論集 第 1 章

BOOK ONE. TREATISE ONE. On Faith. 1. The greatest felicity of Christian faithfulness is to know the nature of faith, which is of such kind and so great that to each man it is not lent by another, but is born of his own will. For the rest, if—as some suppose—it hangs upon the mouth of a teacher, then beyond doubt, when that same teacher either ceases or teaches otherwise, it is destroyed. To this is added that, unless a preceding faith—girt about with all devotion—embrace the introduction of the Law, a faith which by believing renders its effect both to itself and to the Law, that introduction will be empty; for to the unbeliever it cannot render the fruit of the believer. In short, Abraham pleased God by belief without the Law (Gal. ...).

(Gal. 3:6), and the Jewish people displeased God by unbelief together with the Law. Hence there is no doubt that the Law cannot stand without faith, while faith can stand without the Law; otherwise this innumerable throng, happier in its very simplicity, would still lie subject to the dominion of death, if only those learned in the Law had deserved to be justified. But since it is written, The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life (2 Cor. 3:6)—because we are not under the Law but under grace, which compels us to love God and to serve Him alone in the sacrament of the one Trinity once believed, not by argument, not by necessity, but by the will—I judge it most manifest that the simple man is far better than the crafty: for the simple man believes simply all the words of God;

but the crafty man, made foolish by excessive cleverness, confounds himself with vain inquiries. II. But someone will say: if this is so, then the Law profits no one. Far from it! It profits, and that very greatly: for through it the will of God is made known to the peoples; through it we are gathered together and held by heavenly discipline (Rom. 3:20 and 7:7); through it, I say, every kind of sin is denounced, lest anyone perish unawares. It never ceases to admonish, lest anyone excuse his guilt by ignorance: now stern, now gentle, it shows the reward and shows also the sword, about to bestow upon each what he has chosen, so that he may rightly fulfil what he undertakes.

From those who come to it, it demands only the profession of belief, and this only because it cannot see their faith; and if it detects from their conduct that faith is absent, then at once, in anger, it punishes as faithless the very one it has taught; and it testifies that it was promulgated for no other cause than that faith might be vindicated against the faithless. In short, take away sin, and the command of the Law ceases. For the Law, as it is written, is not made for the righteous, but for the sinner: because the just lives by faith (1 Tim. 1:9; Gal. 3:11), the unbeliever unjustly. Therefore whoever esteems the disputation of the Law to be faith errs; whoever confounds two diverse things into one. For disputation, just as it cultivates the Law, so, if it be cunning, uproots faith:

for assuredly there is no faith where faith is sought by inquiry. Then, the Law is common, but faith is private: for the Law ever flows from the parent book, while faith clings tenaciously to its own purpose alone. The Law passes from one to another; faith perishes if at any time or in any way it turns aside from its state. The Law can in some measure reach a man's conscience, but it cannot see it; faith cleanses the conscience to its very marrow, that it owe nothing of guilt even within: for he who fears not his own conscience is the very one who fears not God. Add that the Law is both learned and taught in parts. Add that as a whole it is neither understood nor held.

Add that it is asserted by anyone with arguments according to the quality of his wit. Add that it is desired by all and fulfilled by none. Add that it is an indicator of God's will, not of God's origin or nature. 8. III. It follows that we ought to know whether we should affirm a treatise about faith, or faith as a treatise. If we say a treatise about faith, we shall err grievously: for the nature of faith does not suffer itself to be subjected to the artifice of loquacity, by which nothing else is laboured for save that faith be approved by its own virtues alone; for that cannot be perfect which awaits from elsewhere something necessary to itself. But if we begin to call faith a treatise,

then assuredly it will be neither ours, nor its own, nor even his to whom it is said to belong: for the treatise, while it builds up faith, by that very means by which it builds it up, destroys it; nor will it give to anyone what it does not possess, but rather, that it may not possess it, it still keeps inquiring. I observe, moreover, as the names of the asserters indicate (which, if you take them away, there is no quarrel left for chance contingencies), that there have been many treatises, many faiths—and indeed novel ones, nourished by the labour and favour of litigation: which, because the true one can scarcely be found, I believe, lest the peoples should suffer want, have been put up for sale as merchandise. Yet from among all these, what ought to be chosen can be neither known nor comprehended:

for that cannot be either proper or firm which has an ever-uncertain state: since indeed the choosing of one is the rejection of another; or if all without exception are to be embraced, so that a man should have as many faiths as he has words that he lacks, all the more will he have nothing—because the treatise that begot them, or daily begets them, can still beget more; and on the other hand, when provoked, it again consumes them, by re-treating and refuting according to the powers of wits and arguments. But if, as needs must be, there is one—that noble and ancient faith—which I would say is born not by a treatise but by its very birth: and is moreover greater than the Law, since by believing God to be God it earned its merit, and did not learn to believe but presumed it;

let that ruinous invention of its own treatise tell me what battle it casts forth! 'Lest faith perish,' it says, 'when it is either ill believed or ill taught.' What evil this reasoning is, we shall soon see. IV. Now I desire to know whether faith consists of doctrine, or of belief, or of both. If it consists of doctrine, then those who know no letters do not have faith—but neither do those who do know letters: because by no reasonings can they bring the knowledge and observance of the Law to perfection. If it consists of belief, it needs no interpretation: because, just as it is believed once, so once, from that very thing which has been believed, faith is consummated, and is neither lessened nor increased. But if of both, then the faith of the Patriarchs is half-formed:

and on this account the books of our own constitution, namely of our decree-making, must be assigned to them, that they may be able to be perfect. O how wretched is the faith that words contrive! O how feeble is that whose limbs are daily scattered by sundry argumentations! O how undefended is that which moment by moment craves the patronage of kings, of judges, of the rich, and sometimes even—what is worse—of the Gentiles! O how base and slippery is that with which an alien opinion makes sport! O how adulterous is that which knows not by what author it was born! O how ridiculous is that which, when two Christians contend, is called perfidy by one of them if it is not transferred over, but called faith once it has been transferred!

O how untrue is that which is strong by factions! O how publican-like is that whose secrets even the profane gossip about! O how presumptuous is that which prefers rather to be believed for its own novel tradition than for antiquity, than for God the Lord saying: You reject the commandment of God, that you may establish your own traditions (Mark 7:9). But I do not say this to render the benefit of doctrine thankless, but that each one may know that faith is one thing, a treatise another; and that faith can neither be given, nor known, nor destroyed through a treatise. It cannot be given; for if it can be given by words, it will also be able to be taken away by words. Likewise it cannot be known; for it may happen that a man bears one thing on his lips, another in the inmost recesses of his heart.

Likewise it cannot even be destroyed; for if the faith is true, it can be nothing other than what it is. Therefore, since it is not within human capacity to see the secrets of faith, nowhere, brother, nowhere does your curiosity profit, nowhere your quarrel: because the one whom you suppose, even among your own zealous followers, to be the most faithful, this man is faithless; and the one whom you suppose faithless, this man is faithful. Perhaps someone esteems himself the more faithful in this, if he speaks cleverly—whereas he is rather the more truly faithful who, in sacred preaching, has not stretched the keen edge of his mind further than is permitted: for the matter has come to this, that our faith is investigated to the injury of God. That this would come to pass Solomon announced, and what is to be guarded against he taught in these words:

Better is he who is deficient in understanding yet in fear, than he who abounds in cleverness and transgresses the Law (Sir. 19:21). And again: Be not overwise; and do not argue more than is fitting (Eccles. 7:17). Likewise Paul: Be not high-minded, but fear (Rom. 11:20). 16. V. Since these things are so, why do you constrain the Law by the Law? Why, under the image of faith, do you lay aside faith? Why do you strive to drain the very fount of divinity by philosophical arguments? If you desire to show your skill in the Law, clear away the clouds of the readings. Teach that it is not contrary to itself: teach that all the things it proclaims are to be believed. But if you approve one part of it and reject another part,

how do you seek faith through this, when you yourself make it guilty of unfaithfulness, since you do not believe the whole? But if you are versed in the faith of the spirit, demonstrate some power. Command the mountains to remove themselves. Let the rage of lions vanish at your wonder, their jaws turned to fawning. Beneath your steps let the wave of the sea grow thick, and be made solid with marble stiffness. Let a tiny skiff bear your faith faithfully amid the troubled bosoms of the seething deep. With the bridle of prayer rein back the courses of the Sun and Moon from the chamber of their western prison. Let the seething fire of the panting furnace, its nature conquered, feel through you and with you a refreshing coolness. Breathe back into life the souls of the dead, recalled to the threshold of life.

Drive away diseases from the suffering, heal sicknesses, rejoice in temptations and in torments for the name of the Lord. If hard things befall you, show that you have faith like a grain of mustard seed. But if rather—what is worse—inflamed under the sound of the Law and of faith with love of worldly boasting, you presume that you can, by that very right by which you exist of yourself, compel by arguments, examine, measure, and discern the inestimable and incomprehensible perpetuity of the divinity—that of the begotten God of God and of the Holy Spirit: here I dare not answer you. For it would indeed be safer to seem unskilled than to be sacrilegious. And yet I have one who may stand against you on my behalf:

for the Law, by which you compel me, perhaps the less skilled, to sin, that very Law will mightily blunt and rebuke and confute you, since Solomon says: Seek not things too high for thee, and search not into things too mighty for thee. Think always upon the things that God has commanded thee; and be not curious in many of His works: for the surmise of them has seduced many, and held their understanding in vanity (Sir. 3:22, etc.). Likewise Paul writes back to the curious, saying: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and how unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of God? (Rom. 11:33-34). And do you seek out His nature?

But in another place too he plainly expressed this matter which is here treated, when he speaks to Timothy, instructing him in these words: I exhorted thee to charge certain men that they use no perverse doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which furnish questions rather than the true account of God, which is in faith. But the aim of the commandment is charity, from a pure heart and a good conscience and a simple faith (1 Tim. 1:3-4). VI. Therefore, if you are a servant of God, avoid foolish and unlearned questions, knowing that they beget strifes. And the servant of God must not be quarrelsome; for strife is the enemy both of charity and of faith: and if anyone loses these, he knows neither things divine nor things human.

These things, if you are religious, observe; if you are truly God-fearing, keep them: concerning that which exceeds the measure of human understanding, decline to dispute. He in a manner denies God, whoever asserts God by argument: for a defence is offered only to the weak; nor can he revere Him whom he thinks to be the product of his own wit—that is, what God was reckoned to be. For the rest, this is the true nobility of faith: that one serve God faithfully (Prov. 10:10); that he place his confidence in Him alone; that he acknowledge himself to be called faithful from fidelity and confidence; that he live with blameless conduct; that he presume to know Him by a good conscience, not by loquacity, which is indeed the mother of sin;

and that he not violate but honour the one fullness of power of the Trinity, which is conceived by one mind and one belief. 19. TREATISE TWO. On Hope, Faith, and Charity. I. In three things consist the foundations of the Christian summit, that is, in hope, in faith, and in charity; which seem so connected one to another that they are mutually necessary to each other. For unless hope go before, for what does faith labour? If faith be not, how shall hope itself be born? And to which two, if you deny charity, both will cease: for neither can faith work without charity, nor can hope work without faith. And so the Christian, if he desires to be perfect, must be built up in these three things;

for if any of these be wanting to him, he will not have the perfection of his work. Hence first of all, hope of things to come is to be set before us, without which we perceive that even present things themselves cannot stand. Indeed, take away hope, and all humanity grows numb. Take away hope, and all arts and virtues will cease. Take away hope, and all things are destroyed. What does a boy do for his schoolmaster, if he hopes not for the fruit of letters? Why does a sailor commit his raft to the deep abyss, if never gain, never the longed-for harbour meets him? Why does a soldier despise—I will not say the injuries of bristling winter or scorching summer, but even himself—if he bears no hope of future glory? Why does a farmer scatter seed, if he gathers not the harvest, the reward of his sweat?

Why does a Christian believe in Christ, if he believes not that the time of perpetual felicity promised to him by Him will come? II. But hope is from faith, which, although it be placed in the future, is nevertheless rightly subject to faith; for where faith is not, neither is hope: for faith is the substance of hope, and hope is the glory of faith; since the reward which hope holds, faith deserves; which indeed fights on behalf of hope, but conquers for itself. Therefore, brethren, it is to be embraced by us tenaciously, and to be guarded with every kind of virtue; upon it we must lean strongly: for it is the immovable, unconquered foundation of our life;

a bulwark alike and a weapon against the assaults of the devil, the impenetrable breastplate of our soul, the compendious and true knowledge of the Law, the terror of demons, the strength of martyrs, the beauty—or rather the wall—of the Church, the handmaid of God, the friend of Christ, the table-companion of the Holy Spirit. To this both things present and things to come are subject; the present, because it despises them; the future, because it presumes them to be its own. Nor does hope fear that they will not come; because it ever carries them with it in its own virtues. This is that which Abraham, against hope, in hope believed God, that he might become the father of many nations (Rom. 4:18). And 'against hope' means that which is impossible and is not seen: but it is made possible by this hope, when God's word is undoubtingly and strongly believed;

for the Lord says: All things are possible to him that believes (Mark 9:22). Hence Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6); who was righteous for this reason, that he was faithful; for the just lives by faith (Gal. 3:6); faithful for this reason, that he believed God; for unless he had believed, he could have been neither just nor father of nations. Wherefore it is manifest that hope and faith are of one inseparable nature: because in a man, whichever of these has failed, both die. III. Faith, therefore, is most especially our own proper possession, the Lord Himself saying: Thy faith hath made thee whole (Mark 10:52). Therefore, if it is ours, let us keep it as our own, that we may rightly hope for what is another's;

for no one entrusts his property to a bankrupt, nor will he honour a deserter with triumphal rewards, especially since it is written: To him that has, it shall be given, and he shall abound; but from him that has not, even that which he has shall be taken away from him (Matt. 13:12). Through this, brethren, Enoch deserved to be translated with his body against the law of nature. Through this Noah, escaping, found no one with whom to compare that he had passed through the flood. Through this Abraham attained to the friendship of God. Through this Isaac shone forth beyond the rest (Heb. 11:5, 7, 8, 20). Through this Jacob prevailed to wrestle with God. Through this Joseph subjected Egypt to his dominion (Gen. 32, 41). This made for Moses a glassy ground in the Red Sea (Exod. 14:22).

This, that the wonted measure of its course being set aside, the sun and moon at the desire of Joshua son of Nun put on their bridles to obey him (Josh. 10:13). This brought triumphs to the unarmed David over the armed Goliath (1 Sam. 17). This in Job, amid frequent and immense evils, did not despair (Job 1 and 2). This was the physician in the blindness of Tobit (Tob. 11). This in Daniel bound the mouths of the lions (Dan. 6). This in Jonah turned the whale into a skiff (Jon. 2). This in the army of the Maccabean brotherhood conquered alone (2 Macc. 7). This made the fires gentle for the three children (Dan. 3). This in Peter presumed that the sea could be walked upon with the feet (Matt. 14:29).

Through this the Apostles stripped many of the crowns of swelling ulcers, contagious and scabby with their deformed leprosy, restoring them to gleaming skin. Through this, I say, they commanded the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the lame to run, paralytics to be restored, demons to flee from the possessed, and the dead themselves often to return from their tombs together with their own funeral processions, so that all marvelled that tears of joy were made which had just now been tears of bereavement. 22. IV. But it is a long thing, brethren, to go through each one, especially because charity presses forward with stronger claims; which is so endowed above all things that, by its own right, it is the queen of all. Let faith triumph by whatever virtues it will, and let hope set forth many and great things;

yet without this charity both will not stand: faith, first of all, if it love not itself; hope, if it be not loved. Add that faith profits itself alone; charity profits all. Add that faith does not fight for free; but charity is wont to confer benefits even upon the ungrateful. Add that faith does not pass over into another; whereas charity—it is too little to say it passes into another—passes into a whole people. Add that faith belongs to few; charity to all. Add that hope and faith have a season; but charity has no end (1 Cor. 13), it grows at every moment, and the more it is believed by those who love one another in turn, the more it is owed in return. It does not love anyone for his person, because it knows not how to flatter; nor for honour, because it is not ambitious;

not for sex, since to it both are one; not for time, because it is not changeable; it is not envious, because it knows not what envy is; it is not puffed up, because it cherishes humility; it thinks no evil, because it is simple; it is not angry, because it gladly embraces even injuries; it does not deceive, because it itself guards good faith; it lacks nothing whatever, because to it, beyond what it is, nothing is necessary. This preserves the countryside, cities, and peoples settled and at peace. This makes the swords at the sides of kings to be secure. This presses down wars, removes strifes, voids lawsuits, restrains the courts, uproots hatreds, extinguishes wraths. This penetrates the sea, encircles the globe, supplies by commerce to the nations the things they need.

I will quickly proclaim its power, brethren. Whatever nature has denied to places, charity restores. This, by conjugal affection, compels two human beings by a venerable sacrament into one flesh. This bestows upon humanity that which is born. Its is the gift, that there is a dear wife, that there are noble children, that there are true fathers. Its is the gift, that others are near to us, like us, or more than us—be they neighbours or friends. Its is the gift, that we love servants as sons; and they gladly cherish us as masters. Its is the gift, that we love—I will not say acquaintances or friends—but often even those whom we have never seen. Its is the gift, that we recognize the virtues of the ancients from their books, or their books from their virtues. V.

But why then should I linger longer among human affairs, as though they alone were endowed with this affection? Do we not see every kind of living creature testify to charity by congregation and concord; and so all their motions, as by one sense, turned about by love their mistress, so that anyone may understand this cannot happen without the discipline of natural friendship? But what they do for one another in necessities, the well-nigh daily examples of swine—so delightful a struggle, known to all—declare: for when one of their number, perchance set spinning by the fury of a bold wolf, has begun to be led into present peril by tyrannical assaults, all suddenly hasten together; they come to the aid of the one in distress;

again and again they throw themselves headlong against the very weapons of the enemy in eager rivalry; they confound him with a mighty din; and with their squalid tusks thrust forth, they resist as it were in a testudo-formation; and by charity they more easily conquer that which singly, by naked strength, they could scarcely overcome. The very elements too, brethren—diverse enough and at enough variance—an attentive observer would once have caught at strife, had not kindly charity bound them together, endowing them with mutual and equal gifts of temperance, by the faithful offspring of perennial wedlock. There is nothing at all that without this can be pleasing, without this peaceful, without this faithful, without this secure, without this glorious, without this joined to God, without this able to be perfect.

Finally, when the Lord was asked what was the highest precept of the sacred Law, He thus spoke, saying: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two precepts hang the whole Law and the Prophets (Matt. 22:37, 39, 40). Hence it is manifest that love is the substance and natural mistress of all divine virtues: since it is learned from the Law, but is born in our minds: for the Law hangs upon charity, charity does not hang upon the Law, as the Sacred Scripture says: The Law is not made for the just, but for the sinner (1 Tim. 1:9). And that man is the sinner who has not the charity of God:

and on this account he who works wrath is rightly subject to the Law. But perhaps someone may say, the Law is to be despised, because it is not necessary to the just and is burdensome to the sinner. Far from it, brethren: nay rather it is to be venerated, because it is the mirror of truth, because it is a certain rigid form of love: for whatever it has learned from the just, it compels the unjust also to do—doubly renowned, by glorifying the one and correcting the other. VI. It stands established, therefore, that the whole of Christianity is deposited rather in charity than in hope or in faith: as an evident example testifies. Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of the Lord, lost both hope and faith: because charity did not remain in him:

for heresies and schisms too are thus disseminated, when inflated faith and hope are torn away from the foundation of love. But what not only these but the other virtues too would be without charity, learn from a brief indicator: And though I have, he says, all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And though I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing (1 Cor. 13:2-3). For charity, brethren, loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity never falls away (ibid., 7 and 8). Therefore not undeservedly does the Lord God commend the love of one's neighbour:

since it alone presumes that it can keep what it commands. VII. The first duty of love, therefore, is to render back to God that we have been born; to owe to Him alone that we live; and to retain nothing whatever in the inmost recesses of our heart that we may keep under another's right. But when, by His invitation to this devotion, we have begun to be inhabited by the same, or to dwell in Him, as John says: God is charity; he that abides in charity abides in God, and God in him (1 John 4:16); then at last, brethren, we shall worthily render back charity to Him through Himself, because, an exchange having been made, what is His stands in place of our portions. The next thing is that we also love our neighbours with that affection wherewith we love ourselves:

especially since the very laws of kinship demand this: for the prophet cries out: One God created you. Is not one the Father of you all (Mal. 2:10)? Whoever, therefore, retains the awareness of his own nobility loves his brother: nor does he wait to hear anything from the Law, lest by an admonition something be derogated from his piety; and he loves himself in his brother so much that he would hate himself without him. To the sum of all this it is added, that God made man to His own image and likeness for this end, that by the contemplation of the image we might be moved to reverence the truth; and the matter was left in this condition, that whatever of evil or of good we do to anyone, we should be seen to have done it to God;

For this reason John, that special confidant of the Lord's mysteries, declares without wavering: 'If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, cannot love God, whom he does not see' (1 John 4:20). Let us therefore contend among ourselves, brethren, in a glorious rivalry of mutual love; and by venerating the image of God most worthily, let us make plain what we ourselves owe to Truth itself, knowing that whoever has injured the image stirs up Truth to the ruin of his own soul. Nor is the proof far from what is said. If anyone should by any means violate the countenance of some illustrious King (though only a man), does he not at once pay the capital penalty, as for sacrilege committed?

How much more strongly must we take precaution in the cause of God, whom alone that one fears which, in the powers of nature, is dreaded even by the kings themselves? VIII. But it is necessary for each one to know the proper character of sincere love, lest under the mere sound of the name the rule of truth be betrayed; for there is also another love, truly contrary to our salvation, to which the form of a man is rightly assigned, because it is recognized as temporal and frail. Therefore it is depicted with a childish figure, because its wanton instability is not tempered even by an old man's years. Therefore naked, because its will is shamefulness. Therefore winged, because upon whatever it has conceived a desire, it rushes swiftly.

Therefore it is furnished with darts and torches, because to its unlawful ardors a sword is always joined. Therefore it is blind, because when it has been inflamed it considers neither age, nor beauty, nor sex, nor rank, nor even that sacrosanct affection of true devotion. With its torches this love set Eve's breast ablaze. With its darts it slew Adam. This love attempted to subject Susanna either to the monstrous fires of the two elders or to slaughter her by the parricidal sword. This love demanded that Joseph be its ravisher of a woman; yet even while she stripped him, it did not find him unchaste. This love stormed the synagogue, when it surrendered its own weapons to her. Everywhere turbulent, everywhere it is borne along insane. It promises, it deceives, it gives, it takes away;

now sad, now cheerful, now humble, now exalted, now drunken, now fasting, now accuser, now defendant. It jokes, it plays, it grows pale, it wastes away, it sighs, it conceals, it flatters: it either tempts or deceives, and it fawns worse than it rages. It lets pass no opportunity whatever for doing harm. Do you wish to know what evil it is? In the very fruit of itself it even hates itself. With its poisons the whole world daily seethes; and by its pestilential pleasures all things are so corrupted that whatever is done in it, while by the sacred words we are commanded that it ought not to be loved by us, rightly seems to the wise abominable, as John says: 'Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world.'

'If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but of the lust of the world' (1 John 2:15-16): for through this the devil, while in various ways he captures and deceives the minds of men, so came to be called Desire by his own luxurious devotees and worshippers. IX. Now therefore let us see whence true love comes, where it resides, and to whom above all it is owed. Surely to Him who made man; who handed to him, as a gift of perpetual love, His own likeness; who gave him the round world; who subjected to his power all the elements of the world with their living creatures;

who commanded for him the years, the seasons, the months, the nights, the days, and the two most brilliant chariots of the royal orbs to serve him with the ever bountiful delight of alternation; who, when man had been slain by the bitterly-sweet poisons of the aforesaid love and plunged into the seat of hell, vivified him by the mystery of His own majesty, and moreover enriched him with a share in the heavenly kingdom. O charity, how holy and how rich! O how mighty! He who has not you has nothing. You were able to change God into man. You made Him, shortened, sojourn for a little while away from the immensity of His majesty. You bound Him fast in a virginal prison for nine months. You restored Eve into Mary. You renewed Adam in Christ.

You provided the sacred cross for the salvation of a world already lost. You emptied death of its power by teaching God to die. It is your doing that, when the omnipotent God's Son is slain by men, none of the two grows angry. You hold the soul of the heavenly people, when you adorn peace, guard faith, embrace innocence, cultivate truth, love patience, and present hope. You make of diverse men—differing in character, in age, in station—out of one nature one spirit, one body. You permit the glorious martyrs to be separated from the confession of the Christian name by no torments, by no novelty of death, by no rewards, by no friendships, by no affections—indeed by no torturer at all, more grievous than these through the gnawing assault upon their devotion.

You, that you may clothe the naked, are content to be naked yourself. To you hunger is a feasting. If the destitute and hungry man eat your bread, it is your wealth to hold in mercy all that you have. You alone know not how to be entreated. You without delay rescue the oppressed, even at your own loss, when they are set in any straits whatsoever. You are the eye of the blind. You are the foot of the lame. You are the most faithful shield of widows. You are a better parent to orphans than either father or mother. Either mercy or joy never permits your eye to be dry. You so love your own enemies that no one can discern what difference there is between them and those dear to you. You, I say, join heavenly things to human, human secrets to heavenly. You guard the things of God. You command in the Father.

You obey yourself in the Son. You exult in the Holy Spirit. You, though being one in three, are by no compact divided; you are moved by no slander of human curiosity. From the Paternal fountain you are wholly poured out into the Son; and yet, wholly poured out, where you are poured you do not depart. Rightly are you called God, because you alone wield the power of the Trinity. TRACTATE III. On Justice. I. Perhaps some learned one among the bystanders may burst into peals of laughter, that I, a most unskilled and tongue-tied man, should dare to dispute anything about justice—concerning whose proper nature men of outstanding genius and learning have set down nothing certain in their enormous books. But let me not be troubled how anyone may mock at me;

for in the Church of God a painted seriousness is not sought, and not pure truth; from which all those have wandered far—and not without cause—who reckoned that the justice of God resides in the powers of eloquence. In short, since they could not grasp it (for neither could they without the teaching of divine wisdom, of which they had no knowledge), they asserted two kinds of justice: one civil, the other natural; of which the Apostle made most open mention when he spoke to the Romans, saying: 'For being ignorant of the justice of God, and wishing to establish their own, they did not submit to the justice of God' (Rom. 10:3).

But since, thinking nothing of the future, they look only to the advantages of the present life, and defend the false against the true in place of the true; thus they lost both, with their hands in the midst of them and their eyes wide open: God's justice, since they think it foolish, because it labors at the expense of its own—I will not say substance, but even, if there be need, of its very welfare—to profit others more than itself: and their own justice, because, although it is falsely clad in the name of wisdom, yet, in consulting its own advantages (which can in no way at all be procured without the disadvantages of others), it cannot by anyone truly most foolish be denied to be unjust. II.

But if they could have known true justice—whose reward is immortality, and which is for that very reason covered with the veil of feigned foolishness, so that a great thing might be sought by great virtues and great labors—they would unhesitatingly choose to be judged just though fools, rather than wise though unjust: especially since now their fraud lies wholly in the open, for they were not able to transpose the reality but the names, defaming justice with the name of foolishness and injustice with the name of wisdom: which names, if you correct them to their proper places and restore them to their own seats, you will find that foolishness rather befits injustice, and wisdom befits justice; which I shall not cease to prove also by the testimonies of sacred law, whose words are these:

'For seeing that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe' (1 Cor. 1:21). And again more plainly: 'If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise: for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God' (1 Cor. 3:18-19). For which cause the same God thus far testifies through the prophet: 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the strong man glory in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches: but let him that glories glory in this, to understand and know that I am the Lord, who exercise mercy and judgment and justice upon the earth' (Jer. 9:23-24).

O in how very few words He summed up all this business that is so strenuously transacted in the world! For by these three things, which are the foundations of all vices, as if by certain violent tempests, the whole human race, shipwrecked in every instant, is driven to its destruction. For wisdom, seething with thick arguments, adorned with the persuasive and delightful falsehood of brilliant speech, armed with the trumpet of the voice and the sword of the tongue, draws all deeds to itself, gathers crowds, harangues; it so decides disputes as to sow them, it collects depraved and slippery morals; with its own laws it assails laws; it constrains right by right. Who would not see that it never does, nor ever has done, anything right, in whatever it has done?

Do you wish to know how just it is? It thinks itself wretched unless it has overthrown truth. As for fortitude, which men have in common with savagery, it places all right in its strength; whatever it has prevailed to do, it esteems right: and therefore, without any reverence for divine or human religion, it destroys abruptly with fire and sword, together with its own whole substance, the inhabitants, the cities, and the countryside, fearing nothing at all in the confidence of a death that is its friend; finally, what wisdom by its industry collects through laws, it scatters, sometimes with eyes closed, in a single onslaught. Third is the rich one, avarice, both of which strive to heap up wealth with marvelous speed; for it the whole world soldiers; for it every age serves. O wickedness!

What darkness is this? It is in all men, and by all it is reproached as though it did not exist. It is accused, and yet it is cultivated; it cuts throats, and is loved. It is truly an invincible kind of calamity, to which, when wisdom has been subjugated, virtue too will be enslaved. III. Do you now see clearly that the wisdom of this world is not justice? and indeed not even true wisdom: because it cannot be that a true wise man is not also just; and equally that a just man is not also a true wise man: for a just man cannot be unwise, nor a wise man unjust, reason itself teaching this: for he who is a fool knows not what is good and what is evil, nor can he know what he should reject and what he should hold; and therefore he always sins, which is contrary to justice:

but the just man abstains from all sin: which he does for this reason, that he possesses the knowledge of evil and good, which belongs assuredly to a wise man. Whence it comes about that one who is a fool can never be just; nor wise, whoever has been unjust. Moreover, whether of the just man or of the wise, if one of the two should be lacking—which they supposed possible—that one will assuredly be neither wise nor just. IV. Enough, as I think, have the deceptions of the world been laid bare: in which, since all men deal more skillfully than can be told, it is superfluous to linger. Whence let us now come to true justice, the fountain and mother of all virtues:

which, beyond all the rest, wholly gathers and unfolds itself for the benefit of others, knowing what is owed chiefly to God, claiming nothing for itself, leaving nothing as its own, except that it faithfully and without any boasting performs His will. It is, moreover, wholly conspicuous and diffused before the public: yet in such a way that it desires rather to be felt than seen: plainly cautious, and to what side it should incline, lest in anything it should reproach itself, lest it should ever fail in a work once begun. This justice breaks the yokes of captives by ransoming them: by healing the imprisoned, gentle and ever-watchful care knows the prison better than the prisoners do: it shares sickness with the sick: it does not allow cast-off corpses to lie uncovered and unburied:

upon the poor and wretched, neglecting its own need, it scatters generously and secretly the seeds of piety; it permits itself neither to be entreated, nor to be recompensed with the substitute reward of praise: this it counts a grievous loss, this it esteems a crime: for by leaving nothing to itself, in a blessed covetousness it surpasses avarice: for avarice possesses men, but this possesses God. Hear further with what love, with what devotion it hastens to the proper seat and palm set before it. If anyone challenges it into court to take away its tunic, it willingly grants him its cloak as well; it is reviled, and blesses; it is beaten, and gives thanks; it has its throat cut, and does not resist; moreover, for its slayers it entreats God.

Its one chief and greatest care and caution is, that it owe nothing to the world, that it suffer none of these things deservedly. Those who either have not read the divine writings, or, having read them, have thought them empty, by the favor of a rough and unpolished discourse—yet one that says, 'Unless you believe, neither shall you understand' (Isa. 7:9, according to the LXX rendering)—think it foolish and ridicule it as vain, because, although it could enjoy the goods of the world, it neglects them, and willingly makes itself unhappy; not believing that, by keeping the commandments of God and trampling worldly pleasures with offices of this kind, when it has become victor and free from the bonds of the flesh, it will fully enjoy the inestimable blessedness of promised immortality. V. But what is it to us, what they may say?

A distinguished man, as our own one says: 'God knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are foolish' (Ps. 94:11). Let them leave us our foolishness; let them keep with themselves their wisdom; of which indeed I perceive almost all the followers to be Christians—who think it perfect justice to guard their own and not to seek what is another's, neglecting the command of true wisdom, which is contained in these words: 'If you would be perfect, go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and take up your cross, and come, follow me' (Matt. 19:21). About this I know not what anyone could put forward; one thing, however, I know, that there is none of us who does not labor at every moment to have more than he had; and while he strives for this,

he is certainly playing the part of avarice, which is the enemy of justice. So far does it go, that the barns of a few are full of grain, while the belly of very many is empty. Hence for the peoples worse prices than scarcity itself by the measures. Hence fraud, perjury, robberies, lawsuits, and wars: daily by others' bellowings gain is sought; and proscription is called industry; and the coveting of another's property, under the pretext of protecting one's own and of diligence, is pressed with most cunning arguments, so that a man, undefended or innocent, may lose by laws what he has; which is worse than any violence: because that which is snatched by force can sometimes be reclaimed; but what is lost by the circumventions of laws, cannot. Let him glory who will in that justice:

yet let him know that he who is enriched by others' miseries is more wretched than the wretched. Would anyone think him just, who sets the advantage of his household property before piety? who, while men labor under hunger and nakedness, feeds moths, weevils, and worms? who withdraws what he has, by an unhappy tenacity, not only from others but even from his own self? VI. But, you will say, it is just that I keep my own and seek not another's. This too the Gentiles are accustomed to say. But how unjust it is in the sight of God, we shall presently see. Now first of all, most excellent Christian, I desire to know what things are yours, since to those who fear God all things are common, as it is written: 'Now the multitude of them that believed acted with one heart and one mind' (Acts

4:32): nor was there any distinction among them, nor did they reckon anything of their goods as their own, which were theirs: but all things were common to them, as the day, the sun, the night, the rain, the condition of being born and of dying: which divine justice has bestowed equally upon the human race, without any exception of persons. Since these things are so, without doubt he is not unlike a tyrant, who alone possesses what could profit the advantages of very many. What then? That, while the poor man daily dies of oppression, hunger, cold, and injury, you cultivate gold as your friend, guard silver, and hold a costly garment and proud and superfluous ornaments as sacrosanct, like an idol:

you adorn yourself moment by moment, rich in public, richer in private: nor do you understand that, when a man is dying of want, one who could relieve him with such great wealth but does not relieve him, himself seems to slay him. O the slaughter of how many souls hangs upon the trappings of bedecked matrons! the price of one of whose ornaments, if you should dissolve it into money and distribute it to the needs of individuals, you would know from their reviving breath, by the loss of how many that finery is composed. VII. I have children, he says, whom I ought not to strip bare. This is the excuse of unbelief, which the Holy Spirit through the prophet thus far beats down, saying: 'I have been young, and now am old; and I have never seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread' (Ps. 37:25):

And again, 'The rich have wanted and suffered hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good thing' (Ps. 34:10): which is most easy to prove by example. We remember it recorded in the books of Kings (1 Kings 17) that, in the time of famine, when the whole people everywhere was dying, when Elijah asked for food, a memorable widow gave to him, not a divided portion, but the whole of the last substance of her own and her children's sustenance, and chose rather to die with her children than to pass over justice: for which so illustrious a deed she received from God immortal food, which voracity could not diminish: for by her own diminishing it grew.

In short, the state of these vessels remained ever full and entire, and however much the lasting necessity of expense had taken from them, just so much did renewed fecundity replace. Wherefore, if you desire to be a good father, if provident, if useful, like that Abraham, you ought to love God more than your children, that you may deserve to have them whole, safe, and blessed. But it is a foolish thing, for you to wish to provide the substance of life to those to whom you have given neither birth, nor breathed souls into, nor can bestow salvation. Whence, even if late, restrain your sacrilegious voice, mindful of human frailty, you who, in this very thing of which we speak, are ignorant of what may befall: and lay aside the deceit of a vain excuse.

To ingrates you store up avarice by sin. It belongs to the power of God alone to provide for the advantages of things to come. TRACTATE IV. On Chastity. I. He who cultivates chastity most easily recognizes of how great nobility it is: for it is of such great virtue that it is honorable even to its own enemies. This confirms the foundations of the whole human race: this furnishes to all the propriety of names: this guards the sacred rights of parents, of spouses, and of children: this, conspicuous in either sex, marvelous in every age, not doubtful in any condition, devoted to itself alone, always rightly conscious, wholly subject to no thing, fearing one thing only, that it be more than what it is called.

In short, in solitude—which by the fearful is called occasion—it fears itself as a judge: and it reveres every secret place more than the public. It hates the pestilential blandishments of hostile flesh: and whatever pleasure or gift the world has heaped upon it, it spits out the whole, presuming that it possesses the whole, if only it be pure. It desires no one shamefully: nor does it likewise present itself as desirable to any. In its own state it remains in every place, at every time, consulting honor rather than advantage. Do you wish to know of how great felicity it is? It is loved both by him who possesses it and by him who possesses it not.

If, therefore, its glory often exults even among the Gentiles (although there it cannot be fruitful or true, because it dwells under a shameless robber), how much more glorious ought it to be among the Christian people, who serves its sanctifier, the inviolable God? For if the Church is therefore the spouse of Christ because she is chaste; therefore honored with the yoke of the heavenly bridal chamber, because even after the nuptials she remains thereafter a perpetual virgin: we, who are born of so great a wedlock, ought in every way to strive that we may prove the nobility of our lineage not only by relation, but also by the faith of likeness. Whence, however, I bear myself before you, most beloved brethren, because this, and no ambiguous, affirmation shines forth in you:

For you show that you both have and possess God as Father, since chastity—in which God dwells—you do not merely profess to love, but adorn with your radiant morals. It is therefore a great glory to adorn that by which you are adorned; to preserve that by which you yourself are preserved. Finally, your praise is matched to the praise of chastity: for it furnishes you with holiness, and you furnish it with love. Through it you attain Christ: nay rather, it through you embraces Christ with you. Through it you obtain from God the Father what you ask: nay rather, it through you obtains, on whose behalf you anxiously labor, lest, while it asks for anything, it blush. Blessed, when it is added in boys: more blessed, when in adolescents it happily fears a fall:

most blessed, when in young men it labors to extinguish carnal fires. To be sure, in old men, just as it is to be honored, so it is not to be marveled at: for although it is a victress, yet it shares the palm of its triumph with the rigor of old age: for the battle of concupiscence ceases where, with growing infirmities, by very necessity even the members of the unchaste become chaste. II. Come now, let us briefly publish the fury of its rival, even by a comparison of names, so that what is to be sought, and what to be fled, may most easily be recognized. Under the veil of Christ's name, brethren, Antichrist likewise tries to assert himself chaste, that he may deceive: he drags after himself the sound of chastity's name; but what fruits its author has, he shows.

For it runs about raving through the peoples: and with the burning goads of lusts it hurls the slippery minds of men into corruption, sparing not sex, not age, not piety, not even itself, because he who covets another's modesty first loses his own. To it no pure night and day succeed, for it is always submerged in the storm of its own miry whirlpool, while ever-seething the foulness of lust is perpetrated either in reality or in image. It either bestows or receives rewards, it corrupts or is corrupted; it casts in love, a little after to make of love a hatred. It sows illegitimate heirs, and, knowing the crime, excuses it with the names of piety. It either kills its own offspring or strips them of affection.

It reckons nothing at all base either to suffer or to do, provided that its attempts succeed in their effect. Nevertheless, in the very fruit of itself—in which it is wont to rejoice over the defilement of another's vanquished modesty—it is always unhappy. Finally, after the deed has been perpetrated, it hates both itself and him whom it has conquered. This often proclaimed war upon peaceful nations; this sometimes overthrew robust kingdoms; this triumphed over the marriage-beds of others, subjugated either by base or by cruel deeds; this, frenzied with masculine ardor, discharging by a soldier's pay unknown and unexpected to the very women, taught women to storm their own nature; this set the wages of lust above all in the deaths of parents, of children, of husbands, and of wives;

this not seldom destroyed the names of piety by monstrous intercourse, persecuting indeed the chaste, but consistently slaying only the unchaste; this, I say, moment by moment both gives birth to all that is evil, and has given birth to all that is worse; for in idols it is a goddess, but in their worshippers a handmaid. It procures veneration for itself in the temples, mirth in the theaters, importunity in public, opportunity in any secret places whatsoever. Wanton, sparing neither tongues, nor eyes, nor ears, it jokes, hopes, solicits, fawns, is jealous, rages, is armed with prayers, is armed also with anger, likewise not seldom extorting by force what it could not obtain by blandishments. It always rejoices in the varied interchange of lusts;

and it repents, never arriving at satiety by its slippery profit. It longs to do what it fears to have made public; it attempts absolutely everything, that it may claim everything for itself. It is a new kind of monstrosity. It hates chastity; and yet it desires to seem that which chastity is. III. Meanwhile with marvelous arts it adorns itself, and seeks upon itself its own face, which it does not have. It paints itself upon itself, and, with the varied dye of a procuring master's cosmetic, it clothes its own countenance with alien countenances—being henceforth not what nature has bestowed, but what the temporal whim has dictated to it at the verdict of the mirror. Now it amends, now it deletes the forms it had loved, now it substitutes others, now it brings forth new ones.

A hydra of shapes made by its own hands, it always advances impudently, because it knows not how to blush under alien colors—not known to its household, not to its kin, not to its husbands, not to itself, because what is not constant can never be known nor true. Moreover, it never loves God, whom it knows to be contrary to its own works. It is assuredly the bondservant of the devil, for it possesses his kingdom; for it itself begot the gods, it itself brought them into the world, through whom or in whom the devil is worshipped, in whose deeds their origin is shown. It itself rendered Jove greatest by innumerable, varied, and great crimes. It itself, worse than a stepmother, shamefully conquered Hercules in the lust of Omphale—him whom a terrible throng of monsters could not overcome.

It itself, after many adulteries, prostituted to the spectacle of the whole world Venus, stripped bare in all her limbs and trying to cover herself with curved hands—nay rather demonstrating the vice of her soul and body. There is no need to go through them one by one; although even these things have not been worthy to be told, yet for expressing the force of unchastity they have seemed necessary, that everyone may know that luxury pertains to idolatry. It itself, I say, turned the sepulchers of the dead into temples, the tombs into altars, the corpses into images, the funeral rites into sacrifices, the customs into sacred rites. Thus, thus did it snatch the human race from the worship of God, while with a winsome festivity it persuades them that the wicked deeds of wicked men are to be cultivated and imitated.

Indeed, to men, against the law of God and the justice of God, it disastrously inspires—as it were a free license—of wandering outside the lawful bed into strange lust, and thus it tears their women also away from modesty, who, deserted, compelled by ardor or by grief, if they do such things, think that they are either imitating or avenging themselves. On account of which the Lord says in His precepts: 'Whoever shall dismiss his wife, save for the cause of adultery, makes her to commit adultery.' What the slippery husbands can here reply, I do not see; they who, deceived by the unjust impunity of human laws, not knowing true justice even from their own will, willingly do what they are unwilling to suffer:

who, dragged apart by the detestable theft of profane lust, no longer content with shameful hiding-places, sometimes (O wickedness!) sweat in their frenzied coupling under the very gazes of matrons, not perceiving, wretched men, that in such a business, with God as judge, what is not lawful for wives is not lawful for husbands either; just as Paul the Apostle, prescribing to such men, says: 'The woman has not power over her own body, but the husband: likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife' (1 Cor. 7:4).

Thus therefore, since they are one flesh, one sacrament of the divine work, since the woman was made from her own man, and the one is held bound to the other, and through this, by the law's right too, they are touched by a single line, there is no doubt that the one of the two who has transgressed will be consumed by the everlasting torments of dreadful punishment. But neither does it pass unpunished for those who, without wives, the more freely out of love of sinning, purchase for themselves uncertain and dishonourable wares of their lusts, not perceiving that whatever is lawful outside of wedlock is wretched and unchaste; for to a Christian, brothers, I do not think anything more is permitted than that he be either continent or a husband. V. I come now to examples, which are above all most necessary for the matter;

because what is done is more than what is said, so that both the evil of unchastity and the good of chastity may most easily be recognized from one and the same instance. Joseph the Hebrew, a young man (Gen. 39), distinguished in lineage, more distinguished in beauty, and most distinguished of all in the uprightness of his character, was among the sons of Jacob the younger in age, but the greater in spirit. He, by the impulse of an envious brotherhood, was carried down into Egypt and sold away by his brothers — he whom his master's wife had begun to love for the worse, whom his brothers hated:

for when the woman blazed to her very marrow with the fire of an insane passion, strongly armed with arguments for a sacrilegious persuasion, she seizes solitude, seizes a secret and a place such as in which even an unprovoked youth has often been wont to be violent toward unwilling women. But when, bursting forth upon her design, she finds that neither her caresses nor her promises avail her, joining hand to hand, with the turn reversed, she set about to divert the youth's fire, with all her strength, onto her own tinder. But he, in resisting, leaving behind the garment violently wrenched from him, fled away naked from the pit of unchastity; yet, clothed with the splendour of chastity, after a slanderous condemnation he was both set free by God and honoured.