(Admonition 13.) The whole and healthy are to be admonished in one way, and the sick in another. The whole are to be admonished to exercise the health of the body toward the health of the mind; lest, if they bend the grace of the health received to the use of wickedness, they be made worse by the gift; and afterward deserve graver punishments, in that they now do not fear to make evil use of the more abundant good things of God. The whole are to be admonished not to despise the opportunity of meriting salvation forever. For it is written: 'Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation' (2 Cor. 6:2). They are to be admonished lest, having been unwilling to please God when they could, they be unable to when they will, though too late. For hence it is that wisdom afterward forsakes those whom, long refusing, it first called, saying:
'I called, and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and there was none who regarded; you have despised all my counsel, and neglected my rebukes; I also will laugh at your destruction, and mock you when that which you feared shall come upon you' (Prov. 1:24, ff.). And again: 'Then they shall call upon me, and I will not hear; they shall rise early, and shall not find me' (Prov. 1:28). And so, when the health of the body, received for working good, is despised, of how great a gift it was is felt when it is lost. And it is sought fruitlessly at the last, which, granted at a fitting time, is not usefully possessed. Whence it is again well said through Solomon: 'Give not your honour to strangers, and your years to the cruel;'
'lest strangers be filled with your strength, and your labours be in another's house, and you groan at the last, when you have consumed your flesh and your body' (Prov. 5:9, ff.). For who are strangers to us, but the malignant spirits, who are separated from the lot of the heavenly homeland? But what is our honour, save that, though created in bodies of clay, we are yet made to the image and likeness of our Creator? Or who else is the cruel one, but that apostate angel, who both struck himself down by the punishment of death through pride, and, though himself lost, did not spare to bring death upon the human race? He gives his honour, then, to strangers, who, created to the image of God...
...and likeness created, yet administers the seasons of his life to the pleasures of the malignant spirits, gives his honour to strangers. He also delivers his years to the cruel one, who spends the spaces of living he has received upon the will of the evilly domineering adversary. Where it is well subjoined: 'Lest strangers be filled with your strength, and your labours be in another's house.' For whoever, through the received soundness of the body, through the wisdom bestowed upon his mind, toils not in exercising virtues but in perpetrating vices, in no way multiplies by his own strength his own house, but the dwellings of strangers, that is, the deeds of the unclean spirits, doing this surely either by luxuriating or by pride, so that, himself being added, the number of the lost may grow. And it is well subjoined:
And you will groan at the last, when you have consumed your flesh and your body. For very often health of the flesh, once received, is squandered upon vices; but when it is suddenly withdrawn, when the flesh is worn away by afflictions, when the soul is already pressed to depart, the health that was ill used is sought again, as though for living well. And then men groan that they were unwilling to serve God, when by serving they can in no way recover the losses of their negligence. Whence it is said elsewhere: 'When he slew them, then they sought him' (Psalm 78:34). But on the contrary, the sick are to be admonished to perceive that they are sons of God in this very thing, that the scourges of discipline chastise them. For unless he were disposing to give them an inheritance once corrected, he would not take care to instruct them through afflictions.
For hence the Lord says to John through the angel: 'I rebuke and chasten those whom I love' (Revelation 3:19; Proverbs 3:11). Hence again it is written: 'My son, do not neglect the discipline of the Lord, nor grow weary when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and he scourges every son whom he receives' (Hebrews 12:5-6). Hence the Psalmist says: 'Many are the tribulations of the righteous, and from them all the Lord delivered them' (Psalm 34:19). Hence too blessed Job, crying out in his pain, says: 'If I be righteous, I will not lift up my head, being sated with affliction and misery' (Job 10:15). It is to be said to the sick that, if they believe the heavenly fatherland to be their own, they must of necessity endure toils in this present life as though in a foreign land.
For hence it is that the stones were hewn outside, that in the building of the Lord's temple they might be laid without the sound of a hammer; because, namely, we are now beaten outwardly by scourges, so that afterwards we may be set in place within the temple of God without the stroke of discipline, in order that whatever is superfluous in us the present blow may cut away, and then only the concord of charity may bind us together in the edifice. The sick are to be admonished to consider with what harsh scourges of discipline carnal fathers chastise their sons for the sake of obtaining earthly inheritances. What then is that grievous penalty of divine correction to us, by which both an inheritance never to be lost is obtained, and torments ever to endure are shunned? For hence Paul says:
'We have indeed had the fathers of our flesh as instructors, and we reverenced them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? And they indeed for a few days instructed us according to their own will; but he for that which is profitable, in receiving his sanctification' (Hebrews 12:9-10). The sick are to be admonished to consider how great a health of the heart bodily affliction is, which recalls the mind to knowledge of itself, and often, when health casts it away, renews the memory of infirmity, so that the soul, which is led outside itself into elation, may be reminded, by the flesh it endures being smitten, to what condition it is subject.
This is rightly signified in the case of Balaam (if only he had been willing to follow the voice of God by obeying), in that very delay of his journey (Numbers 22:23ff.). For Balaam strains to reach his purpose, but the beast over which he presides hinders his desire. For the ass, delayed by the obstruction, sees the angel whom the human mind does not see; because very often the flesh, made slow by afflictions, points out to the mind, by its own scourge, the God whom the mind itself, presiding over the flesh, did not see, so that it hinders the anxiety of a spirit desiring to advance in this world, as one bent on a journey, until the invisible One who meets it becomes known to it. Whence it is also well said through Peter:
'The dumb beast of burden, subject to the yoke, received a rebuke of his madness, in that, speaking with a man's voice, it restrained the prophet's folly' (2 Peter 2:15-16). For the insane man is rebuked by the dumb beast of burden, when the exalted mind is reminded by the afflicted flesh of the good of humility which it ought to hold. But Balaam did not obtain the gift of this rebuke, because, going forth to curse, he changed his voice, not his mind. The sick are to be admonished to consider how great a gift bodily affliction is, which both washes away sins committed and restrains those that might have been committed; which, taken from outward blows, inflicts on the smitten mind the wounds of penitence. Whence it is written: 'The bruise of a wound wipes away evils, and stripes in the innermost parts of the belly' (Proverbs
20:30). For the bruise of a wound wipes away evils, because the pain of scourges washes away wickednesses whether thought or committed. Now by the name of the belly the mind is wont to be understood; because, just as the belly consumes food, so the mind, by pondering, digests its cares. For that the belly means the mind is taught by that saying in which it is written: 'The lamp of the Lord is the breath of man, which searches out all the secrets of the belly' (ibid.). As if to say: The illumination of the divine breath, when it comes into the mind of man, illuminating it to itself, shows it those things which, before the coming of the Holy Spirit, it was able both to carry as depraved thoughts and yet knew not how to weigh. Therefore the bruise of a wound wipes away evils, and stripes in the innermost parts of the belly;
because when we are outwardly smitten, we are silently and afflictedly recalled to the memory of our sins, and we bring back before our eyes all that has been ill done by us, and by this very thing which we suffer outwardly, we grieve the more inwardly for what we have done. Whence it comes about that, amid the open wounds of the body, the hidden stripe of the belly cleanses us the more, because the hidden wound of pain heals the wickednesses of depraved deeds. The sick are to be admonished to keep the virtue of patience, so as to consider unceasingly how great evils our Redeemer bore from those whom he had created; that he endured so many abject reproaches of insults; that, daily snatching from the hand of the ancient enemy the souls of captives, he received the buffets of his mockers;
that, while washing us with the water of salvation, he did not hide his face from the spittle of the faithless; that, while by his intercession delivering us from eternal torments, he silently endured scourges; that, while bestowing on us everlasting honors among the choirs of angels, he suffered blows; that, while saving us from the piercings of our sins, he did not refuse to bow his head to thorns; that, while intoxicating us with eternal sweetness, in his thirst he received the bitterness of gall; that he who for us adored the Father, though he was equal in divinity, being adored in mockery kept silence; that, while preparing life for the dead, life himself came even to death. Why then is it deemed harsh that a man should endure scourges from God for his evil deeds, if God endured such great evils from men for good deeds?
Or who, with sound understanding, should be ungrateful concerning his own chastisement, since he himself did not depart from this life without a scourge, who lived here without sin?