Bishop Avitus to the lord king. The question which your piety has proposed for discussion must be referred wholly and entirely, by spiritual consideration, to the inner figure. For it is not promised that this be repaid with hundredfold interest — that which each has contributed, by pious profession and with a compassionate mind, for the nourishment of the poor; because even in this very bounty of almsgiving, in which the disposition of the doer rather than his wealth is regarded, it is not the quantity of the gift that is to be weighed, but of the zeal. Whence it came about, through the Gospel reading, that the poor offering of two coins is preferred to boundless gifts of gold and silver. And if it were repaid to that one giving widow according to the measure of a hundredfold, without doubt she who had brought in less than all would receive less than all.
Whence also, when St. Peter had said, 'Behold, we have left all things and followed you' (Matt. 19:27) — he who certainly, as the reading teaches, had left nothing other than the nets by which he carried on a scant living by the craft of fishing — this answer was given him: 'Everyone who shall have left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or fields for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life.' For since in the Holy Scriptures the number one hundred is hallowed with all perfection, discern that there are repaid a hundredfold, not the things bestowed in Christ's name, but the things relinquished for Christ's name:
for although the saving reward of almsgiving profits greatly, yet it is incomparably greater to leave all things than to dispense very much. Wherefore let your glory determine that this hundredfold is proclaimed of martyrdom alone, to whose crown no merit whatever of human work is equal. This is the hundredth fruit which indeed awaits eternal life in the world to come, but which in the present age also compensates with wondrous honour the insults inflicted upon the martyrs. Whence also in another place of the Gospel the Lord's word testifies that the sprout of the well-nourished seed, falling into good ground, went forth to a hundredfold crop.
Therefore he consecrates parents, wife, or children, or brothers to be relinquished only for Christ's name — that is, when, for the sake of upholding the confession of the Name, we must make a sacrifice not only of such kinship-ties, but even of our souls and bodies. Concerning which division the same Lord says in another place: 'I came to set sons against their parents, the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law' (Matt. 10:35): that is, that the persons of whatever affections, as we press on toward Christ, are to be forsaken if they refuse to accompany us. But apart from this sense, it is gathered both by examples and by reason that these kinships ought not always to be dismissed by us as though prejudged.
For those relatives too are not to be dismissed who hasten to the heavenly crowns by contempt of the world, trampling death underfoot; nor can we persuade the faithful to cast off their marriages or their parents, since the Lord cries out that it is not lawful for a man to dismiss his wife. 'And what God has joined together,' he says, 'let not man put asunder' (Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:9). And the Apostle testifies (1 Tim. 5:8) that he who does not provide for his own, and especially for his kin, denies the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Peter followed the Lord, and Peter's own wife followed Peter. When the carnal use had ceased, the spiritual comfort remained. And with his brother Andrew accompanying him, he had dismissed neither brother nor wife, in whose company he clung to the footsteps of Christ.
Wherefore it is to be feared that persons of this kind do not so much obstruct us as hinder us. For since the divine word sets before every kind, rank, and dignity of men the heavenly kingdom to be obtained, he is a rash preacher who, given the office of princes that administer the kingdom at the divine bidding, should advise that all the things we said above must be relinquished; whereas even to persons of this eminence contempt of the world may be suggested and the kingdom of heaven promised — the Apostle, as you recall, testifying to the wealthy (1 Tim. 6:17-19) that they should be rich in good works, and lay up for themselves a good foundation, so as to lay hold of the true life. To whom, according to this sentence, even the use of fields or revenues will be able to profit, if the craving for them does no harm.
Yet there is also another kind of sanctity, in which, if a time of persecution be at hand, a full confession may imitate a certain martyrdom. For if anyone should change the ancient custom or sect of his parents by believing better, and not be held fast by the privilege of custom, when truth summons to the love of salvation, this man usefully dismisses parents, brothers, and sisters: like the rich Abraham, who, enjoying all heavenly gifts, and rightly using sons, servants, gold, silver, patrimony, and marriage, nevertheless shook himself free from his fatherland and his kindred by a vow to change his religion; and, with old age now impending, receiving the sign of circumcision by which Christianity was prefigured, he foreshowed that those already advanced in age can become children by conversion.
Of whom the prophetic word also says: 'The child a hundred years old shall die' (Isa. 65:20): that is, he shall receive a hundredfold in that he has been made a child; whom, excelling by the aforesaid plurality of the sacred number, just as the newness of living made him a child in his mature age, so the renewal thus preserved shall make him one who has advanced into immortal longevity.