教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 2 章

And there are some who scrutinize spiritual precepts with diligent care, but what they penetrate by understanding they trample by living; they teach in haste the things they have learned not by deed but by meditation; and what they preach with words they assail by their morals. Hence it comes about that, when the pastor walks over precipices, the flock follows to the fall. Hence indeed the Lord complains through the prophet against the contemptible knowledge of pastors, saying: When you yourselves drank the clearest water, you fouled the rest with your feet; and my sheep fed on what had been trodden by your feet; and they drank what your feet had stirred up (Ezek. XXXIV, 18, 19).

The pastors drink the clearest water when, rightly understanding the streams of truth, they draw them in. But to disturb the same water with the feet is to corrupt the pursuits of holy meditation by living badly. The sheep, namely, drink their water disturbed by the feet, when subjects do not follow the words they hear, but imitate only the examples of depravity which they behold. And while they thirst for the sayings, because they are perverted through the works, they take up mud in their draughts as though from corrupted fountains. Hence too it is written through the prophet: The snare of my people's ruin are the wicked priests (Hos. V, 1; IX, 8). Hence again the Lord says concerning the priests through the prophet: They have become to the house of Israel a stumbling-block of iniquity. For no one (Dist. 83, c.

for no one) does more harm in the Church than he who, acting perversely, has the name or rank of holiness. For no one presumes to reprove such a delinquent; and the fault is grievously extended into an example, when for reverence of his rank the sinner is honored. But all the unworthy would flee the weights of so great a guilt, if with the solicitous ear of the heart they weighed the sentence of Truth, which says: He who shall scandalize one of these little ones who believe in me, it is expedient for him that an ass's millstone be hung about his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea (Matt. XVIII, 6). For by the ass's millstone is expressed the round and toil of secular life, and by the depth of the sea is signified the uttermost damnation.

He, therefore, who, brought to the appearance of holiness, destroys others either by word or by example — surely it had been better for him that earthly deeds under an exterior habit should have bound him to death, than that the sacred offices should display him as a model imitable for sin to the rest; because, of course, if he fell alone, in some measure a more tolerable penalty of hell would torment him.