is that fools prefer the body to the soul, the idol to God.

But we, who have cast off Adam and put on Christ (Eph. 4:22; Gal. 3:27); we who, with God as our teacher, have learned what is the force, what the end, what the reward of the flesh, and what of the soul; we who are not ignorant that by the victory of the flesh both are extinguished, and by the victory of the soul both are preserved—let us follow the better things, at least with the same zeal with which we follow the evil. No excuse befits anyone, especially since our affairs have been committed to our own will, the Prophet saying: 'Before man are good and evil, death and life; what he shall choose, this shall be given him' (Sir. 15:18). Whence there is no doubt that our will gives the victory to whichever party it has joined itself; and that in the resurrection it shall either enjoy a perpetual reward or be punished with a like punishment. TREATISE XIII.

On Circumcision. I. Most carefully, dearest brethren, an account seems due to be rendered of circumcision—of which the most blessed Paul made mention not only in the present reading, but also in several places—so that both the Christian may recognize the truth and the Jew his own error. For he is wont often, with great clamor, to boast that this is the nobility of his race, this the power of the heavenly sacrament, this the lawful mother of eternal life, this the perpetual partner of the future kingdom, without which no one can come at all to the knowledge of God. Whence first of all I think it must be defined what circumcision is, so that then at last what sort of thing it is may rightly be recognized.

Circumcision is, brethren, a scar made circular by iron in the wound of a round injury. If the Jew reckons this a glory—to say nothing of other things—greater is the glory of the man who, in honor of his goddess (a base old crone and a harlot, indeed), offered up in sacrifice with fouler mysteries not a small piece of skin of that same member, but the member itself cut off by the roots; for this reason, namely, that the Jew after his sacrament can sin through this part, whereas the other thereafter can no longer sin through this part. II. It follows that he must declare whether he maintains this to be carnal or spiritual. If spiritual, why does he glory in the flesh?

If carnal, it cannot profit the soul, because flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50). There is the further point that circumcision fights against the Sabbath, which it proclaims must on no account be violated by any work. For it often happens that a son is born to him on the Sabbath, whom, if on the eighth day—that is, when the next Sabbath comes—he does not circumcise according to the law, the soul of the infant is to perish from his people. Here, dearest brethren, let him choose which he will: let him circumcise or defer.

If he circumcises, he corrupts the Sabbath; if he does not circumcise, he has made void, with the destruction of an innocent soul, the appointed laws of circumcision, because the eighth day alone received from God the privilege of circumcision, not the seventh, not the ninth, and on this account it is necessary that either be empty, if one of the two can invalidate the other. III. What of this, that Abel the just was found without this wound (Gen. 4)? What of this, that Enoch is read to have been translated by God whole and entire (Gen. 5)? What of this, that Noah, uncircumcised, while the flood raged, was by divine providence appointed heir and father to the human race (Gen. 6, 7, 8)? What of this, that Melchizedek, that highest priest most acceptable to God, was ignorant of this scar (Gen. 14)?

What of this, that with their foreskin the people of the Ninevites were freed by the indulgence of God (Jonah 3)? All of whom He would certainly have commanded to be circumcised, if He foresaw the circumcision of the flesh to be necessary for the salvation of those whom He loved. Surely He would have done so to Adam himself first. IV. But perhaps someone may say: was Abraham then a sinner, that he should be circumcised; or was he just, and ought not to have been circumcised? Abraham, brethren, was both a just man, and nonetheless was necessarily circumcised. For what does Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto justice' (Rom. 4:3). Did it perhaps say, 'Abraham was circumcised, and it was reckoned to him unto justice'?

Since, then, Abraham, whole and entire like Enoch and the rest, was justified, and afterward circumcised, it is manifest that circumcision was not necessary to Abraham, but was provided for the designation of the Jewish people, who were to be carnal. In short, it conferred nothing on him: because he pleased God before, not after, he was circumcised; and he received the reward not of circumcision, but of the promise merited in his uncircumcision. Whence it is manifest that Abraham bore in himself the type of a twofold people, so that by the mark of circumcision he might express the Jew, and by the justice of his faith the Christian. V. Add that this circumcision so far does not promise salvation as it points out the place and the head of crime.