教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 3 章

These things, then, we have said briefly, that we might show how great is the weight of governance, lest whoever is unequal to it should dare to profane the sacred offices of rule, and through the lust for the summit should take up the leadership of perdition. Hence indeed James devoutly forbids it, saying: Be not many masters, my brethren (James III, 1). Hence the very Mediator of God and men avoided receiving a kingdom on earth, who, transcending also the knowledge and sense of the supernal spirits, reigns in heaven before the ages. For it is written: Jesus therefore, when He had known that they would come to take Him by force and make Him king, fled again into the mountain Himself alone (John VI, 15).

For who could have ruled over men so without fault as He who would govern those whom He Himself had created? But because He had come in the flesh for this reason — that He might not only redeem us through His Passion, but also teach us through His manner of life, presenting Himself as an example to His followers — He would not become king, yet of His own accord came to the gibbet of the cross; He fled the offered glory of the summit, He sought after the penalty of a shameful death; that His members might learn, namely, to flee the favors of the world, to fear its terrors not at all, to love adversity for the sake of truth, and in dread to shun prosperity, since both of these often defile the heart through swelling pride, while those others purge it through sorrow. In these the spirit raises itself up; in those, however, even when it has raised itself, it is laid low.

In these things a man forgets himself; in those, however, even unwilling and constrained, he is recalled to the memory of himself. In these the goods even of former deeds often perish; in those, however, the offenses even of long time are wiped away. For for the most part the heart is pressed down under discipline by the mastery of adversity; but if it has burst forth to the summit of governance, it is straightway changed into elation by the habit of glory. So Saul, who, considering himself unworthy, had first fled, swelled with pride as soon as he took up the helm of the kingdom (1 Sam. X, 22; XV, 11, 30); for, desiring to be honored before the people while he was unwilling to be publicly rebuked, he rent the very one who had anointed him into the kingdom (Acts XIII, 22).

So David, pleasing by the judgment of his Author in almost all his acts, as soon as he was free from the weight of pressure, burst out into the swelling of a wound (2 Sam. XI, 3 ff.), and became cruelly rigid in the death of a man, he who had been weakly dissolute in the lust for a woman; and he who before had known piously to spare the wicked, afterward learned, without the obstacle of any reconsideration, to pant after the slaughter even of the good (ibid., 15). For at first he was unwilling to strike the persecutor he had caught, and afterward, with loss to a sweating army, he destroyed even a devoted soldier. Surely his guilt would have carried him far from the number of the elect, had not the scourges recalled him to pardon.