i. His 0 itaquesuperinvidiadisputatis, quamgravimaloetiamvanitasvanosinvolvat, consequenterexpediam. Quæutfaciliusvitaripossit, quidinsecorruptionishabeatbreviterdeclaremus.
1. And so, these things having been discussed concerning envy, I shall consequently set forth with how grievous an evil vanity also entangles the vain. That it may the more easily be avoided, let us briefly declare what corruption it has in itself.
For vanity is a certain inflated disposition of a languishing soul concerning its various delights, greedy of attaining honor and at the same time ignorant of it, smitten with the disease of empty excellence, hollow, diseased, turbulent, mistress of frivolous minds, flattering to all who are ill-founded, smoky to those who resist, seductive to those to be captured, unconquered over those captured; a certain imitation of the virtues, the soul of the vices, the kindling of carnal delights, the blight of morals, the appetite for dignities; sweet to the wretched, bitter to the perfect, perilous to the wavering, overbearing to the subjected, weak toward the well-founded; it easily takes captive, delights its captives, vexes the ambitious, puffs up the narrow-minded, humbles the puffed-up;
whom the swollen serve, under whom the haughty lie prostrate, whom the lost find, to whom those about to fall run, in whom those already fallen seem to themselves to stand. 2. This is vanity, which does not, as is supposed, drain out any virtues, but, when it has been received by the vicious, strengthens the license of the vices; for the rest, it does not penetrate at all minds full of virtues. It tempts therefore the empty and those propped up by no virtues; and those very ones, puffed up with the arrogance of ruinous ambition, it casts headlong into hidden disgraces by a certain delight in raging publicly—just as a tempest tosses an empty ship in different directions with swelling waves, and on the threshing-floor, while the grain remains by its own weight, the light wind snatches the chaff from it. And if this is so, vanity does not make men vicious, but reveals them:
carrying them around with the wind of its own blast, and whirling them about, driven by slippery affections; men who accommodate themselves to all its impulses by the zeal of their own will; who shamefully boast of works of which they are not even conscious; who wickedly aspire to be praised by all; who, by comparison with themselves, disparage holy men; who, lifted up by the vice of popular favor, think that nothing of perfection is lacking to them. They rejoice in the greetings of those they meet, they favor their flatterers, they obey their pleasures, they please all base men. They are eager to teach what they do not know, they wish lofty things to be believed about themselves, they prefer delightful things to weighty ones; they curse with the lip what they lust after in the soul; they impose the names of virtues on their vices.
They deceive themselves, they beguile those who favor them. Swift in honorable promising, false in performing. Changeable from the good, tenacious of the bad. Grave in word, base in soul, deceitful everywhere. Glad at prosperity, fragile under adversity. Puffed up at services rendered, anxious at reproaches. Immoderate toward joys, easy toward human things, always difficult toward honorable things. 3. Vanity therefore oppresses those enticed by these and like things, and permits them neither to feel their own disease nor to come to the physician. And what is it to come to the physician, but for the sick man to acknowledge his own infirmities, and not to be pleased with himself, but to be confounded over deeds which had seemed to him glorious?
This indeed those men do not do who, inflamed with the desire of acquiring a reputation, devote themselves only to those works by which human favor is purchased, and despise the goods of character; and the ardor of human praise so inflames them that they take up without labor, and gladly perform, the laborious and elaborate things which the populace admires and by which fame is spread abroad. Hence it comes that to fast, to abstain, to keep vigil, to frequent the church, or to chant psalms—though all these things are not done without labor—those who long to please men by them do them even with delight: not that men of God do not also do these things, but that those are proved to render them to God rather than to men, who more fervently strive to excel even in holy conduct. 4.
But if anyone shines outwardly, where he can be believed great, and within, where God alone sees, is squalid; who would not understand that all those continual labors of abstinence and fastings and vigils—which the love of God makes bearable to us, but to them the love of human praise and inflamed vanity—are not ornaments of character, but veils of vices? Wherefore true fasts, abstinences, vigils, almsgivings, and the rest of this kind, ought to increase our good, not to veil sin; and they are to be rendered to God not in place of righteousness, but together with righteousness: since indeed they ought to fulfill the precepts much more attentively, who are prepared to transcend them by the love of perfection.
Otherwise, if the envious, the proud, the puffed-up, the covetous, do not repress these and similar evils of their breast, and yet wear out their body by fastings and the labor of abstinence, however continuous: neither do those works, expended on vanity, justify them, and these vices, which they neglect to amend, condemn them. And so, although throughout this book, with each of the individual vices dealt with, I have also subjoined the remedies by which they may be guarded against or amended, here nevertheless, for the sake of brevity, a certain general rule, the Lord enlightening, must be shown; relying on which rule truly, men may withstand all sins. No thing so preserves us free from all sin as the fear of punishment and the love of God.