For not because he is impious or wicked shall he therefore go unpunished, on the ground that his malice could not harm the just. For the endurance and virtue of the just profits, not him who inflicted death or torments, but him who received what was inflicted upon him patiently, unto reward. And therefore this man too will deservedly be punished for the savagery of his cruelty, because he willed to inflict evil; and the other, nonetheless, has suffered nothing evil, because, patiently sustaining by the virtue of his soul the temptations and sorrows, he made those things which were inflicted with an evil purpose pertain to the advancement of a better state and to the blessedness of eternal life.
For neither did the patience of Job acquire a reward for the devil, because it rendered him more illustrious by his temptations, but rather for that very man who bravely bore them; nor shall Judas be granted immunity from eternal punishment, because his betrayal profited unto the salvation of the human race. For it is not the outcome of the work that is to be considered, but the disposition of the worker. Wherefore this definition ought to be immovably kept in us: that evil can be inflicted upon no one by another, save upon him who has contracted it by the sloth of his own heart and by pusillanimity—the blessed Apostle confirming this same sentence in one little verse: 'But we know that to those who love God all things work together for good.'
For in saying 'all things work together for good,' he comprehends together not only those things which are prosperous, but even those which are thought adverse. Through which, in another place also, the same Apostle describes himself to have passed, when he says: 'through the arms of righteousness which are on the right hand and on the left'—that is, through glory and dishonor, through infamy and good report; as deceivers, and yet truthful; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as needy, yet enriching many'—and so forth.
All things therefore that are reckoned prosperous and are said to be of the right hand—which the holy Apostle designated by the name of glory and good report—and those also which are esteemed adverse—which he plainly expressed through dishonor and infamy, and describes as being on the left—become to the perfect man arms of righteousness, if he sustains magnanimously those inflicted upon him; namely, because, fighting by means of these, and using these very adversities by which he is thought to be assailed as weapons—wielding them like a bow and sword and a most valid shield against those who bring them upon him—thus fortified, he acquires the advancement of his patience and virtue; seizing a most glorious triumph of constancy from those very weapons of the enemy which are inflicted lethally; neither elated by prosperity nor cast down by adversity, but always advancing on a level path and by the royal way, never moved from that state of tranquility by supervening gladness as though to the right, nor again impelled as to the left by inrushing adversity and dominating sadness.
'For much peace have they that love Thy name, and there is no stumbling-block to them.' But of those who are changed with each befalling chance according to its quality and variety, it is thus said: 'But the fool shall be changed like the moon.' For as it is said of the perfect and wise, 'To those who love God all things work together for good,' so of the weak and foolish it is pronounced, 'All adverse things befall the senseless man.' For he neither profits by prosperous things nor is amended by adverse. For it belongs to the same virtue to bear sorrowful things bravely as to govern prosperous ones with moderation; and it is most certain that he who is overcome in one of the two can endure neither. Yet a man can more easily be dashed down by prosperity than by adversity.
For these adverse things sometimes restrain and humble even the unwilling, and by a most wholesome compunction either make them sin less or amend them; but those prosperous things, exalting the mind with soft and pernicious blandishments, cast down the secure by a greater ruin through the very outcome of their felicity. These, therefore, are they who are figuratively called in the Holy Scriptures ἀμφοτεροδέξιοι, that is, ambidextrous—as that Ehud (Aoth) in the book of Judges is described to have been, who used either hand for the right.
Which virtue we too shall be able intellectually to possess, if, by good and right use, we make both those things which are prosperous and reckoned of the right, and those which are adverse and called of the left, to pertain to the right part, so that whatever things are inflicted may become to us, according to the Apostle, arms of righteousness. For we perceive that our inner man subsists by two parts and, so to speak, hands; and none of the saints can be without this left hand of which we speak; but herein perfect virtue is discerned, if he converts both to the right by using them well.
And that what we say may be more plainly understood: the holy man has a right hand, namely spiritual successes, in which he then stands when, fervent in spirit, he masters all desires and lusts; when, secure from every diabolical assault, without any labor or difficulty he either rejects or cuts off the vices of the flesh; when, uplifted from the earth, he contemplates all present and earthly things as empty smoke and a hollow shadow, and despises them as things soon to pass away; when, through an ecstasy of mind, he not only most ardently desires future things but even more clearly beholds them; when he is more effectually fed on spiritual contemplations; when, the heavenly mysteries being unlocked to him, he beholds them more lucidly; when he sends up his prayers to God more purely and more eagerly; when, thus enkindled with the ardor of the spirit, he migrates with all alacrity of soul to those things which are invisible and eternal, so that he no longer believes himself to stand in the flesh at all.
He likewise has also a left hand, when he is entangled in the whirlwinds of temptations; when he is inflamed toward the desires of the flesh by the heats of enticements; when he is kindled to the fury of anger by the fire of perturbations; when he is beaten by the elation of pride or vainglory (cenodoxia); when he is depressed by the sadness that works death; when he is shaken by the engines and the assault of acedia; and when, all spiritual fervor being withdrawn, he grows torpid with a certain tepidity and irrational gloom, so that not only is he deserted by right and fervent thoughts, but even psalm, prayer, reading, and the seclusion of the cell all at once become a horror to him, and by a certain intolerable and foul disgust all the instruments of virtue grow loathsome; by which when the monk is beaten, let him know that he is pressed on his left side.
Whoever, therefore, in those things which we have said before to be of the right part is in no way elated by creeping-in vanity of glory, and, fighting manfully in those which are of the left part, falls by no despair, but rather takes from contraries certain arms of patience for the exercise of virtue, will use either hand for the right, and, made a triumphant conqueror in both actions, will attain the palm of victory as much from the left estate as from the right. Such we read blessed Job to have deserved to be, who indeed was crowned by his right hand when, the father of seven sons, walking opulent and rich, he offered daily sacrifices to the Lord for their purification, desiring to present them as received and familiar not so much to himself as to God; when his door
stood open to everyone who came; when he was the foot of the lame and the eye of the blind; when from the fleeces of his sheep the shoulders of the weak were warmed; when he was the father of orphans and the husband of widows; when he did not even in his heart rejoice over the ruin of his enemy.
And the same man again, through the left part, by a more sublime virtue triumphed over adversities: when, bereaved of seven sons in one moment, he was not consumed as a father by bitter grief, but as a true servant of God rejoiced over the will of his Creator; when, from wealthy become most poor, from rich made naked, from strong become wasted, from renowned and glorious become ignoble and despised, he retained the uncorrupted fortitude of soul; when at last, destitute of all substance and wealth, he was made a dweller of the dunghill, and, as though a most severe executioner of his own body, with a potsherd scraped the flowing gore, and from every part of his limbs drew off clods of worms, his fingers plunged into the depths of his wounds.
In all which, despairing in nothing, he slipped into no blasphemy, nor murmured against his Creator in anything. Nay rather, by no means terrified by so great a mass and bitterness of temptations, he tore off and cast away that very garment which had remained to his body out of all his former substance—and which alone, because he was clothed with it, had been able to be saved from the devil's devastation—and added to that nakedness which the most cruel plunderer had brought upon him a voluntary nakedness. The hair of his head too, which alone had remained untouched of the relics of his former glory, he cast, shorn, to his tormentor; and, cutting off even that which the raging enemy had left, with that heavenly voice he exults and insults against him:
'If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not sustain evil things? Naked came I forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it has pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.' Deservedly might I call Joseph too ambidextrous, who in prosperity was more pleasing to his father, more dutiful toward his brothers, more acceptable to God; and in adversity was chaste, faithful to his master, most gentle in prison to the bound, forgetful of injuries, beneficent to his enemies—and to the envious and, as far as lay in them, his murdering brothers, found not only pious but even bountiful. These, therefore, and their like are rightly called ἀμφοτεροδέξιοι, that is, ambidextrous.
For they use either hand for the right, and, passing amid those things which the Apostle enumerates, they say alike: 'through the arms of righteousness which are on the right hand and on the left, through glory and dishonor, through infamy and good report,' and so forth. Concerning which right hand or left, Solomon thus speaks in the person of the bride in the Song of Songs: 'His left hand is under my head, and His right hand shall embrace me.' Which, although he signifies both to be useful, yet he places that left hand under the head, because the adverse parts ought to lie subject to the principal seat of the heart. For to this end only are they useful: that for a time they may exercise us and train us unto salvation, and render us perfect unto patience.
The right hand, however, she desires to cleave to her by the saving embrace of the Bridegroom, that she may cherish and forever preserve herself, and to be inseparably bound to it. We shall therefore be ambidextrous when neither the abundance nor the want of present things has changed us, and when the former has not driven us to the pleasures of harmful relaxation, nor the latter drawn us to despair and complaint; but rendering thanks to God alike in both, we reap an equal fruit from prosperity and adversity. Such a man the true ambidexter, the teacher of the Gentiles, testifies himself to have been, saying: 'For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.'
'I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me.' Therefore, although we have said that temptation is twofold, that is, in things either prosperous or adverse, yet it must be known that all men are tempted for three reasons: usually for proving, sometimes for cleansing, occasionally for the deserts of their sins. And for proving indeed, as we read that blessed Abraham, that Job, and many of the saints endured countless tribulations; or that which is said in Deuteronomy to the people through Moses: 'And thou shalt remember all that journey through which the Lord thy God led thee forty years through the desert, to afflict thee and to prove thee, and that the things which were in thy mind might be made known, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or not.'
And that which is said in the psalm: 'I proved thee at the waters of contradiction.' To Job also: 'Dost thou think that I have spoken to thee otherwise than that thou mightest appear just?' But for cleansing, when he delivers over his just ones to divers temptations, humbling them for certain small and light sins, or for the pride of their purity, so that, smelting away in the present all the filth of their thoughts and (to use the prophet's word) the dross which he perceives to have hardened in their hidden parts, he may transmit them like pure gold to the examination to come, permitting nothing to remain in them which the fire of judgment, searching afterward, might find to purge away with penal torment; according to that: 'Many are the tribulations of the just,' and:
'My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord, neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him: for whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. For what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if you be without discipline, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards and not sons.' And in the Apocalypse: 'Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise.' To whom also, under the figure of Jerusalem, in the person of God, the word is thus directed through Jeremiah: 'For I will make a full end of all the nations among which I have scattered thee: but thee I will not make a full end; yet I will chastise thee in judgment, that thou mayest not seem to thyself innocent.' For which saving cleansing David prays, saying: 'Prove me, O Lord, and try me:
burn my reins and my heart.' Isaiah too, understanding the usefulness of this temptation, says: 'Correct us, O Lord, but yet in judgment, and not in thy fury'; and again: 'I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, for thou wast angry with me; thy wrath is turned away, and thou hast comforted me.' But for the desert of sins the blows of temptation are inflicted, as there the Lord threatens that he will send plagues upon the people of Israel, saying: 'I will send upon them the teeth of beasts, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground'; and: 'In vain have I struck your children, they have not received correction.' In the Psalms also: 'Many are the scourges of the sinner'; and in the Gospel: 'Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee.'
We find indeed also a fourth reason, whereby we know by the authority of the Scriptures that certain sufferings are laid upon some solely for the manifesting of the glory and works of God, according to that word of the Gospel: 'Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him'; and again: 'This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it.' But there are also other kinds of retribution, by which some who have surpassed the full measure of wickedness are struck in the present, as we read that Dathan and Abiron, or Core, were condemned, and above all those of whom the Apostle says: 'For which cause God delivered them up to shameful affections and to a reprobate sense,'
which is to be judged heavier even than the other punishments. For of these the Psalmist says: 'They are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men.' For they do not deserve to be saved by the visitation of the Lord, nor to obtain healing by temporal blows, who, despairing of themselves, 'have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all uncleanness'; and who, by hardness of heart and by the habit and frequency of sinning, escape the purgation of this most brief age and the retribution of the present life. To whom also the divine word reproaches through the prophet: 'I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became as a firebrand plucked out of the burning; and yet you returned not to me, saith the Lord.' And Jeremiah:
'I have slain and destroyed my people, and yet they are not returned from their ways'; and again: 'Thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved; thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than the rock, they have refused to return.' And when the prophet saw that all the medicine of this time had been spent in vain toward their healing, despairing as it were now of their salvation, he cries out: 'The bellows have failed in the fire, the founder hath melted in vain; for their wickednesses are not consumed. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord hath rejected them.'
That the Lord applied this saving purgation of fire in vain about those who are hardened in their crimes, he thus complains under the person of Jerusalem, caked with the deep rust of her sins: 'Set it empty upon the coals, that it may grow hot, and its brass may be melted, and its filth may be melted in the midst thereof. Great pains have been taken, and its great rust went not out of it, not even by fire. Thy uncleanness is execrable; because I desired to cleanse thee, and thou art not cleansed from thy filthiness.'
Wherefore, like a most skilled physician, when the Lord, having spent all the healing remedies and seeing that no kind of cure remains which can be fitted to their sickness, is as it were overcome by the greatness of their iniquities, and is compelled to depart from that his merciful chastisement; and so he announces to her, saying: 'I will no longer be angry with thee, and my jealousy is departed from thee.' But of others, whose heart the frequency of sins has not hardened, and who do not need that most severe and, so to speak, caustic medicine of fire, but for whom the instruction of the saving word suffices unto salvation, it is said: 'I will amend them at the hearing of their tribulation.'
We are not ignorant also of other causes of punishments or retributions, which are inflicted upon those who have grievously sinned, not to expiate their crimes nor to abolish the deserts of their sins, but for the amendment and the fear of the living. Which we know were manifestly brought upon Jeroboam the son of Nabath, and Baasa the son of Ahia, and Ahab and Jezabel, the divine sentence thus pronouncing: 'Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and I will cut down thy posterity, and I will kill of Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and the last in Israel. And I will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nabath, and like the house of Baasa the son of Ahia; because thou hast done to provoke me to anger, and hast made Israel to sin.'
'The dogs also shall eat Jezabel in the field of Jezrahel. If Ahab die in the city, the dogs shall eat him; but if he die in the field, the birds of the air shall eat him'; and that which is announced as a mighty threat: 'Thy carcass shall not be brought into the sepulchre of thy fathers.'
Not that this brief and momentary punishment could suffice to smelt away either the so profane devices of him who first set up golden calves for the perpetual transgression of the people and their impious separation from the Lord, or the so countless and so wicked crimes of the sacrileges of those others; but that upon the rest also, who, either neglecting the things to come or utterly disbelieving them, were broken only by the consideration of things present, the terror of those retributions which they feared might be struck by the example; and that they might recognize, by the proof of this severity, that with that majesty of the supreme Godhead there is no carelessness of human affairs and of daily governance, and might more manifestly perceive, through these things which they most grievously dreaded, that God is the requiter of all deeds.
We find indeed that even for lighter faults some received in the present the same sentence of death by which those also were punished whom we said before to have been the authors of sacrilegious transgression; as happened in the case of him who had gathered wood on the Sabbath, or in Ananias and Sapphira, who through the error of unfaithfulness had kept back some small part of their own substance.
Not that the weights of their sins were equal, but because, being found the presumptuous authors of a new transgression, they had to furnish to the rest an example as of sin, so also of punishment and terror, so that whosoever should thereafter attempt to aim at the same things might know that, according to the same form by which they were condemned—even if the penalty be deferred in the present—it must be repaid at the examination of the judgment to come. And because, while wishing to run through the kinds of temptations or retributions, we seem to have made a certain digression from the narration set before us, in which we were saying that the perfect man remains ever immovable in either temptation, let us now return again to the same.
Therefore the mind of the just man ought not to be like wax or any other softer material, which, ever yielding to the stamp of those who seal it, is shaped according to its form and image, and retains it in itself only until it is reshaped by another seal impressed over it; and so it comes to pass that, never persisting in its own quality, it is always turned and passes over to the form of the things impressed upon it. But rather it ought to be like a kind of adamantine seal, so that our mind, ever keeping its own inviolable figure, may stamp and transform all the impressions that fall upon it to the quality of its own state, while itself can be marked by no incursions. GERMANUS:
Can our mind continually retain one state and ever persist in the same quality? THEODORUS: It is necessary, according to the Apostle, that one 'renewed in the spirit of his mind' should each day advance, ever 'stretching forth to those things that are before'; or, if he neglect this, the consequence is that he goes back and slips down into the worse. And therefore the mind can in no way endure in one and the same quality. As if one should try to drive a boat by the impulse of oars against the waters of a violent river, he must either, cutting through the force of the torrent's channel by the strength of his arms, climb upward, or, his hands slackening, be carried headlong back down the descending stream.
Wherefore this will be a plain sign of our loss: if we understand that we have gained nothing further, let us not doubt that we have been altogether called backward on the very day on which we have not perceived ourselves to have advanced toward higher things. For, as I have said, the mind of man cannot continually remain in the same state, nor, while abiding in this flesh, will any one of the saints so possess the summit of the virtues as to persevere immovable in it. For it is necessary that something be always either added to them or taken away; and in no creature can there be such perfection as is not subject to the passion of mutability, according to that which is read in the book of blessed Job: 'What is man that he should be spotless, and he that is born of a woman that he should appear just?'
'Behold, among his saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not clean in his sight.' For we confess God alone to be unchangeable, whom alone the prayer of that holy prophet thus addresses: 'But thou art the selfsame'; and himself says of himself: 'I am God, and I change not'; because, namely, he alone is by nature always good, always full, and always perfect, to whom nothing can ever be either added or taken away. And therefore we ought always to stretch ourselves out to the pursuits of the virtues with unremitting care and solicitude, and to occupy ourselves continually in these exercises, lest, our progress ceasing, diminution forthwith follow.
For, as we have said, the mind is not able to remain in one and the same state—that is, so as neither to receive increases of the virtues nor to sustain losses. For not to have gained is, in it, to have diminished, because the appetite for advancing, once it ceases, will not be free from the danger of receding. And therefore continual abiding in the cell must be maintained. For as often as anyone strays from it, so often, upon returning, will he, like a new and beginning inhabitant, waver and be troubled.
For that intentness of mind which, sitting in the cell, he had acquired, if it be relaxed, he will not be able to recover again without labour and grief; and thus, brought back, he will not think of the progress lost—which he might have added had he not been shaken out of the cell—but will rather rejoice if he perceive himself to have recovered the very state from which he had fallen. For as time lost and past cannot be recalled again, so neither can those gains which have perished be restored. For however much the intentness of mind may afterward have wrought, it is the progress of the present day and the gain of the present time, not the reparation of profit once lost.
But that even the heavenly powers are subject to mutability, as we have said, those declare who from their number fell through the vice of a corrupted will. Whence not even those are to be thought to be of an unchangeable nature who persevere in that blessedness in which they were created, in that they have not been similarly depraved to the contrary part. For it is one thing to be of an unchangeable nature, another not to be changed through the industry of virtue and the guarding of good by the grace of the unchangeable God. For whatever is either acquired or held by diligence can also perish through negligence. And therefore it is said:
'Praise not any man before his death'; because, forsooth, one who is still set in the struggle and, so to speak, in the arena, although he is wont to conquer and to win frequent palms of victory, cannot yet be secure from the fear and misgiving of an uncertain outcome. And therefore God alone is called unchangeable or good, who, possessing goodness not by the pursuit of industry but by nature, cannot be anything other than good. No virtue therefore can be immovably possessed by man; but, that it may be continually held once won, it is necessary that it be always guarded by that same diligence and industry by which it was acquired.
But no one who has lapsed is to be believed to have fallen by a sudden ruin, but either, deceived at the very outset by a bad training, or through a long carelessness of mind—the vigour of the soul gradually departing and thereby the vices little by little increasing—to have collapsed by a miserable fall. For 'before contrition goeth injury, and before ruin an evil thought.' Just as a house never falls to ruin by a sudden shock, unless, whether by an old defect in the foundation or by the long slothfulness of the inhabitants, the coverings of the roof have been gradually corrupted by the smallest drops at first penetrating—which, through long-standing negligence laid open to a greater degree and collapsing, afterward let in streaming the storm of rains and showers.
'For by slothfulness the framing shall be brought low, and through the idleness of hands the house shall drip through.' That this happens spiritually to the soul, the same Solomon designates in other words thus, saying: 'The droppings drive a man out of his house on a winter's day.' Elegantly, therefore, did he compare carelessness of mind to a house and a neglected roof, through which at first, like certain most minute drops, the drippings of the passions penetrate to the soul.