But as for what the Apostle says (I Pet. 5:3), that we ought to present a pattern to the faithful, what will it avail if he to whom the care of exhorting the good or chastising the wicked has been committed shows himself worthy of imitation to the good by living well, yet does not correct the wicked by keeping silent? For to this end, unless my opinion deceives me, a priest must live holily: lest he nullify his own words by contrary deeds—if he does not do what he preaches ought to be done, or if he presumes to preach what he does not do. But if he acts otherwise, he profits nothing among those who know his life;
for to this end he is set over the Church of God: that he may not only instruct others by the example of his own manner of life through living well, but also, by preaching with confidence, set their sins before each one's eyes—showing what punishment awaits the hardened, what glory awaits the obedient; despairing of no one's salvation, may he not contemn it; let him lament over the souls of those who refuse to amend, imitating the Apostle, who says: That I may mourn for many of those who sinned before and did not do penance (II Cor. 12:21); and again: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn (II Cor. 11:29)? Wherefore, knowing that if he spares any rich or powerful persons and favors those who live wickedly, he both ruins them and perishes himself;
he ought both to live holily for the sake of example, and to teach for the sake of the office of his administration: certain that his own righteousness will avail him nothing, from whose hand the soul of the one perishing is required. For whenever any other person perishes, upon whom no necessity of teaching rests, he alone will pay the penalty of his own crime; but that man to whom the dispensation of the word has been committed, even if he lives holily and yet either is ashamed or afraid to reprove those who live in ruin, perishes together with all who perish while he keeps silent. And what will it profit him not to be punished for his own sin, who must be punished for another's? Let me be proved a liar, unless the Lord speaks this through the prophet Ezekiel under a kind of terrifying warning, saying to him:
And you, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel (Ezek. 33:7). Nor ought we to hear this in passing, that he calls the priest a watchman: so that, just as it belongs to a watchman to look out from a higher place and to behold more than all others, so a priest ought to be loftier than all by the sublimity of his office, and to have the grace of greater knowledge appointed to him, by which he may be able to instruct those living under him. Let us now see what the divine word contains. Hearing, he says, the word from my mouth, you shall announce it to them from me (ibid.); so that the priest may speak what he has learned from the divine reading, what God has inspired in him, not what he has discovered by the presumption of human sense. You shall announce it to them, he says, from me. From me;
you do not speak my words from yourself. There is no reason for you to be puffed up over them as though they were your own. From me, he says, announce to them. But now let us hear what he is to announce: If, when I say to the wicked man, 'O wicked one, you shall surely die,' you do not speak so that the wicked man may guard himself from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand (ibid., 8). What could be said more expressly, what more plainly? If you do not speak to the wicked man, he says, that he may guard himself from his wickedness, and he perishes, his blood I will require at your hand. This is to say: If you do not announce to him his sins, if you do not reprove him so that he may turn from his wickedness and live;
both you, who did not rebuke, and he himself, who sinned while you kept silent, I will destroy with everlasting flames. Who, I ask, will be of so stony a breast, who so made of iron, whom this sentence does not terrify? Who so estranged from faith that he does not believe this sentence?