'There was given to me a goad of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me, lest I be exalted; concerning which I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me; and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for virtue is made perfect in infirmity' (Ibid.). Never, therefore, is virtue instructed by gentler proofs, since the examples of the greatest virtues would then perish. Our vessel rejoices in tossings, when it is raised amid whirlwinds, when it is buffeted by raging waves; when this journey, rough with adversities arising, does not spare, provoking devout virtue to unremitting contest. For otherwise we cannot be happy before the Lord, unless it befall us to be purged by misfortunes and by earthly squalor.
Moreover, he is to be judged wretched and sick who, flabby with pleasures, wallows and lies among enticements. Let that man know himself unhappy who wanders among the delights of vices, pierced through by an enervated happiness. Wretched and unhappy is he who has not been tempted by unhappiness. For he lacks the gift who lacks also the contest. He who has dreaded the darts of adverse contest has never deserved to obtain the name of victor. Without doubt it is the mark of a cowardly soul to fear things fearful, of a base and idle one to pursue what is safe. An imperfect and languid good is virtue cast aside into ease without contest. For then vigour lies enervated and feeble, then the sick soul lies low, then the brightness lies obscured;
and therefore the bravest soldier must always stand in the battle-line, and must seek an occasion by which virtue, when shaken out, may shine forth. For to the lover of battles wounds are ornaments. Therefore, to despise labours and to come to the knowledge of virtue, there is need of trials, which are, as it were, the nurse that raises up strength. For that body is solid, and that mass of limbs robust, which frequent use has exercised. In short, husbandmen have brawny strength from frequent labour, their hands are worn hard, while among thorns and briars, with bowed body, the fruit is sought by sweat. The art of the sailor, whose vessel the storm has often twisted, while amid perils it strains toward harbour, has learned to ride out the waves and to fight with the tempest.
To shake out its darts a lacerated army is strong, and it seeks victories amid wounds, that it may please its own king. The runners' limbs are nimble, and practice, the schoolmaster, has taught and equipped them. Why say more? There is no one who has not, by the increase of temptations, ascended to more perfect estates, and, as victor, seized upon the reward. (Chapter VII) And so, while at first we endure small and moderate things, it is necessary that we learn to bear the greater or the greatest. For the bright proof of our warfare is to set our step through the steep, to be carried through hard things, and with hard strength to bear the hard sentence of miseries. To heaven the way is set for us through rough places, through narrow ones, through hard windings and defiles; and that way he has not kept who was unwilling to be tempted.
To heaven God calls the bravest soldier, whom pressures lead on with attending glories, and rewards receive as victor destined to reign. Does he meanwhile lay upon us anything abrupt, that exceeds the measure of a balanced weight? Does he heap on anything that by excess surpasses the fitness of our virtue? The most faithful governor commands the pack to be laid on according to our strength. This the proclamation of Paul attests and proves. 'God is faithful,' he says, 'who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which ye are able, but will bear it' (I Cor. X). So let us believe that we are led and ruled by the Lord, as disciples are governed by their teachers of letters:
they lay on and impose very much labour upon those whom they have seen to excel the rest in skilful talents; and we too temper the burden, according to the measure of their strength, upon the animals subjected to our dominion: we lay heavy things on the stronger, and light things on the slender, that use, that nurse of strength, may raise and advance their powers into the greatest vigour of youth. In this manner our first beginnings are chastised with light stripes, that thereafter, out of love, that is, of divine virtue, they may prepare accustomed strength for graver things. And although this principle abounds in many divine proofs, yet let us use some example even from worldly matters, for it does no harm to use another's things in that part in which they are ours.
Do you suppose that their own children are hateful to the Lacedaemonians, whose disposition and tender frames, still ignorant of toil, they put to the test, and, with public whippings applied, that very paternal affection exhorts them to bear the strokes of the scourges bravely; and, torn and half-dead, they beseech and beg them to persevere in setting wound before wound? What wonder if God permits you also, and his noble children and his own household, to be harshly tempted for the sake of the splendour of virtue to be fostered, being about to bestow perpetual kingdoms upon the victors? Who thus promises the wages of labour against whatever evils, and says: 'He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved' (Matt. X). And again:
'Come to me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matt. XI). A little span of time, soon to perish, is the price of eternity. The devotion of tribulation shall be repaid, made fruitful with everlasting fruits. With us a kingdom is sought by a fruitful captivity; security is bought with perils, rest is procured by sweat: 'For virtue,' says the Apostle, 'is made perfect in infirmity' (II Cor. XII). It is assuredly more advantageous to be shaken in the flesh by languishing afflictions, than with sound limbs to carry a conscience vexed by a blind torment. For very many grow sick with sins from the very emptiness of their limbs.
For while they are free from infirmities, the body must needs run down with morbid slackness, and be dissolved by a deadly disease, and, wickedly sound, drive the man headlong through vices and the thickets of errors. (Chapter VIII) Do you judge those to be free, or exempt from diseases, whom barbarous pleasures have bound fast? They have no chain, but luxury holds them in fetters with a savage bite. Thus they have fallen into the snares of savage pleasures, like birds captured by the fowler's fraud, which, the more they strive to escape, the more they entangle themselves in countless meshes and sink into deeper folds. Are those, forsooth, sound whom an insane disease enwraps and tosses about? But he is safe whom God corrects with any stripe whatever, who attests that he is a lover of man by chastising:
'Those whom I love,' says the Lord, 'I rebuke and chastise' (Rev. III). And therefore let him not judge himself sound who lacks either diseases or defilements, and is not mended by the remedy of infirmity. But those are wretched who grow torpid in the idle tranquillity of excessive happiness; whom a false health flatters, that it may deceive and beguile them; whom, indeed, an eternal sickness shall hold, an eternal tormentor thereafter about to vex the whole man. For these there are as many ways as pleasures shall have offered. For these the road is what their companion lust shall have dictated, doomed to perish amid perils. For, snatched away by the windings of dragging vices, the wretches are whirled in varied slidings into destruction, into a most uncertain way from which there is no return;
they stretch their mind toward outward things, after the manner of little streams, whose return to their own fount is never possible. Indeed they lead this life, whose companion is an end, as they themselves suppose, in prosperous courses; but the step at the last is altogether ill smeared over, since one stands hard at the very end. And what does it profit to have run prosperously through perils, if after the course it befall one to perish? In short, in vain has a ship run into harbour through a proud and raging sea, with the convenient prosperity of friendly waves, if it arrive with shipwreck, and the harbour receive it doomed to perish. It is therefore more advantageous, under the leading of any pressure, to reach the harbour of glory, than, in a delicate vessel, when the course of morbid slackness is finished, to go out into punishments.
Often, then, poverty is preferable to riches, deformity to beauty, reproach to praises, servitude to power, weakness to strength, captivity to liberty, humility to dignity. David the illustrious prophet uttered a song of this kind: 'It is good for me, O Lord,' he says, 'that thou hast humbled me, that I may learn thy justifications' (Ps. CXVIII). Therefore it is better to be humbled by the judgment of discipline, than to be condemned with the world, as the Apostle says: 'When we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world' (I Cor. XI). Therefore what, out of love of the Lord, is dispensed for our benefit, let us bear without murmuring. For it is bestowed as a remedy is by a physician, and discipline by a Lord. It is of the art of medicine sometimes to cauterize with fire and iron.
What wonder if the Lord, the physician of our souls, shakes us with whirlwinds, examines us with diseases, purges us with calamities? It is a mark of our fortitude to be purged, as it were through fires and flames, after the manner of vessels, which the divine Scripture attests and proves: 'The furnace,' it says, 'proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation just men' (Ecclus. XXVII). And elsewhere it says: 'Gold, and silver, and iron, and lead, and everything that passeth through the fire, shall be cleansed' (Num. XXXI). Never do the vessels say to the potter: Why do you examine us by the judgment of the flames, and burn and prove us with scorching fires? Which, unless the arbiter of fire pronounce them by his judgment most fit, cannot be put to use.
We too, unless the judgment or examination of temptations shall have purged us, are found useless to the potter of our limbs, who burns us that he may cure, tempts us that he may free, vexes us that he may save. For nothing is so foul, so squalid, that it is not expiated from vices by purifications. In short, we have often seen those defiled by reproach come into brightness, and iron overlaid with rust shine forth into its former appearance. We have seen gold and silver purified by the discipline of the flame, and lopped trees revive with most joyful cultivation, and be adorned with pleasant shoots. We have seen barren things recalled into fruitfulness, and, the stock being drained, a root and the greatest fruit attend it.
So also in us, whatever perhaps was seething under the pressure of sins, whatever blemish of squalid oldness stood in the way, this has been shut out by the light of sickness. And therefore, brother, the sickness of your limbs has, like a physician, rendered you sound. In you the material of the flesh alone lacks the health of strength; and lest perhaps it vex you, it is vexed by a useful disease. This is that which the dog-star of old age strikes in all, and, as hay withers, about to lose its own flower, as it is written: 'All flesh is hay, and all its glory as the flower of the hay. The hay is withered, and the flower is fallen; but the word of the Lord abideth for ever' (Isa. XL).
Let us therefore bear it with equanimity, if the body—which, as we read, is to perish like hay with its flowers about to fall—be tossed and drained by hurtful evils; the body whose health is wont to bring on a disease of the soul, and to draw forth savage and barbarous pleasures against spiritual advantages. In short, the flesh, unbridled, has often ungirded the soldiers of chastity. It is therefore for our good if we be chastised with long and biting scourges—the flesh by whose chastity, nevertheless, we are assailed. Foolishly do we love the flesh: we do not grieve at the prison and sepulchre of the soul. Therefore, despising the frailty of the flesh as a treasure, let us seize whatever befalls with the embraces of devotion. It is a fearful thing for a Christian soldier to wish to remain in tranquillity after the manner of those who make merry.
It is the mark of a dejected mind to dread the whirlwind, but of the contrary sort not to tremble amid contrary things. It is of unhappiness not to know adversities, of happiness to know how to engage with adversities and to know how to fight. For since all the blows, as we have already said, by which we are shaken are begotten from a divine gift, let him know himself an outsider to the love of God who knows not how to be vexed by temptations, since the trumpet of the law inculcates upon our hearing with manifold song and says: 'The Lord your God tempts you,' it says, 'that he may know whether ye love him with all your heart and with all your soul' (Deut. XIII). And elsewhere: 'Son,' it says, 'neglect not his discipline, nor faint when thou art corrected by him. For whom God loves he corrects' (Prov. III). And again:
'Despise not,' it says, 'the correction of the Lord. For he himself gives pain, and he himself gives refreshment; he strikes, and his hand presents healing' (Job V). (Chapter IX) But perhaps you say: (THE SICK MAN) Would that to me too, as to others, it were granted under hope of health to be tempted at intervals! Would that it were permitted for a little to taste soundness, by the respite of some recovery, whatever it be! What is this, that the disease so busies itself and dwells shut up in my limbs, that it has shut out a health not about to return? that a pernicious companion should lead my shaken limbs down to the very end of life, itself too to be led down by death, to be shut out along with the limbs? What is this, that the perceptions of health throughout the whole span of life are frustrated in my joints?
With cold brought into the veins, the warm vigour has faded into chill; the movements which nature had given, the imprisoned torpor has shut out. In short, not even a little is the exercise of the wasting body tasted by way of a journey. The knees are not bent in accustomed prayers; the uneven order of the fingers, disturbed by an inward numbness, is hindered from handling what it is wont. Why say more? Every office of the body, once wont to be present at the stations of the sinews, thus lies chilled and shut up. Alas the grief! I alone thus deserved to be chastised: I alone to lie subject to such pernicious blows, and to be enfolded in long-lasting evils. (THE OTHER) I beg you, brother, to curb these murmurings with the bridle of patience, and to shut up your querulous voices in silence, while the prophetic comfort thus addresses you and says:
'Join thyself to God,' it says, 'and endure, that thy life may increase at the last. Receive all that shall be applied to thee, and endure in sorrow, and in thy humiliation have patience, since gold and silver are proved in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation' (Ecclus. II). While I review the laws and songs of the prophets, my hearing conceives also the excellent maxims of worldly authority, filched, if I mistake not, from the divine law, which needs must be inserted among the precepts of the law. For it does no harm to use another's things in that part in which they are ours. This is the first maxim: 'Fire,' it says, 'proves gold, and misery good men.' And elsewhere: 'Nothing,' it says, 'seems more unhappy than he to whom nothing adverse has ever befallen.'
'It was not permitted to him to prove himself, where all things flowed for him according to his wish.' And elsewhere: 'I judge thee wretched,' it says, 'because thou hast not been wretched; thou hast passed through life without an adversary: no one will know what thou couldst have done, nor even thou thyself. For there is need of trial for the knowledge of oneself. What each one can do, he has not learned unless tempted.' And in another place: 'To be happy for a long time, and to pass through life without disease of soul, is to be ignorant of the other part of nature's realm.' Therefore let us bear with a happy soul the emerging miseries, by which unknown things are learned, and happiness is born, and virtue too, when shaken out, is purged: whether because it behoved us to suffer, or because we are already held captive. Unless the flame shall have added splendour to gold, it suffers cheapness, dim with its dross;
so he who has not been shaken by the trials of miseries lies ignorant of the estate of happiness and of his own virtue. Rightly does Solomon attest thee with this word: 'He who has not been tempted in something, knows not of what sort he is' (Ecclus. XXXIV). Bless therefore the Lord in the time of tribulation, whom thou hast praised in the time of health. Use the songs of the prophetic voice: 'I will bless the Lord,' it says, 'at all times; his praise shall be ever in my mouth' (Ps. XXXIII). Let that voice above all of blessed Job be brought forth from thee with steadfast proclamation, by which failing strength rejoices in mighty nourishment, and rises up, restored into a new shoot. 'If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure the evil?' (Job II). 'The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away:
as it seemed good to the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord' (Job I). It is therefore an adverse thing, and altogether contrary, to murmur against the Lord in the time of proving: who either vexes the deadly stain of our life by the tossing of hardships that he may free us, or winnows by justice that he may crown us, and by the vexation of our limbs either our fault is scourged, or our justice is proven, that it may conquer. For, that we may turn your mind back to the palm of ancient proving for the comfort of your sufferings, let us use the most just examples. (Chapter X) Although it is well known that the merits of persons differ by long degrees, it is not unjust if we compare the contest of the Christian man to the encounters of victorious justice.
The things you seem to endure in this world are moderate, if you consider what Job, the familiar of the Lord, was able—by the Lord's permission—to endure. God tempered it so that it should suit and agree with his strength. Could you, at the first, who are unequal, be equal to the honours of a justice following in succession? You are shaken less than the just man, but you are wounded more grievously than the rest: his sufferings are great, but yours too are not smaller. For you yourself are great, who follow the great. This one, the patriarch Job, was an unconquered worshipper of the Majesty, wealthy and rich in the tallies of equity, of whose illustrious merits the Lord himself stood forth, when he anticipated the deadly instruments of the hostile faction with the proclamation of praise:
'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him upon the earth: a man without complaint, a true worshipper of God, refraining himself from every evil work, and abiding in his innocence and in the simplicity of his heart' (Job I)? Therefore, when by divine permission he was shaken by hostile darts, and the frequent, truculent insinuation of the robber assailed him, he vanquished the emerging blows with the shield of patience, and, strong with the barriers of justice, he met the savage forest of onrushing evils, full of arrows and crosses. He, when his wealth was taken away by the hostile whirlwind, feels no loss, who finds gain in losses, who possessed the Lord shut up in the folds of his heart.
He, when a sudden force wrenched the building, its corners shaken, into collapse, was bereaved, his children carried off, yet stable in faith and immovable he endured. When his harmless limbs, full of the Lord, teemed with legions of beasts, and his body, struck with hostile blows, when a swarm of worms roved perniciously through the burrows of his mangled flesh, cast within his wounds he soldiered on unharmed. And he whom raging fury tore with pestilent wounds, endured the hostile whirlwinds with tranquillity of mind, so that they yielded. The just man conquered by being scourged, the enemy failed by striking. To him the service of his servants was denied; about you your attendants perform their ministries.
Friends console you with frequent visits and grieve, so that, if nature permitted, they would perhaps bear this burden with you. There is, brother, there is one virtue of the soul, which, rescuing us from the whirlwinds of this life as though from the deep, would lead us into the harbour of tranquillity. Behold, the day hastens with headlong slidings toward its setting. Behold, the world, unclean with the filth of old age, is whirled into collapse. Behold, by the suffrage of death heaven receives the victors. All things, as we make our escape, perish, and, with their setting now near at hand, are swallowed up, not to return. With us, after the lost world, after the death of the body, all things are healed. We shall rejoice in the soundness of our limbs, where life shall be vexed by no disease. Therefore in you, brother,
let the most excellent soul, by its illustrious leading, so steer and rule the hindered offices of the body, that this calamity of the body may be an occasion desirable for virtue. For no tree is solid or robust, save that which, by the incursion of the constant whirlwind, its trunk shaken, is tried, bent this way and that, or against which the blast of the winds' whirlwinds often runs; for by those very vexations it is bound tight, is pressed, and by its fixed roots is more surely strengthened. So too are we, stretched out, made firm by the biting scourges of frequent evils, corrected by being beaten, bound tight by being cut down, and we are freed from squalor while we are winnowed by long falls.
Therefore, though amid mounting pains and monstrous miseries the limbs may be afflicted, let virtue reign robust and unimpaired with heavenly vigour, virtue by which contrary things are borne, and even those hardships that are called adversities. In the very midst of these straits the wise man, sustained by the support of consolation, both rejoices and wastes away in equal measure, and by his high-minded reasoning he is enlarged and lives. In short, he does not know the things he suffers who is mindful of unconquered virtue, who under the guidance of reason has found that very many men were once oppressed by evils, yet were, with reason for their teacher, increased and nourished by their own affliction. Thus the consolations of reason lie open to you, so that now the calamity of the body may be counted among your goods, and likewise the whole captive mass of the body. But the resurrection will come, which will restore you unimpaired, and with you all the members that are now beset.
But let the tongue be nourished by its daily task in the praises of the Lord, that it may one day recount the abundance of praise in the kingdoms of heaven. May the Lord cherish you with heavenly medicine, and grant you to endure under so great a burden with unbending strength.