BOOK ONE. Good discourse is necessary to discipline for all, full of prudence, and a mind intent on reason runs ahead by virtues and curbs the passions; for virtue is teachable. Indeed it is sought by zeal and learning, and lost by neglect. Otherwise, were not good discourse necessary for correction, the law would never say: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But because bare discourse, useful for admonishing, is weak for persuading, therefore the consideration of right reason must be applied, that what good discourse has prescribed, reason, more fully handled, may persuade. For we are constrained to obedience by no servile necessity, but by the arbiter of the will, whether we incline toward virtue or are bent toward fault.
And therefore either free affection draws us to error, or the will, following reason, calls reason back. But the gravest passion of fault is concupiscence, which reason softens and represses. For it can soften it, but cannot eradicate it, since the mind, which is capable of reason, is not the master of its own passions, but their repressor. For it cannot come to pass that one prone to anger should not be angry, but that he should temper himself by reason, restrain his indignation, and call himself back from punishing, as the prophet too teaches us, saying: 'Be angry, and sin not.' He conceded what belongs to nature, he denied what belongs to fault. And so every... takes its origin from other things, not from itself, and therefore is secondary. For it is received either from natural things or from useful ones.
And so it either tempers natural things or is an asserter of usefulness. In short, it does not cut out concupiscence from the mind, but brings it about that we do not serve concupiscence. For who is so great that he could take away the bodily impulse, save He alone who was able to say of the unfruitful fig tree — that is, the malice of the Jews: 'Behold, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none: cut it down, then.' To whom the servant answered: 'Let it alone this year also, until I dig about it and put a basket of dung.' And if indeed it bears fruit, well; but if not, in time to come cut it down.' Rightly did he refer the matter to the Lord, because he could not claim for himself the power of cutting out the bodily fall, but reserved it for the Lord.
In short, what man shall we take up as better and stronger than holy David, who could not take away from himself the desire by which he had longed for water from the cistern of Bethlehem, cut off by the hostile army, but could mitigate it? For since we do not find that water was lacking to others — that is, to so great a number of an army — when surely much less could water from other springs be lacking to the king, suffering a kind of irrational concupiscence, he desired that water which was walled about by the encircling of the enemy, whence it could not easily be brought without the greatest danger. And so he says: 'Who will give me a drink from the cistern that is in Bethlehem by the gate?'
And when three men had been found who broke through the enemy's camp and brought the water which he had desired with the utmost longing, perceiving that the same water had cost him at another's peril, he poured it out to the Lord, lest he should seem to drink the blood of those who had brought it. This thing is an indication that concupiscence indeed runs ahead of reason, but reason resists desire. David therefore suffered what is human, in that he irrationally desired; but this is praiseworthy, that he defrauded the irrational concupiscence by a rationally prepared remedy.
While I praise those men who blushed at their king's desire and chose rather to put an end to it even at the risk of their own safety, I praise still more the one who, in his own desire, blushed at another's peril and weighed water bought at the price of a doubtful lot against blood. At the same time, as a victor checking his craving, as it were, he poured out the water to the Lord, to show that he quenched his own longing by the consolation of the word. A sober mind, therefore, is able to rein in and repress the impulses of even the gravest passions, to cool all the heat of the most burning desire, to divert its motions elsewhere, and by the exercise of right reason to spit out the passions.
For when God established man and planted in him character and senses, he then imposed upon man's motions the royal command of the mind, so that all of man's senses and motions might be ruled by its vigor and power. To the grace of the creature he added this, that he should form the mind itself by divine precepts and instruct it in the disciplines of wisdom, by which it might know both what to avoid and what to choose. The mind, therefore, holding fast by right reason the discipline of wisdom, that it may know things divine and human, is trained in the law, through which it learns which passions it ought to subject to itself. Now the leaders of the passions are, as it were, the natural ones, pleasure and pain, which the rest follow.
For these embrace them all, and each of the two is a passion not only of the body but also according to the soul. And since we have said that under these lie other passions: before pleasure comes desire, after pleasure comes rejoicing; while before pain comes fear, and after pain comes sadness; and agitation of the mind is a passion common to both pleasure and pain. I shall pass over the others—namely pride, avarice, ambition, contention, envy, which are passions according to the soul; I shall pass over also the insatiable lust of devouring and the excess of luxury and wantonness, which are vices bound up with the body and operate according to it.
And rightly does temperance most of all quench the ardor of these passions, for it first tempers the soul by sobriety and moderation and forms the mind, then also by abstinence from delicacies it draws tight the reins of bodily fierceness. Therefore the law cut back the license of foods and the abundance of feasts, not only to prune away luxury, but also so that, by contemplation of the restraining precept, it might open the way to the exercise of reason, which would cut back the incitements of gluttony and the other desires and restrain the bodily passions and their motions. Temperance, then, is the forerunner of correction, the mistress of discipline.
Setting out from this, holy Jacob received from his brother the birthright which he did not possess, and being preferred by his consent, he taught for the future that the intemperate are by their own judgment of little worth to themselves. Setting out from this, Joseph both subdued the heat of youth and, when tempted by adulterous allurements, strengthened his mind by the persuasion of right reason. In short, though he was brave and strong, he chose rather to support himself by the exercise of reason, saying to his master's wife: «If my master knows nothing because of me in his house, and has given into my hands all things whatsoever he has, and nothing has been kept back from me except you, because you are his wife—how then shall I do this evil thing and sin before God?»
This, then, is the exercise of right reason, which the Greeks call logismos, by which the mind, intent upon wisdom, is made firm. For the reasoning is beautiful, that he ought neither to be ungrateful for his master's kindnesses, nor could the sin be hidden which he would commit with God as witness, from whom he could not hide. Good reason, therefore, which both strips away for the most part a hostile disposition and sets aside the pain of injury. In short, even on the battle-line it often calms the victor and slows the sword of one about to strike and snatches a suppliant from death, because just reason persuades one to spare the subdued. For about excluding or softening the pain of injury, what better teacher than the patriarch Jacob, who, rebuking his own sons Simeon and Levi, said:
«You have made me hateful, so that I seem cruel.» And indeed they had avenged the wrong done to their sister, who, contrary to the customs of her fathers, had been outraged by the violation of her chastity. Yet Jacob, the teacher of discipline, the guardian of chastity, could not approve the rape that had been committed, but chose rather that the insolent be restrained by reason, knowing that reason could temper indignation. Temperance, then, is what prunes away desires. This God commanded the first human beings to hold fast, saying: «But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, you shall not eat nor touch it, lest you die.» And because it was not held fast, therefore the transgressors of that excellent virtue were made exiles from paradise and deprived of immortality. This the law teaches and pours into the affections of all.
That it is to be taught—both as wisdom and as discipline—Scripture bears witness: concerning temperance in the law, concerning the rest in the book of Job, in which it is written: «Is it not the Lord who teaches understanding and discipline?» And in the Gospel the Lord himself says: «Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.» And elsewhere he says to his disciples: «Go, teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.» But whence are they called disciples, or what else did they learn from Christ but to practice the precepts of the virtues? Finally David says: «Come, children, hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.» Surely the fear of God is among the number of the virtues, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, through which is acquired the form of godly teaching, of which Paul says:
«But thanks be to God, that, though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which you were delivered; and being set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.» Teaching, therefore, brings it about that we are able to attain to righteousness. Righteousness can therefore be acquired by learning. Let us, then, apply ourselves with zeal to the form of the Gospel's teaching. The least bit of zeal is often reckoned for the greatest. For everything lies in zeal, through which obedience is brought to bear, which will incline toward whichever side—either fault, or grace which it joins to itself. This drew us in the first Adam to death; this in the second Adam called us to life. There is no reason for us to ascribe our wretchedness to anyone but our own will.
No one is bound to guilt unless by his own will he turns aside. There is no crime in things that are inflicted upon the unwilling; only the deeds done willingly does the odium of offenses follow—which we transfer onto others. Christ chooses for himself a willing soldier; the devil buys at auction for himself a willing slave. He possesses no one bound by the yoke of servitude unless that one has first sold himself to him for the price of sins. Why do we accuse the flesh as though it were weak? Our members are weapons of unrighteousness and weapons of righteousness. You saw a poor man receiving injury; you protected him: your members are weapons of piety, by which you vindicated the poor man from wrong. You saw a needy man; you gave to him gifts: with your right hand you repelled death from your breast.
You saw one being led to death; you snatched him away, for it is written: «Snatch away him who is led to death»: your members are weapons of righteousness, if you did not allow a man to perish unjustly. You saw a woman; you chastised your body, you put to death your lusts, and turning away from the bold eyes of the harlot you forsook her: your members are weapons of chastity. But on the contrary, if your eye looked upon a woman to desire her, you opened a wound, you drove a spear into your own body: your members are weapons of sin. You saw the property of orphans, and you drove them from their fathers' homes, you removed the boundary-stones which your fathers had set: your members are weapons of iniquity.
The disposition, therefore, not the flesh, is the author of guilt; the flesh, however, is the minister of the will. Let not our will, then, sell us. The apostle cries out: «Do you not know that to whomever you present yourselves as slaves to obey, you are the slaves of him whom you obey—whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?» Therefore, if we serve either sin or righteousness, let us consider in which case the servitude is more bearable and the fruit more abundant. But what fruit can there be in death? For the wages of sin is death, and therefore there is no fruit in it, but loss of honor, since we blush at what we have done. But to serve righteousness is liberty; for he who has been called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who has been called as free is Christ's slave.
Both conditions are best—to be under Christ, under whom is both precious servitude and glorious liberty: precious servitude, as having been purchased at the price of so great a blood; glorious liberty, which no servitude of fault, no chains of sins constrain, which no burdens of disgraceful deeds, no traffickings in crimes consign to the bond of base servitude. Learn humility, O man; recognize the force of the apostolic teaching. If you call yourself a slave, you are a freedman; if you boast yourself free, you are a slave. For both he who has been redeemed as a slave has liberty, and as for him who has been called as free, it is good for him to recognize that he is Christ's slave, under whom servitude is safe and liberty secure.
Who asserts that Paul was, as it were, an amateur even in matters of law? He knew how to distinguish between a freedman and a freeborn man, and therefore he spoke not carelessly but precisely: «For he who has been called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who has been called as free is Christ's slave.» For in truth we are all Christ's freedmen, no one freeborn; for all were begotten in servitude. Why do you, of servile inheritance, take to yourself the arrogance of freedom? Why do you usurp the titles of nobility? Do you not know that the guilt of Adam and Eve enslaved you to servitude? Do you not know that Christ redeemed you, did not merely buy you? «You were not redeemed with gold and silver from your vain manner of life handed down by your fathers, but with the precious blood of the Lamb,» cries out the apostle Peter.
Therefore you have been redeemed by the Lord and you are a slave, because you were created; you are a slave because you were redeemed, and you owe servitude both as to a master and as to a redeemer. And do not think that freedman-status under Christ is anything inferior to liberty. In dignity it is equal, in protection it is more excellent, in grace it is on a par, against the fall it is more guarded, against pride it is more sheltered. You have so received liberty that you ought to remember the one who set you free, that you may know that lawful homage is to be rendered to your patron, lest your liberty be revoked because of ingratitude. What is more blessed than you, who reign under a master and serve as a soldier under a patron? But what is there that the Lord has not bestowed upon you? He gave the law, he added grace.
For the law denounced sin, but in our slippery condition it could not utterly restrain it. «For I came to know sin, which I did not know; I came to know that covetousness is sin; and by this occasion of the knowledge of sin, the debts were heaped up, because sin, which before through my ignorance seemed dead, revived in me; but I died under the wound of sin,» because the knowledge of fault, which seemed likely to profit me, this harmed me—that I should know what I could not avoid. For it betrayed sin, and through the good of its own denunciation it heaped up the odium of sin itself. And so sin became to me beyond measure, because it was heaped up by the denunciation of the commandment; for guilt grows when it is exposed and not guarded against.
How then is the commandment good, which is death to me? Or how is it not death to me, that sin, to be made manifest through the good of its own signifying, wrought death in me? For it is certain that death came to me, while I recognize as sin that which I do, just as the Lord himself says: «If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.» Why then do you marvel if the law is death to some, since even the saving coming of the Lord, through whom we have been redeemed, is death to some? For the unbeliever seeks death for himself out of grace, while the grace of the commandment remains. For just as the knowledge of poisoned cups is perfected for the discipline of medicine, so the divine commandment is perfected unto eternal life.
But just as, to one who misuses harmful potions, the knowledge of them turns to evil and peril, and the more he comes to know poisons, the more he understands himself to be in danger, so the form of the commandment is the author of death to those who interpret the law wrongly, or who, though the sins are pointed out and forbidden, cannot avoid them. Just as, therefore, a good antidote is not good to one who is imprudent or intemperate, so a good commandment is not good to the intemperate. Therefore the commandment is good, which to someone is death. Take, then, your answer to the first proposition, that the commandment which is death to me can be good: good by the nature of the saving precept, death through the intemperance of the flesh.
And since we have learned that the commandment which is death to me is good, let us now examine how that which through the good has worked death for me is not death to me. For the apostle proposed it thus: «Did then that which is good become death to me? Far from it; but sin, that it might appear as sin, through the good wrought death in me.» And so let us look at the particulars. The commandment is indeed of the law, but the law is spiritual, whose grace I see, whose beauty I praise. I proclaim its form, I admire the precept: but because I am carnal and have been sold under sin, I am dragged unwilling to fault. For guilt lords it over me as over a slave. And so I hate the crime and yet do it. The mind hates, the flesh lusts:
Yet I am in both: I who consent to the law with my mind, and with my flesh do that which I do not will. Good, therefore, is the commandment to which I consent, and good is the mind which chooses that which is good. Good for judging, but for the most part weak for resisting, because the body's appetite fights against it and drags it captive to the allurements of error. In which peril there is one remedy: that the grace of God should free him whom the law could not free. For so it is written: «O wretched man that I am, who shall free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.» And so it comes about that, although the sin which lay hidden—that is, my covetousness, which I did not think to be sin—has wrought death for me,
while it is exposed, and the sin itself has been made beyond measure—for it was sin even though it was not known, but by knowledge it was heaped up and took on, as it were, an increase of error, and the form of the commandment passed over into the nature of an offense—yet it is not death to me, for whom it is ready to flee to Christ, through whom we are released from all peril of death. The second proposition, therefore, is also resolved: that the commandment of the law is not death to me, even if it works death. For our being troubled belongs to frailty, but our escaping belongs to Christ.
Therefore, to return to the beginning of this discourse: good is the mind which has the exercise of reason and is intent upon the disciplines of wisdom, but it has a grievous struggle with the body of death, and for the most part the allurement of the flesh overcomes the reason of the mind. Therefore the Lord first gave the law, to which the mind of man gave itself for obeying and began to serve it, that it might be made subject; but the flesh was not subject, because the wisdom of the flesh is not subject to the law and was fighting against its precepts. For it could not obey virtue, being given over to desires and entangled in carnal enticements. Therefore we must labor to hold fast the grace of God. The mind, then, is good if it is intent upon reason, but little perfected unless it has the governance of Christ.
For the Lord Jesus came, who would fasten our passions to his cross and forgive our sins. In his death we have been justified, that the whole world might be cleansed by his blood; in short, in his death we have been baptized. If, therefore, in his death our sins are remitted to us, let the passions of our sins also die in his death, let them be held fast, fastened by the nails of his cross. If in his death we have died, why are we recalled again, as though living, to the things that are worldly? What have we to do with the elements of the world, what with desires, what with luxury and wantonness, to which we have died in Christ? But if we have died in Christ, in Christ we have risen again;
let us therefore dwell with Christ, let us seek with Christ the things that are above, not the things that are corruptible and earthly. Christ, rising from the dead, left the old man fastened to the cross and raised up the new. Christ died for this reason, that we too might die to sin and rise again to God. Our flesh is dead; why does it live again to sin, why does it again obey sin? Why does sin again reign in the dead, since death is the end of sin? We are dead in the flesh; we have been renewed in the spirit. Let us walk in the spirit, because we have received the Spirit of Christ. But if Christ is in us, then let our flesh be dead because of sin, but let the spirit live because of justification.
Thus that which was impossible to the law is resolved, if we walk in the spirit: thus we bury the passions, if we do not loosen the cross of this body, if we do not rewrite the handwriting of sin which was blotted out on the cross of Christ, if we do not put on again the garment of the old man which we have stripped off. For it is written in the Song of Songs: «I have put off my tunic; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?» The members of the body, therefore, have been put to death for us; why do its vices sprout up again? For this reason the law did not prevail, because it did not mortify the flesh; for this reason it passed by like a shadow, because it gave no color; for this reason it even overshadowed us from the Sun of righteousness, because it heaped up crimes: therefore it even did harm.
Why then was it necessary that the law be promulgated, if it was not going to profit? We already had the law of nature; each one was a law to himself, who had the work of the law written in his heart. That we did not keep: why was another also added, in whose works the flesh could not be justified? A bond was added, not a release; the recognition of sins was added, not their remission. We all sinned, who could put forward an excuse through ignorance: the mouth was stopped for all. Yet it profited me. I began to confess what I was denying, I began to recognize my offense and not to cover up my unrighteousness, I began to pronounce against myself my unrighteousness to the Lord, «and you forgave the impieties of my heart.»
But this also profits me, that we are not justified by the works of the law. I have nothing, therefore, in which I might glory in my own works; I have nothing in which to boast, and therefore I will glory in Christ. I will not glory because I am righteous, but I will glory because I have been redeemed. I will glory not because I am empty of sins, but because my sins have been remitted to me. I will not glory because I have profited anyone, nor because anyone has profited me, but because Christ is my advocate before the Father, because the blood of Christ was poured out for me. My fault has become for me the price of redemption, through which Christ came to me. For my sake Christ tasted death. More fruitful is fault than innocence. Innocence had made me arrogant; fault rendered me submissive.
You have, therefore, the ways in which the giving of the law profited you. But you say that through the law sin abounded. Yet where sin abounded, grace also abounded. You have died to sin, O man; therefore the law no longer hinders. You rise again through grace; therefore the law profited, because it acquired grace. You have also received the pledge of Christ's love, since he who died for you is your advocate and reserves the reward of his blood, and he who reconciled the sinner to the Father much more commends the innocent and protects the subject, because he has adopted the guiltless. Being then a debtor of so great a benefit, do you not repay homage? He has made you an heir, he has made you a co-heir, an heir of God, a co-heir of Christ: he has poured into you the spirit of adoption.
Count these things and add them up, not so much toward the bond of debt as toward the preservation of the gift received. You are a co-heir of Christ, if you suffer with him, if you die with him, if you are buried together with Christ. Take up his sufferings, that you may deserve to be with him above the sufferings. See how he has forgiven you your former sins, so that he made what you sinned do no harm. See how he exhorts you not to lose what you have received. The goal of this brief labor is near, and the crown is the fruit of perpetual reward; the suffering is bearable, the recompense beyond all reckoning. For what afflicts you? Is it the abjectness of obscurity? But there will be for you in the future the glorious nobility of devotion and faith. Is your estate too slender, your sustenance too narrow?
But there will be for you the riches of eternal recompense, in which you can lack nothing whatever. Is it the loss of children? You will receive perpetual ones, whom you had received as temporal. It will be said of you: «Blessed is he who has seed in Zion and household members in Jerusalem.» «The sufferings of this present time,» she says, «are unworthy to be compared to the glory to come»—so Scripture tells you. Add that the blessed life is not diminished by these adversities of worldly troubles or bodily sufferings, but is rather proven. Add that it does not feel the losses of patrimony, or hides with a brave mind the loss of kindred, and swallows up grief. Add that he knows no shipwrecks who is ever in the harbor of tranquility.
What of this, that your labor is shared in common with the whole of creation, since for your sake the world itself endures the servitude of corruption, since with the saints you have a common fellowship of this labor and of expectation? The sun acknowledges its own setting, the moon its waning, the lights of the stars their wandering, while the redemption of our whole body is awaited. But do you fear the doubtful windings of life and the snares of the adversary, when you have the help of God, when you have so great a regard from him that for your sake he did not spare his own Son? Scripture has used a beautiful word, to declare the loving purpose of God the Father toward you, who offered his Son to death. And the Son could not feel the bitterness of death, in that he was in the Father:
He kept nothing for himself, he offered all for you, in that, in the fullness of his divinity, he himself lost nothing and yet redeemed you. Consider the Father's love. As an act of devotion he took on, as it were, the peril of a Son about to die, he drank, as it were, the grief of bereavement, lest the fruit of redemption should be lost to you. So great was the Lord's zeal for your salvation, that he all but put himself at risk, while he was gaining you. He, for your sake, took on our losses, that he might graft you into things divine and consecrate you to the heavenly. Marvel that Scripture even added: «For us all he delivered him up,» to show that he so loves all, that he delivered up for individuals the Son most dear to himself.
For those, then, for whom he gave that which is above all things, can it come about that he has not given them all things in him? For he excepted nothing who yielded up the author of all. There is nothing, therefore, which we should fear can be denied us, nothing in which we ought to lose our perseverance and distrust the divine bounty, whose generosity was so long-lasting and continuous, that first he predestined, then called, and those whom he called these he also justified, and those whom he justified these he also glorified. Can he forsake those whom he has followed up with such great benefits all the way to their rewards? Among so many benefits of God, are any snares of the accuser to be feared? But who would dare to accuse those whom he sees chosen by divine judgment?
Can God the Father himself, who bestowed his gifts, rescind them, and banish from the grace of paternal affection those whom he received by adoption? But is the fear that the judge may be too severe? Consider whom you have as judge. Surely the Father has given all judgment to Christ. Can he then condemn you whom he redeemed from death, for whom he offered himself, whose life he recognizes to be the recompense of his own death? Will he not say: «What profit is there in my blood, if I condemn him whom I myself have saved?» Then you consider the judge, you do not consider the advocate. Can he pass a more severe sentence, who does not cease to intercede, that the grace of the Father's reconciliation may be conferred upon us? But even if some grievous things should threaten, by no means should they separate us from Christ.
Why should we not, for his sake, endure even hard and bitter things, who for our sake took on things so unworthy? And therefore love ought to be in us, so that by no perils we are called back from Christ. For it is written: «Many waters will not be able to extinguish love, and rivers will not enclose it, for the soul of one who loves crosses the torrent.» No tempest, no deep peril, no terror of death or punishment diminishes the force of love; for in these we are proven, in these is the blessed life, even if it be flooded with many perils. For the wise man is not broken by the pains of the body, nor harassed by misfortunes, but even amid afflictions he remains blessed.
For the adversities of the body neither diminish the gift of the blessed life, nor sip away anything of its sweetness, because the blessedness of life is not in the delight of the body, but in a conscience pure from every stain of sin, and in the mind of him who recognizes that what is good delights, even if it be harsh, while what is unseemly, even if it be sweet, does not soothe. The cause, therefore, of living well is not bodily delight, but the prudence of the mind. For it is not the flesh, which is subject to passion, but the mind, which judges, because nothing delights better than the honorableness of counsels and the beauty of works; this, then, is the interpreter of the blessed life.
For prudence, or reason, the arbiter of passion, is better than passion, and that which judges is more excellent than that which is subject to judgment. For it cannot be that what is irrational should be better than reason. He therefore has in himself his own recompense, who follows Jesus, and in his own disposition he has reward and grace. Even if he endures hard things, he is nevertheless blessed in his own character, blessed in the very perils, as the Lord defined when he said: «Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.» There is, then, a blessed life in human beings, but in those, namely, in whom life shall have been perfect. But the perfect life is not this sensible one, but that rational one, according to the exercise of reason and the liveliness of the mind.
In which there is not a portion of the man, but the perfection, which lies not so much in the condition of the man as in his operation; for this is what makes him blessed. To this man, then, what is good except he himself to himself? That which he has, this good is also present to him and will be for him the cause of future goods. Of this good Solomon said: «Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells. Let your waters overflow from your own fountain, but let them run abroad in your streets. Let them be set apart for you alone, and let no stranger be a partaker with you. Let the fountain of your water be your own.» Use, therefore, your own inner good. The greatest testimony of this good is that he who has it does not seek other things.
For what should he seek who despises lower things and clings to the most excellent, as it is written: «Let the deer of friendship and the colt of graces converse with you? Let friendship go before you and be one with you in every time»; for good is the friendship of the virtues and the love of the highest good. And so that perfect man seeks nothing else but the one and surpassing good. Whence he also says: «One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and behold the delight of the Lord.» Nor indeed should you disdain him as though he were narrow and poor, because he is content with the, as it were, solitary fellowship of the one good. For surrounded by the friendship of this good he will be most abundant.
For to a man of this kind there abounds enough for blessedness and for the possession of the good, and therefore he desires nothing else. For he seeks nothing as though it were new, who has all things. For there is nothing of good which he does not have, nor is he delighted by superfluous things, but by necessary ones—and by that very thing which is necessary not to himself but to the flesh that cleaves to him; and he indulges that which does not differ from the purpose of the inner man, so that he may make both one and reconcile the inner man to God, together with the outer, that in both there may be one spirit. The man, then, of this purpose is neither diminished by losses, nor broken by adversities, nor hindered by barriers, nor saddened by the losses of his own. For their instruction the apostle says:
'We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as the rest who have no hope.' For he consoles himself with faith in the resurrection and with the grace of the reward to come, nor does he receive sadness into that mind by which he cleaves to God and rejoices in the delight of the divine presence. But he who is grieved over these things is not grieved according to God, and what is not according to God is full of folly. From the perfect man, therefore, the sorrow of this world is far removed, which is not according to God, as is also every anxiety over bodily hardship.
For to this disposition of mind and substance there is not reckoned the condition of the body, nor any external use of nature, since the unconquered soul ought to preserve a uniform constancy alike against the pleasures of the body and the very frailty of nature, against bereavements, losses, and insults. Thus he who desires to hold the palm of blessedness must cut into the body itself and strip off the senses of the flesh, for the fruit of that blessedness lies not in the possession of one virtue but, if it be possible, in the fellowship of many, indeed of all the virtues. The perfect man, therefore, neither knows the discomforts of this body nor the adversities of the world, nor does he feel them, since he bears a mind alien to any fear that they may befall him. For the more perfect life is not defined by being free from these things, but by despising them.
For if it were so defined, that the blessed life were one which could be found free and empty of such mishaps, then surely when these things befell, no one could be defined as blessed. These things, therefore, are set aside, and this alone is required in the estimation of the blessed life: that its definition be held not in other things, but in the possession of what is true and good; since he who has this spurns the rest and seeks them not. I now ask whether the wise man takes delight in bodily health. We cannot deny that he delights in it according to nature, and that he gladly accepts feeling no pain rather than pain — unless perchance for Christ's sake, for whom, if the cause demand it, he would readily accept even the disabling of his body and offer his whole body to death.
Yet the same man, even apart from the cause of faith and righteousness, if health be lacking, is not stricken in soul nor broken by bodily pain, for he can console himself with the perfection of the virtues. I ask also whether he delights in children. Who would deny this? For it is not a hard and iron man, but a perfect man, that is sought. Yet even if he lose his children, he is not therefore less blessed, who is therefore no less perfect; for what is perfect is blessed. Indeed, such a perfect man is wont to appear more so if he endures adversity than if he abounds in prosperity; although neither when external advantages or bodily joys are absent nor when they are present is anything wont to be taken from his virtue or added to it. Yet for very many it has redounded as much to praise to have borne adversity bravely as never to have fallen into it.
But these things are weighed by appearance, not by true worth. That is the deep thing: that the righteous man wills nothing save that one and surpassing good; that he reaches out to this alone, accounts this one thing among his goods, ever desires not another thing along with it but it alone, and in this takes his delight. If to him another thing be joined which delights him — as is the sweetness of children — that one good is not lost, but this other is added. For accidents do not diminish the blessedness which they cannot increase, because that good remains full and inviolable, into which the soul clothes itself and into which it has grafted and poured itself. Perfect virtue remains ever amid adversities and delights, and neither do adversities diminish anything of its perfection nor do delights add to its perfection.
For what is there that he who has ascended to the summit should feel either of loss from perishable things or of advantage? Nor indeed — though this is held by most to be the gravest of evils — will he think himself wretched if he himself or his children should come into captivity; for he will not bear intolerably what nature holds, or what seems good to the Lord. Indeed the righteous man said: 'Good is the word that the Lord has spoken'; and he said: 'Let there be peace and faithfulness in my days.' Surely this righteous Hezekiah did not rejoice that the hardship of captivity had passed down upon his sons; but he could not gainsay the will of the Lord, and therefore he received His commands with an even mind, like a humble servant. There is added this also: that he could reckon that even in captivity the merit of virtue could shine forth.
For Jeremiah was no less blessed in captivity, nor Daniel less, nor Ezra less, nor were the blessed Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael less blessed than if they had not fallen into captivity; for they were led into captivity precisely that they might bring to the people both present comforts in captivity and hope of escaping captivity. For it belongs to the perfect man to sustain the common lot of nature by strength of soul and to lead it to better things, and not to succumb to those things which seem to most men terrible and dreadful, but, like a brave soldier, to bear up under the assaults of the gravest disasters, to undergo the conflicts; and, like a provident helmsman, to steer the ship in a storm, and, by meeting the rising waves, rather to avoid shipwreck by cleaving the waves than by shunning them.
This man is not fearful in persecution, not softened amid torments so as to provoke the torturer; but like a brave athlete who strikes back at the one who scourges him — if not with blows, at least with the lash of his speech — who despises the torments dreaded by many, saying: 'The strokes inflicted on them have become the arrows of children.' Though he wrestle with the gravest pain, he does not show himself pitiable, but displays, as a light in a lantern, that even amid harsh tempests and the gravest blasts his light shines, and that the virtue of his soul cannot be extinguished.
This man is not soft under wrongs done to his own, nor anxious about the tomb of his own body, knowing that heaven is owed to it; not more abject in the captivity of his fellow citizens, but like a stern judge condemning the perfidy and errors of the unfaithful — as did Daniel, who exposed the thefts of the priests and refuted their superstitions, showing that they rested on no truth but were veiled by frauds. Such, in short, is the perfect man, who would have all act well and that no evil befall anyone; and if, against his will, evil should befall, he himself nonetheless loses nothing of his own blessedness.
But perhaps someone might think that sickness and weakness of the body are a hindrance to fulfilling the office of perfection, on the ground that no works of the hands or deeds can proceed. But the righteous man will not feel these to be a hindrance to himself; nay, he will rebuke even the man who pitiably bewails such things and convict him as it were of cowardice, because he reckons more in the use of the body than in the virtue of the soul; because he desires those things to which he would be a slave, when he has that whereby he could rather command others; because he groans in poverty, who could be above the world's wealth — for to the faithful man the whole world of riches belongs — because he laments his lowly birth, who ought to despise royal powers and to command the rich and the mighty.
For this is the life of the righteous man: who ought to reckon as common even the means he has, nay even to divide them among the needy, to dispense to the poor; to cut back his own pleasures, to reduce his expenditure, to apply the thrift of temperance, to keep sobriety in prosperity, patience in adversity, endurance in pain, magnanimity in dangers; to know no vows for perpetual health, not to be shaken by the terror of impending death, nor to think him more excellent for whom, according to nature, children, kinsmen, well-being, gladness, and abundance have overflowed, than him to whom these have been lacking; and to weigh merits not by the externals of the world but by the household goods of virtue. Who would deny that this too is the pattern of the righteous man: to fear nothing,
to dread nothing except the losses of virtue, and to repress the empty fears of others — fears which they have over the anxiety of dangers, the dread of death, the infirmity of the body — so that he may teach that to be dissolved from the body and to be with Christ is much better, and may show that operations are not hindered by the weaknesses of the body, but are increased; and that a man is commended not by the splendor of his lineage, nor by the support of his kinsmen, nor by his wealth, but by a good disposition of heart.
For Elijah was no less blessed than Moses, although the one, needy of food, in a cheap sheepskin, without children, without provision, without companion, and the other, leader of peoples, glad in his offspring, girded with power, by their diverse manner established an equal merit — as was declared in the Gospel when they shone forth with the Lord Jesus in the glory of the resurrection; for He seems to have given them an equal reward as if to equal witnesses of His glory. Nor was Elisha less blessed than David, although the one was subject to kings and the other endowed with royal power, they attained a grace of prophetic sanctification by no means unequal. For what is lacking to him who possesses that good and has ever as his companion and consort virtue itself? In what state is he not most powerful?
In what poverty is he not rich? In what lowliness of birth not illustrious? In what leisure not industrious? In what disability not vigorous? In what infirmity not strong? In what quiet of sleep not at rest — he whom his own virtue does not forsake even while he rests? In what solitude not thronged — he whom the blessed life surrounds, whom grace clothes, whom the mantle of glory illumines? For he is no less blessed at leisure than when he works, no less glorious sleeping than waking, because he is no less safe and sound asleep than when awake. But when can he seem to be at rest, whose mind ever works? And when is he alone, who is ever with that good, of which the prophet says: 'We shall be filled with the good things of Your house'?
When is he cast down, whose conversation is in heaven? When is he not comely, who conforms himself to the likeness of that comely and only good — who, even if he be loosed in his limbs, yet lifts himself up in mind? And just like one accustomed to play upon the lyre: if he should see it broken to pieces, its strings slackened and shattered, and its use interrupted,
would cast it away and not seek out its melodies, but would soothe himself with his own voice — so this man too will suffer the lyre of his body to lie idle, and will delight himself in his heart, soothe himself by the remembrance of a good conscience, lift himself up by the divine oracles and the prophetic writings, holding that sweet and joyful thing in his soul, embracing it in his mind, to whom nothing sad can befall, since the grace of the divine presence ever breathes upon him, and he himself is present to himself, suffused with the highest tranquillity of soul. THE SECOND BOOK. In the previous book we discoursed on the precepts of the virtues; in the one that follows let us make use of the examples of illustrious men, who, placed in the gravest dangers, did not lose the blessedness of life, but rather gained it.
Was not Jacob also blessed, even when he forsook his fatherland? Nay, plainly blessed, who took up the hardships of exile in order to soften his brother's wrath. For if he is blessed who turns aside from sin, surely he cannot be denied blessed who lightens another's fault and averts a crime. And so by voluntary exile he turned aside a parricide that was prepared, and by that deed sought safety for himself and bestowed innocence upon his brother. Deservedly, then, divine grace accompanied him everywhere, so that even when he slept he acquired the gift of the blessed life. For he saw the mysteries of things to come and heard divine oracles. A good laborer in sleep and rich in poverty, who by the service of a hireling's life procured both a patrimony and a marriage by the same office.
This same man, an excellent reconciler of brotherly affection, strove with gifts and acts of deference to shut out all indignation and to turn away the pain of offense, showing that he had not been made the less by exile, who could lavish what he had not received. But I am hastening too much to lower matters and running over things merely useful, when first it must be defined what 'blessed' is. For it is written:
'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence' — Scripture thereby signifying that he is blessed who has either kept himself from the fellowship of the faithless (for this is impiety: not to acknowledge the Author of life and a certain Parent of salvation), or has not abided in sin, or has not persevered in luxury and wantonness. And it signifies that he too, meditating in the law of the Lord day and night, shall be like a tree that shall give its fruit in its season. The former are merits leading to rewards; this is the reward of merits.
Which of these things that pertain to the blessedness of merits was lacking to holy Jacob, who was so far from the fellowship of the ungodly that from him the faithful people received its name, being called Israel — because with the eyes of his inner mind he beheld God, abstaining from sin, sober from all the drunkenness of luxury, so that he swallowed up the hardships of labors and neglected the security of leisure? Was it not beautifully and truly said of him that he too 'shall give his fruit in its season,' of whom it is written: 'Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field'? For he was perfect in every flower of the virtues and breathed forth the grace of sacred blessing and heavenly blessedness.
For he himself is the field which the Lord blessed — not that earthly field, rough with woods, or broken with torrents, or marshy with sluggish waters, or barren of grain, or useless for vines, stony with still-unfruitful gravel, or cracked and dried up with drought, or soaked with blood, or untended and overgrown with brambles and thorns — but that field of which the Church says in the Song of Songs: 'I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and strengths of the field.' For this is the field of which the Lord also says: 'And the beauty of the field is with me.'
In this field is found that grape which, when pressed, poured forth blood and washed the world; in this field is that fig tree, beneath which the saints shall rest, refreshed by the sweetness of spiritual grace; in this field is that fruitful olive, flowing with the ointment of the Lord's peace; in this field bloom the pomegranates, which cover their many fruits under the one safeguard of faith and cherish them in a certain embrace of charity. These fruits, then, did Jacob breathe forth, who followed God through dangers and believed himself everywhere safe under His guidance. For although the sweet and pleasant fragrance of the field belongs to it because it is the fragrance of nature, yet in the holy patriarch it was the grace of the virtues that breathed. How temperate was his thrift, who did not even crave the food prepared for himself,
but yielded it without delay to his brother who asked. From him he received the primacy of the blessing. How dutiful toward his parents, that he deserved by his mother's affection to be preferred to his elder brother and to be hallowed by the gift of his father's blessing! How religious, that he refused to wound his brother; how modest, that he feared to deceive his father; how honoring, that he could not refuse his mother what he was commanded! But neither must the parents be left unexcused by us, in that they preferred the younger son to the elder. At the same time, we must beware lest anyone, while attending to their example, hold an unjust judgment among his children, so as to think one to be loved and the other passed over. For from this brotherly hatreds are stirred up, and over the increase of vile money a parricidal crime is contrived.
Let the same measure of love cherish one's offspring. Yet grant that affection may seize something more around the more endearing or the more like child: the form of justice ought to be equal toward all. More is conferred on the beloved, for whom the love of his brothers is sought; but more is taken away from him who is burdened with the resentment of an unjust preference. Esau threatened that he would kill his brother, and neither brotherly kinship nor reverence for his parents recalled him from his parricidal fury; and he grieved that the blessing had been snatched from him, of which assuredly he ought to have proved himself worthy by gentleness, not by crime. But Rebecca too preferred not so much son to son as the just to the unjust. For with a devout mother the mystery outweighed the mere pledge of blood:
she was not so much preferring him to his brother as offering him to the Lord, whom she knew able to preserve the gift conferred on her. In this she was also taking thought for the other, whom she was withdrawing from a divine offense, lest he be entangled in a graver guilt, if he were to lose the grace of the blessing once received. Yet receive a good contest between the parents. Let the mother bring affection, the father judgment. Let the mother incline with tender devotion toward the younger; let the father preserve toward the elder the honor of nature. Let the one honor the more, the other love the more. While each cherishes one, let them not conspire against either, defrauding the other. Let there be equality amid diverse contests, and by unequal pursuits let grace be conferred equally on both by the equal love of the parents. Let the one make up for what the other diminishes.
Thus with devout affection did the patriarch Isaac and holy Rebecca contend, so as to make neither the inferior, but both equal. Yet he prevailed who was preferred by the oracle; promptness prevailed over slowness, gentleness over harshness. While the one sought rustic prey by rough hunting, this one ministered to his devout father foods of gentle manners, domestic grace, sweet feasts of tender meekness and piety. Whatever comes of its own accord pleases more in the affections than whatever you may have thought must be presented studiously. Jacob went to the sheep and brought the offspring of innocence, or rather the gifts of sacred prophecy; for he believed no food sweeter to the patriarch than Christ, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb to the sacrifice.
This food, profitable both for the parent in public office and for the people whose type he bore, he judged to be that whereby there was to be the remission of sins. Therefore he received the robe of his brother, because he excelled in aged wisdom; therefore the younger brother stripped the elder brother, because he shone forth in the dignity of faith. This robe, in a type of the Church, Rebecca brought forth and gave to her younger son — the robe of the Old Testament, the prophetic and priestly robe, that royal robe of David, the robe of Solomon, of the kings Hezekiah and Josiah — and gave it to the Christian people, who would know how to use the mantle received, since the people of the Jews had it without use and knew not their own adornments. This robe lay in shadow, set aside and neglected;
for it was darkened by the gloomy mist of impiety, nor could it be more amply unfolded in the narrow heart of the people. The Christian people put it on, and it shone forth. They illumined it with the clarity of their faith and with the light of devout deeds. Isaac recognized the familiar smell of his own kindred, recognized the robe of the old Scripture; but the voice of the old people he did not recognize, and therefore knew it to be changed. For the same robe remains even today, but the confession of the more devoted people has begun to be melodious; and he rightly said: 'The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.' And he smelled the smell of the garments.
And perhaps this is the meaning: that we are justified not by works but by faith, since carnal infirmity is a hindrance to works, but the clarity of faith overshadows the error of deeds, and merits pardon for offenses. After the blessing had been celebrated, the elder brother afterward arrived. By this it is declared that the kingdom of the Church was conferred earlier than that of the Synagogue in predestination, but that the Synagogue entered in afterward, that sin might abound, and when sin had abounded, grace also might abound; and at the same time that it might be made clear that the candidate for the heavenly kingdom must be diligent, so that he may snatch the blessing first and claim the prerogative of his commendation. Hence the younger son was not censured by his father, but praised, in that Isaac said:
'Your brother came with guile and received your blessing.' For good is the guile where the seizure is irreproachable; and irreproachable is the seizure of piety, since 'from the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent seize it.' For the fathers, hastening, kept the Passover, who in haste ate the lamb, not lingering; and holy Joseph, by a contrivance of devout deception, summoned and held his brother Benjamin. And yet he himself, by compelling, drew out and obtained a blessing for himself to be blessed — but that blessing which should agree and accord with the former, namely, that he should serve his brother. For he who could not command and rule another ought to serve, that he might be ruled by the wiser.
For it was not the part of the holy patriarch to assign his son to the degenerate condition of servitude, but, like a good father who had two sons — the one intemperate, the other prudent and sober — to take counsel for both, he set the sober over the intemperate and ordained the foolish to obey the prudent; because the foolish cannot be a willing disciple of virtue nor persevere in zeal, since the fool 'is changed like the moon.' And deservedly he denied him the liberty of his own choice, lest like a ship in the waves he should drift without a helmsman. But he subjected him to his brother according to what is written: 'For the imprudent serves the prudent.' Rightly, then, did he subject him, that by the command of the one ruling he might better his own disposition. And therefore he says:
'By your sword shall you live, and you shall serve your brother'; for piety is the mistress of cruelty, and meekness prevails over harsh impulses. Everyone serves who has not the authority of a pure conscience; everyone serves who is either broken by fear, or ensnared by pleasure, or led by lusts, or exasperated by indignation, or cast down by grief. For every passion is servile, since 'he who commits sin is the servant of sin,' and what is worse, he who is subject to vices is the servant of many. He has handed himself over to many masters, so that he can scarcely be permitted to go out from such servitude.
But truly that man who is the arbiter of his own will, the judge of his own counsel, the interpreter of his own choice; who restrains the appetite of bodily passion; who does well the things he does — and doing well, he acts rightly, and he who acts rightly acts blamelessly and irreproachably, having power over his own acts — he assuredly is free. For he who does all things prudently and so as he wills, he alone is free. It is not chance condition that makes a slave, but shameful folly. Indeed, a prudent servant rules foolish masters, and 'their own servants shall lend to their masters.' What shall they lend? Not money, surely, but wisdom, just as the law also says: 'You shall lend to many nations, but you yourself shall not borrow.'
For the Jew lent to the proselyte the oracles of the divine law; but because he himself could not see the mysteries of the law and knew not the oracles he possessed — he who lent the letter to the nations — now from them he borrows the grace of spiritual doctrine, and deservedly has been made subject to servitude, since he who borrows is a servant, as one bound to the interest of his creditor; whereas he who imparts the interest of devout doctrine, he is the prince, just as the law says: 'You shall be prince of many nations, but princes from among them shall not be over you.' For he is a prince who rules and who has the principate of wisdom. This the people of the Jews had; but since it could not keep what it taught, it must learn what it knew not how to teach. This, then, is what the patriarch Isaac says:
'You shall serve your brother. But it shall come to pass when you shall lay down and loose his yoke from your neck' — signifying that there would be two peoples to come, the one the son of the bondwoman, the other of the free (for the letter serves, but grace is free), and that the people which attends to the letter would be a servant so long as it should follow the interpreter of spiritual doctrine. Then too there shall come to pass that which the Apostle says: 'That the remnant may be saved according to the election of grace.' You shall serve your brother, therefore; but then you shall feel the gain of servitude, when you shall have begun to obey your brother willingly rather than by compulsion. Hence arose envy, and Esau threatened that after his father's death he would kill his brother.
But if this should happen, let us learn from Rebecca how it must be provided against, lest envy stir up wrath and wrath break out into parricide. Let Rebecca come — that is, let one be clothed with patience, the good guardian of innocence — and let her counsel that we give place to anger. Let us withdraw somewhat further off, until indignation be softened with time and forgetfulness of the offense creep in. And so patience does not dread exile, but undertakes it readily, not so much to avoid peril to safety as to turn aside the incitement of crime. The devout mother too endures that her most beloved son be away from her, conferring the more upon him whom she has hurt, yet taking thought for both, that she might keep the one free from parricide and the other untouched by crime.
We have heard what intemperance, drunk with bodily lusts, has said; let us consider what true virtue does. It requires nothing save the grace of God; it follows that one and highest good alone; it is content with Him alone, from whom we receive all things, while to Him we ourselves confer nothing, since He has need of nothing. As David says: 'I said to my Lord, You are my Lord, since You have no need of my goods.' For of what has He need who abounds in all things and lavishes all upon us, and ministers everything without defect? 'And Jacob set forth and slept' — which is the token of a soul at quiet — 'and he saw the angels of God ascending and descending.'
This means that he foresaw Christ on earth, to whom a host of angels descended and ascended, to render service in dutiful ministry to their own Lord. And he came to the well, that he might drink of his own vessels and from the springs of his own wells, and that the waters might overflow for him from his own fountain; for 'the fountain of life is in the hands of the righteous.' And he came to Laban and pastured his sheep. Iniquity dwells unaccompanied; wisdom does not omit the office of ruling. It knows not to be idle even among things that are another's; it knows not to be an exile among strangers. For how should it be — wisdom, which everywhere preserves its own right and holds within itself what it possesses?
As a hireling the righteous man enters in and yet is a ruler, who was gathering for himself, by the ministry of evangelical preaching, a flock shining with the splendor of many surpassing virtues, so that he set before the sheep about to drink the rod of storax and of the nut tree and of the plane tree in the troughs, that, conceiving by the conception of a devout mind the prefigured mysteries of the most blessed Trinity, they might form by no means discolored offspring. Good sheep, which brought forth not degenerate offspring of good works of sacred faith. By the storax is signified the incense and the evening sacrifice which is offered to God the Father in the Psalm. By the rod of the nut tree the priestly office is offered to Christ;
for this is the rod of Aaron, which, having been laid up, blossomed, by which the priestly grace of sanctification shone forth. By the plane tree is signified the abundance of spiritual fruit, because to this tree the vine is joined, that by its joyful fellowship it may pour itself out into rich offspring, since indeed the grace of the Spirit, joined to it, is wont to cherish the gifts of the Lord's passion and the remission of all sins. By these things, then, as the Scripture says, 'he became exceedingly rich,' nourishing a good flock for Christ, which he ennobled with the badges of a glorious name by the title of faith and by the variety of virtues. And so he did not seem to himself straitened, being rich in faith, and by the sons of Laban he was called into envy as one most opulent, because he had heaped up his own flock by the accession of another's flock.
And God said to him: 'Return to the land of your father and to your kindred, and I will be with you' — showing that nothing was lacking to him whom the fullness of all things attended. To one made perfect this alone is to abound: that in him all things hold together, and that all things are referred back to him, and nothing is strange to him. Nothing superfluous is necessary to him for whom a faithful peace was at hand, through which he might reconcile the things that at first had been at variance. Nor is it any wonder if he possessed peace, who had set up and anointed unto God a pillar, which is the Church; for she has been called 'the pillar and ground of the truth.' He anoints her who pours out the ointment of faith upon Christ and of mercy upon the poor. Now let us consider what manner of man the just one ought to be, if envy has arisen against him. First, that he should turn aside from it;
For it is better to depart without strife than to sit down amid quarreling. Next, that he should possess such things as he can carry away with him, so that he may in no respect be held liable by his adversary, but may say: 'Examine, whether anything of yours is with me.' And Laban searched, and found nothing of his own with Jacob. A great man, and truly blessed, who could lose nothing of his own, and could hold nothing belonging to another — that is, who had nothing less and nothing superfluous. And so he is perfect who lacks nothing, and just who has nothing in excess; for this is to keep the measure of justice. How great a virtue, whose fellowship gave gain and inflicted no loss! This is what it is to be perfect: to give the greatest profit to those who cleave to one, and to bring no harm.
In short, he who desired to harm him could not send him away empty. For the wise man is never empty, always having about himself the garment of prudence, who can say: 'I put on justice and clothed myself with judgment,' as Job said. For these are the inner coverings of the mind, which no other can take away, except when one's own fault strips a man bare. Thus Adam, when stripped, was found naked; but Joseph, even when his outer garment had been cast off, was not naked, for he kept unharmed the garments of virtue. Never, then, is the wise man empty. For how should he be empty who has received of the fullness of Christ and keeps what he has received? How should he be empty whose soul is filled, which guards the garments of received grace?
This is what must be feared: that someone should lose the covering of innocence, that the impious, by the violent pressure of a sacrilegious persecution, overstepping the bounds of justice, should snatch away the garment of the soul and mind. This does not easily happen, unless first the utterance of his own iniquity has stripped a man. Whence David also says: 'If there is iniquity in my hands, let me deservedly fall before my enemies empty; let the enemy pursue my soul and seize it.' No one, then, of the enemies can seize your soul, unless it has first been made empty. Do not, therefore, fear those who can plunder treasures of gold and silver. These take nothing away from you.
For they take away what you did not have, they take away what you could not possess, they take away what did not adorn your soul but burdened it, they take away what did not enrich your heart but rather weighed it down; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, as you have heard read today. Many shut up their gold behind the bolts of their doors, yet do not even trust to their bars and locks; many set watchmen, yet they themselves are wont to fear the guards more than the gold; many lie brooding over buried gold — their gold is under the earth, and their heart is under the earth. Beware, therefore, lest you too bury your heart, while still living, in the ground.
It is not, then, the thieves of that gold who are to be feared; it is that usurer you must beware of, who searches out the substance of your soul, to see whether you have contracted any debt of more grievous sin — who shuts up your heart in the soil, who buries your soul under that turf with which you have covered your gold, who bends down your mind under the usury of compound interest and buries it in a heavy sepulchre from which none rises again. Follow holy Jacob, who had nothing of others' vices, nor was he empty and void of his own virtues, for he was filled with the fruit of justice. But these things are moral; that other matter is mystical — that Laban came to him, that is, 'the whitened one' (since Satan too transforms himself into an angel of light), and began to demand his own from him. Jacob answered him:
'Examine whether anything of yours is with me' — that is: I have nothing of yours. Search, whether you recognize anything of your own vices and crimes. I have carried off nothing of your frauds; I have no share whatever in your deceit; I have fled all that is yours as a contagion. And Laban searched, and found nothing of his own. How blessed the man in whom the enemy found nothing that he could call his own, in whom the devil stumbled upon nothing that he could recognize as his! This seemed impossible in a man, but he bore the type of Him who said in the Gospel: 'The prince of this world will come, and in me he will find nothing.' For whatever is the devil's is nothing, since it can have no permanence and no substance.
But he himself who was prefigured in Jacob is the Lord Jesus, a man of two marriages, that is, a partner as it were both of the Law and of grace, who first loved the virgin Rachel and, predestined to him in marriage, cherished her with pious affection. But since Leah, like the Law, came in by stealth and crept in, weaker in her eyes, like the Synagogue, which through blindness of mind could not see Christ, the grace of holy Rachel superabounded — she who was sought above that first marriage, who already then, by the interpretation of her name, signified the future primacy of the Church: blessed Rachel, who took away reproach by her childbearing; blessed Rachel, who hid the rites and errors of the Gentiles, who declared that their idols were full of uncleanness.
Let no one think that the reverence due to fatherly affection was violated, because she sat while her father stood, since it is written: 'He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' Where the cause of religion was being pleaded, faith ought to hold the seat of judgment, and faithlessness to stand as if accused. These things were so far approved, that as holy Jacob set out, the angels of God met him. Indeed he saw the encampment of God drawing near and said: 'This is the camp of God'; for the divine protections are wont to be present to the perfect and the faithful. But the perfect man was pondering the reconciliation with his brother, in such a way that he might invite him by humility, win him by services, and think him to be won over even by gifts.
And so he went to meet his brother with his wives and his children, that even if he himself were the object of indignation, the brother might be bent by the dutiful homage shown to kinship. And he bowed himself seven times to the earth. What does this mean? The Law says: 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve' — and here he worships an intemperate, wrathful man, one threatening the outrage of fratricide. Or did he worship that earth congealed with human gore, drenched with the venoms of serpents, or wretched with barren gravel, or bristling with hard and rugged crags? And what does it mean that he worshiped seven times? The resolution would remain in doubt, were it not that this comes to mind, which the Lord Jesus answered to Peter, when he asked in the Gospel: 'If my brother sins against me, how often shall I forgive him? Up to seven times?'
'Not only seven times, but even seventy times seven.' This, then, the holy patriarch signifies by a prophetic spirit, looking toward Him who was to come, who would command pardon to be granted to a brother not only up to seven times, but even up to seventy times seven — so that by contemplation of Him, Esau, when he met him, might forgive his brother the injury he thought he had received, and, though wronged, might return into favor; because for this reason the Lord Jesus was to take up flesh and to come upon the earth, that he might grant us a multiplied pardon of our sins. Finally, about to seek concord from his brother, he slept in the camp. Perfect virtue has tranquility and the steadfastness of repose; therefore the Lord reserved his gift for the more perfect, saying:
'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.' For it belongs to the perfect not to be easily moved by worldly things, not to be troubled by fear, not to be agitated by suspicion, not to be shaken by terror, not to be vexed by grief, but as on a most safe shore, against the rising billows of the world's storms, to keep the mind unmoved, calming it in a faithful anchorage. This firm support Christ has brought into Christian minds, bringing inner peace to the souls of the approved, that our heart be not troubled, nor our mind agitated. The Apostle, our teacher, declared this peace to be above every mind, saying: 'And the peace of God, which surpasses every mind, shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' The fruit of peace, therefore, is not to be disturbed in the breast. In short, the life of the just is tranquil.
But the unjust man is full of unrest and disturbance. And so the impious man is afflicted more by his own suspicions than most are by another's blows, and the welts of wounds are greater in his soul than in the bodies of those who are beaten by others. It is a great thing for one to be tranquil within himself and to be at agreement with himself. Outwardly, peace is sought either by the anxious foresight of a commander, or by the hand of soldiers, or it yields to the fortunate outcome of wars, or to some slaughter of the barbarians, if in a hostile movement they turn their own arms against themselves. In that peace there is no virtue of ours, but only an outcome. Surely the glory of that peace is referred to the commander; the fruit of this other peace is in us, which is in our minds and is held fast in the affections of each individual.
Of this peace the fruit is greater, by which the temptations of spiritual wickedness are repelled, than that by which hostile arms are driven back. This peace is loftier, which shuts out the enticements of bodily passions and mitigates their disturbances, than that which quiets barbarian incursions; for it is more to resist an enemy shut up within you than one removed afar. And so Jacob, who had cleansed his heart from all rancor and bore a peaceable affection, after he had set aside all that was his, remained alone and wrestled with God. For whoever despises worldly things draws nearer to the image and likeness of God. For what is it to wrestle with God but to take up the contest of virtue and to engage with One who is higher, and to become an imitator of God superior to the rest?
And because his faith and devotion were insuperable, the Lord revealed hidden mysteries to him, touching the breadth of his thigh, for the reason that from his lineage the Lord Jesus was to arise, sprung from the Virgin, who would be neither unequal nor unlike to God. The breadth of the thigh, growing numb, signified His cross, for the reason that by remission of sin diffused throughout the whole world He would be salvific to all — He who by the numbness and sleep of His body would grant the resurrection of the dead. Whence not without merit the sun rose upon holy Jacob, upon whose lineage the saving cross of the Lord shone forth; and likewise because the sun of justice rises for him who beholds God, since He Himself is the eternal light. But Jacob limped from his thigh.
For this reason the children of Israel to this day do not eat the sinew. Would that they had eaten and had believed! But because they were not going to do the will of God, therefore they did not eat. There are also those who take it in this way, that Jacob limped on one thigh for the reason that, since two peoples were to flow forth from his lineage, the numbness of one was even then being declared as about to come concerning the grace of faith. That, then, is the people which limped through the numbness of faithlessness.
In short, not long after a revelation of this kind, when Dinah, Jacob's daughter, had been deflowered and her virgin modesty defiled by the son of a foreigner, his sons, who did not understand the mystery, slew the foreigners — who were offering fellowship of faith through the joining of their stock — out of zeal for vengeance. But Jacob, who in his moral gentleness loved clemency, or who by the mystic spirit foresaw the sacrament of the Church to be gathered from the Gentiles, received unwillingly and with grief that scene of vengeance exacted. Whence to him, prophesying the coming of the Lord Jesus, a divine answer was given: 'Arise and go up to the place of Bethel' — that is, into the house of bread, where Christ was born, as the prophet Micah testifies, saying:
'And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephratah, are not the least, that you should be among the princes of Judah. For out of you shall come forth a prince in Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.' Truly the house of bread, which is the house of Christ, who came to us as the saving bread from heaven, that now no one might hunger, since he gains for himself the food of immortality. There the patriarch is bidden to dwell, there to make an altar to God who appeared to him. There he received the strange gods and hid them under the terebinth; there too Rachel was buried 'on the way,' it says, 'to Ephratah; this is Bethlehem.' There also Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. How great the mysteries, since there is the Church of God, in which God appears and speaks with his little servants!
There the idols of the Gentiles are snatched away and hidden; for the faith of the Church has abolished every observance of heathenism. But I ask why he hid them under the terebinth. Surely that kind of tree is unfruitful. There, then, are the gods of the Gentiles, where there is no fruit. There the earrings of the Gentiles are buried, which they gave to Jacob, that they might now grow accustomed to hear a new tongue, might know nothing of the old sleep of faithlessness, that their ears might become deaf to sacrilege and be cleansed unto grace. Not without merit did holy Daniel there detect the false testimony against Susanna. For there faithlessness still wished to set down its roots, but it could not lie hidden, because it was detected by a prophetic spirit.
And the error of the elder was fitting to the true confession, in that he there declared chastity to be defiled, where the idols of the Gentiles were buried; but the truth of the Church did not cover faithlessness, but hid it away and stopped the ears of heathenism. Fittingly too, holy Rachel was buried there, because all who are baptized into Christ are buried together with him. For thus we are taught, the Apostle saying: 'For we were buried together with him through baptism into death, that as he rose from death, raised by his own power, so we too by his grace may rise again.' Then, therefore, every error of the Gentiles is truly hidden away, when one has been washed from his vices, because, our old man being nailed to the cross, he no longer knows how to serve the old sin.
Fittingly too a pillar is set up over the tomb of Rachel, because the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Now Jacob grew old, and he had already long since grown old in character; but in him there strove the brisk vigor of youth and the tranquility of old age. For there is also an old age that is green with grace, and a youth that is gray with counsels, of which Scripture says: 'For venerable old age is, and the age of old age is an unspotted life.' Of this life was Jacob, who by good works anticipated the time of long-lived old age, so that he both plucked its fruit before the time and did not fear its end at the proper time. Blessed indeed is the young man who lives well, but blessed too is the old man who has lived well.
For what the young man hopes for, the older man has attained; what the old man was, he who is young desires to be. Surely the young man, while a longer course of the restless sea still remains before him, is tossed by the waves; but the old man, as if in harbor, is at his station in old age. Such, then, was Jacob, who already held, with the key of grace closed and sealed safe and sound, goods scarcely to be hoped for by the young. But what you possess is more excellent than what you still hope for. Jacob, then, was an old man, to whom the young, stricken by some adverse storm of the times, betook themselves as into a harbor; while he himself, set as on a watchtower of this life, looked out with anxious affection and, far in advance, foresaw remedies for doubtful affairs.
In short, there was famine in all the land: the old man, laid aside, was the first to hear what the lively young men were ignorant of... I shall see. Meanwhile he was the first to warn his sons that grain was abundant in Egypt; that thither they must journey, to buy what was needful for their use. Gladly too he himself acquiesced in the young men's counsels, so as even to send the younger son along with them. And when they reported back that his son Joseph was alive, though his body was broken yet with a lively strength of mind he did not wait for the son to come to him, but rather himself went on to the son; for the measure of order does not outweigh affection. And so he felt no hindrances of weary old age as he went on; for affection lightened the labor.
But when he had gained the fruit of his recovered son, and some time had passed — namely seventeen years, which, according to that patriarch's long life, is the time of a small portion — and he recognized that the end of his life was drawing near to him, he called Joseph his son and, through the future heir of his generation, bound him by oath not to be buried in Egypt; and the pledge having been received, when a little after he fell ill and his son Joseph came to him, as if his strength had been recovered, he sat up upon his bed and blessed the twelve patriarchs and prophesied. Now let some say:
that Jacob was not blessed, when he was in the very days of death — he who mingled almost more discourse with God than with men; that he was not blessed, when his eyes were heavy in old age and he could not see; for to some it seems that blindness is a grievous hardship of calamity. But then too Jacob was blessed, because he discerned by the spirit those whom he could not discern by the eyes and by sight. He saw things to come, who was reckoned not to see things present.
In short, Joseph himself erred, when, having placed his elder son at Jacob's right hand and his younger son at his left, that the order of age might preserve the order of blessing, Jacob stretched out his right hand over the younger grandson and his left over the elder grandson; and when his son wished to turn the father's right hand over Manasseh the elder, Jacob answered: 'I know, my son, I know: this one too shall become a people, and this one shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he.' And he added the cause of the preference, saying: 'His seed shall become a multitude of nations.' So much better did he see, though hindered in bodily sight, that he taught the seeing man to have erred. For who sees better than he who sees Christ?
Or who can say that he was hindered in his eyes, who saw the Church shining forth in Christ? Is it not, then, clear that weakness cannot hinder blessedness? He, hindered in the function of his eyes, he, with the powers of his body worn out, leaving his body on the bed as in a sepulchre, rose up into himself, and gathering himself far from others and within his very self, had withdrawn himself from present things and was mingled with the future age of the last days. For thus it is written: 'I will announce,' he says, 'to you what shall befall you in the last days.' What, then, was lacking to him to whom God was present, who had said to him as he set out: 'I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will lead you back forever'?
Nor was He lacking, since the Holy Spirit spoke in him. Who is so mighty in his own home as this man in a stranger's? Who so abounding in plenty as this man in famine? Who so strong in youth as this man in old age? Who so active in business as this man in leisure? Who so swift in the racecourse as this man on his little couch? Who so joyful in the flower of adolescence as this man on the threshold of death? Who so rich in a kingdom as this man in a foreign place? In short, he blessed kings. And not without merit was he not poor, who lacked nothing. He was not poor, who did not think himself poor. And who would call him poor, of whose company the whole world was not worthy, and whose conversation was therefore in heaven?
This man, indeed, was exceedingly rich in the riches of simplicity and sincerity, comely with a beauty of soul greater than of body — a beauty that does not know how to wither — vigorous in age, to whom it was permitted, whenever he wished, to go out from this bodily hovel and to penetrate, by the heavenly vigor of his mind, the upper regions of paradise, exulting in spirit as he gave commands about his last burial-place. For he presumed that he was not to be shut up in an earthly tomb, but to be received into a heavenly dwelling. And therefore he gave commands about the sepulchre as if for another, while, secure about himself, he reckoned that death of his to be immortality. He seemed entangled by the hindrance of the body, yet with a watchful affection he ran ahead into future times, saying concerning the persecutors of the Lord — those of the tribe of Simeon and Levi who were to become authors of wickedness:
'Let not my soul come into their counsel, and let not my inward parts strive to meet them.' But who is so mighty in virtue as this man, strong in infirmity, who said: 'Cursed be their fury, because it was proud and rash, and their anger, because it was hardened. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel'? But who is so tuneful in songs as this man in his utterances, who was heard by the whole world, who is heard among all peoples, through all ages? Who has sung the differences of seven voices in such sweet measures as this man, who resounded with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit?
Though loosened in his limbs, yet raising himself in mind and lifting himself in spirit, despising with a lofty mind the harmony of his body, as it were of a lyre, broken by the dissolved framework of his limbs, he did not seek to recover it, but suffered it to lie idle on the ground; while he himself soothed himself with an inward song and delighted himself with a prophetic strain, saying: 'Judah, may your brothers praise you. Your hands shall be upon the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall worship you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot you have ascended to me; reclining, you slept like a lion, and like a lion's whelp. Who shall rouse him?' And further on: 'He shall wash his robe in wine, and his mantle in the blood of the grape. His eyes are more gladsome than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.'
What song is sweeter, what sound more delightful than the remission of sins and the resurrection of the dead? This song that holy David — the organ of the divine voice and interpreter of the Lord's word — sang upon the spiritual lyre. With these measures of grace he soothed that sublime soul and mind. With this song he mitigated the harshness of this world, with this sound he softened the hardness of the age, with this psaltery he broke the terror of death, with this sweetness of strings he trampled upon the nether regions. But let us hear also the other things which the holy patriarch Jacob sounded forth upon that wondrous organ of his mind: 'Naphtali is a vine let loose, putting forth beauty in its shoot.'
'My son, enlarged is Joseph, my son, enlarged; my son, sought after with zeal; my son, the younger, return to me.' And further on: 'He has prevailed above the blessings of the abiding mountains and the desires of the eternal hills.' What is sweeter than a blessing, what more pleasing than eternity? And the very words are a song, and in the words are great rewards of prayers, the summits of merits. What is sweeter than holy Joseph, who freed us from reproach by the sacrament of the Lord's cross?
For just as Christ was made a curse, that he might loose the curse of the Law, and was made sin, that he might take away the sin of the world, so he was made a reproach, that he might take away the reproach of heathenism; but that reproach of Christ was esteemed more precious than the treasures of Egypt. And therefore Moses left the court of King Pharaoh and chose the reproach of faith — for which reproach the seas divided themselves before him. He, then, is Naphtali, the vine let loose throughout the whole world, that he might pour out upon all peoples the abundance of the spiritual cup; he is the one enlarged, having a name above every name, who, because he offered himself to death for all, therefore hears from the Father: 'Return to me.' Jacob spoke, and God was heard.
He blessed, and the Lord resounded, saying to the Son: 'Return to me' — that is, after the Passion, return. Return to your throne, return with the trophy, return to me, that the dead may follow you as you rise again, and by your power and likewise by your example may rise together, that you may become the firstborn from the dead, that you may sit at the right hand of the Father. Whence the Son also said: 'Hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power.' Would anyone deny that Jacob was blessed in that final hour of death, who poured forth divine oracles? Would anyone deny that Joseph was blessed in prison, where by the spirit of wisdom he interpreted the truth of the dreams he had heard and revealed the sequence of things to come?
Would anyone deny that Isaiah was blessed, when he was sawn in two; Jeremiah, when he was sunk in the mire; holy Daniel, when he stood undaunted among the lions, and a prophet, snatched up by an angel, brought him his meal? Surely he was not blessed merely because he was eating another's meal, but because by his own merits he shut the unfed mouths of the lions. But who would not call blessed the mother of the Maccabees, who to the funerals of seven sons added herself as an eighth, unto the praise of a heavenly triumph? Nor will I pass you by, Eleazar — as priest to priest, but one to be aided by your prayers — who, a priest by birth, skilled in the Law, mature in years, when you were brought before Antiochus the persecutor, could neither be caught by temptations, nor bent by rewards, nor broken by the bitterness of tortures.
In short, he began with blandishments, because he judged that his torments could be overcome. 'I am ashamed,' he says, 'of your gray hairs, I revere your old age, I admire your prudence: why do you think you must abstain from good feasts, which nature bestows? Relax this kind of obstinacy, wake up at last, while I still prefer to persuade you rather than to extort, lest, overcome by tortures, you do what you refuse when invited by reason.' To this the old man replied: 'We, Antiochus, are not led by stubbornness, but are held by reverence for the Law, which has commanded that we abstain from swine's flesh. You judge it a most beautiful creature; yet you cannot deny that temperance is preferable to pleasure, obedience to the Law preferable to transgression.'
'But if you think this a light thing, that we should feed on swine's flesh — he who has despised the Law in the least things, how shall he keep it in great things? Or if such a creature is precious, we are vindicated, since we are defrauded of that which is most beautiful. But our abstinence is a discipline of chastity. For we learn to cut back luxury, to conquer desires, to shut out concupiscence, to withstand the delights of the body. It is also an exercise of fortitude not to yield to punishments for the sake of the Law, and a mark too of justice and prudence, that what we have chosen to follow we may preserve, in the fear of God, with death set before us. Who would command food to free men? And who would offer himself to be laughed at, so as to be enslaved in this? But you shall not laugh.'
'I am not so old that the fortitude of my spirit does not grow young in me.' And so, hung up and beaten grievously on this side and on that, when his aged limbs could no longer bear the penalties of the lashes, with the torturers and the rackers wearied out, bent down to the earth he bore an unbending mind. And a certain man, whether pitying his great age or desiring to circumvent him by temptations, said: 'Only answer that you will eat: we will keep you free from that food.' But he, crying out: 'By no means let it befall me that I, an old man, should become an incentive to youthful error, I who up to now have been a saving model of instruction. Shall I then, by these mockeries, gain a little longer life, and condemn the labors of my whole life to a brief provision for old age?'
'Old age ought to be a harbor, not the shipwreck of one's former life. I will not deny you, ancestral Law; I will not forswear you, holy institutions of the fathers; I will not dishonor you, priestly fillets; I will not openly defile you with the dust of faithlessness, my gray hairs.' Why say more? By dying amid torments, he became to the rest a teaching of perseverance — he who had been chosen as an example of infirmity. Blessed therefore is he in whom the torments could not conquer reason. Or is he not blessed who by strength of soul could be victor over punishments, and by the oarage of piety could preserve his passion whole amid such great billows? After him were set seven young men with their mother.
The tyrant may well exult, who—thinking it cunning to begin with the old man—chose for himself a teacher who would only make the disciples braver. Their boyish years, as it were, he provoked toward sin with rewards, and pressed toward dread with terrors. But they, no degenerate sons, answered such a leader: 'Why do you despise us, or trick us as though we were children? Our faith may be grey-haired, but our discipline is strong. Make trial of it, then; subject these boyish bodies to whatever punishments you please—you will not find boyish hearts, nor will the engines of torment prove mightier than the watchful sentries of lawful observance. The youth that rivals old age shall overcome him whom old age has already conquered. We sons follow our father, we disciples our teacher. Gather, then, the instruments of torture you have set before us:'
'They bring a training in patience, not a terror of ignorance, even while they seem to threaten.' The tyrant ordered the eldest to be chosen first. But he, with a smile: 'Rightly do you keep the order of nature. But why do you think the law of God may be violated? In point of piety we are all of us the eldest; yet I rejoice that the beginning is made with me. What do you seek, tyrant? I confess that we serve the Most High God. And you are teaching us what we ought to do. If with such obstinacy you wish to wring the truth from us, why should we not think it must be held fast with all our strength?' Why say more? Various kinds of punishments were applied. But piety overcame the fury of his cruelty: the soul was shut out, but not religion. The second came forward, and, no degenerate, fulfilled the offices of his brother by a holy confession. And while the skin was being torn from his head, he answered:
'You strip off the skin indeed, but I have a spiritual helmet which you cannot take away.' And truly no one can take away this helmet, as the Apostle afterwards taught in the Church of the Lord: for the head of the man is Christ, and we are His members. Rightly did the boy by the divine Spirit foresee that apostolic doctrine. The savage beasts flayed the crown of his head and raged with leopard-like ferocity. But he, as his strength failed, said: 'How sweet it is to die for religion, how pleasant every bitterness of death suffered for piety, since the reward of these labours abides! Yours, O king, are the heavier torments; you are tortured the more violently by your own punishments, because you see yourself overcome in your very power.' And when this one too had died, the tyrant ordered a third to take his stand.
And when he tried him partly with snares and partly sought to strike him down with terror, the youth answered him: 'I will not do your will, nor yield to your command. By that blessed passion of my brothers and by their nobility, I will not deny the holy bond of brotherhood. Apply whatever torments you will; the more you press on with the harshness of punishments, the more you will accomplish only this—that you receive greater testimonies of our brotherhood.' And so the tyrant ordered his tongue to be cut off. But he, crying out, said: 'You are conquered, Antiochus, who command the instrument of my voice to be cut away. You have confessed that you cannot answer reason, and you prove our tongue's scourges greater than your own lashes. For we do not fear your lashes; you cannot endure the scourging of our voice.
But these are the scourges of piety; your scourges are those of treachery. Yet even when my tongue is removed, it will scourge you more grievously as it falls with its own murmur. Do you think to escape, Antiochus, if you snatch away my voice? God hears even those who are silent, and hears them the more. Behold, I have opened my mouth, I have loosed my tongue. Cut off the tongue, but you will not cut off constancy, you will not take away virtue, you will not blot out reason, you will not snatch away the testimony of truth, you will not snatch away the cry of the heart. If the tongue be cut off, the blood will cry out, and it will be said to you: the voice of your brother's blood cries to me.
For He who hears the inner thoughts hears the voice of blood. Though the impious man should say, 'Let the darkness cover me and the enclosing walls surround me, for no witness stands by me'—God searches out all things, sees all things, and there is no crime that can lie hidden from the Judge of all, who knows all things before they come to pass. Why do we waste words? Our wounds are more eloquent: even if the wounds be covered, even if the scar be hidden, faith is not hidden. Nor yet should you applaud yourself as though by taking away the tongue you snatch away the confession of praise. We have praised God enough already by our speech; now let us praise Him by our suffering.' And when this one was slain, the tyrant ordered the fourth to be bound to a wheel, so that by its whirling all his limbs might be torn apart.
But he, while he was being tortured monstrously, said: 'You dissolve the members of my body, but you add grace to my passion and do not snatch away the solace of death.' For there is the voice of thunder in the wheel, since in the good and unoffending course of this life the heavenly oracle resounds, just as it resounded in John and James, the sons of thunder. And so I now more clearly recognize what I have read: that the wheel runs within the wheel and is not hindered. For a life that is rounded and smooth turns without any offence in whatever suffering, and within this too the wheel runs. The Law runs within grace, and the keeping of the Law is within the course of the divine mercy: for the more it is turned, the more it is proved.
'It is better here to endure adversities from the impious, that there we may be able to find consolation from the Lord.' And this one, completing his course, broke off his breath and, victorious, poured out his soul. When the fifth was set before him, he was first beaten, and then the tyrant ordered fires to be brought to him and flames placed beneath him. Gore flowed from his wounds, and the blood poured out from his gashed sores quenched the very globes of flame; but he, amid the crackling of the fires, was heard saying: 'I give You thanks, O Lord, that You have granted us to say: We have passed through the fire, even as elsewhere Your prophet likewise says: You have tried us with fire, as silver is tried by fire. I shall stand before You like gold purified in the burning, and if there was any fault, the fire has burned it away.'
And so this one too, transfigured from corruption to incorruption, breathed out his life. To the sixth also torments were applied. But he said: 'Do not err in vain and ascribe to your own power the fact that you wreak these things against us. This is the price of our own offences, that we sinners are punished; and thanks be to the Lord, that here a double penalty for our sins is exacted from us, so that there consolation may be brought to us. Thanks too to you, that you are so hard and pitiless, so that by such sufferings of ours the Lord, against whom we have sinned, may become favourable to our nation. We too lighten our burden, while we delight in the sufferings of our faith.' And this one, mangled with hard and cruel torments, was laid beside his brothers.
There remained the youngest of the brothers, and Antiochus was already ashamed to have been thus made a mockery by one of immature age. And so, desiring to deceive him by guile, he promised honours, riches, his own friendship, a share in his secret counsels. But the holy mother admonished her son, saying to him as to the others: 'I know not how you came into my womb; neither did I give you the spirit nor form your members, but these are the gifts of Almighty God.' Antiochus, seeing the mother anxious, supposed that she feared for his safety, and began to urge her too to call her son back from his purpose. But she, in her native tongue, said to her son: 'You alone, my son, remain, the height of my desires;
you, the last, closed up my child-bearing; you, the last, close up my joys. Have pity on me, who carried you in my womb through so many months' courses; do not in one moment confound my old age, do not tarnish the trophies of so many of your brothers, do not forsake their holy company, do not desert their fellowship. These triumphs still await you. Look up to heaven, whence you drew your breath, to the Father of all; look down to the earth, which first ministered nourishment to you; look to your brothers, who seek their comrade; look to your mother, who gave you milk. Repay the wages of holy blood: do not be torn away from your brothers, do not be torn away from your mother. The wealth that Antiochus promises is temporal, the honours temporal: everlasting is the crown that is bestowed by God Almighty.
For us the Lord gave seven days' lights; the sixth day I have now closed, and the works of all were very good. You owe it to me, my son, that for what I laboured in those six, I may rest in you on the seventh, as one now keeping holiday from the works of this world.' And so the youth, springing forward, said: 'What are you waiting for?' And crying aloud that he could in no wise be torn from the fellowship of his brothers—whose funerals were far more blessed than the king's commands—while he pressed upon the king with reproaches, he too, racked with bitter kinds of torments, discharged the debt of this life. Last of all the mother was offered to death. Who would deny her blessed, who, as though walled about by seven ramparts, stood among the bodies of her sons, feeling no assault of death?
Who, I ask, would doubt of her blessedness—she who, encompassed by seven towers, lifted up her head to the seat of paradise; who, girt about with seven sons, brought a most holy choir to God upon the heavenly altars, attuned to sing the praises of the Lord not only with melodious voices but also with their sufferings? How good a child-bearing of faith, how safe a harbour is that of piety, how splendid a lamp of the Church, gleaming with sevenfold light, and from an eighth womb supplying oil to all those lights! Of whom it is beautifully said:
'Give a portion to those seven, and indeed to those eight,' because in either number they obtain the fellowship of grace—nourished under the Law, crowned through grace; seven as in the Sabbath, eight as in the Gospel—with the holy mother added as the supplement of the passion, who in such sons both brought forth and gave birth to the perfect form of piety. There come back to memory the words of the holy woman speaking to her sons: 'I bore you, I poured into you the juice of milk: do not lose your nobility.' Thus other mothers are wont to call their sons back from martyrdom, not to call them to it. But she set her maternal affection in this—if she should persuade her sons to a life eternal rather than temporal.
And so the holy mother watched the contests of her sons; and although she was shaken with the compassion of a mother's heart, by her zeal for piety she repressed her grief, and when Antiochus offered—when she could have chosen the safety of her sons—she preferred their peril; and stifling the groans of nature, she wished the punishment of her sons to be increased, that death might draw nearer the sooner. We see the marks of a mother turned upon her sons, that she might leave none surviving, but acquire them all as holy coheirs of death. Nor were the sons lesser than such a parent—they who exhorted one another, who said with one zeal and a certain keenness of spirit: 'Let us crush the onslaught of hostile death. For then shall we live, when we have died. Let no one abandon the order of piety, let no one withdraw himself from the triumphant battle.
Not to man, but to Almighty God have we devoted our souls. Not for man, but for the Author of all do we war. Such is this combat, that he conquers the more gloriously who has been the more cruelly slain.' And so no one feared, no one trembled, none of so many brothers was more sluggish toward death, but all ran to death through bitter torments as though to the path of immortality. And the mother, beholding in harmony the ranks of her sons, like a devout soul offered up the members of her own body in her sons, and through her own limbs she seemed to herself to undergo the longed-for torments.
The sons fell, mangled by the torments; the dead were rolled upon the dead, bodies were tumbled upon bodies, heads were hewn off upon heads, the place was filled with the corpses of her sons: yet the mother did not weep, did not lament, did not close the eyes or the mouth of any one of the dying, did not wash their wounds—knowing they were more glorious if they were seen disembowelled and caked alike with dust and blood, as victors are wont to return from war, as men are wont to bring back trophies from the enemy. She judged that no coverings should be cast over them, no funeral rites should follow, save in the company of her own death as well. What harp could pour forth sweeter songs than the sons had uttered as they admonished one another amid such grievous torments?
For nature's groan burst forth even from the unwilling. You might have gazed in order upon the corpses of the slain, like the strings of a lyre. You might have heard the seven-stringed psaltery resounding with triumphant groans. Not so would those alluring songs of the Sirens, as they say, draw on the listener; for those drew men to shipwreck, these to the victory of sacrifice. Nor so would the swan's songs charm the ears and the mind; for swans die by the lot of nature, these were dying for love of piety. Not so do the hoarse murmurings of doves resound in the secret grove, as the last words of the dying resounded with the utmost sweetness.
Nor does the moon shine so among the stars, as the mother among her sons; and as she led them out, about to illumine them for martyrdom, she shone, and when, embracing her victors, she lay in the midst of her sons. O mother truly stronger than adamant, sweeter than honey, more fragrant than any flower! O indissoluble bond of piety! O love truly mighty as death, a zeal of devotion and faith hard as hell! No floods of so many sufferings could quench your love, no rivers of such great bitternesses could overwhelm it. As the ark in that flood of the world was borne unharmed over the spaces of the whole earth, so you too stood immovable in piety against the surge of such grievous sufferings, and, when you could have chosen the safety of your sons, you would not.
With what affection shall I follow after you, holy pledges of a holy mother? With what brush of my speech shall I depict the likeness of your forms and of your souls? You stood among the royal armies, to which the whole world was subdued, which even India, fleeing into the hidden recesses of the farthest sea, shunned; and you alone carried off the victory over a proud king without any martial conflict. In you the arms of piety alone conquered; the tyrant paid the penalty both because he could not conquer you and because he was destroyed by a horrible death.