Treatises

On the Unity of the Church

1 Since the Lord warns us and says, "You are the salt of the earth," and since he bids us be simple toward innocence and yet, with our simplicity, prudent, what else befits us, dearest brothers, than to be on our guard, and, watching with anxious heart, both to understand and to beware of the snares of the crafty enemy, so that we, who have put on Christ, the wisdom of God the Father, do not seem less wise in guarding our salvation? For it is not persecution alone that is to be feared, nor those things that advance by open attack to overthrow and cast down the servants of God. Caution is easier where the danger is plain, and the mind is prepared for the contest in advance when the adversary declares himself. The enemy is more to be feared and guarded against when he creeps up secretly, when, deceiving under the image of peace, he slithers in by hidden approaches, which is also how he received the name of serpent. This is always his cunning; this is his blind and lurking deceit for entrapping man. So from the very beginning of the world he deceived, and, flattering with lying words, he beguiled the inexperienced soul through its unwary credulity. So, trying to tempt the Lord himself, he approached secretly, as if to creep up again and deceive; yet he was understood and beaten back, and therefore overthrown, because he was recognized and exposed. 2 Hence an example has been given us to flee the way of the old man, to walk in the footsteps of the conquering Christ, so that we are not unwary and rolled back again into the snare of death, but, foreseeing the danger, we may take possession of the immortality we have received. But how can we possess immortality unless we keep the commandments of Christ, by which death is overcome and conquered, as he himself warns and says: "If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments"; and again: "If you do what I command you, I no longer call you servants but friends"? These, in short, he calls strong and steadfast; these, founded upon the rock with solid mass; these, established with immovable and unshaken firmness against all the storms and whirlwinds of the world. "He who hears my words," he says, "and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock. The rain came down, the floods came, the winds came and beat upon that house, and it did not fall: for it was founded upon the rock." We ought, then, to stand fast on his words, to learn and do whatever he both taught and did. But how does he say that he believes in Christ who does not do what Christ commanded him to do? Or how will he reach the reward of faith who will not keep faith with the command? He must waver and wander and, carried off by the spirit of error, be blown about like dust that the wind shakes up; nor will he make progress toward salvation by walking, who does not hold the truth of the way of salvation. 3 But we must beware not only of things that are open and manifest, but also of those that deceive by the subtlety of crafty fraud. And what is more crafty or more subtle than this? The enemy, exposed and overthrown by the coming of Christ, after light came to the nations and the saving light shone out for the preservation of men, so that the deaf received the hearing of spiritual grace, the blind opened their eyes to the Lord, the sick recovered with eternal health, the lame ran to the church, the dumb prayed with clear voices and prayers, seeing the idols abandoned and his seats and temples deserted by the great multitude of believers, devised a new fraud, to deceive the unwary under the very title of the Christian name. He invented heresies and schisms, by which to overthrow faith, corrupt truth, and split unity. Those whom he cannot hold in the blindness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives by the error of a new road. He snatches men from the church itself, and, while they seem to themselves to have already drawn near to the light and escaped the night of the world, he pours other darkness over them again without their knowing it; so that, not standing with the gospel of Christ and with its observance and law, they call themselves Christians, and, walking in darkness, think they have the light, while the adversary flatters and deceives them, who, according to the apostle's word, transforms himself into an angel of light and suborns his ministers as ministers of righteousness, who assert night for day, destruction for salvation, despair under the pretext of hope, faithlessness under the pretence of faith, Antichrist under the name of Christ; so that, while they tell lies that look like truth, they frustrate the truth by their subtlety. This happens, dearest brothers, because there is no return to the source of truth, nor is the head sought, nor is the teaching of the heavenly Master kept.

Textual variant: the “Feed my sheep” clause is retained.

4 If anyone considers and examines these things, there is no need of long discussion and arguments. The proof for faith is easy by a summary of the truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: "I say to you," he says, "that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven." After his resurrection he says to him again, “Feed my sheep.” Upon one he builds the church; and although after his resurrection he gives equal power to all the apostles and says, "As the Father has sent me, I also send you. Receive the Holy Spirit: if you forgive anyone's sins, they will be forgiven him; if you retain anyone's, they will be retained," yet, to make unity manifest, he arranged by his own authority that the origin of that same unity should begin from one. The other apostles too were certainly what Peter was, endowed with an equal fellowship both of honor and of power; but the beginning proceeds from unity, so that the church of Christ may be shown to be one. This one church the Holy Spirit also designates in the Song of Songs, in the person of the Lord, and says: "My dove is one, my perfect one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her that bore her." Does he who does not hold this unity of the church believe that he holds the faith? Does he who strives against and resists the church trust that he is in the church? For the blessed apostle Paul too teaches this same thing and shows the sacrament of unity, saying: "One body and one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God." 5 This unity we ought firmly to hold and defend, especially we bishops who preside in the church, so that we may prove the episcopate itself also to be one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood by a lie; let no one corrupt the faith of the truth by faithless betrayal. The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each one in full. The church is one, which is extended more widely into a multitude by the increase of its fruitfulness; just as the sun has many rays but one light, and a tree many branches but one strength founded on its tenacious root; and when many streams flow down from one spring, though their number seems spread out by the lavishness of an overflowing abundance, yet unity is preserved in the source. Tear a ray of the sun from its body: the unity does not admit a division of the light. Break a branch from the tree: once broken, it cannot sprout. Cut off a stream from its spring: once cut off, it dries up. So too the church of the Lord, bathed in light, stretches its rays through the whole world; yet it is one light that is spread everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. She extends her branches over the whole earth in rich abundance; she spreads wider her abundantly flowing streams; yet there is one head and one source, and one mother, rich in the results of her fruitfulness. From her womb we are born, by her milk we are nourished, by her spirit we are given life. 6 The bride of Christ cannot be made an adulteress; she is undefiled and chaste. She knows one home; she guards the sanctity of one bedchamber with chaste modesty. She keeps us for God; she assigns to the kingdom the sons she has borne. Whoever is separated from the church and joined to an adulteress is separated from the promises of the church; nor will he who has left the church of Christ reach the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger, he is profane, he is an enemy. He cannot have God for his Father who does not have the church for his mother. If anyone who was outside the ark of Noah could escape, then he too escapes who is outside the church. The Lord warns and says: "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ acts against Christ; he who gathers elsewhere than in the church scatters the church of Christ. The Lord says: "I and the Father are one." And again it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: "And the three are one." And does anyone believe that this unity, which comes from the divine steadfastness and coheres with heavenly sacraments, can be split in the church and separated by the divorce of clashing wills? He who does not hold this unity does not hold God's law, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation. 7 This sacrament of unity, this bond of concord inseparably cohering, is shown when in the gospel the tunic of the Lord Jesus Christ is not divided at all nor torn, but, when they cast lots for Christ's garment, as to who should rather put on Christ, the garment is received whole, and the tunic is possessed unspoiled and undivided. The divine Scripture speaks and says: "But about the tunic, because it was not sewn from the upper part but woven throughout, they said to one another: 'Let us not tear it, but let us cast lots for it, whose it shall be.'" He bore a unity coming from the upper part, that is, coming from heaven and from the Father, which could not be torn at all by the one who received and possessed it, but kept its firmness whole once for all and solid, inseparably. He cannot possess the garment of Christ who tears and divides the church of Christ. On the other hand, when, at Solomon's death, his kingdom and people were split, the prophet Ahijah, meeting King Jeroboam in the field, tore his garment into twelve pieces, saying: "Take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord: See, I am tearing the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and I will give you ten sceptres, and two sceptres shall be his, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen to put my name there." When the twelve tribes of Israel were being split, the prophet Ahijah tore his garment. But because Christ's people cannot be torn, his tunic, woven throughout and cohering, was not divided by those who possessed it: undivided, joined, connected, it shows the cohering concord of our people, who have put on Christ. By the sacrament and sign of his garment he declared the unity of the church. 8 Who, then, is so wicked and faithless, who so maddened by the fury of discord, as either to believe that the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the church of Christ, can be torn, or to dare to tear it? He himself warns and teaches in his gospel, saying: "And there shall be one flock and one shepherd." And does anyone think that there can be in one place either many shepherds or several flocks? The apostle Paul likewise, impressing this same unity upon us, appeals to us and urges us and says: "I urge you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." And again he says: "Bearing with one another in love, taking pains to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Do you think that one can stand and live who withdraws from the church and builds for himself other seats and different homes? For it was said to Rahab, in whom the church was prefigured: "Your father and your mother and your brothers and the whole house of your father you shall gather to yourself into your house, and everyone who goes out of the door of your house shall be guilty of his own death." Likewise the sacrament of the Passover in the law of Exodus contains nothing else than that the lamb, which is slain as a figure of Christ, be eaten in one house. God speaks, saying: "In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not cast the flesh outside the house." The flesh of Christ and the holy thing of the Lord cannot be cast outside, nor is there any other house for believers except the one church. This house, this dwelling of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and proclaims in the psalms, saying: "God, who makes those of one mind to live in a house." In the house of God, in the church of Christ, those of one mind live; they persevere in concord and simplicity. 9 For this reason the Holy Spirit also came in a dove. It is a simple and joyful creature, not bitter with gall, not savage with bites, not violent with tearing claws; it loves human dwellings, knows the fellowship of one home; when they breed they bring forth their young together; when they fly about they keep close to one another; they spend their life in common intercourse; they acknowledge the concord of peace with the kiss of the beak; they fulfill the law of unanimity in all things. This is the simplicity that should be known in the church; this is the charity to be attained, that the love of the brotherhood may imitate the doves, that gentleness and mildness may equal the lambs and sheep. What are the ferocity of wolves, the madness of dogs, the deadly poison of serpents, and the bloody savagery of beasts doing in a Christian breast? We must rejoice when such people are separated from the church, so that they do not prey upon the doves and sheep of Christ with their savage and poisonous contagion. Bitterness cannot cohere and be joined with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with fair weather, war with peace, barrenness with fruitfulness, drought with springs, storm with calm. Let no one think that the good can depart from the church: the wind does not carry away the wheat, nor does the storm overturn the tree founded on a solid root. It is the empty chaff that is tossed by the tempest; it is the weak trees that are overturned by the onset of the whirlwind. These the apostle John curses and strikes, saying: "They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us." 10 Hence heresies both have often arisen and still arise, while a perverse mind has no peace, while discordant faithlessness does not hold unity. The Lord permits and allows these things to happen, the choice of one's own freedom remaining, so that, while the test of truth examines our hearts and minds, the unimpaired faith of the approved may shine out in clear light. The Holy Spirit forewarns through the apostle and says: "There must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you." So the faithful are proved, so the faithless are uncovered; so even before the day of judgment, here too, the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous are already divided and the chaff is separated from the wheat. Hence are those who, of their own accord, set themselves over rash gatherings without divine appointment, who make themselves prelates without any law of ordination, who, though no one gives them the episcopate, take to themselves the name of bishop; whom the Holy Spirit designates in the psalms as sitting in the chair of pestilence, plagues and pestilences of the faith, deceiving with the serpent's mouth and skilled in corrupting truth, vomiting deadly poisons from pestilent tongues, whose speech creeps like a cancer, whose discourse pours a deadly venom into the breasts and hearts of each. 11 Against such the Lord cries out; from them he restrains and calls back his erring people, saying: "Do not listen to the words of the false prophets, for the visions of their heart deceive them. They speak, but not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who cast away the word of God: 'Peace shall be yours and all who walk in their own wills'; to everyone who walks in the error of his heart: 'No evils shall come upon you.' I did not speak to them, and they prophesied. If they had stood in my substance and heard my words and taught my people, I would have turned them from their evil thoughts." The Lord again designates and marks these same people, saying: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of the water of life, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water." Although there can be no other baptism besides the one, they think that they baptize; having forsaken the fountain of life, they promise the grace of living and saving water. Men are not washed there but rather defiled, nor are sins purged but rather heaped up. That birth begets sons not for God but for the devil. Born through a lie, they do not receive the promises of truth; begotten of faithlessness, they lose the grace of faith. Those cannot come to the reward of peace who have broken the Lord's peace by the fury of discord. 12 Nor let some deceive themselves by an empty interpretation, because the Lord said: "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am with them." Corrupters of the gospel and false interpreters set down the last words and pass over the earlier ones, remembering part and craftily suppressing part: as they themselves are cut off from the church, so they cut up the sense of a single passage. For the Lord, when he was urging unanimity and peace on his disciples, said: "I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything, whatever you ask, it will be done for you by my Father who is in heaven. For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am with them"; showing that most is granted not to the multitude but to the unanimity of those who pray. "If two of you," he says, "agree on earth": he put unanimity first, he set the concord of peace before, he taught faithfully and firmly that we should agree. But how can he agree with anyone who does not agree with the body of the church itself and with the whole brotherhood? How can two or three be gathered in the name of Christ who, it is plain, are separated from Christ and from his gospel? For it is not we who have withdrawn from them, but they from us; and since heresies and schisms were born later, when they set up different conventicles for themselves, they have left the head and source of truth. But the Lord speaks of his church and speaks to those who are in the church, that if they are in concord, if, according to what he commanded and warned, two or three, though gathered, pray with one mind, though they be two or three, they can obtain from the majesty of God what they ask. "Wherever two or three are," he says, "I am with them": that is, with the simple and peaceable, with those who fear God and keep God's precepts. With these, though two or three, he said that he is present, as he was with the three youths in the furnace of fire, and, because they remained simple toward God and of one mind among themselves, he refreshed them with the breath of dew in the midst of the surrounding flames; as he was present himself with the two apostles shut up in prison, because they were simple, because they were of one mind, and, loosing the bars of the prison himself, he set them again in the marketplace, that they might hand on to the multitude the word which they were faithfully preaching. When, therefore, he lays down in his precepts and says, "Where two or three are, I am with them," he who instituted and made the church does not divide men from the church, but, reproaching the faithless for their discord and commending peace to the faithful by his own voice, he shows that he is with two or three praying with one mind rather than with very many who disagree, and that more can be obtained by the concordant prayer of a few than by the discordant petition of many. 13 Therefore, when he was giving the law of prayer, he added, saying: "And when you stand to pray, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive you your sins." And one who comes to the sacrifice with dissension he calls back from the altar and bids him first be reconciled with his brother, and then, returning with peace, offer his gift to God; because God did not regard Cain's gifts either: for he could not have God at peace with him who, through the discord of jealousy, did not have peace with his brother. What peace, then, do the enemies of the brothers promise themselves? What sacrifices do the rivals of the priests believe they celebrate? Do they think Christ is with them when they are gathered, who are gathered outside the church of Christ? 14 Such men, even if they are killed in confession of the name, that stain is not washed away even by blood: the inexpiable and grievous guilt of discord is not purged even by suffering. He cannot be a martyr who is not in the church; he will not be able to reach the kingdom who has forsaken her who is to reign. Christ gave us peace; he commanded us to be of one heart and one mind; he enjoined us to keep the covenants of love and charity uncorrupted and inviolate. He cannot show himself a martyr who has not kept brotherly charity. Paul the apostle teaches and bears witness to this, saying: "And if I have faith so that I remove mountains, but do not have charity, I am nothing; and if I give all my goods for food, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have charity, I gain nothing. Charity is great-hearted, charity is kind, charity is not jealous, is not puffed up, is not provoked, does not act wrongly, thinks no evil; it loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity will never fail." "Never," he says, "will charity fail." For it will always be in the kingdom; it will endure forever in the unity of a brotherhood that holds together. Discord cannot reach the kingdom of heaven; he who has violated the love of Christ by faithless dissension cannot have part in the reward of Christ, who said: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." He who does not have charity does not have God. It is the voice of the blessed apostle John: "God," he says, "is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." They cannot abide with God who would not be of one mind in the church of God. Though they burn, given over to flames and fires, or lay down their lives thrown to the beasts, that will not be the crown of faith but the punishment of faithlessness, not the glorious end of religious virtue but the death of despair. Such a man can be killed; he cannot be crowned. He professes himself a Christian in the same way that the devil often falsely claims to be Christ, as the Lord himself forewarns and says: "Many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many." As he is not Christ, although he deceives in the name, so he cannot be regarded as a Christian who does not remain in his gospel and in the truth of faith. 15 For to prophesy, to cast out demons, and to do great mighty works on earth is certainly a sublime and admirable thing; yet no one who is found in all these attains the heavenly kingdom unless he walks in the observance of the right and just way. The Lord declares and says: "Many will say to me on that day: 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do great mighty works in your name?' And then I will say to them: 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity.'" There is need of righteousness, that one may deserve well of God the Judge; we must obey his precepts and warnings, that our merits may receive their reward. The Lord in the gospel, when he was directing the way of our hope and faith in a short summary, said: "The Lord your God is one Lord," and: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets." He taught unity and love together by his teaching; he enclosed all the prophets and the law in two precepts. But what unity does he keep, what love does he guard or even think of, who, maddened by the fury of discord, splits the church, destroys faith, disturbs peace, scatters charity, profanes the sacrament? 16 This evil, most faithful brothers, began long ago; but now the hostile havoc of the same evil has grown, and the poisoned destruction of heretical perversity and schisms has begun to rise and sprout the more, because so it had to be at the ending of the world, as the Holy Spirit foretold and forewarned us through the apostle: "In the last days," he says, "troublesome times will come; men will be self-pleasing, proud, swollen, covetous, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, impious, without affection, without covenant, informers, incontinent, ungentle, not lovers of the good, traitors, insolent, puffed up with stupor, loving pleasures rather than God, having a deformed appearance of religion but denying its power. Of these are those who creep into houses and prey upon weak women laden with sins, who are led by various desires, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. And as Jannes and Mambres withstood Moses, so these also withstand the truth; but they will not get very far, for their ignorance will be manifest to all, as theirs also was." Whatever was foretold is being fulfilled, and, as the end of the world now draws near, it has come for the testing both of men and of the times. More and more, as the adversary rages, error deceives, stupor lifts up, envy inflames, covetousness blinds, impiety depraves, pride puffs up, discord embitters, anger hurls headlong. 17 Yet let not the excessive and abrupt faithlessness of many move or disturb us; rather let it strengthen our faith by the truth of what was foretold. As some have begun to be such because these things were foretold beforehand, so let the other brothers beware of such people, because these things too were foretold beforehand, as the Lord instructs us and says: "But you, beware; see, I have told you all things beforehand." Avoid such men, I beg you, and keep away from your side and your ears their deadly conversations as the contagion of death, as it is written: "Hedge your ears with thorns, and do not listen to a wicked tongue." And again: "Evil talk corrupts good character." The Lord teaches and warns that we must withdraw from such: "They are blind," he says, "leaders of the blind. But if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into the ditch." Whoever has been separated from the church must be turned from and shunned. Such a man is perverted and sins and is condemned by himself. Does he think he is with Christ who acts against the priests of Christ, who separates himself from the fellowship of his clergy and people? He bears arms against the church; he fights against God's arrangement. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, faithless instead of faithful, sacrilegious instead of religious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother, despising the bishops and forsaking the priests of God, he dares to set up another altar, to make another prayer with unlawful words, to profane the truth of the Lord's offering by false sacrifices; not knowing that he who strives against God's ordinance is punished by divine chastisement for the audacity of his rashness. 18 So Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who tried to claim for themselves the right to sacrifice against Moses and Aaron the priest, paid the penalty at once for their attempt. The earth, its joints broken, opened into a deep chasm, and the gaping of the receding ground swallowed them up standing and alive. Nor did the anger of an indignant God strike only those who had been the authors; the others too, the two hundred and fifty sharers and companions of the same madness, who had banded together with them in their audacity, fire going out from the Lord consumed with swift vengeance; warning, of course, and showing that whatever the wicked attempt by human will to destroy God's ordinance is done against God. So too King Uzziah, when, carrying a censer and violently taking the sacrifice upon himself against the law of God, he would not obey and yield to Azariah the priest who opposed him, was confounded by divine indignation and spotted on his forehead with the blotches of leprosy, marked, since the Lord was offended, on that part of the body where those who deserve well of the Lord are sealed. And the sons of Aaron, who put strange fire on the altar which the Lord had not commanded, were at once destroyed in the sight of the avenging Lord. 19 These, of course, are imitated and followed by those who, despising God's tradition, seek after strange doctrines and bring in teachings of human institution; whom the Lord rebukes and reproves in his gospel, saying: "You reject the commandment of God, so as to establish your own tradition." This crime is worse than that which the lapsed seem to have committed, who nevertheless, placed in penance for their crime, appeal to God with full satisfactions. Here the church is sought and entreated; there the church is fought against. Here there may have been necessity; there the will is held fast in crime. Here he who lapsed harmed only himself; there he who tried to make a heresy or schism deceived many by dragging them with him. Here is the loss of one soul; there the danger of many. Certainly the one both understands that he has sinned and laments and bewails it; the other, swelling in his sin and pleasing himself in his very offenses, separates sons from their mother, entices sheep from their shepherd, disturbs the sacraments of God. And while the lapsed man has sinned once, the other sins daily. Finally, the lapsed man, if he afterwards attains martyrdom, can receive the promises of the kingdom; the other, if he is killed outside the church, cannot attain the rewards of the church. 20 Nor let anyone be surprised, dearest brothers, that even some of the confessors go on to such things, and that some of them too sin so wickedly, so grievously. For confession does not make a man immune from the snares of the devil, nor, while he is still placed in the world, does it defend him with perpetual security against worldly temptations, dangers, attacks, and assaults; otherwise we would never afterwards see in confessors the frauds, debaucheries, and adulteries which we now see in some, and groan and grieve. Whoever that confessor is, he is not greater or better or dearer to God than Solomon; and yet Solomon, as long as he walked in the ways of the Lord, kept the grace he had obtained from the Lord; after he forsook the Lord's way, he lost the Lord's grace too. And therefore it is written: "Hold fast what you have, so that no one else takes your crown." The Lord surely would not threaten that the crown of righteousness could be taken away, unless, when righteousness departs, the crown must depart too. 21 Confession is the beginning of glory, not yet the full merit of the crown; it does not complete praise but begins dignity; and since it is written, "He who endures to the end, he will be saved," whatever comes before the end is a step by which one climbs to the summit of salvation, not the goal where the top of the height is already held. He is a confessor: but after confession the danger is greater, because the adversary has been more provoked. He is a confessor: all the more ought he to stand with the Lord's gospel, having obtained glory from the Lord through the gospel. "From him to whom much is given, much is required"; and from him to whom more dignity is ascribed, more service is demanded. Let no one perish by a confessor's example; let no one learn injustice, insolence, or faithlessness from a confessor's conduct. He is a confessor: let him be humble and quiet, let him be modest and disciplined in his conduct, so that he who is called a confessor of Christ may imitate the Christ whom he confesses. For since he says, "He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted," and he himself was exalted by the Father because he, the Word and the Power and the Wisdom of God the Father, humbled himself on earth, how can he love self-exaltation who both commanded humility to us by his law and himself received from the Father the most exalted name as the reward of humility? He is a confessor of Christ: but only if the majesty and dignity of Christ are not afterwards blasphemed through him. Let the tongue that has confessed Christ not be abusive, not turbulent, not heard resounding with insults and quarrels; let it not, after words of praise, dart the poisons of the serpent against the brothers and the priests of God. But if he afterwards becomes blameworthy and detestable, if he squanders his confession by evil conduct, if he stains his life with shameful foulness, if, finally, forsaking the church where he became a confessor and splitting the concord of unity, he exchanges his first faith for later faithlessness, he cannot flatter himself by his confession as if chosen for the reward of glory, since from this very fact the deserts of punishment have grown the greater. 22 For the Lord chose Judas too among the apostles, and yet Judas afterwards betrayed the Lord. Yet the firmness and faith of the apostles did not fall on that account, because Judas the traitor fell away from their fellowship. So here too the holiness and dignity of the confessors is not at once diminished because the faith of some has been broken. The blessed apostle speaks in his letter, saying: "For what if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Has their unbelief made void the faithfulness of God? By no means; for God is true, but every man a liar." The greater and better part of the confessors stands firm in the strength of its faith and in the truth of the Lord's law and discipline; nor do they depart from the peace of the church, who remember that they obtained grace in the church by God's favor; and by this very fact they obtain a fuller praise for their faith, that, separated from the faithlessness of those who were joined with them in the fellowship of confession, they have withdrawn from the contagion of crime. Truly enlightened by the light of the gospel, shining with the pure and white light of the Lord, they are as praiseworthy in preserving the peace of Christ as they were victorious in their conflict with the devil. 23 I wish, indeed, dearest brothers, and at the same time I counsel and urge, that if it can be, none of the brothers may perish, and that our rejoicing mother may enclose in her bosom the one body of a people in agreement. Yet if wholesome counsel cannot recall to the way of salvation certain leaders of schisms and authors of dissension who persist in blind and obstinate madness, still you others, whether taken in by simplicity, or led on by error, or deceived by some cunning of deceitful craft, free yourselves from the snares of deceit, release your wandering steps from errors, recognize the straight road of the heavenly way. It is the voice of the apostle bearing witness: "We command you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw from all brothers who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us." And again he says: "Let no one deceive you with empty words; for because of these things the anger of God comes upon the sons of stubbornness. Do not, therefore, share with them." We must withdraw from those who do wrong, or rather flee from them, so that, while one is joined to those who walk wickedly and goes along the paths of error and crime, wandering from the way of the true road, he too is not held in the same crime. There is one God, and one Christ, and one church of his, and one faith, and one people joined into the solid unity of a body by the glue of concord. Unity cannot be split, nor can one body be separated by the division of its structure, torn into pieces with its vitals ripped apart. Whatever departs from the womb cannot live and breathe apart; it loses the substance of salvation. 24 The Holy Spirit warns us and says: "Who is the man who desires life and loves to see the best days? Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceitfully. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." The son of peace ought to seek peace and pursue it; he who knows and loves the bond of charity ought to keep his tongue from the evil of dissension. Among his divine commands and saving teachings, the Lord, when already near his passion, added, saying: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you." This inheritance he gave us; all the gifts and rewards of his promise he promised in the keeping of peace. If we are heirs of Christ, let us remain in the peace of Christ; if we are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers. "Blessed," he says, "are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." The sons of God ought to be peacemakers, gentle in heart, simple in speech, concordant in affection, faithfully cleaving to one another in the bonds of unanimity. 25 This unanimity existed once under the apostles; so the new people of believers, keeping the Lord's commands, held fast their charity. Scripture proves it, saying: "And the multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and mind." And again: "And they were all persevering with one mind in prayer, with the women and Mary, who had been the mother of Jesus, and his brothers." And therefore they prayed with effective prayers; therefore they could obtain with confidence whatever they asked of God's mercy. 26 But in us unanimity has so diminished that generosity in good works has also been broken. Then they sold houses and estates, and, laying up treasures for themselves in heaven, they offered the price to the apostles to be distributed for the needs of the poor. But now we do not give even tithes from our patrimony, and, while the Lord bids us sell, we rather buy and increase. So the vigor of faith has withered in us, so the strength of believers has languished. And therefore the Lord, looking upon our times, says in his gospel: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?" We see what he foretold coming to pass. In the fear of God, in the law of righteousness, in love, in works, there is no faith. No one thinks of the fear of things to come; no one considers the day of the Lord and the anger of God and the punishments coming upon unbelievers and the eternal torments appointed for the faithless. Whatever our conscience would fear if it believed, because it does not believe it does not fear at all. But if it believed, it would also take care; and if it took care, it would also escape. 27 Let us rouse ourselves as much as we can, dearest brothers, and, breaking off the sleep of our old sloth, let us be watchful to observe and do the Lord's precepts. Let us be such as he himself commanded us to be, saying: "Keep your belts fastened and your lamps burning, and you like men waiting for their master, when he comes from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he comes, finds watching." We ought to be ready, so that, when the day of setting out comes, it does not catch us hampered and entangled. Let our light shine and gleam in good works, that it may lead us from this night of the world to the light of eternal brightness. Let us always wait, anxious and cautious, for the sudden coming of the Lord, that when he knocks our faith may be awake, to receive from the Lord the reward of its watchfulness. If these commands are kept, if these warnings and precepts are held fast, we cannot be overcome while asleep by the deceiving devil; as watchful servants we shall reign with Christ as Lord.

On the Dress of Virgins

1 Discipline, the guardian of hope, the anchor of faith, the guide on the way of salvation, the kindling and nourishment of a good disposition, the teacher of virtue, makes us abide always in Christ and live continually for God, and come to the heavenly promises and the divine rewards. To follow it is wholesome; to turn from it and neglect it is deadly. In the Psalms the Holy Spirit speaks: “Keep hold of discipline, so that the Lord does not become angry and you perish from the right way, when his anger quickly blazes against you.” And again: “But to the sinner God says: Why do you recite my ordinances and take my covenant in your mouth? But you have hated discipline and cast my words behind you.” And once more we read: “He who casts away discipline is wretched.”⁠a And from Solomon we have received the commands of Wisdom as she warns: “My son, do not neglect the discipline of God, and do not faint when you are rebuked by him; for whom God loves he rebukes.” Now if God rebukes whom he loves, and rebukes in order to correct, then brothers too, and above all priests, do not hate but love those whom they rebuke in order to correct, since God also foretold through Jeremiah, and signified our own times, saying: “And I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they shall feed you, feeding you with discipline.” 2 If, then, discipline is commanded often and everywhere in the holy Scriptures, and the whole foundation of religion and faith proceeds from obedience and fear, what should we more eagerly seek, what should we more wish for and hold to, than that, with our roots fixed more firmly and our houses built solidly upon the rock with a strong structure, we should stand unshaken against the storms and whirlwinds of the world, and come to the gifts of God by the divine precepts, considering and knowing alike that our members are temples of God, cleansed from all the filth of the old contagion by the sanctification of the life-giving washing, and that it is not lawful to violate or defile them, since he who violates them is himself violated? We are the worshipers and priests of those temples; let us serve him whose we have now begun to be. Paul says in his letters, by which through divine teaching he has formed us for the course of living: “You are not your own, for you were bought dearly. Glorify and bear God in your body.” Let us glorify and bear God in a pure and clean body and with better obedience; and since we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, let us obey the command of our Redeemer with every service of servitude, and take care that nothing unclean and profane be brought into the temple of God, so that he is not offended and does not leave the dwelling he inhabits. These are the words of the Lord who heals and teaches, who cures and also warns: “See,” he says, “you have been made well; stop sinning, so that something worse does not happen to you.” He gives the fear that governs living, he gives the law of innocence, after he has bestowed health; and he does not allow the man to wander afterwards with free and loose reins, but threatens more severely the very one who was bound over to him by being healed, since, of course, it is a lesser fault to have sinned before, when you did not yet know the discipline of God, but there is no pardon for sinning further after you have begun to know God. And indeed let men as well as women, boys as well as girls, every sex and every age, observe and attend to this, in keeping with the religion and faith they owe to God, so that what is received holy and pure from the Lord's graciousness may not be held with less careful fear. 3 Now our address is to the virgins, whose care is the greater as their glory is the more sublime. They are the flower of the church's growth, the beauty and adornment of spiritual grace, a joyful nature, a work of praise and honor whole and incorrupt, the image of God answering to the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of Christ's flock. Through them and in them the glorious fruitfulness of mother church rejoices and flowers abundantly; and the more plentiful virginity adds to its number, the more the mother's joy increases. To these we speak, these we exhort, with affection rather than with authority; not that we, the last and least and fully aware of our lowliness, claim anything for ourselves in order to censure their freedom, but because, the more careful we are in our concern, the more we fear the assaults of the devil. 4 Nor is this caution empty, or the fear vain, which looks to the way of salvation and guards the life-giving precepts of the Lord, that those who have dedicated themselves to Christ, and, withdrawing from fleshly desire, have vowed themselves to God in flesh as well as in mind, may complete their work destined for a great reward, and may not seek to be adorned or to please anyone except their Lord, from whom they also expect the reward of virginity, as he himself says: “Not all receive the word, but those to whom it has been given; for there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made so by men, and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Again, by this voice of the angel the gift of continence is shown and virginity proclaimed: “These are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they have remained virgins. These are they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” Nor does the Lord promise the grace of continence to males only and pass over women; but since woman is a portion of man, and was taken and formed from him, in nearly all the Scriptures God speaks to the first-formed man, because the two are in one flesh, and in the male the woman is signified as well. 5 If, then, continence follows Christ, and virginity is destined for the kingdom of God, what have such women to do with earthly finery and ornaments, by which, while they are eager to please men, they offend God, not considering that it has been foretold: “Those who please men are put to shame, because God has despised them”; and Paul too proclaims gloriously and sublimely: “If I were pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ”? But continence and chastity do not consist in the integrity of the flesh alone, but also in the honor and modesty of dress and adornment, so that, according to the apostle, she who is unmarried may be holy both in body and in spirit. Paul instructs us and says: “The unmarried man thinks of the things of the Lord, how he may please God; but he who has contracted marriage thinks of the things of this world, how he may please his wife. So also the woman and the unmarried virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.” A virgin ought not only to be one, but also to be perceived and believed to be one: let no one who sees a virgin doubt whether she is a virgin. Let integrity show itself equal in all things, and let the dress not discredit the good of the body. Why does she go out adorned, why with her hair dressed, as if she either had a husband or were seeking one? Let her rather fear to please, if she is a virgin, and not court danger to herself, when she is keeping herself for better and divine things. She who has no husband whom she may pretend to please should persevere whole and pure, not only in body but also in spirit. For it is not right for a virgin to have her hair dressed to show off her beauty, or to glory in her flesh and its loveliness, since she has no struggle greater than against the flesh, and no more stubborn contest than to conquer and tame the body. 6 Paul proclaims with a strong and sublime voice: “But far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world”: and a virgin in the church glories in the appearance of her flesh and the beauty of her body! Paul adds and says: “For those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its vices and desires.” And she who professes to have renounced the desires and vices of the flesh is found in the very things she had renounced. You are caught, virgin, you are exposed: you boast that you are one thing and you aim at another. You spatter yourself with the stains of fleshly desire, though you are a candidate for integrity and modesty. “Cry out,” says God to Isaiah, “all flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass. The grass has withered and the flower has fallen; but the word of the Lord remains forever.” It befits no Christian, and it especially does not befit a virgin, to reckon any glory and honor of the flesh, but only to seek the word of God and to embrace the goods that will remain forever. Or if one must glory in the flesh, it is surely when it is tortured in confessing the name, when a woman is found stronger than the men who torture her, when she suffers fire or crosses or the sword or beasts in order to be crowned. Those are the precious jewels of the flesh; those are the better ornaments of the body. 7 But there are some who are rich and wealthy in abundant means, who make a show of their riches and contend that they ought to use their own goods. Let them know, first, that she is rich who is rich toward God, she is wealthy who is wealthy in Christ, and those things are goods which are spiritual, divine, heavenly, which lead us to God, which remain with us in God's presence as a lasting possession. But whatever is earthly, received in this world and destined to stay here with the world, ought to be despised as much as the world itself is despised, whose pomps and delights we renounced even then, when by a better passage we came to God. John rouses and exhorts us, testifying with a spiritual and heavenly voice: “Do not love the world,” he says, “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 desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which are not from the Father but from the desire of the world. And the world will pass away, and its desire; but he who does the will of God will remain forever, as God also will remain forever.” Therefore we must pursue what is eternal and divine, and do everything according to the will of God, so that we may follow the footsteps and teachings of our Lord, who warned and said: “I have not come down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” Now if the servant is not greater than his master, and the one who has been set free owes obedience to his liberator, we who desire to be Christians ought to imitate what Christ said. It is written, and it is read and heard, and is proclaimed by the church's mouth for our example: “He who says he abides in Christ ought himself also to walk as he walked.” We must walk with equal steps; we must strive with a step that imitates his. Then the pursuit of truth will answer to faith in the name, and the reward is given to the believer if what is believed is also done. 8 You say you are wealthy and rich. But Paul meets your riches, and with his own voice prescribes that your dress and adornment be moderated within a just limit. “Let women,” he says, “adorn themselves with reverence and modesty, not with braided hair nor gold nor pearls or costly clothing, but as befits women who profess chastity, by good conduct.” Peter also agrees with these same precepts and says: “Let there be in a woman not the outward adorning of ornament or gold or clothing, but the adorning of the heart.” Now if he warns that even married women, who are accustomed to excuse their finery by their husbands, are to be restrained and regulated by religious observance according to the church's discipline, how much more is it right for a virgin to observe this, for whom there is no excuse for her adornment, nor can the falsehood of blame be shifted onto another, but she alone remains in the fault. 9 You say you are wealthy and rich. But not everything that can be done ought to be done, nor should desires that are excessive and born of worldly ambition be stretched beyond the honor and modesty of virginity, since it is written: “All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient; all things are lawful, but not all things build up.” Otherwise, if you dress your hair too extravagantly and walk conspicuously in public, draw the eyes of the young upon you, drag young men's sighs after you, nourish the lust of desire, and kindle the tinder of hope, so that, even if you yourself do not perish, you still destroy others and offer yourself to those who see you as a sword and a poison, you cannot be excused on the ground that you are chaste and modest in mind. Your shameless dress and immodest adornment refute you; nor can you any longer be counted among the maidens and virgins of Christ, you who live in such a way that you may be loved as a lover. 10 You say you are wealthy and rich. But it does not befit a virgin to boast of her riches, since divine Scripture says: “What has pride profited us, or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow”;⁠b and the apostle again warns and says: “And let those who buy be as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as though they did not use it; for the form of this world is passing away.” Peter also, to whom the Lord commends his sheep to be fed and guarded, upon whom he placed and founded the church, denies indeed that he has gold and silver, but says that he is rich in the grace of Christ, wealthy in his faith and power, by which he did many mighty works with wonder, by which he abounded in spiritual goods for the grace of glory. These riches, this wealth, she cannot possess who would rather be rich for the world than for Christ. 11 You say you are wealthy and rich, and you think you should use the things God willed you to possess. Use them, but for saving purposes and good ends; use them for the things God has commanded, which the Lord has shown. Let the poor feel that you are rich; let the needy feel that you are wealthy. Lend your patrimony to God; feed Christ. That you may be allowed to carry through the glory of virginity, that you may succeed in coming to the Lord's rewards, win this by the prayers of many. Commit your treasures there, where no thief digs through, where no lurking robber breaks in. Acquire possessions for yourself, but heavenly ones rather, where your fruits, constant and lasting and immune from every touch of worldly harm, no rust wears away, no hail cuts down, no sun scorches, no rain spoils. For you sin against God in this very thing, if you believe riches were given you by him in order that you might enjoy them in a way that does not save. For God also gave man a voice, and yet love songs and indecent songs are not to be sung; and God willed iron to exist for tilling the ground, yet murders are not therefore to be committed. Or, because the Lord established incense and wine and fire, must one therefore sacrifice to idols? Or, because flocks of cattle abound in your fields, will you have to slaughter victims and offerings? Indeed, a great patrimony is a temptation, unless the wealth works for good uses, so that by his patrimony each one, the richer he is, should redeem his sins rather than increase them. 12 The distinctions of ornaments and clothing and the allurements of beauty befit none but prostitutes and immodest women, and hardly any women's dress is more costly than that of those whose modesty is cheap. So in the holy Scriptures, by which the Lord willed us to be instructed and warned, a prostitute city is described, beautifully dressed and adorned, and destined to perish with her ornaments and rather on account of those very ornaments. “And there came,” he says, “one of the seven angels who had the bowls, and approached me, saying: Come, I will show you the condemnation of the great prostitute who sits upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality. And he carried me away in the spirit, and I saw a woman sitting upon a beast; and that woman was clothed in a cloak of purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, holding a golden cup in her hand full of curses and uncleanness and of the sexual immorality of the whole earth.” Let chaste and modest virgins flee the finery of the unchaste, the dress of the immodest, the insignia of brothels, the ornaments of prostitutes. 13 Isaiah too, full of the Holy Spirit, cries out, and rebukes and reproaches the daughters of Zion, corrupted by gold and clothing, flowing with ruinous wealth and departing from God through the delights of the world. “The daughters of Zion,” he says, “have been exalted, and have walked with necks held high and with nods of the eyes, and with the step of their feet trailing their tunics and playing with their feet as well. And God will humble the chief daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their dress; and the Lord will take away the glory of their clothing and their ornaments, and their hair and curls and crescents and hair partings and bracelets and clusters and armlets and rings and earrings, and silks woven with gold and hyacinth. And instead of a sweet fragrance there will be dust; and instead of a belt you will have a rope tied around you; and instead of a golden ornament of the head you will have baldness.” This God blames, this he brands; from this he declares them corrupted, from this fallen away from true and divine adornment. Exalted, they fell; adorned, they earned disgrace and foulness. Clothed in silk and purple, they cannot put on Christ; adorned with gold and pearls and necklaces, they have lost the ornaments of heart and breast. Who would not curse and flee what has been ruin to another? Who would seek and take up what has served as a sword and a weapon for another's death? If the one who drank died after draining the cup, you would know that what he drank was poison; if the one who took food perished after taking it, you would know that what could kill when taken was deadly, and you would neither eat nor drink from what you had seen others perish by before. Now how great is the ignorance of the truth, how great the madness of mind, to want what has always harmed and still harms, and to think that you yourself will not perish by what you know others have perished by! 14 For God did not make sheep scarlet or purple, nor did he teach us to dye and color wool with the juices of plants and with shellfish, nor did he establish necklaces with stones set in gold, or pearls arranged in a woven row with a numerous joining, with which to hide the neck he made, so that what God formed in man might be covered and what the devil invented might be seen on top of it. Or did God will wounds to be inflicted on the ears, by which infancy, still innocent and ignorant of worldly evil, is tortured, so that afterwards precious beads might hang from the scars and holes of the ears, heavy if not by their own weight, then by their great price? All these things the sinful and apostate angels brought forth by their arts, when, sunk down to earthly corruption, they fell away from heavenly strength. They also taught women to paint the eyes by drawing black around them, to stain the cheeks with a false blush, to change the hair with artificial colors,⁠c and to assault the natural appearance of the whole face and head with their corrupting practices. 15 And indeed at this point, out of the fear which faith suggests to us and the love which brotherhood requires, I think that not only virgins and widows but also married women, and all women altogether, should be warned that the work of God, his making and his fashioning, ought in no way to be adulterated by applying yellow color or black powder or rouge, or, in short, any cosmetic that corrupts the natural features. God says: “Let us make man in our image and likeness”; and does anyone dare to change and alter what God has made! They lay hands on God when they strive to re-form and transfigure what he has formed, not knowing that everything that is born is the work of God, and whatever is altered is the devil's. If some master painter had captured someone's face and appearance and bodily form in colors that rivaled life, and when the likeness was already drawn and finished another man laid hands on it and, as if more skilled, re-formed what was already formed and painted, the insult to the first artist would seem grave and his indignation just. Do you think you will go unpunished for the audacity of such wicked rashness, an offense against God the artist? Though you may not be immodest toward men and unchaste through seductive paints, by corrupting and violating the things that are God's you are held guilty as a worse adulteress. That you think you are adorned, that you think your hair is dressed, is an assault on the divine work, a betrayal of the truth. 16 It is the voice of the apostle warning: “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened; for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Do sincerity and truth persist when what is sincere is polluted by adulterous colors, and what is true is changed into a lie by the paints of cosmetics? Your Lord says: “You cannot make one hair white or black”; and you, to overcome your Lord's word, want to be more powerful: with bold effort and sacrilegious contempt you dye your hair, with an evil omen of things to come you already begin your hair's flame-color, and, oh the wickedness, you sin with your head, that is, with the better part of the body! And though it is written of the Lord, “But his head and hair were white as wool or snow,” you curse gray hair, you loathe whiteness, which is like the Lord's head! 17 Do you not fear, I beg you, you who are such, that when the day of resurrection comes your Maker may not recognize you, may remove and shut you out as you come to his rewards and promises, and, rebuking you with the vigor of a censor and judge, may say: “This is not my work, nor is this our image. You have polluted your skin with false cosmetics, you have changed your hair with adulterous color, your face has been overcome by a lie, your form has been corrupted, your face is someone else's. You will not be able to see God, since your eyes are not those which God made but those which the devil stained.” You have followed him; you have imitated the reddened and painted eyes of the serpent; adorned by your enemy, you will burn along with him. Should not these things, I beg you, be pondered by the servants of God, and feared always, day and night? Let married women see to what they flatter themselves with, when they plead their husbands' comfort in their eagerness to please; by putting them forward as an excuse, they enlist them as partners in a guilty consent. Virgins, certainly, for whom this address makes no allowance, if they have adorned themselves with arts of this kind, I would not think ought to be counted among virgins, but, like infected sheep and diseased cattle, should be kept away from the holy and pure flock of virginity, so that by their contagion they do not pollute the others while they live together, and so that those who have perished do not destroy others. 18 And since we seek the good of continence, let us avoid everything harmful and hostile. Nor do I pass over those things which, coming into use through negligence, have made for themselves a license by usurpation against modest and sober morals. Some women are not ashamed to be present at weddings and, in that freedom of wanton talk, to mix in unchaste conversations, to hear what is not fitting, what it is not lawful to say, to watch and be present amid shameful words and drunken banquets, by which the tinder of lust is kindled, the bride is encouraged to endure debauchery and the bridegroom to be bold in it. What place is there at a wedding for one whose mind is not set on marriage? Or what can be pleasurable and joyful there, where both pursuits and wishes are different? What is learned there, what is seen? How far a virgin falls from her purpose! How much less modest she leaves who had come modest! Though she remain a virgin in body and mind, by her eyes, ears, and tongue she has lessened what she had. 19 And what of those who go to the mixed baths, who prostitute to eyes curious for lust bodies dedicated to modesty and chastity? When they shamefully see naked men and are seen naked by men, do they not themselves offer an enticement to vice? Do they not stir up and invite the desires of those present to their own corruption and injury? “Let each one see,” you say, “with what mind he comes there; my only concern is to refresh and wash my poor body.” That defense does not clear you, nor does it excuse the charge of wantonness and impudence. That washing soils, it does not cleanse; it does not purify the limbs but stains them. You look at no one immodestly, but you yourself are looked at immodestly; you do not pollute your eyes with shameful delight, but while you delight others, you yourself are polluted. You make a spectacle of the bath; the places where you gather are fouler than the theater. All reverence is stripped off there; together with the covering of clothes the honor and modesty of the body are laid aside; virginity is uncovered to be pointed at and handled. Now consider whether a woman who has advanced to the boldness of nakedness is modest among men when she is clothed. 20 Thus, then, the church often mourns her virgins; thus she groans at their infamous and detestable stories; thus the flower of virgins is extinguished, the honor and modesty of continence is cut down, all glory and dignity is profaned. Thus the enemy, the stormer of walls, insinuates himself by his arts; thus by snares that deceive in secret the devil creeps up; thus, while virgins wish to be more elaborately adorned and to roam more freely, they cease to be virgins, corrupted by a secret disgrace, widows before they are married, adulteresses not against a husband but against Christ, destined to suffer punishments as great for their lost virginity as the rewards for which they had been destined as virgins. 21 Hear, therefore, virgins, as you would a parent; hear, I pray, one who fears for you and warns you alike; hear one who faithfully looks to your benefit and advantage. Be such as God the Maker made you; be such as the hand of the Father formed you. Let your face remain uncorrupted, your neck pure, your form unaltered; let no wounds be inflicted on your ears, nor a costly chain of bracelets and necklaces enclose your arms or neck; let your feet be free of golden fetters, your hair painted with no color, your eyes worthy of seeing God. Let baths be taken with women, among whom your bathing is modest. Let shameless wedding feasts and wanton banquets be avoided, whose contagion is dangerous. Overcome clothing, you who are a virgin; overcome gold, you who overcome the flesh and the world. It does not belong to the same person to be unable to be overcome by greater things and to be found unequal to lesser ones. Narrow and strait is the way that leads to life; hard and steep is the path that leads to glory. By this path the martyrs go, the virgins walk, all the righteous advance. Avoid the broad and spacious roads: there are deadly enticements there and death-bringing pleasures; there the devil flatters in order to deceive, smiles in order to harm, entices in order to kill. The first fruit, the hundredfold, is that of the martyrs; the second, the sixtyfold, is yours. As with the martyrs there is no thought of the flesh and the world, and no small, light, or soft contest, so in you also, whose reward is second in grace, let your strength in endurance be next to theirs. The ascent to great things is not easy. What sweat, what labor we endure when we try to climb hills and mountain peaks! What, then, in order to climb to heaven? If you consider the reward of the promise, what you labor at is less. Immortality is given to the one who perseveres, everlasting life is promised, the Lord promises a kingdom. 22 Keep, virgins, keep what you have begun to be; keep what you will be. A great recompense awaits you, a great prize for virtue, the greatest reward for chastity. Do you wish to know what evil the virtue of continence escapes and what good it possesses? “I will multiply,” God says to the woman, “your sorrows and your groanings, and in sorrow you will bear children, and your turning will be to your husband, and he will rule over you.” You are free from this sentence; you do not fear the sorrows and groanings of women; you have no fear in childbirth concerning children; nor is a husband your lord, but your Lord and head is Christ, in the likeness and place of the man; your lot and condition are the same as men's. It is the voice of the Lord saying: “The children of this world beget and are begotten; but those who have been counted worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead do not marry nor contract marriage; for they do not begin to die. For they are equal to the angels of God, since they are children of the resurrection.” What we shall be, you have already begun to be. You already hold the glory of the resurrection in this world; you pass through the world without the world's contagion. While you persevere chaste and virgins, you are equal to the angels of God. Only let virginity remain and endure solid and unharmed, and as it began bravely, let it persevere continually, and seek the ornaments not of necklaces or clothing but of character. Let it look to God and heaven, and not lower to the desire of the flesh and the world, nor set down on earthly things, the eyes lifted up on high. 23 The first sentence commanded us to increase and multiply; the second counseled continence as well. While the world was still rough and empty, we propagated ourselves by fruitfulness, producing abundance, and increased for the growth of the human race; now that the earth is full and the world entices, those who can receive continence, living in the manner of eunuchs, are castrated for the kingdom. The Lord does not command this but encourages it; he does not impose the yoke of necessity, since the choice of the will remains free. But when he says there are many dwellings with his Father, he shows lodgings of a better dwelling. You seek those better dwellings; castrating the desires of the flesh, you obtain the reward of a greater grace in the heavenly places. All, indeed, who come to the divine and paternal gift by the sanctification of baptism put off the old man there by the grace of the saving washing, and, renewed by the Holy Spirit, are cleansed from the filth of the old contagion by a second birth. But to you belongs a greater holiness and truth of the second birth, since you no longer have any desires of the flesh and body. Only the things of virtue and of the spirit remain in you for glory. It is the voice of the apostle, whom the Lord called his vessel of election, whom God sent to proclaim the heavenly commands: “The first man,” he says, “is from the clay of the earth, the second from heaven. As was the one from clay, such also are those from clay; and as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly. As we have borne the image of him who is from clay, let us also bear the image of him who is from heaven.” This image virginity bears, integrity bears, holiness and truth bear; those bear it who are mindful of God's discipline, holding to righteousness with religion, steadfast in faith, humble in fear, strong for all endurance, gentle in bearing injury, ready in showing mercy, of one mind and harmonious in brotherly peace. 24 All these things, good virgins, you ought to observe, love, and fulfill, you who, devoted to God and Christ, go before us to the Lord, to whom you have dedicated yourselves, as the greater and better part. You who are advanced in years, be teachers to the younger; you who are younger, give encouragement to your equals. Rouse one another with mutual exhortations; call one another to glory by rival examples of virtue. Endure bravely, go forward spiritually, arrive happily. Only remember us then, when virginity begins to be honored in you.

On the Lapsed

1 See, dearest brothers, peace has been restored to the church, and what lately seemed difficult to the unbelieving and impossible to the faithless, our security has been restored by divine help and vengeance. Our minds return to gladness, and, the storm and cloud of oppression dispersed, calm and serenity have shone out again. Praises must be given to God, and his benefits and gifts celebrated with thanksgiving, although our voice did not cease giving thanks even in the persecution. For the enemy cannot be allowed so much power that we who love God with our whole heart and soul and strength should not proclaim his blessings and praises always and everywhere with glory. The day longed for by everyone's prayers has come, and after the dreadful and hideous darkness of a long night, the world has shone out, lit by the light of the Lord. 2 We gaze with joyful eyes on the confessors, illustrious with the renown of a good name and glorious with the praises of courage and faith; clinging to them with holy kisses, we embrace those we have longed for with a divine and insatiable desire. Here is the white-robed cohort of Christ's soldiers, who broke the turbulent ferocity of the pressing persecution by their steadfast encounter, ready to endure prison, armed to bear death. You have fought bravely against the world; you have presented a glorious spectacle to God; you have been an example to the brothers who will follow. Your devout voice has spoken Christ, in whom it has confessed that it believed once for all. Your illustrious hands, which had been accustomed only to divine works, have resisted the sacrilegious sacrifices. Your mouths, sanctified by heavenly food after the body and blood of the Lord, have spat out profane contagion and the leavings of idols. Your heads have remained free of the impious and wicked veil with which the captive heads of those who sacrificed were veiled there. Your brow, pure with the sign of God, could not wear the devil's crown; it has kept itself for the Lord's crown. How gladly mother church receives you in her bosom as you return from battle! How blessed, how joyful she opens her gates, that you may enter in united ranks, bringing back trophies from the defeated enemy! With the triumphant men come women too, who have conquered their sex along with the world. Virgins come too, with the doubled glory of their warfare, and boys surpassing their years in courage. And the rest of the multitude of those who stood firm follows your glory, and accompanies your footsteps with marks of praise close to yours and almost joined with them. In them too there is the same sincerity of heart, the same soundness of tenacious faith. Resting on the unshaken roots of the heavenly precepts and strengthened by the gospel traditions, they were not terrified by the exiles prescribed, the tortures appointed, the penalties against property and body. Days were fixed in advance for testing faith; but he who remembers that he has renounced the world knows no day of the world, and he who hopes for eternity from God no longer counts earthly times. 3 Let no one, brothers, let no one mutilate this glory; let no one weaken the incorrupt firmness of those who stood firm by malicious disparagement. When the day appointed for those who denied had passed, whoever had not come forward within the day confessed that he was a Christian. The first title of victory is to confess the Lord when seized by the hands of the Gentiles; the second step to glory is to be withdrawn by a prudent retreat and kept for God. The one is a public confession, the other private: the one conquers the judge of the world; the other, content with God as his judge, guards a pure conscience by integrity of heart. In the one there is readier courage; in the other, safer caution. The one, as his hour approached, was found already ripe; the other perhaps was put off, who left his property and withdrew precisely because he was not going to deny. He would certainly have confessed if he too had been detained. 4 These heavenly crowns of the martyrs, these spiritual glories of the confessors, these very great and excellent virtues of the brothers who stood firm, are saddened by one grief: that the violent enemy has torn away and cast down a part of our own inward parts in the slaughter of his devastation. What shall I do here, dearest brothers, tossed by the varied surge of my mind? What or how shall I speak? Tears rather than words are needed to express the grief with which the wound of our body must be wept over, with which the manifold loss of a people once numerous must be lamented. For who is so hard and iron-hearted, who so forgetful of brotherly love, that, standing amid the manifold ruins of his own and their mournful remains disfigured with much squalor, he could keep his eyes dry and not, with weeping bursting out at once, pour out his groans in tears rather than in voice? I grieve, brothers, I grieve with you; nor does my own integrity and private soundness beguile me into softening my griefs, since a shepherd is wounded more in the wound of his flock. I join my heart with each one; I share the mournful weights of sorrow and death. I lament with those who lament, I weep with those who weep, I think myself fallen with those who have fallen. My own limbs were struck at the same time by those darts of the rampaging enemy; his savage swords passed through my own inward parts. The mind cannot have been immune and free from the onset of persecution: in my fallen brothers my affection has laid me low too. 5 Yet account must be taken of the truth, dearest brothers, and the dark gloom of hostile persecution ought not so to have blinded mind and sense that no light or illumination remains by which the divine precepts can be seen. If the cause of the disaster is recognized, the remedy for the wound is also found. The Lord wished his household to be tested; and because long peace had corrupted the discipline handed down to us by God, the heavenly correction roused a faith that was lying prostrate and, I might almost say, asleep. And although we deserved more for our sins, the most merciful Lord so moderated everything that all that has happened seemed a testing rather than a persecution. 6 Each was intent on increasing his property; and, forgetting what believers had done before under the apostles or what they ought always to do, they brooded with an insatiable ardor of greed on enlarging their means. There was no devout religion in the priests, no sound faith in the ministers, no mercy in works, no discipline in morals. In men, beards defaced; in women, beauty painted; eyes adulterated after God's hands had made them; hair colored with a lie. Crafty frauds to deceive the hearts of the simple, deceitful designs to cheat brothers. Joining the bond of marriage with unbelievers, prostituting the members of Christ to Gentiles. Not only swearing rashly but even perjuring themselves; despising those set over them with proud arrogance; cursing one another with poisonous mouths; quarreling with one another in stubborn hatreds. Very many bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and example to the rest, despising their divine stewardship, became stewards of worldly kings; leaving their chair, deserting their people, wandering through other provinces, they hunted the markets for profitable trade. While brothers in the church went hungry, they wanted to have money in abundance, to seize estates by treacherous frauds, to increase their gains by multiplying interest. What should we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind, when the divine censure had long ago warned us and said, “If they forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my statutes and do not keep my precepts, I will visit their crimes with the rod and their sins with scourges”? 7 These things were foretold to us and predicted beforehand. But we, forgetful of the law given and of its observance, brought it about through our sins that, while we despised the Lord's commands, we came to severer remedies for the correction of sin and the testing of faith; nor were we converted even late to the fear of the Lord, so as to undergo this correction and divine testing of ours patiently and bravely. At the very first words of the threatening enemy the greatest number of the brothers betrayed their faith; they were not cast down by the onslaught of persecution, but cast themselves down by a voluntary fall. What, I ask, so unheard-of, so new had come, that, as if things unknown and unexpected had arisen, the sacrament of Christ should be dissolved with headlong rashness? Did not the prophets before and the apostles afterward announce these things? Did they not, filled with the Holy Spirit, foretell the oppressions of the righteous and the constant injuries from the Gentiles? Does not the divine Scripture, always arming our faith and strengthening the servants of God with a heavenly voice, say, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone”? Does it not again, showing the anger of divine indignation and warning beforehand of the fear of punishment, say, “They worshiped what their fingers had made, and man was bowed down and man was humbled, and I will not forgive them”? And again God speaks, saying, “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord alone.” In the gospel too, afterward, the Lord, a teacher in words and a fulfiller in deeds, teaching what should be done and doing whatever he had taught, did he not forewarn beforehand of whatever is now happening and will happen? Did he not establish beforehand both eternal punishments for those who deny and saving rewards for those who confess? 8 For some, alas, everything fell away and passed from memory. They did not even wait to be arrested before going up, to be questioned before denying. Many were conquered before the battle, laid low without an encounter, and did not even leave themselves the plea that they seemed to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. Of their own accord they ran to the forum; they hastened willingly to death, as though they had long desired it, as though they were embracing an opportunity they had gladly wished for. How many were put off there by the magistrates when evening pressed, how many even begged that their ruin should not be deferred! What compulsion can such a one plead to clear himself of his crime, when he rather used compulsion himself in order to perish? When he came willingly to the Capitol, when he freely approached to comply with the dreadful deed, did his step not falter, his sight grow dim, his inward parts tremble, his limbs give way? Were his senses not stunned, his tongue not stuck, his speech not failing? Could a servant of God stand there and speak and renounce Christ, who had already renounced the devil and the world? Was not that altar, to which he had gone to die, a funeral pyre to him? Ought he not to have shuddered at and fled the devil's altar, which he had seen smoking and reeking with a foul stench, as the funeral and tomb of his life? Why, wretch, do you bring an offering with you, why a victim to supplicate? You yourself have come to the altars as an offering, you yourself as a victim: there you have sacrificed your salvation; your hope, your faith you have burned up there in those deadly fires. 9 And for many their own ruin was not enough: by mutual exhortations the people were driven to destruction; death was pledged to one another in a lethal cup. And that nothing might be lacking to the heap of crime, infants too, carried in their parents' arms or dragged along, lost as little ones what they had obtained at the very first beginning of their birth. Will they not say, when the day of judgment comes: “We did nothing, nor did we leave the Lord's food and cup and hasten willingly to profane contagion. Another's faithlessness ruined us; we found our parents parricides. They denied for us the church as mother, God as Father, so that, while small and unforeseeing and ignorant of so great a crime, we were joined by others to partnership in their crimes, we were caught by another's deceit”? 10 Nor, alas, is there any just and serious reason that excuses so great a crime. One had to leave one's country and suffer the loss of one's property. Yet for whom, born and dying, must not one's country be left at some time and the loss of one's property suffered? Let not Christ be left; let the loss of salvation and of the eternal dwelling be feared. See, the Holy Spirit cries through the prophet: “Depart, depart, go out from there and touch no unclean thing; go out from her midst, be separated, you who bear the vessels of the Lord.” And do those who are the vessels of the Lord and the temple of God not go out from the midst and withdraw, so that they would not be forced to touch what is unclean and be polluted and violated by deadly foods? Elsewhere too a voice is heard from heaven, forewarning what the servants of God ought to do and saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her sins and be struck by her plagues.” He who goes out and withdraws does not become a sharer in the sin; but he who is found an accomplice in the crime is himself struck by the plagues. And therefore the Lord commanded us in persecution to withdraw and flee, and, that this might be done, both taught it and did it. For since the crown comes down by God's favor and cannot be received unless the hour for taking it has come, whoever, abiding in Christ, withdraws for a time does not deny his faith but waits for his time; but he who fell because he did not withdraw remained in order to deny. 11 The truth, brothers, must not be concealed, nor the matter and cause of our wound kept silent. A blind love of their property deceived many; and those whom their means bound like fetters could not be ready or free to withdraw. Those were the bonds of those who remained, those the chains by which courage was held back, faith pressed down, mind bound, and soul shut in, so that those who clung to earthly things became prey and food for the serpent who, according to God's sentence, devours the earth. And therefore the Lord, the teacher of good things and warning for the future, says, “If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” If the rich did this, they would not perish through their riches; laying up treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and assailant in their own house. Heart and mind and sense would be in heaven if their treasure were in heaven; nor could one be conquered by the world who had nothing in the world by which to be conquered. He would follow the Lord unbound and free, as the apostles did, and many under the apostles, and some often, who, leaving their possessions and their parents, clung to Christ with inseparable ties. 12 But how can those follow Christ who are held back by the bond of property? Or how can those seek heaven and climb to the high and lofty places who are weighed down by earthly desires? They think they possess who are rather possessed: slaves of their wealth, not masters of their money but rather bondmen of money. The apostle points to this time and these men, saying, “But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many hurtful desires which plunge a man into perdition and destruction. For covetousness is the root of all evils; by desiring it some have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” And with what rewards does the Lord invite us to contempt of property? With what wages does he repay these small and slight losses of this present time? “There is no one,” he says, “who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive sevenfold in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Knowing this, and assured by the truth of God who promises it, one should not only not fear such a loss but should even desire it, as the Lord himself again proclaims and warns: “Blessed will you be when they persecute you and separate you and drive you out and curse your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and exult: for your reward is great in heaven.” 13 “But tortures came afterward, and severe torments threatened those who resisted.” He can complain of tortures who was overcome by tortures; he can plead the excuse of pain who was conquered in pain. Such a one can ask and say: “I wanted indeed to fight bravely, and, mindful of my sacred oath, I took up the arms of devotion and faith; but as I fought in the encounter, various tortures and long punishments conquered me. My mind stood firm and my faith strong, and my soul long struggled unmoved with the torturing pains. But when, as the savagery of the most cruel judge broke out afresh, I was already exhausted, and now the scourges tore me, now clubs bruised me, now the rack stretched me, now the claw dug into me, now the flame roasted me, my flesh deserted me in the struggle, the weakness of my inward parts gave way; not my mind but my body failed in the pain.” Such a case can quickly advance to pardon; an excuse of that kind can be pitiable. Thus the Lord once pardoned Castus and Aemilius here; thus he made those conquered in the first encounter victors in the second battle, so that those who had before yielded to the fire became stronger than the fire, and conquered by the very thing by which they had been conquered. They pleaded not with the pity of tears but of wounds, not with a lamenting voice alone but with laceration and pain of the body; blood flowed instead of weeping, and instead of tears gore ran down from their half-burned inward parts. 14 But now what wounds can the conquered show, what gashes of gaping flesh, what tortures of limbs, where it was not faith that fell in the encounter, but faithlessness that forestalled the encounter? Nor does the necessity of the crime excuse one who was overpowered, where the crime is one of the will. I do not say this to burden the case of the brothers, but rather to spur the brothers on to the prayer of satisfaction. For since it is written, “Those who call you happy lead you into error and disturb the path of your feet,” he who strokes a sinner with flattering blandishments supplies the tinder of sin, and does not suppress offenses but feeds them. But he who with sterner counsels at once rebukes and instructs his brother advances him toward salvation. “Those whom I love,” says the Lord, “I rebuke and chastise.” So too the Lord's priest ought not to mislead with deceiving compliances but to provide with saving remedies. He is an unskilled physician who handles the swollen pockets of wounds with a sparing hand and, while he preserves the poison shut up in the deep recesses of the body, increases it. The wound must be opened and cut, and, when the putrid parts have been cut away, treated with a stronger remedy. Let the patient cry and shout and complain, impatient through pain; he will give thanks afterward when he feels himself healed. 15 For a new kind of disaster has emerged, dearest brothers, and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving evil and a flattering destruction. Against the vigor of the gospel, against the law of the Lord and God, by the rashness of certain people, communion is being relaxed for the unwary: a void and false peace, dangerous to those who give it and of no benefit to those who receive it. They do not seek the patience of healing nor the true medicine of satisfaction; penance is shut out of their hearts; the memory of the gravest and ultimate sin has been taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow lodged in the deep inward parts is concealed, the pain disguised. Returning from the altars of the devil, they approach the holy thing of the Lord with hands filthy and tainted with the reek; still almost belching the deadly food of idols, with jaws even now exhaling their crime and smelling of the fatal contagion, they break in upon the body of the Lord, when the divine Scripture confronts them and cries out and says, “Everyone who is clean shall eat the flesh; and whatever soul eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation, which is the Lord's, while his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from his people”; and when the apostle likewise testifies and says, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons”; and when he threatens and warns the stubborn and obstinate, saying, “Whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” 16 All these things spurned and despised, before their sins are expiated, before confession of the crime has been made, before the conscience has been purged by the sacrifice and hand of the priest, before the offense of the indignant and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to his body and blood; and they now sin against the Lord with hands and mouth more than when they denied the Lord. They think that to be peace which some peddle with deceiving words. That is not peace but war; nor is he joined to the church who is separated from the gospel. Why do they call an injury a benefit? Why do they call impiety by the name of piety? Why do they pretend to give communion to those who ought to weep continually and entreat their Lord, cutting short the lament of penance? To such lapsed people they are what hail is to crops, a stormy star to trees, a pestilential devastation to herds, a savage tempest to ships. They take away the comfort of hope, they overturn from the root, with diseased speech they creep toward a deadly contagion, they dash the ship on the rocks so that it may not reach port. Such easiness does not grant peace but takes it away; it does not give communion but hinders it for salvation. This is another persecution and another temptation, by which the subtle enemy, still assailing the lapsed, rampages in a hidden devastation, so that lamentation may be quieted, grief silenced, the memory of sin vanish, the groaning of the heart be suppressed, the weeping of the eyes be stopped, and the Lord, gravely offended, not be entreated by long and full penance, although it is written, “Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance.” Let no one deceive himself, let no one be misled. The Lord alone can have mercy. 17 Pardon for sins committed against himself only he can grant who bore our sins, who grieved for us, whom God handed over for our sins. Man cannot be greater than God, nor can a servant remit or forgive by his indulgence what has been committed by a graver sin against the Lord, so that this too is not added to the lapsed person's crime, if he does not know that it was foretold: “Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man.” The Lord must be prayed to; the Lord must be appeased by our satisfaction, who said that he would deny the one who denies him, who alone has received all judgment from the Father. We believe indeed that the merits of the martyrs and the works of the righteous can do a great deal with the Judge; but that will be when the day of judgment comes, when, after the end of this age and world, his people stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 18 But if anyone, rash in his headlong haste, thinks that he can give remission of sins to all, or dares to rescind the Lord's precepts, he not only does no good to the lapsed but even harms them. It is to have provoked his anger not to have kept his sentence, and not to think that the Lord's mercy must first be entreated, but, despising the Lord, to presume on one's own easiness. Beneath the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs cry with a loud voice, saying, “How long, Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who live on the earth?” And they are told to rest and still be patient. And does anyone suppose that someone can become good by remitting and forgiving sins at random against the Judge's will, or can defend others before he himself is avenged? The martyrs order something to be done: if it is just, if lawful, if not to be done by the priest of God against the Lord himself, let the obeying one's consent be easy and ready, provided the petitioner's request has been reverent and moderate. The martyrs order something to be done: if what they order is not written in the Lord's law, we must first know that they have obtained from the Lord what they ask, and then do what they order. For what has been promised by a human pledge cannot at once be seen to have been granted by the divine majesty. 19 For Moses too prayed for the sins of the people, and yet, though he had prayed, he did not receive pardon for the sinners. “I pray, Lord,” he said, “this people has sinned a great sin; and now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book which you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses, “If anyone has sinned before me, him will I blot out of my book.” He, the friend of God, he who often spoke face to face with the Lord, could not obtain what he asked, nor appease by his entreaty the offense of the indignant God. God praises and commends Jeremiah, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I sanctified you and appointed you a prophet to the nations”; and to the same man, when he often entreated and prayed for the sins of the people, he says, “Do not pray for this people, and do not ask for them in prayer and supplication, because I will not hear them in the time when they call upon me, in the time of their affliction.” Yet who was more righteous than Noah, who, when the earth was filled with sins, alone was found righteous on the earth? Who more glorious than Daniel? Who stronger in firmness of faith for undergoing martyrdom, happier in God's favor, who so many times both conquered when he fought and survived when he conquered? Who readier in works than Job, braver in temptations, more patient in pain, more submissive in fear, truer in faith? Yet God said that he would not grant it even if these asked. When the prophet Ezekiel entreated for the sin of the people, he says, “Whatever land sins against me to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand upon it and crush its support of bread and send famine into it and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men were in its midst, Noah and Daniel and Job, they shall not deliver sons or daughters; they alone shall be saved.” So not everything that is asked depends on the prejudgment of the one asking, but on the will of the one giving; and a human sentence claims and assumes nothing to itself unless the divine censure also consents. 20 In the gospel the Lord speaks, saying, “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me, I too will deny him.” If he does not deny the one who denies, neither does he confess the one who confesses. The gospel cannot stand in part and totter in part. Either both must hold good or both must lose their force. If those who deny will not be guilty of a crime, neither do those who confess receive the reward of virtue. Further, if faith that has conquered is crowned, it is necessary that faithlessness that has been conquered be punished too. So the martyrs can either do nothing, if the gospel can be dissolved; or, if the gospel cannot be dissolved, those who become martyrs from the gospel cannot act against the gospel. Let no one, dearest brothers, let no one defame the dignity of the martyrs, let no one destroy their glories and crowns. The strength of their uncorrupted faith remains unharmed; nor can one say or do anything against Christ whose hope and faith and virtue and whole glory is in Christ. That anything should be done by the bishops against God's command, those cannot be the authors who themselves have done God's commands. Or is anyone greater than God, or more merciful than the divine goodness, who would either wish undone what God has allowed to happen, or, as though God had less power to protect his church, would think that we can be saved by his own help? 21 Unless perhaps these things were done without God's knowledge, or all this came without his permission. Let the divine Scripture teach the unteachable and remind the forgetful, which speaks, saying, “Who gave Jacob to plundering and Israel to those who despoiled him? Was it not God, against whom they sinned, and they would not walk in his ways nor hear his law? And he brought upon them his furious anger.” And elsewhere it testifies and says, “Is the hand of God not strong enough to save, or has he made his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and because of your sins he has turned his face from you so as not to have mercy.” Let us consider our offenses; turning over our actions and the secrets of our mind, let us weigh the deserts of our conscience. Let it come back to our heart that we have not walked in the Lord's ways, have cast away God's law, have never been willing to keep his precepts and saving warnings. 22 What good could you think of him, what fear could you believe there was in him, what faith, whom neither fear could correct nor persecution itself reform? His neck is high and straight, and has not bent because he has fallen; his mind is swollen and proud, and has not been broken because he has been conquered. Lying fallen, he threatens those who stand; wounded, he threatens the unwounded; and because he does not at once receive the Lord's body in defiled hands or drink the Lord's blood with polluted mouth, the sacrilegious man is angry with the priests. And (O your excessive madness, raving man!) you are angry with him who strives to turn God's anger away from you; you threaten him who entreats the Lord's mercy for you, who feels your wound which you yourself do not feel, who sheds tears for you which perhaps you yourself do not shed. You still load and heap up your crime; and while you yourself are implacable toward the bishops and priests of God, do you think the Lord can be appeased toward you? 23 Accept rather and admit what we say. Why do deaf ears not hear the saving precepts we urge? Why do blind eyes not see the road of penance which we point out? Why does a shut and estranged mind not perceive the life-giving remedies which we both learn and teach from the heavenly Scriptures? Or if some unbelievers have little faith in things to come, let them at least be terrified by things present. See what punishments we see on those who have denied, what sad ends of theirs we weep over! Not even here can they be without punishment, although the day of punishment has not yet come. Some are punished meanwhile, so that the rest may be set right. The torments of a few are examples for all. 24 One of those who went up to the Capitol of his own accord to deny Christ was struck dumb after he had denied him. The punishment began where the crime began too, so that he could no longer even ask for mercy, having no words for prayers of mercy. Another woman, in the baths (for this was lacking to her crime and her evils, that she should go straight to the baths, having lost the grace of the life-giving washing), was seized there by an unclean spirit, unclean as she was, and tore with her teeth the tongue that had impiously either fed or spoken. After the wicked food had been taken, the madness of her mouth was armed for her own destruction. She became her own executioner, and could not survive long afterward: tormented by pain in her belly and bowels, she died. 25 Hear what happened in my own presence and with me as witness. Some parents, as it happened, fleeing in panic and taking too little thought, left their little daughter in the care of a wet nurse. The nurse took the abandoned child to the magistrates. There, before the idol where the people were flocking, because she could not yet eat meat on account of her age, they gave her bread mixed with wine, which was itself also left over from the sacrifice of those who were perishing. Afterward the mother took her daughter back. But the girl could no more speak of and disclose the crime committed than she had been able before to understand or prevent it. So it happened through ignorance that the mother brought her in with her while we were offering the sacrifice. But the girl, mixed with the saints, impatient of our prayer and supplication, was now shaken with weeping, now tossed about fluctuating in agitation of mind; as if under the compulsion of a torturer, her untaught soul, still in its simple years, confessed by whatever signs it could the consciousness of the deed. And when, the solemn rites completed, the deacon began to offer the cup to those present, and, as the others received, her turn came, the little one, by an instinct of the divine majesty, turned her face away, pressed her mouth shut with tightened lips, and refused the cup. The deacon persisted, however, and, though she resisted, poured in some of the sacrament of the cup. Then there followed sobbing and vomiting. The Eucharist could not remain in a violated body and mouth; the drink sanctified in the Lord's blood burst out of the polluted inward parts. So great is the Lord's power, so great his majesty: the secrets of darkness were uncovered under his light, and not even hidden crimes deceived the priest of God. 26 This happened with an infant, who had not yet reached the age to speak of another's crime committed upon her. But a woman of advanced age, in her more adult years, who secretly crept in while we were sacrificing, taking not food but a sword for herself and admitting as it were deadly poisons into her throat and breast, began afterward to be choked and stifled, her soul in turmoil; and, suffering the oppression no longer of persecution but of her own sin, she fell down, quivering and trembling. The crime of her concealed conscience did not remain long unpunished or hidden. She who had deceived man felt God as avenger. And when another woman tried with unclean hands to open her box in which was the holy thing of the Lord, she was frightened off from daring to touch it by fire rising from it. And another man, who, himself also stained by sacrifice, dared secretly to receive a part with the others when the priest had celebrated, could not eat or handle the holy thing of the Lord; on opening his hands he found he was holding ashes. By the evidence of one it was shown that the Lord withdraws when he is denied, and that what is received does not profit the undeserving for salvation, since saving grace is changed into ashes as the holy thing flees. How many are daily filled with unclean spirits, how many are shaken out of their senses by the fury of madness, even to insanity of mind! Nor is it necessary to go through the ends of each, since, through the manifold ruins throughout the world, the punishment of sins is as varied as the multitude of sinners is numerous. Let each consider not what another has suffered but what he himself deserves to suffer; nor let him think he has escaped if punishment has meanwhile put him off, since he whom the anger of God the judge has reserved for itself ought to fear the more. 27 Nor let those flatter themselves as needing less to do penance who, though they did not defile their hands with the abominable sacrifices, have yet defiled their conscience with certificates. That too is the profession of one who denies, the attestation of a Christian renouncing what he had been. He said that he had done whatever another committed by doing it; and, though it is written, “You cannot serve two masters,” he served a worldly master, he obeyed his edict, he listened to human command rather than to God. Let him see whether he has published what he did before men with less disgrace or guilt; yet he will not be able to flee and escape God as judge, since the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms, “Your eyes have seen my imperfect being, and in your book all will be written”; and again, “Man sees the face, God the heart”; and the Lord himself also forewarns and prepares us, saying, “And all the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart.” He sees through what is hidden and secret and considers what is concealed; nor can anyone escape the eyes of God, who says, “I am a God at hand and not a God from afar. If a man is hidden in hidden places, shall I then not see him?” He sees the hearts and breasts of each, and, being about to judge not only our deeds but also our words and thoughts, he looks on the minds and conceived intentions of all in the very hiding places of a still closed breast. 28 In short, how much greater in faith and better in fear are those who, though bound by no crime of sacrifice or certificate, yet, because they merely thought of it, confess this very thing to the priests of God sorrowfully and simply, make the confession of their conscience, lay open the burden of their mind, and seek a saving remedy even for slight and modest wounds, knowing that it is written, “God is not mocked.” God cannot be mocked and circumvented, nor deluded by any deceiving cunning. Indeed, he sins more who, thinking of God as of a man, believes that he escapes the penalty of his crime if he has not committed the crime openly. Christ says in his precepts, “Whoever is ashamed of me, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him”; and does he think himself a Christian who is either ashamed or afraid to be a Christian? How can he be with Christ who either blushes or fears to belong to Christ? He will have sinned less, certainly, by not looking on the idols, by not profaning the holiness of the faith under the eyes of a people standing round and insulting, by not polluting his hands with deadly sacrifices nor staining his mouth with wicked foods. This serves to make the guilt less, not the conscience innocent. He can more easily attain to pardon for his crime, yet he is not immune from crime. Let him not cease from doing penance and entreating the Lord's mercy, so that what seems less in the quality of the sin is not heaped up by neglect of satisfaction. 29 Let each one confess his sin, I beg you, brothers, while he who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession can be admitted, while satisfaction and remission through the priests are pleasing to the Lord. Let us turn to the Lord with our whole mind and, expressing penance for our crime with true sorrow, entreat God's mercy. Let the soul prostrate itself before him; let grief make satisfaction to him; let all hope rest on him. He himself tells us how we ought to ask. “Return to me,” he says, “with your whole heart, and with fasting and weeping and mourning, and tear your hearts and not your garments.” Let us return to the Lord with our whole heart; let us appease his anger and offense with fastings, weeping, and mournings, as he himself advises. 30 Do we think that he laments with his whole heart and entreats the Lord with fastings, weeping, and mournings who from the first day of his crime frequents the baths daily; who, fed on lavish banquets and swollen with too rich a diet, belches out his indigestion the next day, and does not share his food and drink with the need of the poor? How does one who goes about merry and cheerful weep over his own death? And, though it is written, “You shall not mar the appearance of your beard,” he plucks his beard and dresses up his face. Is he now eager to please anyone, who displeases God? Or does she groan and lament who has time to put on the adornment of costly clothing, and does not think of the garment of Christ which she has lost; to receive costly ornaments and elaborate necklaces, and does not weep for the loss of divine and heavenly adornment? Though you put on foreign garments and silken robes, you are naked; though you adorn yourself with gold and pearls and gems, without the adornment of Christ you are ugly. And you who dye your hair, stop now at least in your sorrows; and you who paint the outline of your eyes with a line of black powder, now at least wash your eyes with tears. If you had lost someone dear to you by death, you would groan sorrowfully and weep; with face unkempt, clothes changed, hair neglected, face clouded, looks downcast, you would show the signs of grief. You have lost your own soul, wretched woman; spiritually dead, you have begun to survive yourself here, and, walking about, to carry your own funeral; and do you not lament bitterly, do you not groan continually, do you not hide yourself for shame of your crime or in constant lamentation? See, these are still worse wounds of sinning; see, these are greater offenses: to have sinned and not make satisfaction, to have offended and not weep for the offenses. 31 Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, illustrious and noble youths, did not refrain from making confession to God even amid the flames and the blaze of the burning furnace. Even with a good conscience, and having often deserved well of the Lord by the obedience of faith and fear, they did not cease to keep humility and make satisfaction to God even amid the very glorious martyrdoms of their virtues. The divine Scripture speaks: “Standing,” it says, “Azariah prayed, and opened his mouth, and made confession to God together with his companions in the midst of the fire.” Daniel too, after the manifold grace of his faith and innocence, after the Lord's favor often shown toward his virtues and praises, still strove to win God's favor by fasting; he rolled in sackcloth and ashes, making confession sorrowfully and saying, “Lord God, great and strong and to be feared, who keep covenant and mercy for those who love you and keep your commands, we have sinned, we have committed wickedness, we have been impious, we have transgressed and forsaken your precepts and your judgments; we have not listened to your servants the prophets, what they spoke in your name to our kings and to all the nations and to all the earth. To you, Lord, to you belongs righteousness, but to us confusion.” 32 These things the meek, the simple, the innocent did to win the favor of God's majesty; and now those who have denied the Lord refuse to make satisfaction to the Lord and to pray! I beg you, brothers, submit to the saving remedies, obey the better counsels; join your tears with our tears, unite your groans with our groans. We ask you, so that we may be able to ask the Lord for you; we turn first to you the very prayers with which we pray God for you that he may have mercy. Do full penance; prove the sorrow of a grieving and lamenting soul! 33 Nor let the thoughtless error or empty stupor of some move you, who, though held in so grave a crime, have been struck with such blindness of mind that they neither understand their sins nor lament them. This is a greater blow of the indignant God, as it is written: “And God gave them a spirit of stupor”; and again: “They did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And therefore God sends them the working of error, that they may believe a lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” Unrighteously pleased with themselves and demented by the estrangement of a stupefied mind, they despise the Lord's precepts, neglect the remedy for their wound, refuse to do penance. Thoughtless before committing the crime, obstinate after it, neither steadfast before nor suppliant afterward, when they ought to have stood they fell; when they ought to lie down and prostrate themselves before God, they think they stand. They have taken peace for themselves of their own accord, with no one giving it; seduced by a false promise and joined to apostates and the faithless, they accept error for truth, count valid the communion of those who are not in communion, and believe men against God, they who did not believe God against men. 34 Avoid such people as much as you can; shun with salutary caution those who cling to pernicious contacts. Their speech creeps like a cancer; their conversation leaps across like a contagion; their harmful and poisonous persuasion kills worse than persecution itself. There, penance remains to make satisfaction; but those who take away penance for the crime close the road of satisfaction. So it happens that, while through the rashness of some a false salvation is either promised or believed, the hope of true salvation is taken away. 35 But you, brothers, whose fear of the Lord is ready, and whose mind, though set in ruin, is mindful of its evil: in penitence and sorrow examine your sins, acknowledge the very grave crime of your conscience, open the eyes of your heart to understand your offense, neither despairing of the Lord's mercy nor yet claiming pardon as already yours. As much as God, with a father's love, is always indulgent and good, so much is he to be feared with a judge's majesty. As greatly as we have sinned, so greatly let us weep. For a deep wound let careful and long treatment not be lacking; let penance not be less than the crime. Do you think God can quickly be appeased, whom you disowned with faithless words, to whom you preferred your property, whose temple you violated with sacrilegious contagion? Do you think he will easily have mercy on you, whom you said was not yours? You must pray and ask more earnestly, spend the day in mourning, pass the nights in vigils and weeping, occupy all your time with tearful lamentations, lie stretched on the ground and cling to ashes, roll in sackcloth and filth; after losing the garment of Christ, want no clothing now; after the devil's food, prefer fasting; apply yourselves to just works, by which sins are purged; give yourselves frequently to almsgiving, by which souls are freed from death. What the adversary was taking away, let Christ receive; nor should property now be held or loved, by which one was both deceived and conquered. It is to be avoided by its possessors as an enemy, fled from as a robber, feared as a sword and poison. Let what has remained be useful only for this, that crime and guilt may be redeemed by it. Let the work of charity be done without hesitation and generously; let all wealth be spent for the healing of the wound; let us lend with our riches and means to the Lord, who is to judge us. So faith flourished under the apostles; so the first people of believers kept Christ's commands: they were ready, they were generous; they gave everything to be distributed by the apostles, and they were not redeeming such sins. 36 If one prays with his whole heart, if he groans with the laments and tears of true penance, if he bends the Lord to pardon of his sin by just and continual works, he who has shown his mercy can have mercy on such, saying, “When you have turned and groaned, then you will be saved and will know where you have been”; and again, “I do not desire the death of the dying, says the Lord, so much as that he return and live.” And the prophet Joel declares the Lord's tenderness at the Lord's own prompting: “Return,” he says, “to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and kind and patient and of great mercy, and one who turns aside his sentence against the evil inflicted.” He can grant indulgence; he can turn aside his sentence. To one who repents, works, and asks he can mercifully pardon; he can credit to his account whatever the martyrs have asked and the priests have done on behalf of such. Or if anyone has moved him more by his own satisfactions, if he has appeased his anger and the offense of his indignation by just entreaty, he gives again arms with which the conquered may be armed; he restores and strengthens the powers by which renewed faith may be invigorated. The soldier will resume his contest, he will repeat the battle, he will challenge the enemy, made indeed stronger for the fight through his grief. He who has made satisfaction to God in this way, who by penance for his deed, by shame for his sin, has conceived more virtue and faith from the very grief of his fall, heard and helped by the Lord, will make glad the church which he had lately saddened, and will deserve not only God's pardon but a crown.

On the Lord’s Prayer

1 The precepts of the gospel, dearest brothers, are nothing other than divine teachings, foundations for building up hope, supports for strengthening faith, nourishment for warming the heart, rudders for directing the journey, safeguards for obtaining salvation; which, while they instruct the teachable minds of believers on earth, lead them to the heavenly kingdom. God willed that many things should be spoken and heard through the prophets, his servants; but how much greater are the things that the Son speaks, which the Word of God, who was in the prophets, testifies with his own voice, no longer commanding that the way be prepared for one who is coming, but himself coming and opening and showing the way to us, so that we, who formerly wandered heedless and blind in the darkness of death, might, enlightened by the light of grace, keep to the road of life with the Lord as our guide and ruler. 2 Among his other saving warnings and divine precepts by which he provides for his people's salvation, he himself also gave a form of prayer; he himself advised and instructed us what to pray for. He who made us live taught us also to pray, with that same kindness, of course, with which he has deigned to give and bestow everything else, so that, while we speak to the Father in the petition and prayer that the Son taught, we may be more readily heard. He had already foretold that the hour was coming when true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth; and he fulfilled what he had promised before, so that we, who have received the Spirit and the truth from his sanctification, may also worship truly and spiritually by his tradition. For what prayer can be more spiritual than that which was given us by Christ, by whom the Holy Spirit too was sent to us? What petition more true before the Father than that which was uttered by the mouth of the Son, who is the truth? So that to pray otherwise than he taught is not only ignorance but also a fault, since he himself laid it down and said: "You reject the commandment of God, so as to establish your own tradition." 3 Let us pray, then, dearest brothers, as God our Master taught. It is a friendly and intimate prayer to ask God with his own words, to let the prayer of Christ rise to his ears. Let the Father recognize his Son's words when we make our petition; let him who dwells within in our heart be also in our voice; and since we have him as our advocate with the Father for our sins, when we sinners ask on behalf of our offenses, let us bring forth the words of our advocate. For since he says, "Whatever we ask of the Father in his name, he will give us," how much more effectively do we obtain what we ask in Christ's name if we ask in his own prayer? 4 And let those who pray have speech and petition marked by discipline, keeping quietness and modesty. Let us think that we stand in the sight of God. We must please the divine eyes both by the posture of the body and by the manner of the voice. For as it is the mark of the shameless to make a din with shouting, so, on the contrary, it befits the modest to pray with restrained petitions. Indeed, the Lord in his teaching commanded us to pray in secret, in hidden and remote places, in our very bedrooms, which is more in keeping with faith, so that we may know that God is present everywhere, hears and sees all, and in the fullness of his majesty penetrates even hidden and secret places, as it is written: "I am a God at hand, and not a God far off. If a man hides himself in hiding places, shall I then not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?" And again: "In every place the eyes of God see the good and the evil." And when we meet together with the brothers and celebrate the divine sacrifices with God's priest, we ought to be mindful of modesty and discipline, not to throw our prayers about at random with unruly voices, nor to hurl with tumultuous talkativeness a petition that should be commended to God with modesty; because God is a hearer not of the voice but of the heart. Nor need he be reminded by shouting who sees our thoughts, as the Lord proves, saying: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" And in another place: "And all the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart." 5 This Hannah, in the first book of Kingdoms, bearing a figure of the church, keeps and observes: she prayed to God not with a clamorous petition but silently and modestly within the very recesses of her heart. She spoke with a hidden prayer but with manifest faith; she spoke not with her voice but with her heart, because she knew that so the Lord hears; and she effectively obtained what she asked, because she asked faithfully. The divine Scripture declares it, saying: "She spoke in her heart, and her lips moved, and her voice was not heard, and the Lord heard her." Likewise we read in the psalms: "Speak in your hearts, and be pierced with sorrow in your beds." Through Jeremiah too the Holy Spirit suggests and teaches these same things, saying: "But in the mind, Lord, you ought to be worshiped." 6 And let the worshipper, dearest brothers, not be ignorant of how the tax collector prayed with the Pharisee in the temple. Not lifting his eyes shamelessly to heaven, nor raising his hands insolently, but beating his breast and bearing witness to the sins shut up within, he implored the help of the divine mercy; and while the Pharisee was pleased with himself, the one who asked in this way rather deserved to be sanctified, who did not place his hope of salvation in confidence in his own innocence, since no one is innocent, but, confessing his sins, prayed humbly; and he who pardons the humble heard him as he prayed. The Lord sets this down in his gospel and says: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing, prayed thus with himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, as is also this tax collector. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' But the tax collector stood far off and would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: 'God, be merciful to me a sinner.' I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than that Pharisee; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." 7 Having learned these things, dearest brothers, from the divine reading, now that we know how we ought to approach prayer, let us learn also, with the Lord teaching us, what to pray. "Thus," he says, "pray: Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come; your will be done in heaven and on earth; give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and do not allow us to be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil." 8 Before all things, the teacher of peace and master of unity did not want prayer to be made individually and privately, so that one who prays should pray only for himself. We do not say, "My Father, who are in heaven," nor, "Give me today my bread"; nor does each one ask that only his own debt be forgiven him, or ask for himself alone that he not be led into temptation and be delivered from evil. Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one but for the whole people, because we, the whole people, are one. The God of peace and master of concord, who taught unity, willed that one should pray thus for all, just as he himself bore all in one. This law of prayer the three youths observed, shut up in the furnace of fire, harmonious in prayer and concordant in the agreement of spirit. The faithful word of divine Scripture declares it, and, while it teaches how such men prayed, it gives an example that we should imitate in our prayers, so that we may be such as they. "Then," it says, "those three, as from one mouth, sang a hymn and blessed God." They spoke as from one mouth, and Christ had not yet taught them to pray. And therefore their speech was prevailing and effective as they prayed, because a peaceful, simple, and spiritual prayer won the Lord's favor. So too we find that the apostles prayed with the disciples after the Lord's ascension: "They were all," it says, "persevering with one mind in prayer, with the women and Mary, who had been the mother of Jesus, and his brothers." They persevered with one mind in prayer, showing by both the urgency and the concord of their prayer that God, "who makes those of one mind to live in a house," does not admit into the divine and eternal house any but those among whom prayer is of one mind. 9 And what are the sacraments of the Lord's Prayer, dearest brothers, how many, how great, briefly gathered in words but spiritually rich in power, so that nothing at all is left out that is not included in our petitions and prayers in this summary of heavenly teaching! "Thus," he says, "pray: Our Father, who are in heaven." The new man, reborn and restored to his God by his grace, says "Father" in the first place, because he has now begun to be a son. "He came," it says, "to his own, and his own did not receive him. As many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God, who believe in his name." He, then, who has believed in his name and become a son of God ought to begin here, both to give thanks and to profess himself a son of God, since he names God his Father in heaven; and also to bear witness, among the very first words of his new birth, that he has renounced his earthly and fleshly father and has begun to know and have as father only him who is in heaven, as it is written: "Those who say to their father and mother, 'I do not know you,' and have not acknowledged their own children, these have kept your precepts and observed your covenant." Likewise the Lord in his gospel commanded that we call no one on earth our father, because, of course, we have one Father, who is in heaven. And to the disciple who had mentioned his dead father he answered: "Let the dead bury their dead." For he had said that his father was dead, whereas the Father of believers is living. 10 Nor ought we to notice and understand only this, dearest brothers, that we call him Father who is in heaven; but we add and say "our Father," that is, of those who believe, of those who, sanctified through him and restored by the birth of spiritual grace, have begun to be sons of God. This word also rebukes and strikes the Jews, because they not only faithlessly spurned the Christ who had been announced to them through the prophets and sent to them first, but also cruelly killed him. They can no longer call the Lord Father, since the Lord confounds and refutes them, saying: "You are born of the devil as father, and you want to do the desires of your father. For he was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him." And through the prophet Isaiah God cries out in indignation: "I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have despised me. The ox has known its owner, and the ass its master's manger; but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me. Woe to the sinful nation, a people full of sins, a wicked seed, lawless sons. You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to indignation." In reproach of them we Christians, when we pray, say "our Father," because he has now begun to be ours and has ceased to be the Father of the Jews who forsook him. Nor can a sinful people be a son; but to those to whom remission of sins is given the name of sons is assigned, and to them eternity too is promised, as the Lord himself says: "Everyone who commits sin is a slave. And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever." 11 How great is the Lord's indulgence, how great the abundance of his condescension and goodness toward us, that he willed us to celebrate prayer in the sight of God in such a way as to call the Lord Father, and that, as Christ is the Son of God, so we too should be called sons of God! None of us would dare to touch this name in prayer unless he himself had allowed us to pray so. We ought, then, to remember and know, dearest brothers, that when we call God Father we ought to act as sons of God, so that, as we are pleased with God the Father, so he may be pleased with us. Let us live as temples of God, so that it may be evident that the Lord dwells in us. Let not our conduct be unworthy of the Spirit, so that we who have begun to be spiritual and heavenly may think and do only spiritual and heavenly things; because the Lord God himself has said: "Those who glorify me I will glorify, and those who despise me shall be despised." The blessed apostle also has set down in his letter: "You are not your own, for you were bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body." 12 After this we say, "Hallowed be your name": not that we wish for God that he be hallowed by our prayers, but that we ask of the Lord that his name be hallowed in us. Besides, by whom is God hallowed, who himself hallows? But because he himself said, "Be holy, since I too am holy," we ask and entreat that we, who were sanctified in baptism, may persevere in what we have begun to be. And this we pray for daily. For we have need of daily sanctification, so that we, who sin daily, may cleanse our sins by constant sanctification. What that sanctification is which is conferred on us by God's condescension, the apostle proclaims, saying: "Neither the sexually immoral, nor idol-worshippers, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor those who lust after males, nor thieves, nor the fraudulent, nor drunkards, nor the abusive, nor robbers will obtain the kingdom of God. And such indeed you were; but you have been washed, but you have been justified, but you have been sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." He says that we have been sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. We pray that this sanctification may remain in us; and because our Lord and Judge warns the man he had healed and given life to stop sinning, so that something worse would not happen to him, we make this petition in continual prayers, we ask this day and night, that the sanctification and quickening received from God's grace may be kept by his protection. 13 There follows in the prayer: "Your kingdom come." We ask that the kingdom of God be made present to us, just as we ask that his name be hallowed in us. For when does God not reign, or when does that begin with him which always has been and never ceases to be? We ask that our kingdom come, promised us by God, won by Christ's blood and passion, so that we who were formerly servants in the world may afterwards reign under Christ's rule, as he himself promises and says: "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world." But Christ himself too, dearest brothers, can be the kingdom of God, whom we long daily to come, whose coming we desire to be made present to us quickly. For since he is himself the resurrection, because in him we rise again, so too he can be understood as the kingdom of God, because in him we are to reign. And rightly do we ask for the kingdom of God, that is, the heavenly kingdom, because there is also an earthly kingdom. But he who has already renounced the world is greater than its honors and its kingdom. And therefore he who dedicates himself to God and Christ desires not earthly but heavenly kingdoms. But there is need of continual prayer and petition, so that we do not fall away from the heavenly kingdom, as the Jews, to whom it had first been promised, fell away, as the Lord makes plain and proves: "Many," he says, "will come from the east and the west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." He shows that the Jews were formerly sons of the kingdom, when they continued also to be sons of God; after the name of Father ceased for them, the kingdom ceased too. And therefore we Christians, who in prayer have begun to call God Father, pray also that the kingdom of God may come to us. 14 We add also and say: "Your will be done in heaven and on earth"; not that God may do what he wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who resists God so that he may not do what he wills? But because we are resisted by the devil so that our mind and conduct may not obey God in all things, we pray and ask that God's will be done in us; and that it may be done in us, there is need of God's will, that is, of his help and protection, because no one is strong by his own powers, but he is safe by God's indulgence and mercy. Indeed, the Lord too, showing the weakness of the humanity he bore, said: "Father, if it can be, let this cup pass from me"; and, giving an example to his disciples that they should do not their own will but God's, he added, saying: "Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will." And in another place he says: "I did not come down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." But if the Son obeyed so as to do the Father's will, how much more ought the servant to obey so as to do the master's will! So John too, in his letter, exhorts and instructs us to do the will of God, saying: "Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the desire of the world. And the world will pass away and its desire; but he who does the will of God remains forever, as God also remains forever." We who wish to remain forever ought to do the will of God, who is eternal. 15 Now the will of God is what Christ both did and taught: humility in conduct, steadfastness in faith, modesty in words, justice in deeds, mercy in works, discipline in morals; not to know how to do an injury and to be able to bear one done; to keep peace with the brothers; to love the Lord with all the heart; to love in him that he is Father, to fear that he is God; to put nothing at all before Christ, because he put nothing before us; to cling inseparably to his love; to stand bravely and faithfully by his cross; when there is a contest over his name and honor, to show in speech the constancy with which we confess, under questioning the confidence with which we engage, in death the patience by which we are crowned. This is to wish to be a co-heir of Christ; this is to do God's command; this is to fulfill the Father's will. 16 We ask that God's will be done in heaven and on earth, both of which pertain to the completion of our safety and salvation. For since we have the body from the earth and the spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven, and we pray that God's will be done in both, that is, both in body and in spirit. For there is a struggle between flesh and spirit, and a daily conflict between them as they disagree with each other, so that we do not do the very things we want, while the spirit seeks heavenly and divine things and the flesh desires earthly and worldly things. And therefore we ask that by God's help and aid there may be concord between these two, so that, while God's will is done both in the spirit and in the flesh, the soul that has been reborn through him may be preserved. The apostle Paul declares this openly and plainly in his own words: "The flesh," he says, "desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the very things you want. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are adulteries, fornications, impurities, filthiness, idolatries, sorceries, murders, enmities, strifes, jealousies, animosities, provocations, feuds, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and things like these: those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, magnanimity, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, chastity." And therefore in daily, indeed continual, prayers we ask that God's will concerning us be done both in heaven and on earth; because this is the will of God, that earthly things give way to heavenly, and that spiritual and divine things prevail. 17 It can also be understood thus, dearest brothers: since the Lord commands and warns us to love even our enemies and to pray also for those who persecute us, we should ask also for those who are still earth and have not yet begun to be heavenly, that God's will may be done concerning them too, which Christ accomplished by preserving and restoring man. For since the disciples are called by him no longer earth but the salt of the earth, and the apostle calls the first man from the clay of the earth but the second from heaven, rightly do we too, who ought to be like God the Father, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust, so pray and ask, as Christ warns us, that we may make our petition for the salvation of all; so that, as in heaven, that is, in us, God's will has been done through our faith, so that we are of heaven, so also on earth, that is, in those who will not believe, God's will may be done, so that those who are still earthly by their first birth may begin to be heavenly, born of water and the Spirit. 18 As the prayer proceeds, we ask and say: "Give us today our daily bread." This can be understood both spiritually and literally, because each understanding, by divine usefulness, avails for salvation. For Christ is the bread of life, and this bread is not everyone's but ours. And as we say "our Father," because he is the Father of those who understand and believe, so also we call it "our bread," because Christ is the bread of us who touch his body. And we ask that this bread be given us daily, so that we, who are in Christ and daily receive his Eucharist as the food of salvation, do not, by the intervention of some graver sin, while we are kept from communion and, not communicating, are barred from the heavenly bread, be separated from Christ's body; as he himself proclaims and says: "I am the bread of life, who came down from heaven. If anyone eats of my bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world." Since, then, he says that whoever eats of his bread will live forever, as it is plain that those live who touch his body and receive the Eucharist by the right of communion, so, on the contrary, we must fear and pray that no one, while he is kept from communion and separated from Christ's body, remains far from salvation, as he himself threatens, saying: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you." And therefore we ask that our bread, that is, Christ, be given us daily, so that we who abide and live in Christ may not withdraw from his sanctification and body. 19 It can also be understood thus: that we, who have renounced the world and cast away its riches and pomps by the faith of spiritual grace, should ask only for food and sustenance for ourselves, since the Lord instructs us and says: "He who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." But he who has begun to be Christ's disciple, renouncing all things according to the word of his Master, ought to ask for daily food, and not extend the desires of his petition far ahead, as the Lord again prescribes and says: "Do not think about tomorrow; for tomorrow will think about itself. Sufficient for the day is its own evil." Rightly, then, does Christ's disciple ask for his sustenance for the day, since he is forbidden to think about tomorrow; because it becomes contradictory and inconsistent for us to seek to live long in the world when we ask that the kingdom of God come quickly. So too the blessed apostle warns us, forming and strengthening the firmness of our hope and faith: "We brought nothing into this world, nor can we take anything out. Having, then, sustenance and covering, we are content with these. But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and snares and many harmful desires, which plunge a man into ruin and destruction. For covetousness is the root of all evils, which some, seeking after, have made shipwreck of the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows." 20 He teaches that riches are not only to be despised but also dangerous; that in them is the root of alluring evils, deceiving the blindness of the human mind with hidden deception. Hence God rebukes the foolish rich man who thought of his worldly wealth and boasted of the abundance of his overflowing crops, saying: "Fool, this night your soul is required of you. Whose, then, will be the things you have prepared?" The fool rejoiced in his crops when he was to die that night, and he whose life was already failing was thinking of abundance of food. On the other hand, the Lord teaches that he becomes perfect and complete who, having sold all his goods and distributed them for the use of the poor, lays up treasure for himself in heaven. He says that that man can follow him and imitate the glory of the Lord's passion who, unencumbered and ready for action, is entangled in no snares of household property, but, loosed and free, himself also accompanies his possessions, which he has sent ahead to the Lord. That each of us may be able to prepare himself for this, he thus learns to pray and to know from the law of prayer what he ought to be. 21 For daily food cannot be lacking to the righteous man, since it is written: "The Lord will not kill the righteous soul with hunger"; and again: "I have been young and have grown old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread"; and the Lord likewise promises and says: "Do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the nations seek these things. But your Father knows that you need all these things. Seek first the kingdom and righteousness of God, and all these things will be added to you." He promises that all things will be added to those who seek the kingdom and righteousness of God. For since all things are God's, nothing will be lacking to him who has God, if he himself is not lacking to God. So a meal was divinely provided for Daniel when he was shut up in the lions' den by the king's command, and the man of God was fed among wild beasts that were hungry and yet spared him. So Elijah was fed in his flight and solitude, the ravens serving him, and in persecution he was nourished by birds bringing him food. And (O detestable cruelty of human malice!) the wild beasts spare, the birds feed, and men lie in wait and rage! 22 After this we also pray for our sins, saying: "And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." After the support of food, pardon for sin is asked, so that he who is fed by God may live in God, and provision may be made not only for the present and temporal life but for the eternal, to which one can come if sins are forgiven, which the Lord calls debts, as he says in his gospel: "I forgave you all the debt, because you asked me." How necessarily, how providently and wholesomely we are reminded that we are sinners, who are compelled to ask for our sins, so that, while pardon is sought from God, the soul may remember its own conscience! So that no one becomes pleased with himself as if innocent, and perishes all the more by exalting himself, he is instructed and taught that he sins daily, since he is commanded to pray daily for his sins. So finally John too warns in his letter, saying: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." In his letter he has included both: that we ought to pray for our sins, and that we obtain pardon when we pray. Therefore he called the Lord faithful to forgive sins, keeping faith with his promise; because he who taught us to pray for our debts and sins has promised fatherly mercy and the pardon that will follow. 23 He has plainly joined and added a law, binding us by a fixed condition and pledge, that we should ask for our debts to be forgiven us in the same way as we ourselves forgive our debtors, knowing that what we ask for our sins cannot be obtained unless we ourselves have done the same to those who sin against us. Therefore he says in another place too: "With the measure with which you have measured, it will be measured back to you." And the servant who, after all his debt had been forgiven him by his master, would not himself forgive his fellow servant, is bound again in prison: because he would not pardon his fellow servant, he lost what had been pardoned him by his master. Christ sets this forth still more strongly in his precepts with greater force of his censure: "When you stand to pray," he says, "forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive you your sins." No excuse remains for you on the day of judgment, when you are judged according to your own sentence, and whatever you have done you yourself also suffer. For God commanded us to be peacemakers and in concord and of one mind in his house, and such as he made us by the second birth, such he wishes us to persevere when reborn, so that we who are sons of God may remain in the peace of God, and that those who have one Spirit may have one heart and one mind. So God does not receive the sacrifice of one who is at variance, and bids him turn back from the altar and first be reconciled to his brother, so that God too may be appeased by peaceful prayers. The greater sacrifice to God is our peace and brotherly concord, and a people made one from the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 24 For in the sacrifices which Abel and Cain first offered, God looked not at their gifts but at their hearts, so that he was pleasing in his gift who was pleasing in his heart. Abel, peaceable and righteous, while he sacrificed innocently to God, taught others also, when they offer their gift at the altar, to come so: with the fear of God, with a simple heart, with the law of righteousness, with the peace of concord. Rightly, being such in God's sacrifice, he himself afterwards became a sacrifice to God, so that, being the first to show martyrdom, he began the Lord's passion by the glory of his own blood, having both the righteousness and the peace of the Lord. Such, in the end, are crowned by the Lord; such will be vindicated with the Lord on the day of judgment. But one who is discordant and at variance, and has no peace with the brothers, as the blessed apostle and holy Scripture testify, will not escape the crime of brotherly dissension even if he is killed for the name; because, as it is written, "He who hates his brother is a murderer," and a murderer does not attain to the kingdom of heaven or live with God. He cannot be with Christ who has preferred to be an imitator of Judas rather than of Christ. What a sin it is that cannot be washed away even by the baptism of blood! What a crime that cannot be expiated by martyrdom! 25 The Lord also necessarily warns us to say in prayer: "And do not allow us to be led into temptation." In this part it is shown that the adversary can do nothing against us unless God has first permitted it, so that all our fear and devotion and attention may be turned to God, since in temptations nothing is lawful for the evil one unless power is granted from there. Scripture proves it, saying: "Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it, and the Lord gave it into his hand." And power is given to the evil one against us according to our sins, as it is written: "Who handed Jacob over as loot, and Israel to those who plundered him? Was it not God, against whom they sinned, and in whose ways they would not walk, nor hear his law? And he brought upon them his furious anger." And again, when Solomon sinned and departed from the precepts and ways of the Lord, it is set down: "And the Lord stirred up Satan against Solomon himself." 26 Power is given against us in two ways: either for punishment when we sin, or for glory when we are tested, as we see was done in the case of Job, God making it plain and saying: "See, all that he has I give into your hands; but beware of touching him himself." And the Lord in the gospel speaks at the time of his passion: "You would have no power against me unless it were given you from above." And when we ask that we may not come into temptation, we are reminded of our weakness and frailty as we ask so, so that no one exalts himself insolently, so that no one proudly and arrogantly claims anything for himself, so that no one regards as his own the glory of confession or suffering; since the Lord himself, teaching humility, said: "Watch and pray, that you may not come into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak"; so that, while a humble and submissive confession goes first and all is given to God, whatever is asked suppliantly with fear and honor of God may be granted by his kindness. 27 After all these, at the completion of the prayer comes a closing clause, concluding all our petitions and prayers in a brief summary. For at the end we put: "But deliver us from evil," including all adverse things which the enemy plots against us in this world, from which there can be a firm and faithful protection if God delivers us, if he grants his help to us as we pray and implore. And when we say "Deliver us from evil," nothing remains that ought to be asked further, once we ask for God's protection against evil; and when this has been obtained, we stand secure and safe against all that the devil and the world contrive. For what fear from the world is there for him whose protector in the world is God? 28 What wonder is it, dearest brothers, if such is the prayer that God taught, who by his teaching has shortened all our prayer into a saving word? This had already been foretold through the prophet Isaiah, when, filled with the Holy Spirit, he spoke of God's majesty and kindness: "Completing and shortening the word in righteousness," he says, "for God will make a shortened word in the whole world." For when the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came to all, and, gathering learned and unlearned alike, gave out the precepts of salvation to every sex and age, he made a great summary of his precepts, so that the memory of learners should not labor in the heavenly teaching, but should learn quickly what was necessary to simple faith. So, when he was teaching what eternal life is, he embraced the mystery of life with great and divine brevity, saying: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Likewise, when he was drawing out the first and greatest precepts from the law and the prophets, he said: "Hear, Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord," and: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets." And again: "Whatever good things you wish that men should do to you, so do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets." 29 Not only by words but also by deeds God has taught us to pray, himself praying and entreating frequently, and showing by the testimony of his example what we ought to do, as it is written: "But he withdrew into the wilderness and prayed"; and again: "He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God." But if he who was without sin prayed, how much more ought sinners to pray! And if he prayed with continual petitions, watching constantly through the whole night, how much more ought we to watch at night in frequent prayer! 30 But the Lord prayed and asked not for himself (for what would the innocent one pray for on his own behalf?) but for our sins, as he himself declares when he says to Peter: "See, Satan asked to trouble you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail." And afterwards he entreats the Father for all, saying: "But I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us." Great is God's kindness and goodness alike for our salvation, that, not content to redeem us with his blood, he should pray for us still more. But see what the desire of him who prayed was: that as the Father and the Son are one, so we too should remain in that very unity; so that from this too it may be understood how greatly he sins who splits unity and peace, since the Lord prayed for this very thing, wishing, of course, that his people should live, since he knew that discord does not come to the kingdom of God. 31 And when we stand for prayer, dearest brothers, we ought to be watchful and apply ourselves to our petitions with our whole heart. Let every fleshly and worldly thought depart, and let the mind think of nothing but that alone for which it prays. For this reason the priest too, before the prayer, prepares the minds of the brothers by first saying a preface: "Lift up your hearts," so that, when the people answer, "We lift them up to the Lord," they may be reminded that they ought to think of nothing but the Lord. Let the heart be closed against the adversary and be open to God alone, and let it not allow the enemy of God to approach it at the time of prayer. For he often creeps in and penetrates, and, subtly deceiving, calls our prayers away from God, so that we have one thing in our heart and another in our voice, when not the sound of the voice but the mind and heart ought to pray to the Lord with sincere intention. And what sloth it is to be distracted and carried away by foolish and profane thoughts when you are praying to the Lord, as if there were anything you ought to think of more than that you are speaking with God! How do you ask to be heard by God when you do not hear yourself? Do you want the Lord to be mindful of you when you pray, when you yourself are not mindful of yourself? This is to be altogether off guard against the enemy; this is, when you pray to God, to offend the majesty of God by carelessness in prayer; this is to be awake with the eyes and asleep in the heart, whereas a Christian ought, even when asleep in the eyes, to be awake in the heart, as it is written in the person of the church speaking in the Song of Songs: "I sleep, and my heart is awake." Therefore the apostle warns anxiously and carefully, saying: "Persevere in prayer, watching in it"; teaching, of course, and showing that those can obtain what they ask of God whom God sees watchful in prayer. 32 And let those who pray not come to God with fruitless or bare prayers. A petition is ineffective when a barren prayer entreats God. For since every tree that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, surely words that bear no fruit cannot win God's favor either, because they are fruitful in no good work. And therefore the divine Scripture instructs us, saying: "Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving."⁠a For he who on the day of judgment will give a reward for works and alms is today too a kind hearer of one who comes to prayer with good works. So, finally, Cornelius the centurion, when he prayed, deserved to be heard. He was one who did many alms among the people and always prayed to God. As he was praying about the ninth hour, an angel stood by him, bearing witness to his deeds and saying: "Cornelius, your prayers and your alms have gone up for a remembrance before God." 33 Prayers go up quickly to God when the merits of our works commend them to God. So too the angel Raphael stood by Tobit, who was always praying and always working, saying: "It is honorable to reveal and confess the works of God. For when you and Sarah prayed, I offered the remembrance of your prayer in the sight of the glory of God; and when you buried the dead in simplicity, and because you did not hesitate to rise and leave your dinner, but went and buried the dead man, I was sent to test you; and again God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. For I am Raphael, one of the seven righteous angels who stand and go about before the glory of God."⁠b Through Isaiah too the Lord warns and teaches similar things, testifying: "Loose every knot of injustice," he says, "undo the stranglings of oppressive contracts; let the broken go free into rest, and tear up every unjust bond; break your bread to the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see the naked, clothe him, and do not despise those of your own seed. Then your light will break forth in its season, and your garments will spring up quickly, and righteousness will go before you, and the glory of God will surround you. Then you will cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking, he will say: 'Here I am.'" He promises that he is present, and says that he hears and protects those who, loosing the knots of injustice from their heart and giving alms to the household of God according to his precepts, while they hear what God commands to be done, themselves also deserve to be heard by God. The blessed apostle Paul, helped by the brothers in his need of affliction, said that the works that are done are sacrifices to God: "I am filled," he says, "having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet fragrance, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God." For when one has pity on the poor he lends to God, and he who gives to the least gives to God; he offers spiritually to God sweet fragrances. 34 In celebrating prayers, we find that the three youths, with Daniel, strong in faith and victorious in captivity, observed the third, sixth, and ninth hours, as a sacrament, of course, of the Trinity, which was to be made manifest in the last times. For the first hour, coming to the third, shows the completed number of the Trinity; and likewise the fourth, proceeding to the sixth, declares a second trinity; and when from the seventh the ninth is completed, a perfect trinity is counted by threes of hours. The worshippers of God, determining these spaces of hours spiritually long ago, kept to them as fixed and lawful times for prayer. And it was afterwards made manifest that these were sacraments of old, because the righteous prayed so before. For at the third hour the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, fulfilling the grace of the Lord's promise. Likewise Peter, going up to the housetop at the sixth hour, was instructed by the sign and also by the voice of God admonishing him, to admit all to the grace of salvation, when before he had doubted about cleansing the gentiles. And the Lord, crucified at the sixth hour, at the ninth washed away our sins with his blood, and, that he might redeem and give us life, he then accomplished his victory by his passion. 35 But for us, dearest brothers, besides the hours observed of old, the times and sacraments of praying have now increased. For we must pray in the morning too, so that the Lord's resurrection may be celebrated by morning prayer. This the Holy Spirit signified long ago in the psalms, saying: "My King and my God, for to you I will pray, Lord; in the morning you will hear my voice; in the morning I will stand before you and will see you." And again the Lord speaks through the prophet: "At dawn they will watch for me, saying: 'Let us go and return to the Lord our God.'" Likewise, when the sun sets and the day ends, we must necessarily pray again. For since Christ is the true sun and the true day, when, as the sun and day of the world recede, we pray and ask that light may come upon us again, we pray for the coming of Christ, who will give us the grace of eternal light. And the Holy Spirit declares in the psalms that Christ is called the day: "The stone," he says, "which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This was done by the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and feast in it." Likewise the prophet Malachi testifies that he is called the sun, saying: "But for you who fear the name of the Lord the sun of righteousness will rise, and in his wings is healing." But if in the holy Scriptures Christ is the true sun and the true day, no hour is excepted for Christians in which God ought not to be worshipped frequently and always; so that we who are in Christ, that is, in the true sun and day, should be instant in prayer the whole day and pray; and when, by the law of the world, the night comes round in turn, succeeding by alternate change, there can be no harm from the darkness of night to those who pray, because for the sons of light there is day even in the night. For when is he without light who has light in his heart? Or when does he lack the sun and the day, whose sun and day is Christ? 36 But we who are always in Christ, that is, in the light, let us not cease from prayer even at night. So Anna the widow, asking without ceasing and always watching, persevered in deserving well of God, as it is written in the gospel: "She did not depart from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day." Let the gentiles see to it, who have not yet been enlightened, or the Jews, who, forsaken by the light, have remained in darkness: we, dearest brothers, who are always in the light of the Lord, who remember and hold fast what we have begun to be by the grace we received, let us count night as day. Let us believe that we always walk in the light; let us not be hindered by the darkness we have escaped; let there be no losses of prayers in the hours of the night, no slothful and idle waste of prayers. Spiritually re-created and reborn by God's indulgence, let us imitate what we are to be. Since we are to have in the kingdom day alone without the intervention of night, let us so watch at night as in the light; since we are always to pray and give thanks to God, let us not cease here too to pray and give thanks.

To Demetrian

1 You have often barked at me, Demetrian, and clamored against the God who is one and true with sacrilegious mouth and impious words, and I had despised you, thinking it more modest and better to scorn the ignorance of one in error by silence than to provoke the insanity of a madman by speaking. Nor did I do this without the authority of divine teaching, since it is written: “Say nothing in the ears of a fool, because when he hears he may mock your wise words”; and again: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you may become like him”; and we are also commanded to keep what is holy within our own conscience and not expose it to be trampled by swine and dogs, as the Lord speaks and says: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they may trample them with their feet.” For when you often came to me more from eagerness to contradict than from a wish to learn, and, resounding with loud cries, preferred to push your own views shamelessly rather than listen patiently to ours, it seemed foolish to engage with you, since it would be easier and lighter to beat back the stirred-up waves of a turbulent sea with shouts than to restrain your rage with arguments. Certainly it is labor in vain and without effect to offer light to the blind, speech to the deaf, wisdom to a brute, since the brute cannot perceive, nor the blind admit light, nor the deaf hear. 2 Considering this, I have often kept silent and overcome the impatient man with patience, since I could neither teach the unteachable, nor restrain the impious with religion, nor check the raging with gentleness. But since you say that many complain, and that it is blamed on us that wars arise more often, that plague and famine rage, and that long spells of clear weather hold back the showers and rains, it is not right to keep silent any longer, so that our silence does not begin to seem to come not from modesty but from lack of confidence, and so that, while we disdain to refute false charges, we do not seem to acknowledge the charge. I answer therefore both you, Demetrian, and likewise the others whom you have perhaps stirred up, and whom, by sowing hatred against us with your abusive words, you have made your many companions, sprouting from your root and origin. Yet I believe they will accept the reasoning of our discourse; for he who has been moved to evil by deceiving falsehood will be moved much more to good by the truth. 3 You have said that all these things by which the world is now shaken and oppressed come about through us and ought to be imputed to us, because your gods are not worshiped by us. On this point, you who are ignorant of the knowledge of God and a stranger to the truth ought to know, first, that the world has now grown old, that it does not stand in the strength in which it formerly stood, nor has the vigor and robustness in which it formerly prevailed. Even if we kept silent and brought forth no proofs from the holy Scriptures and the divine prophecies, the world itself now speaks and testifies to its decline by the evidence of things failing. There is not so great an abundance of rain in winter for nourishing the seeds; there is not the usual heat in summer for ripening the crops; nor are the spring seasons so joyful in their mildness, nor the autumns so fruitful in the produce of the trees. Fewer slabs of marble are dug out of the exhausted and worn-out mountains; the mines, now drained, supply less wealth of silver and gold, and the impoverished veins shrink day by day. And the farmer is diminishing and failing in the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the forum, justice in the court, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. Do you think that the substance of a thing growing old can remain as great as it could be when it was still new and vigorous in its youth? Whatever is sinking, with its end now near, toward its setting and its last must necessarily diminish. So the sun at its setting throws its rays with less bright and fiery splendor; so the moon, as her course declines, grows thin with worn-out horns; and the tree which had before been green and fruitful afterwards becomes barren as its branches dry up, misshapen with age; and the spring which before flowed abundantly from overflowing veins, failing with age, barely drips with a little moisture. This sentence has been passed on the world; this is the law of God: that all things that have risen should set, and things that have grown should grow old, and strong things be weakened, and great things diminished, and, when they have been weakened and diminished, come to an end. 4 You blame the Christians that each thing diminishes as the world grows old. What if old men too should blame the Christians that they are less strong in old age; that they do not flourish as before in hearing of the ears, speed of the feet, keenness of the eyes, robustness of strength, juice of the vitals, bulk of the limbs; and that, whereas once the long life of men went on beyond eight and nine hundred years, now it can scarcely reach the number of a hundred? We see gray hairs in boys; the hair fails before it grows; nor does life end in old age, but begins from old age. So birth hastens to its end while still at its rising;⁠a so whatever is born now degenerates by the old age of the world itself, so that no one should wonder that individual things in the world have begun to fail, when the whole world itself is now in its failing and at its end. 5 As for wars continuing more frequently, barrenness and famine heaping up anxiety, health being broken by raging diseases, and the human race being laid waste by the ravages of plague, know that this too was foretold: that in the last times evils would be multiplied and adversities varied, and that, as the day of judgment drew near, the censure of an angry God would be more and more kindled for the chastisements of the human race. For these things do not happen, as your false complaint and your ignorance of the truth boast and clamor, because your gods are not worshiped by us, but because God is not worshiped by you. For since he himself is the Lord and ruler of the world, and all things are carried on by his will and nod, and nothing can happen except what he himself has done or permitted to happen, surely, when those things happen which show the anger of an indignant God, they do not happen on account of us, by whom God is worshiped, but are inflicted for your sins and deserts, by whom God is not sought at all nor feared, nor, abandoning vain superstitions, is the true religion recognized, so that the God who is one for all may be worshiped and entreated by all as one. 6 Hear him, then, speaking himself; hear him instructing and warning us with his divine voice: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”; and again: “You shall have no other gods besides me”; and again: “Do not walk after strange gods to serve them, and do not worship them; and do not provoke me by the works of your hands to destroy you.” The prophet too, full of the Holy Spirit, bears witness and announces the anger of God, saying: “Thus says the Lord almighty: Because my house is deserted, while you each run to his own house, therefore the heaven will withhold its dew and the earth will withdraw its produce, and I will bring a sword upon the earth, and upon the grain and upon the wine and upon the oil and upon men and upon cattle and upon all the labors of their hands.” Likewise another prophet repeats and says: “And I will rain upon one city, and upon one I will not rain; one part will be rained upon, and the part on which I do not rain will wither. And two and three cities will gather into one city for the sake of drinking water, and even so they will not be satisfied; and you do not turn to me, says the Lord.” 7 See, the Lord is indignant and angry, and threatens because you do not turn to him; and do you wonder or complain, in this obstinacy and contempt of yours, if rain rarely comes down from above, if the earth is rough with the mold of dust, if the barren clod scarcely produces thin and pale grass, if the beating hail weakens the vine, if the overturning whirlwind cuts down the olive, if drought stops the spring, if a pestilent breeze corrupts the air, if a diseased state consumes man? All these things come because sins provoke them, and God is the more exasperated when such great things do no good. For that these things happen either for the discipline of the stubborn or for the punishment of the wicked, the same God declares in the holy Scriptures, saying: “In vain have I struck your sons; they have not received discipline.” And the prophet, devoted and dedicated to God, answers to these same things and says: “You have beaten them, and they did not grieve; you have scourged them, and they would not receive discipline.” See, blows are inflicted from heaven, and there is no fear of God; see, beatings and scourges from above are not lacking, and there is no trembling, no dread. What if not even this censure intervened in human affairs? How much greater still would be the boldness of crimes in men, secure in impunity? 8 You complain that the springs are now less abundant for you, the breezes less healthful, the rain less frequent, and the earth less fertile in serving you; that the elements do not so wait upon your advantages and pleasures. Do you, then, serve God, by whom all things serve you? Do you wait upon him by whose nod the universe waits upon you? You yourself demand service from your slave, and, a man, you compel a man to submit and obey you; and though you have the same lot in being born, one condition in dying, a like material of bodies, a common nature of souls, and by equal right and the same law you both come into this world and afterwards depart from it, yet unless you are served according to your pleasure, unless you are obeyed in compliance with your will, you, an imperious and excessive exacter of service, flog, beat, and frequently afflict and torture with hunger, thirst, nakedness, and the sword and prison. And do you not acknowledge the Lord your God, when you yourself exercise lordship in this way? 9 Rightly, therefore, the scourges and blows of God are not lacking as the plagues rush in. And since these achieve nothing here and do not turn each person to God by such terror of disasters, there remains afterwards the eternal prison and the unceasing flame and everlasting punishment; nor will the groaning of those who plead be heard there, because here the terror of an indignant God was not heard, who cries through the prophet and says: “Hear the word of the Lord, children of Israel, for the Lord has a judgment against the inhabitants of the earth, because there is neither mercy nor truth nor knowledge of God upon the earth: cursing and lying and murder and theft and adultery are spread over the earth; they mix blood with blood. Therefore the earth will mourn with all its inhabitants, with the beasts of the field, with the serpents of the earth, with the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea will fail, so that no one judges, no one refutes.” God says he is indignant because there is no knowledge of God on earth; and God is neither acknowledged nor feared. God rebukes and accuses the sins of lying, lust, fraud, cruelty, impiety, and rage, and no one turns to innocence. See, the things foretold by the words of God are happening, and no one is warned by trust in present things to take thought for the future. Amid these very adversities, in which the soul, confined and shut in, can scarcely breathe, there is leisure to be wicked, and in such dangers to judge not oneself but another. You are indignant that God is indignant, as if you deserved some good by living badly, as if all these things that happen were not still less and lighter than your sins. 10 You who judge others, be for once the judge of yourself too; look into the hiding places of your conscience; indeed, since there is no longer any shame in sinning, and people sin as though they pleased more by the sins themselves, you who are seen by all, transparent and naked, look at yourself as well. For either you are puffed up with pride, or grasping with avarice, or savage with anger, or prodigal at dice, or drunk with wine, or envious with spite, or unchaste with lust, or violent with cruelty; and do you wonder that the anger of God grows for the punishment of the human race, when what is to be punished grows daily? You complain that the enemy rises up, as if, even if there were no enemy, there could be peace among the very togas; as if, even though foreign arms and dangers from barbarians are held down, the weapons of domestic assault did not rage more fiercely and more grievously within, from the false accusations and injuries of powerful citizens. You complain of barrenness and famine, as if drought made a greater famine than rapacity; as if the fire of want did not blaze up more fiercely from the snatching up of the grain supply and the heaping up of prices. You complain that the sky is closed to rain, when the granaries are thus closed on earth. You complain that less is produced, as if what is produced were given to the needy. You accuse plague and pestilence, when by that very plague and pestilence the crimes of individuals have been either uncovered or increased, while no mercy is shown to the sick, and greed and looting hungrily await the dead. The same people are timid in the service of duty and reckless for impious gain, fleeing the funerals of the dying and seeking the possessions of the dead, so that it appears that the wretched were perhaps abandoned in their sickness for this purpose, that they might not escape by being cared for; for he wished the sick man to perish who seizes the property of the one perishing. 11 Such great terror of disasters cannot give a lesson in innocence, and amid a people dying in frequent slaughter no one considers that he too is mortal. Everywhere people run about, seize, take possession; there is no concealment of plundering, no hesitation. As if it were permitted, as if it were required, as if one who does not seize suffered loss and damage of his own, so everyone hastens to seize. In robbers there is at least some shame for their crimes: they love pathless gorges and deserted wildernesses, and they sin there in such a way that the crime of the sinners is veiled by darkness and night. Avarice rages openly, and, safe in its very boldness, displays the weapons of its headlong greed in the daylight of the forum. From this come forgers, from this poisoners, from this assassins in the middle of the city, as quick to sin as they sin with impunity. The crime is committed by the guilty, and no innocent person is found to punish it. There is no fear of accuser or judge: the wicked obtain impunity while the modest are silent, accomplices are afraid, and those who are to judge are for sale. And therefore through the prophet, by the divine Spirit and inspiration, the truth of the matter is brought forth, and the sure and plain reason is shown: that the Lord can prevent adversities, but that the deserts of sinners keep him from helping. “Is the hand of God not strong enough to save,” he says, “or will he make his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and because of your offenses he turns his face from you, so as not to have mercy.” So let sins and offenses be counted up, let the wounds of conscience be considered, and let each person cease to complain about God or about us, if he understands that he deserves what he suffers. 12 And see, what is the very thing about which our discourse chiefly is: that you harass us, the innocent, that to the insult of God you attack and oppress the servants of God? It is not enough that your life is stained by the variety of raging vices, by the iniquity of deadly crimes, by the sum of bloody plunderings; that the true religion is overthrown by false superstitions; that God is neither sought nor feared at all: you go further still and pursue the servants of God, dedicated to his majesty and divinity, with unjust persecutions. It is not enough that you yourself do not worship God: you go further and persecute with sacrilegious hostility those who do worship him. You neither worship God nor allow him to be worshiped at all; and while the others please you, who venerate not only these foolish idols and images made by the hand of man but even certain prodigies and monsters, the worshiper of God alone displeases you. Everywhere in your temples the pyres of victims and the burnt remains of cattle smoke, and the altars of God are either none or hidden. Crocodiles and dog-headed apes and stones and serpents are worshiped, and God alone on earth is either not worshiped or not worshiped with impunity. The innocent, the righteous, those dear to God, you deprive of home, strip of patrimony, load with chains, shut in prison, punish with beasts, the sword, and fire. Nor are you even content with a quick end to our pains and with the simple and swift brevity of punishments: you apply long tortures to tear bodies apart, you multiply numerous punishments to lacerate the vitals; nor can your savagery and brutality be content with the usual tortures: ingenious cruelty devises new punishments. 13 What is this insatiable madness for butchery, this unappeasable lust for cruelty? Rather, choose for yourself one of two things: to be a Christian is either a crime or it is not. If it is a crime, why do you not kill the one who confesses it? If it is not a crime, why do you persecute the innocent? For I ought to have been tortured if I denied it. If, fearing your punishment, I hid by a deceiving lie what I had been before and that I had not worshiped your gods, then I should have been tortured, then I should have been driven by the force of pain to confess the crime, as in other inquiries the accused are tortured who deny that they are guilty of the crime of which they are charged, so that the truth of the deed, which is not brought out by the informing voice, may be wrung out by bodily pain. But now, since I confess of my own accord, and cry out, and bear witness with frequent and repeated words again and again that I am a Christian, why do you apply tortures to one who confesses, and who destroys your gods not in hidden and secret places but openly, but publicly, but in the very forum in the hearing of magistrates and governors? So that, even if what you charged against me before had been too little, what you ought both to hate and to punish more has now grown. Why, when I proclaim myself a Christian in a crowded place with the people standing around, and confound both you and your gods by clear and public preaching? 14 Why do you turn to the weakness of the body, why do you contend with the frailty of earthly flesh? Engage with the vigor of the mind; break the strength of the spirit; destroy faith; conquer by argument if you can, conquer by reason. Or, if your gods have any divinity and power, let them rise up to avenge themselves; let them defend themselves by their own majesty. But what can they provide for their worshipers who cannot avenge themselves on those who do not worship them? For if the avenger is of more worth than the one avenged, you are greater than your gods. If, then, you are greater than those you worship, you ought not to worship them, but to be worshiped by them. Your vengeance defends them when they are injured, just as your protection guards them, locked up, so that they do not perish. Be ashamed to worship those whom you yourself defend; be ashamed to hope for protection from those whom you protect. 15 O if you would be willing to hear and see them when they are adjured by us, tortured with spiritual scourges, and cast out of possessed bodies by the torments of words; when, howling and groaning with a human voice, and feeling the scourges and blows of a divine power, they confess the judgment to come! Come and learn that what we say is true; and since you say you worship the gods in this way, believe at least those whom you worship. Or, if you are willing to believe even yourself, he who now besieges your breast, who now has blinded your mind with the night of ignorance, will speak about yourself in your hearing. You will see us entreated by those whom you entreat, feared by those whom you adore; you will see standing bound under our hand, and trembling as captives, those whom you look up to and venerate as lords. Surely even so you could be confounded in these errors of yours, when you have seen and heard your gods, at our questioning, at once betray what they are, and unable, even with you present, to conceal those tricks and deceits of theirs. 16 What sluggishness of mind is this, then, or rather what blind and foolish madness of the senseless, not to come from darkness to light, and, bound by the snares of eternal death, to refuse to receive the hope of immortality; not to fear God when he threatens and says: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord alone”; and again: “They have worshiped what their fingers made, and man has been bent down and man humbled, and shall I not forgive them?” Why do you humble yourself and bow down to false gods? Why do you bend your captive body before foolish images and earthly fictions? God made you upright, and while the other animals are bent forward and pressed down in a posture sloping toward the ground, you have a lofty stature, and your face lifted up to heaven and to the Lord. Look there, direct your eyes there, seek God in the heights. So that you may escape the depths below, lift up your heart, raised aloft, to high and heavenly things. Why do you prostrate yourself in the fall of death with the serpent whom you worship? Why do you fall into the devil's ruin through him and with him? Keep the loftiness in which you were born. Persevere such as you were made by God. Set your soul upright with the posture of your face and body. So that you may know God, know yourself first. Abandon the idols which human error invented. Turn to God, who, if you implore him, comes to help. Believe in Christ, whom the Father sent to give us life and restore us. Cease to harm by your persecutions the servants of God and of Christ, whom, when harmed, divine vengeance defends. 17 That is why none of us resists when he is arrested, nor avenges himself against your unjust violence, although our people are very many and numerous. Security about the vengeance that will follow makes us patient. The innocent yield to the guilty; the blameless submit to punishments and tortures, certain and confident that whatever we suffer does not remain unavenged, and that the greater the injury of the persecution, the more just and heavy the vengeance for it becomes. Nor does anyone ever rise up against our name by the crime of the impious without divine vengeance following at once. To pass over ancient memories and not rehearse with any recital the vengeances often repeated on behalf of the worshipers of God, the proof of a recent event is enough: that so swiftly, and in such swiftness so greatly, the defense lately followed in the ruin of affairs, the loss of wealth, the waste of soldiers, the diminution of the camps. Nor let anyone think that this happened by chance or suppose it was fortuitous, since long ago divine Scripture laid it down and said: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord”; and again the Holy Spirit warns beforehand and says: “Do not say: I will avenge myself on my enemy, but wait for the Lord, that he may be your help.” From this it is clear and plain that all these things which come down from the anger of God happen not through us but for us. 18 Nor should anyone think that Christians are not avenged by what happens because they themselves seem to be touched by the onset of these events. He feels punishment from the adversities of the world whose joy and glory are all in the world. He mourns and weeps if things go badly for him in this age, for whom things cannot go well after this age; whose whole fruit of living is gathered here, whose every consolation ends here, whose perishable and brief life reckons some sweetness and pleasure here; and when he has departed from here, only punishment remains for his pain. But those who have confidence in future goods feel no pain from the onset of present evils. In short, we are neither dismayed by adversities, nor broken, nor grieved, nor do we murmur in any disaster to property or sickness of the body. Living by the spirit rather than the flesh, we overcome the weakness of the body by firmness of mind. By the very things that torture and weary you we know and trust that we are proved and strengthened. 19 Do you think that we suffer adversities equally with you, when you see that the same adversities are not borne equally by us and by you? Among you impatience is always clamorous and complaining; among us a brave and religious patience is always quiet and always thankful to God. It claims nothing joyful or prosperous for itself here, but, mild and gentle and steady against all the whirlwinds of the tossing world, awaits the time of the divine promise. For as long as this body remains, common with others, the bodily condition must also be common; nor is it given to the human race to be separated from one another, except by departing from this world. Meanwhile the good and the bad are held within one house. Whatever comes within the house we suffer with equal lot, until, the end of temporal time completed, we are divided to the lodgings either of eternal death or of immortality. So we are not your equals and peers because, being still placed in this world and in this flesh, we meet the disadvantages of the world and the flesh equally with you. For since everything that punishes lies in the feeling of pain, it is plain that one whom you see not grieving with you is not someone who shares your punishment. 20 Among us there flourishes the strength of hope and the firmness of faith; amid the very ruins of the falling age the mind is upright, courage unmoved, patience never without joy, and the soul always secure about its God, as the Holy Spirit speaks through the prophet and exhorts, strengthening the firmness of our hope and faith with a heavenly voice: “The fig tree,” he says, “will not bear fruit, and there will be no produce in the vines. The work of the olive will fail, and the fields will not yield food. The sheep will fail from the pasture, and there will be no oxen in the stalls. But I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice in God my Savior.” He denies that the man of God and worshiper of God, supported by the truth of hope and founded on the steadfastness of faith, is moved by the assaults of this world and age. Though the vine fail and the olive deceive and the field, parched as the grass dies from drought, wither, what is that to Christians, what to the servants of God, whom paradise invites, whom all the grace and abundance of the heavenly kingdom awaits? They always exult in the Lord and are glad and rejoice in their God, and bravely endure the evils and adversities of the world while they look forward to the good and prosperous things to come. For we who have put off earthly birth and have been re-created and reborn by the Spirit, and live no longer for the world but for God, shall not receive God's gifts and promises until we come to God. And yet we always ask and pour out prayers for warding off enemies and obtaining rains and either removing or moderating adversities; and for your peace and safety we pray continually and earnestly, day and night, propitiating and appeasing God. 21 So let no one flatter himself that, because the condition of worldly labors is meanwhile common to us and to the profane, to the worshipers of God and to God's adversaries, through the equality of flesh and body, he may conclude from this that all these things that happen are not inflicted for us. For it was foretold by the preaching of God himself and the testimony of the prophets that the anger of God would come upon the unrighteous, that persecutions which would hurt us humanly would not be lacking, but also that vengeances would follow which would defend the injured divinely. 22 And how much is done here for us meanwhile! Something is given as an example, so that the anger of God the avenger may be known. But the day of judgment is still ahead, which holy Scripture announces, saying: “Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction from God will be present. For see, the day of the Lord comes, of incurable indignation and anger, to make the whole earth a desert and to destroy the sinners out of it.” And again: “See, the day of the Lord comes, burning like an oven, and all the foreigners and all the wicked will be stubble, and the coming day will set them on fire, says the Lord.” The Lord foretells that the foreigners will be set on fire and burned, that is, those foreign to the divine race and profane, not spiritually reborn nor made children of God. For that only those can escape who have been reborn and sealed with the sign of Christ, God says in another place, when, sending his angels for the devastation of the world and the destruction of the human race, he threatens more severely at the last, saying: “Go and strike and do not spare with your eyes. Do not pity old men, and kill young men and virgins and women and little ones, that they may be utterly destroyed. But do not touch anyone on whom the sign is written.” What this sign is, and on what part of the body it is placed, God shows in another place, saying: “Pass through the midst of Jerusalem and mark a sign on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over the iniquities that are done in their midst.” And that this sign pertains to the passion and blood of Christ, and that whoever is found in this sign is kept safe and unharmed, is likewise proved by the testimony of God, saying: “And the blood shall be a sign for you upon the houses in which you are, and I will see the blood and protect you, and there shall be no plague of destruction on you when I strike the land of Egypt.” What went before in figure, in the lamb that was slain, is fulfilled in Christ, the truth following afterwards. As there, when Egypt was struck, the Jewish people could escape only by the blood and sign of the lamb, so also, when the world begins to be laid waste and struck, whoever is found in the blood and sign of Christ alone escapes. 23 Look, therefore, while there is time, to true and eternal salvation; and since the end of the world is now near, turn your minds to God in the fear of God. Nor let this powerless and empty dominion in the world over the righteous and meek delight you, since in the field also darnel and wild oats lord it among the cultivated and fertile crops; and do not say that evils happen because your gods are not worshiped by us, but know that this is the anger of God, this the censure of God, so that he who is not understood through his benefits may at least be understood through his blows. Seek God, even late, for long ago God, warning through the prophet, exhorts and says: “Seek God, and your soul shall live.” Know God, even late, for Christ also, at his coming, admonishes and teaches this, saying: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Believe him who does not deceive at all. Believe him who foretold that all these things would come. Believe him who will give to believers the reward of eternal life. Believe him who will inflict on unbelievers eternal punishments in the fires of Gehenna. 24 What glory of faith will there be then, what punishment of unbelief, when the day of judgment comes! What joy of believers, what sorrow of unbelievers, that they refused to believe here before, and that now they cannot return to believe! Ever-burning Gehenna will burn up those condemned to it, and a devouring punishment with living flames; nor will there be any source from which they could ever have respite or end of their torments. Souls with their bodies will be kept for pain in infinite tortures. There he will be forever looked upon by us who looked upon us here for a time; and the brief enjoyment of cruel eyes in the persecutions they carried out will be paid for by a perpetual sight, according to the faithful word of holy Scripture, which says: “Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be a spectacle to all flesh.” And again: “Then the righteous will stand in great boldness against those who afflicted them and who took away their labors. Seeing it, they will be troubled with horrible fear, and will marvel at the suddenness of unexpected salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: These are those whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools thought their life madness and their end without honor. How have they been counted among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints? So we have strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness has not shone for us, and the sun has not risen for us. We have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and we have walked through difficult wildernesses, but the way of the Lord we have not known. What has pride profited us, or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow.”⁠b Then there will be the pain of punishment without the fruit of repentance, empty weeping and ineffective pleading. Too late do they believe in eternal punishment who refused to believe in eternal life. 25 Provide, therefore, for your security and life while you may. We offer you the saving gift of our mind and counsel. And since it is not lawful for us to hate, and we please God more when we return no requital for injury, we exhort you, while you have the opportunity, while something of the world still remains, to make satisfaction to God and to emerge from the depth of dark superstition into the bright light of true religion. We do not envy your advantages, nor do we hide the divine benefits. We return goodwill for your hatred, and for the tortures and punishments inflicted on us we show you the ways of salvation. Believe and live; and you who persecute us for a time, rejoice with us forever. When one has departed from here, there is no longer any place for repentance, no effect of satisfaction. Here life is either lost or held; here provision is made for eternal salvation by the worship of God and the fruit of faith. Nor let anyone be held back, either by sins or by years, from coming to obtain salvation. For one who still remains in this world no repentance is too late. The way to God's indulgence is open, and access is easy to those who seek and understand the truth. Though it be at the very end and setting of temporal life, if you pray for your sins and implore the God who is one and true by confession and the faith of acknowledging him, pardon is given to the one who confesses, and saving indulgence is granted from the divine mercy to the one who believes, and one passes to immortality at the very moment of death. This grace Christ imparts; this gift of his mercy he bestows, by subduing death with the trophy of the cross, by redeeming the believer at the price of his blood, by reconciling man to God the Father, by giving life to the mortal through heavenly regeneration. Him, if it can be, let us all follow; let us be enrolled under his sacrament and sign. He opens to us the way of life; he brings us back to paradise; he leads us to the kingdoms of heaven. With him we shall always live, made children of God through him; with him we shall always exult, restored by his blood. We shall be Christians glorious together with Christ, blessed by God the Father, rejoicing with perpetual delight, always in the sight of God and always giving thanks to God. For he cannot but be always joyful and grateful who, though he had been liable to death, has been made secure in immortality.

That Idols Are Not Gods (authorship disputed)

1 That those whom the common people worship are not gods is known from this: they were once kings, who, because of the memory of their kingship, afterwards began to be worshiped by their own people even in death. From this, temples were founded for them; from this, statues were fashioned to keep the faces of the dead by their image; and people sacrificed victims and celebrated feast days by paying them honor. From this, what had been adopted at first as consolations became sacred rites for later generations. And let us see whether this truth also holds for them one by one. 2 Melicertes and Leucothea throw themselves into the sea and afterwards become deities of the sea; the Castors die by turns so that they may live; Aesculapius is struck by lightning so that he may rise to be a god; Hercules is burned up in the fires of Oeta so that he may put off the man. Apollo fed the flocks of Admetus; Neptune built walls for Laomedon, and the unlucky builder received no wage for his work. The cave of Jupiter is visited in Crete and his tomb is shown, and it is plain that Saturn was put to flight by him; from this Latium got its name, from his hiding place. He first taught in Italy how to print letters and to stamp coins; from this the treasury is called Saturn's. He was also a cultivator of the countryside; from this he is painted carrying a sickle. When he was a fugitive, Janus had received him as a guest; from his name the Janiculum was called and the month of January established. He himself is depicted with two faces, because, set in the middle, he seems to follow both the year that is beginning and the year that is departing. The Moors, for their part, openly worship their kings and do not cover this name with any veil. 3 From this the religion of the gods varies among the nations and the individual provinces, since not one God is worshiped by all, but each keeps the cult proper to its own ancestors. That this is so Alexander the Great wrote to his mother in a notable volume: that, out of fear of his power, a priest had betrayed to him the secret about the gods being men, namely that it was the memory of ancestors and kings that was preserved. From this the rite of worshiping and sacrificing grew up. But if gods were once born, why are they not born even today? Unless perhaps Jupiter has grown old, or childbearing has failed in Juno? 4 And why do you think the gods can do anything for the Romans, when you see that they were of no avail for their own people against Roman arms? For we know the Romans' home-born gods. Romulus became a god by the perjury of Proculus; and Picus and Tiberinus and Pilumnus and Consus, whom Romulus wished to be worshiped as a god of fraud, as if a god of counsels, after his treachery issued in the rape of the Sabine women. Tatius also invented and worshiped the goddess Cloacina; Hostilius, Fear and Pallor. Soon Fever was dedicated by someone or other, and Acca and Flora, prostitutes. These are the Roman gods. As for the rest, Thracian Mars and Cretan Jupiter and Juno, whether of Argos or Samos or Carthage, and Taurian Diana, and the Idaean mother of the gods, and the monsters of Egypt, are not deities: surely, if they had had any power, they would have preserved their own kingdoms and those of their people. Clearly there are among the Romans also the conquered household gods which the fugitive Aeneas brought over; there is also the bald Venus, much more shamefully bald here than wounded in Homer. 5 Kingdoms, moreover, do not come by merit but vary by lot. Before, the Syrians and Persians held empire; and we know that the Greeks and Egyptians reigned. So, by the succession of powers, the time to rule has come to the Romans as to the others. Besides, if you go back to their origin, you would blush. The people is gathered from criminals and the guilty, and, once an asylum is set up, impunity for crimes makes up their number. Then, so that the king himself may have the first place in crime, Romulus becomes a fratricide; and to make marriages, he begins a thing of concord with discords. They seize, they rage, they deceive, to increase the size of the city: their weddings are broken treaties of hospitality and cruel wars with their fathers-in-law. There is also the step of office: the highest of Roman honors is the consulship. So we see the consulship begin as the kingship did: Brutus kills his sons, so that the esteem of his office may grow by the vote of crime. Thus the Roman kingdoms did not grow from holy religions or from auspices or auguries, but they keep a time received within a fixed limit. Besides, Regulus observed the auspices and was captured; Mancinus kept religion and was sent under the yoke; Paulus had hungry chickens, and yet was cut down at Cannae; Gaius Caesar, when the auguries and auspices held him back from sending ships across to Africa before the winter solstice, disregarded them: all the more easily did he both sail and conquer. 6 Now the explanation of all these things is this, which deceives and misleads and, by blinding tricks, leads the foolish and prodigal crowd away from the truth. They are impure and wandering spirits, who, after they were sunk in earthly vices and withdrew from heavenly strength by earthly contagion, do not cease, being lost, to destroy, and, being depraved, to pour in the error of depravity. The poets too know these as demons; and Socrates declared that he was instructed and ruled at the will of a daimonion; and from them the magi have their power for harmful or playful things. Yet the chief of these, Ostanes, both denies that the form of the true God can be seen and says that true angels stand beside his throne. In this Plato also agrees by the same reasoning, and, keeping one God, calls the others angels or demons. Hermes Trismegistus too speaks of one God and confesses him incomprehensible and beyond estimation. 7 These spirits, then, lurk under consecrated statues and images; these inspire the breasts of seers with their breath, animate the fibers of entrails, govern the flights of birds, rule the lots, produce oracles, always wrap the false in the true, for they both are deceived and deceive; they disturb life, disquiet sleep; creeping secretly into bodies as spirits, they also terrify minds, twist limbs, break health, provoke diseases, in order to force people to worship them, so that, when they have been glutted with the savor of altars and the pyres of cattle, they may loosen what they had bound and seem to have cured it. This is their healing: their injury ceases for their worshipers. Nor have they any other aim than to call men away from God and to turn them from the understanding of true religion to superstition toward themselves; and since they themselves are under punishment, to seek companions in punishment, whom by error they have made partners in their crime. Yet these, when adjured by the true God, immediately yield to us and confess, and are forced to leave the bodies they possess. You may see them, at our voice and by the prayer of the hidden majesty, beaten with whips, scorched with fire, stretched by the growth of an increasing punishment, howling, groaning, pleading, confessing where they come from and when they depart, in the hearing even of those who worship them, so that they either leap out at once or vanish gradually, as the faith of the sufferer helps or the grace of the healer breathes upon it. From this they drive the crowd to hatred of our name, so that men begin to hate us before they know us, for if they knew us, they might either imitate us or be unable to condemn us. 8 There is therefore one God, Lord of all; for that sublimity cannot have a partner, since it alone holds all power. Let us borrow an example for the divine rule even from the earth. When did a shared kingship ever begin in good faith or end without blood? So the brotherhood of the Thebans was broken, their discord lasting even in death, as their pyres stood apart. And one kingdom does not hold the Roman twins, whom one lodging of the womb held. Pompey and Caesar were kinsmen by marriage, and yet they did not keep the bond of kinship in rival power. Nor should you wonder at this in man, since all nature agrees on it: the bees have one king, the flocks one leader, the herds one ruler. Much more has the world one ruler, who commands all things whatever by his word, orders them by his reason, and completes them by his power. 9 He cannot be seen: he is brighter than sight; nor comprehended: he is purer than touch; nor estimated: he is greater than sense. And so we estimate God worthily when we say he is beyond estimation. What temple could God have, whose temple is the whole world? And while I, a man, live in a larger space, shall I shut up the power of such great majesty within one small shrine? He is to be dedicated in our mind, consecrated in our breast. Do not seek a name for God: God is his name. There is need of words where a multitude must be distinguished by the proper marks of names; for God, who alone is, the word God is the whole. Therefore he is one, and he himself is spread everywhere. For even the common people in many things naturally confess God, when the mind and soul are reminded of their author and ruler. We often hear it said, “God,” and “God sees,” and “I commend it to God,” and “God will repay me,” and “if God grants,” and “what God wills.” But what a sum of guilt this is, to refuse to acknowledge one whom you cannot fail to know! 10 As to who Christ is, and how salvation came to us through him, this is the order, this the reasoning. The Jews first had favor with God. So of old they were righteous; so their ancestors obeyed their religious rites. From this their kingdom flourished in greatness, and their people grew numerous. But afterwards they became undisciplined, and, puffed up by confidence in their fathers, while they despised the divine precepts they lost the grace given them. How profane their life was, what offense of violated religion was incurred, they themselves also testify, who, though silent in voice, confess it by their outcome: scattered and straying, they wander; fugitives from their own soil and sky, they are tossed about among foreign lodgings. 11 And God had also foretold long ago that, as the age declined and the end of the world drew near, God would choose for himself much more faithful worshipers from every nation, people, and place, who would receive forgiveness through God's gifts. Of this grace and discipline, which the Jews had received but lost by despising their religious duties, then, the Word and Son of God is sent as arbiter and teacher, who through all the prophets is proclaimed as the enlightener and guide of the human race. He is the power of God, he is his reason, his wisdom and glory; he descends into a virgin, he, the Holy Spirit, puts on flesh; God is mingled with man. He is our God, he is Christ, who, as mediator of the two, put on man, whom he might lead to the Father. Christ willed to be what man is, so that man also might be what Christ is. 12 The Jews also knew that Christ was to come, for he was always announced to them by the prophets' warnings. But since a twofold coming of his was signified, one which would carry out the practice and example of a man, the other which would declare him God, they did not understand the first coming, which went before hidden in suffering, and believe in one only, which will be manifest in power. That the Jewish people could not understand this was the desert of their sins: they were so punished with blindness of wisdom and understanding that those who were unworthy of life had life before their eyes and did not see it. 13 And so, when Christ Jesus, according to what had been foretold by the prophets, drove demons out of men by his word and the command of his voice, strengthened the paralyzed, cleansed lepers, gave light to the blind, gave the lame their step, brought the dead to life again, compelled the elements to serve him, the winds to be his servants, the seas to obey, the underworld to yield, the Jews, who had believed him only a man from the lowliness of his flesh and body, judged him a magician from the freedom of his power. Hence their teachers and leaders, that is, those whom he refuted by his teaching and wisdom, inflamed with anger and provoked by indignation, at last seized him and handed him over to Pontius Pilate, who was then governing Syria on behalf of Rome, and demanded his cross and death by their violent and persistent demands. 14 He himself had foretold that they would do this, and the testimony of all the prophets had gone before in the same way: that he must suffer, not in order to feel death but to conquer it, and, when he had suffered, return again to the realms above, to show the power of the divine majesty. So the course of events fulfilled the promise. For, when crucified, he forestalled the executioner's office and gave up his spirit of his own accord, and on the third day he rose again from the dead of his own accord. He appeared to his disciples as he had been; he offered himself to be recognized by those who saw him gathered together; and, conspicuous in the solidity of a bodily substance, he remained forty days, so that they might be instructed by him in the life-giving precepts and learn what they were to teach. Then, surrounded by a cloud, he was taken up into heaven, so that as victor he might set before the Father the man whom he loved, whom he put on, whom he protected from death; he is soon to come from heaven for the punishment of the devil and the judgment of the human race, with the vigor of an avenger and the power of a judge. But the disciples, spread through the world at the admonition of their Teacher and God, were to give precepts for salvation, to lead men from the error of darkness to the way of light, to give sight to the blind and ignorant for the knowledge of the truth. 15 And so that the proof might not be less solid and the confession of Christ soft, they are tested through tortures, through crosses, through many kinds of punishment. Pain, which is the witness of truth, is summoned, so that Christ the Son of God, who is believed to have been given to men for life, might be proclaimed not only by the heralding of the voice but also by the testimony of suffering. Him therefore we accompany, him we follow, him we have as the leader of our way, the prince of light, the author of salvation, who promises heaven and the Father alike to those who seek and believe. What Christ is, we Christians will be, if we have followed Christ.

On Mortality

1 Although in most of you, dearest brothers, the mind is solid, the faith firm, and the soul devoted, not shaken by the mass of the present mortality, but, like a strong and steady rock, it rather breaks the turbulent onslaughts of the world and the violent waves of the age, and is not itself broken, and is not conquered by temptations but proved; yet because I notice that some among the people, whether from weakness of mind, or smallness of faith, or the sweetness of worldly life, or the softness of their sex, or, what is worse, from error about the truth, stand less firmly and do not display the divine and invincible strength of their hearts, the matter was not to be passed over or kept silent. Rather, as far as our modest ability suffices, with full vigor and with a discourse drawn from the Lord's reading, the faint-heartedness of a delicate mind should be checked, so that he who has already begun to be a man of God and of Christ may be held worthy of God and of Christ. 2 For he who serves as a soldier of God, who, set in the heavenly camp, already hopes for divine things, ought to recognize that we must have no trembling and no disturbance at the storms and whirlwinds of the world, since the Lord foretold that these things would come, instructing and teaching and preparing and strengthening the people of his church with the encouragement of his foreseeing voice for all endurance of things to come. He foretold and prophesied that wars and famines and earthquakes and pestilences would arise in various places; and so that a new and unexpected fear of hostile events might not shake us, he warned beforehand that adversities would increase more and more in the last times. See, the things that were spoken are happening; and since the things foretold are happening, whatever was promised will also follow, as the Lord himself promises and says: “But when you see all these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.” The kingdom of God, dearest brothers, has begun to be near; the reward of life and the joy of eternal salvation and everlasting gladness and the possession of paradise, lately lost, are now coming as the world passes away; now heavenly things succeed earthly ones, great things small ones, eternal things perishable ones. What room is there here for anxiety and worry? Who among these things is trembling and sad, except one who lacks hope and faith? For it belongs to one who does not want to go to Christ to fear death; and it belongs to one who does not believe he is beginning to reign with Christ not to want to go to Christ. 3 It is written: “The righteous lives by faith.” If you are righteous and live by faith, if you truly believe in God, why, since you are going to be with Christ and are secure in the Lord's promise, do you not embrace being called to Christ and rejoice to be free of the devil? Simeon, that righteous man who was truly righteous, who kept God's commands with full faith, when it had been divinely revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen Christ, and the infant Christ had come into the temple with his mother, recognized in the Spirit that Christ was now born, of whom it had been foretold to him; and when he had seen him he knew that he would soon die. So, glad at his death now near and secure about his approaching summons, he took the child in his hands, and, blessing God, cried out and said: “Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” He proved and bore witness, namely, that the servants of God have peace, free and tranquil rest, only then, when, drawn out of these whirlwinds of the world, we reach the harbor of our eternal home and security, when, this death having been accomplished, we come to immortality. For that is our peace, that is faithful tranquility, that is steady, firm, and everlasting security. 4 For what else is carried on daily in the world but a battle against the devil, a fight against his darts and weapons in constant conflicts? We have an encounter with avarice, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; a constant and troublesome struggle with the vices of the flesh, with the enticements of the world. The mind of man, besieged and surrounded on every side by the assaults of the devil, scarcely meets each one, scarcely resists. If avarice is laid low, lust springs up; if lust is suppressed, ambition takes its place; if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship. You are driven to curse, which the divine law forbids; you are compelled to swear, which is not lawful. 5 So many persecutions the soul suffers daily, by so many dangers the heart is pressed; and is it a delight to stand here long among the devil's swords? We should rather desire and pray to hasten to Christ with the help of a speedier death, as he himself instructs us and says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” Who would not wish to be without sorrow? Who would not hasten to come to joy? But when our sorrow will turn into joy the Lord himself declares again, saying: “I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” Since, then, to see Christ is to rejoice, and there can be no joy for us unless one sees Christ, what blindness of mind or what madness it is to love the afflictions and punishments and tears of the world, and not rather to hasten to the joy that can never be taken away! 6 But this happens, dearest brothers, because faith is lacking, because no one believes that the things God promises are true, God who is true, whose word to believers is eternal and firm. If a serious and praiseworthy man promised you something, you would trust the one who promised and would not believe you could be cheated or deceived by one you knew to stand by his words and deeds. God speaks with you, and do you waver faithlessly with an unbelieving mind? God promises immortality and eternity to you as you leave this world, and do you doubt? This is not to know God at all; this is to offend Christ, the teacher of believing, by the sin of unbelief; this is, though set in the church, not to have faith in the house of faith. 7 How much it profits to leave the world Christ himself, the teacher of our salvation and benefit, shows. When his disciples were saddened because he said he would soon go away, he spoke to them, saying: “If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I am going to the Father,” teaching and showing that when dear ones whom we love leave the world, we ought to rejoice rather than grieve. Mindful of this, the blessed apostle Paul sets it down in his letter and says: “To me to live is Christ and to die is gain,” counting it the greatest gain no longer to be held by the snares of the world, no longer to be liable to any sins and vices of the flesh, but, exempt from distressing afflictions and freed from the poisonous jaws of the devil, to set out at Christ's call for the joy of eternal salvation. 8 But some are troubled that the power of this disease attacks our people equally with the pagans, as if a Christian had believed for this purpose, that, immune from contact with evils, he might happily enjoy the world and the age, and not, having endured all adversities here, be kept for future joy. It troubles some that this mortality is common to us with others. But what in this world is not common to us with others, as long as this flesh, according to the law of our first birth, remains common? As long as we are here in the world, we are joined with the human race by equality of flesh; we are separated by the spirit. So until this corruptible puts on incorruption and this mortal receives immortality, and the Spirit leads us to God the Father, whatever are the disadvantages of the flesh are common to us with the human race. So when the earth is barren with a sterile yield, famine distinguishes no one; so when a city has been taken by an enemy's invasion, captivity lays waste all alike; and when the clear skies withhold rain, there is one drought for all; and when jagged rocks shatter a ship, shipwreck is common to all who sail, without exception; and pain of the eyes and attacks of fever and weakness of all the limbs are common to us with others, as long as this common flesh is borne in the world. 9 Indeed, if a Christian knows and holds to the condition and law on which he believed, he will know that he must labor in the world more than others, since he has more to struggle with the devil's assaults. Divine Scripture teaches and forewarns, saying: “Son, when you come to the service of God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation”; and again: “In pain endure, and in your humiliation have patience, for gold and silver are tried in the fire, and acceptable people in the furnace of humiliation.”⁠a 10 So Job, after the loss of his property, after the deaths of his children, grievously afflicted also with sores and worms, was not conquered but proved; showing in his very struggles and pains the patience of a religious mind, he said: “Naked I came out of my mother's womb, naked I shall also go under the earth. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And when his wife also urged him, impatient under the force of pain, to say something against God with a complaining and resentful voice, he answered and said: “You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not bear evil things?” In all these things that happened to him Job did not sin with his lips before the Lord. Therefore the Lord God bears witness to him, saying: “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him on the earth, a man without complaint, a true worshiper of God.” And Tobias, after magnificent works, after many glorious praises of his mercy, suffering blindness of the eyes, fearing and blessing God in adversity, grew in praise through the very affliction of his body. His wife, too, tried to corrupt him, saying: “Where are your righteous deeds?⁠b See what you suffer.” But he, steadfast and firm in the fear of God, and armed by the faith of religion for all endurance of suffering, did not yield in his pain to the temptation of his weak wife, but rather deserved more of God by greater patience; and afterwards the angel Raphael praises him and says: “It is honorable to reveal and confess the works of God. For when you prayed, you and Sarah, I offered the memorial of your prayer before the glory of God; and when you buried the dead in simplicity, and because you did not hesitate to rise and leave your dinner, and went and buried the dead man, I was also sent to test you. And again God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. For I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who stand and go in and out before the glory of God.”⁠c 11 This endurance the righteous have always had; this discipline the apostles held from the Lord's law: not to murmur in adversity, but to accept bravely and patiently whatever happens in the world. For the Jewish people always gave offense in this, that they murmured against God too often, as the Lord God testifies in Numbers, saying: “Let their murmuring cease from me, and they shall not die.” We must not murmur in adversity, dearest brothers, but bear patiently and bravely whatever happens, since it is written: “A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.” In Deuteronomy too the Holy Spirit warns through Moses and says: “The Lord your God will afflict you and send famine upon you, and it will be known in your heart whether you keep his commandments well or not”; and again: “The Lord your God tests you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” 12 So Abraham pleased God, because, in order to please God, he neither feared to lose his son nor refused to commit the killing of his child. You who cannot lose a son by the law and lot of mortality, what would you do if you were commanded to kill your son? The fear of God and faith ought to make you ready for all things. Though there be loss of property, though there be constant and bloody torment of the limbs from attacking diseases, though there be the mournful and sad tearing away of wife, of children, of dear ones departing, let these things be for you not stumbling blocks but battles; let them not weaken or break the Christian's faith, but rather show his strength in the struggle, since every injury from present evils is to be despised in confidence of future goods. Unless the battle has come first, there cannot be a victory; when there has been victory in the clash of battle, then the crown is also given to the victors. The helmsman is recognized in the storm; the soldier is proved in the line of battle. It is a soft boasting when there is no danger; when there is struggle in adversity, there is the proof of truth. The tree that is grounded with a deep root is not moved by the winds that bear down on it, and the ship that is made solid with strong joinery is beaten by the waves and not holed; and when the threshing floor treads out the crops, the strong and sturdy grains despise the winds, while the empty chaff is snatched away as the wind carries it. 13 So also the apostle Paul, after shipwrecks, after scourgings, after many and grievous torments of flesh and body, says he is not harassed but corrected by adversities, so that, while he was more grievously afflicted, he might be more truly proved. “There was given to me,” he says, “a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me, that I might not be exalted. For this reason I asked the Lord three times that it might leave me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” When, therefore, weakness and feebleness and some devastation rage, then our power is made perfect; then faith, if it has stood firm when tested, is crowned, as it is written: “The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation proves righteous men.”⁠d This, in short, is the difference between us and the others who do not know God: they complain and murmur in adversity, while adversities do not call us away from the truth of virtue and faith, but prove it in pain. 14 That now the bowels, loosened into a flux, drain the strength of the body; that a fire conceived in the marrow seethes into sores of the throat; that the intestines are shaken by constant vomiting; that the eyes burn with the force of the blood; that in some the feet or other parts of the limbs are cut off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that through the losses and injuries of the body, as the sickness breaks out, either the gait is weakened, or the hearing obstructed, or the sight blinded: all this serves as a proof of faith. To meet so many onslaughts of devastation and death with unshaken strength of mind, what greatness of heart that is! What sublimity, to stand upright amid the ruins of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God, but rather to rejoice and embrace the gift of the time, so that, while we firmly show forth our faith and, having endured our labor, advance to Christ by the narrow way of Christ, we may receive the reward of his way and of faith, with him as judge! Let him, of course, fear to die who, not reborn of water and the Spirit, is delivered over to the fires of Gehenna. Let him fear to die who is not enrolled under the cross and passion of Christ. Let him fear to die who will pass from this death to the second death. Let him fear to die whom, as he departs from the world, eternal flame will torment with unending punishments. Let him fear to die for whom this is gained by a longer delay: that his torment and groaning are meanwhile postponed. 15 Many of our people are dying in this mortality; that is, many of our people are being freed from the world. This mortality is a plague to the Jews and the pagans and the enemies of Christ; to the servants of God it is a saving departure. That the righteous die with the unrighteous without any distinction within the human race is no reason for you to think that destruction is common to the evil and the good. The righteous are called to refreshment; the unrighteous are snatched away to punishment. Protection is given more speedily to the faithful, punishment to the faithless. We are improvident and ungrateful, dearest brothers, toward divine benefits, and we do not recognize what is being bestowed on us. See, virgins depart in peace, safe with their glory, not fearing the threats and corruptions and brothels of the coming Antichrist. Boys escape the danger of their slippery age and happily come to the reward of continence and innocence. The delicate matron no longer fears tortures, having gained, by the swiftness of death, escape from the fear of persecution and from the hands and tortures of the executioner. By the terror of the mortality and of the times, the lukewarm are kindled, the slack are braced, the sluggish are roused, deserters are compelled to return, the pagans are forced to believe; the old people of the faithful is called to rest, and a new and plentiful army is gathered for the battle line with stronger strength, to fight without fear of death when the battle comes, since it enters the service in the time of mortality. 16 Then, dearest brothers, what of this? How fitting it is, how pertinent, how necessary, that this pestilence and plague, which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each and examines the minds of the human race: whether the healthy serve the sick; whether relatives love their kin dutifully; whether masters pity their ailing slaves; whether physicians do not desert the sick who beg them; whether the fierce suppress their violence; whether the greedy quench, at least out of fear of death, the ever insatiable fire of raging avarice; whether the proud bend their necks; whether the wicked soften their boldness; whether the rich, as their dear ones perish and they themselves are about to die without an heir, at least then bestow and give something. Even if this mortality had brought nothing else, it has done this great service to Christians and servants of God: we have begun to seek martyrdom willingly, while we learn not to fear death. These are exercises for us, not funerals: they give the mind the glory of courage; by contempt of death they prepare us for the crown. 17 But perhaps someone may object and say: “This is what saddens me in the present mortality, that I, who had been ready for confession and had devoted myself with my whole heart and full strength to enduring suffering, am deprived of my martyrdom, since I am forestalled by death.” In the first place, martyrdom is not in your power but in God's graciousness; nor can you say you have lost what you do not know whether you deserve to receive. Then, God is the searcher of the reins and the heart, the observer and knower of hidden things; he sees you and praises and approves you, and he who perceives that courage was ready in you gives a reward for that courage. Had Cain already killed his brother when he offered his gift to God? And yet God in his foresight condemned beforehand the murder conceived in his mind. As there the evil thought and ruinous design were foreseen by the providence of God, so also in the servants of God, in whom confession is intended and martyrdom conceived in the mind, the mind devoted to good is crowned with God as judge. It is one thing for the will to be lacking for martyrdom, another for martyrdom to be lacking to the will. As the Lord finds you when he calls you, so he also judges you, since he himself testifies and says: “And all the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart.” For God seeks not our blood but our faith. For neither Abraham nor Isaac nor Jacob was killed, and yet, honored by the merits of faith and righteousness, they deserved to be first among the patriarchs; and to their banquet is gathered everyone who is found faithful and righteous and praiseworthy. 18 We ought to remember that we should do not our own will but God's, as the Lord told us to pray daily. How backward and perverse it is that, while we ask that God's will be done, when God summons us and calls us from this world we do not at once obey the command of his will! We struggle and resist, and like obstinate slaves we are brought before the Lord's face with sadness and grief, departing from here by the chain of necessity, not by the obedience of the will; and we want to be honored with heavenly rewards by him to whom we come unwillingly. Why, then, do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven may come, if earthly captivity delights us? Why do we ask and demand in frequently repeated prayers that the day of the kingdom may hasten, if our greater desires and stronger wishes are to serve the devil here rather than to reign with Christ? 19 Finally, so that the signs of divine providence might shine forth more plainly, that the Lord, foreknowing the future, takes counsel for his own toward true salvation: when one of our colleagues and fellow priests, worn out by illness and anxious about approaching death, was praying for a reprieve, there stood by him as he prayed, when he was already nearly dying, a young man venerable in honor and majesty, tall in stature and shining in appearance, such that human sight could scarcely look on him with fleshly eyes as he stood by, except that one about to leave the world could already see such a one. And he, not without a certain indignation of mind and voice, rebuked him and said: “You fear to suffer, you do not want to go out: what shall I do with you?” It was the voice of one rebuking and warning, one who, anxious about persecution but untroubled about the summons, did not consent to the present desire but took counsel for the future. Our brother and colleague, about to die, heard what he was to tell the others. For he who heard when about to die heard it in order to tell it: he heard it not for himself but for us. For what would he learn who was about to depart? He learned it rather for those who remain, so that, when we find that the priest who asked for a reprieve was rebuked, we might know what is best for all. 20 To us also, the least and last, how often has it been revealed, how frequently and plainly has it been commanded by the graciousness of God, that I should bear witness constantly and preach publicly that our brothers who have been freed from the world by the Lord's summons are not to be mourned, since we know that they are not lost but sent ahead; that in departing they go before us; that, as with travelers and seafarers, they ought to be missed, not lamented; and that dark clothes are not to be put on here when they have already put on white garments there; that no occasion is to be given to the pagans to blame us rightly and justly, because we mourn as extinguished and lost those whom we say are alive with God, and do not prove by the testimony of the heart and breast the faith we utter in speech and voice. We are betrayers of our hope and faith if what we say seems feigned, fictitious, painted over. It profits nothing to display courage in words and destroy the truth in deeds. 21 Finally, the apostle Paul reproves, rebukes, and blames anyone who is saddened by the departure of his own. “We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers,” he says, “about those who sleep, that you may not be saddened as the others also who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” He says that those are saddened at the departure of their own who have no hope. But we who live in hope, and believe in God, and trust that Christ suffered for us and rose again, abiding in Christ and rising through him and in him, why are we either unwilling ourselves to depart from the world, or mourn and grieve for our own who depart, as if they were lost? Christ himself, our Lord and God, warns us and says: “I am the resurrection. He who believes in me, though he die, will live; and everyone who lives and believes in me will not die forever.” If we believe in Christ, let us have faith in his words and promises, so that, not destined to die forever, we may come with glad security to Christ, with whom we shall always live and reign. 22 That we die meanwhile is that we pass over through death to immortality; eternal life cannot follow unless we come to depart from here. This is not an exit but a passage, and, the journey of time completed, a crossing over to eternal things. Who would not hasten to better things? Who would not long to be changed and re-formed more quickly into the likeness of Christ and to the dignity of heavenly grace? As the apostle Paul proclaims: “But our citizenship,” he says, “is in heaven, from where we also await the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory.” Christ the Lord also promises that we shall be such, when, so that we may be with him and rejoice with him in the eternal dwellings and in the heavenly kingdom, he prays to the Father for us, saying: “Father, those whom you have given me I will that where I am they also may be with me and see the glory which you gave me before the world was made.” One who is to come to the throne of Christ, to the glory of the heavenly kingdom, ought not to mourn and lament, but rather, according to the Lord's promise and according to faith in the truth, rejoice in this his departure and transfer. 23 So, finally, we find that Enoch also, who pleased God, was translated, as divine Scripture testifies and speaks in Genesis: “And Enoch pleased God, and afterwards he was not found, because God translated him.” This was what it was to have pleased in the sight of God: to have deserved to be transferred from this contagion of the world. And through Solomon also the Holy Spirit teaches that those who please God are taken from here earlier and freed more quickly, so that, while they linger too long in this world, they are not polluted by the world's contacts: “He was snatched away so that wickedness would not change his understanding. For his soul was pleasing to God; for this reason he hastened to lead him out from the midst of iniquity.” So also in the Psalms the soul devoted to its God hastens to God with spiritual faith, as it is written: “How beloved are your dwellings, God of powers! My soul longs and hastens to the courts of God.” 24 It belongs to one whom the world delights to wish to remain long in the world, one whom the age, flattering and deceiving, invites with the enticements of earthly pleasure. Moreover, since the world hates the Christian, why do you love what hates you, and not rather follow Christ, who both redeemed and loves you? John cries out and speaks in his letter, and exhorts us not to love the world by following fleshly desires. “Do not love the world,” he says, “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 desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the desire of the world. And the world will pass away, and its desire; but he who does the will of God remains forever, as God also remains forever.” Rather, dearest brothers, with sound mind, firm faith, and robust courage, let us be ready for every will of God; shutting out the fear of death, let us think of the immortality that follows. Let us show that we are what we believe, so that we do not mourn the passing of our dear ones, and, when the day of our own summons comes, we come without hesitation and willingly to the Lord as he calls us. 25 And though this should always have been done by the servants of God, it ought to be done much more now, when the world is already collapsing and besieged by the whirlwinds of hostile evils, so that we, who see that grievous things have already begun and know that more grievous things are imminent, may count it the greatest gain if we depart from here quickly. If the walls of your dwelling were tottering with age, the roof trembling above, and the house, already worn out, already exhausted, its structure sinking with age, threatened imminent collapse, would you not move out with all speed? If, while you were sailing, a turbulent and stormy tempest, with the waves violently stirred up, foretold coming shipwreck, would you not seek the harbor more quickly? See, the world totters and falls, and bears witness to its ruin no longer by the age of things but by their end; and do you not give thanks to God, do you not congratulate yourself that, taken away by an earlier departure, you are delivered from the ruins and shipwrecks and plagues that threaten? 26 We must consider, dearest brothers, and think again and again that we have renounced the world and are living here meanwhile as guests and strangers. Let us embrace the day that assigns each of us to his own home, which, snatching us from here and releasing us from the snares of the world, restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Who, having been set abroad, would not hurry to return to his homeland? Who, hastening to sail to his own people, would not wish more eagerly for a favorable wind, that he might quickly embrace his dear ones? We count paradise as our homeland; we have already begun to have the patriarchs as our parents. Why do we not hurry and run, so that we may see our homeland and greet our parents? A great number of dear ones await us there, a thronging and abundant crowd of parents, brothers, and children longs for us, already secure of their own safety, still anxious for our salvation. To come to the sight and embrace of these, how great a joy it is for them and for us in common! What delight of the heavenly kingdom is there, without fear of dying and with eternity of living! How supreme and perpetual a happiness! There is the glorious choir of the apostles; there the company of the exulting prophets; there the countless people of the martyrs, crowned for the glory and victory of their contest and suffering; the triumphant virgins who subdued the desire of the flesh and body by the strength of continence; the merciful, rewarded, who did works of righteousness by feeding and giving to the poor, who, keeping the Lord's precepts, transferred their earthly patrimonies to heavenly treasuries. To these, dearest brothers, let us hasten with eager longing; let us pray that we may soon be with them, soon to come to Christ. May God see this thought of ours; may Christ see this purpose of mind and faith, he who will give the ampler rewards of his love to those whose desires for him have been greater.

On Works and Alms

1 Many and great, dearest brothers, are the divine benefits by which the abundant and plentiful mercy of God the Father and of Christ has worked and always works for our salvation: that the Father sent the Son to preserve us and give us life, so that he might restore us; and that the Son willed to be sent and to be called the Son of man, so that he might make us sons of God. He humbled himself to raise up the people who before lay prostrate; he was wounded to heal our wounds; he became a servant to draw out to freedom those who were in servitude. He endured death to show forth immortality to mortals. Many and great are these gifts of divine mercy. But further, what providence and how great mercy it is that provision is made for us by a saving plan, so that man, once redeemed, is more fully cared for by being kept safe! For when the Lord at his coming had healed the wounds which Adam had borne and cured the ancient poisons of the serpent, he gave a law to the one made whole and commanded him to stop sinning, so that something worse would not happen to him if he sinned. We had been confined and shut up in a narrow place by the command of innocence. Nor would the weakness and frailty of human fragility have had anything to do, unless the divine goodness, coming to help once more, had opened a certain way of safeguarding salvation by showing works of righteousness and mercy, so that by almsgiving we might wash away whatever stains we afterwards contract. 2 The Holy Spirit speaks in the Scriptures and says: “By almsgiving and faith sins are purged.” Not, of course, those sins which had been contracted before, for those are purged by the blood and sanctification of Christ. Again he says: “As water will quench fire, so almsgiving will quench sin.” Here too it is shown and proved that, as by the washing of the saving water the fire of Gehenna is quenched, so by almsgiving and righteous works the flame of sins is laid to rest. And since remission of sins is given once in baptism, constant and continual works, imitating the likeness of baptism, bestow God's indulgence again. The Lord also teaches this in the Gospel. For when his disciples were criticized because they ate without having first washed their hands, he answered and said: “He who made what is within also made what is without. But give alms, and see, all things are clean for you,” teaching, of course, and showing that it is not the hands that must be washed but the heart, and that filth is to be removed from within rather than from without; but that he who has cleansed what is within has also cleansed what is without, and, the mind being cleansed, has begun to be clean in skin and body as well. Moreover, warning and showing how we can be clean and purified, he added that alms must be given. The merciful one admonishes that mercy be shown; and since he seeks to save those whom he redeemed at a great price, he teaches that those who have been defiled after the grace of baptism can be cleansed again. 3 Let us therefore recognize, dearest brothers, the wholesome gift of divine indulgence; for cleansing and purging our sins, we who cannot be without some wound of conscience, let us heal our wounds with spiritual remedies. Nor let anyone so flatter himself about a pure and spotless heart as to rely on his innocence and think that no medicine need be applied to his wounds, since it is written: “Who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sins?” And again John sets it down in his letter and says: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” But if no one can be without sin, and whoever says he is blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary, how kind is the divine mercy, which, knowing that some wounds will not be lacking afterwards to those who have been healed, has given saving remedies for healing and curing wounds again! 4 In short, dearest brothers, the divine admonition has never ceased or fallen silent from calling the people of God, always and everywhere in the holy Scriptures, both old and new, to works of mercy; and with the Holy Spirit singing and exhorting, everyone who is instructed in the hope of the heavenly kingdom is commanded to give alms. God charges and commands Isaiah: “Cry out,” he says, “with strength, and do not spare. Lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their sins and to the house of Jacob their crimes.” And when he had commanded that their sins be charged against them, and had set forth their crimes with the full force of indignation, and had said that even if they used prayers and petitions and fasts they could not make satisfaction for their sins, nor could they soften the anger of God even if they rolled in sackcloth and ashes, yet in the last part, showing that God can be appeased by almsgiving alone, he added, saying: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. If you see the naked, clothe him, and you shall not despise those of your own seed. Then your light shall break forth in its season, and your garments shall quickly spring up, and righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking, he will say: See, I am here.” 5 Remedies for propitiating God have been given in the words of God himself; the divine teachings have taught what sinners ought to do: that satisfaction is made to God by righteous works, that sins are purged by the merits of mercy. And in Solomon we read: “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will pray for you against all evil.”⁠a And again: “He who stops his ears so as not to hear the weak will himself call on God, and there will be no one to hear him.” For he cannot deserve God's mercy who has not himself been merciful, nor will he obtain anything from the divine goodness by his prayers who has not been humane toward the prayer of the poor. The Holy Spirit likewise declares and proves this in the Psalms, saying: “Blessed is he who considers the needy and poor; in the evil day the Lord will deliver him.” Mindful of these precepts, when King Nebuchadnezzar was troubled and terrified by an ominous dream, Daniel gave a remedy for turning away evils by obtaining divine help, saying: “Therefore, king, let my counsel please you, and redeem your sins by almsgiving and your iniquities by mercy to the poor, and God will be patient with your sins.” And the king, not obeying him, suffered the adverse and hostile things he had seen, which he could have escaped and avoided had he redeemed his sins by almsgiving. The angel Raphael too bears like witness, and exhorts that almsgiving be done willingly and generously, saying: “Prayer is good with fasting and almsgiving, for almsgiving delivers from death and itself purges sins.”⁠b He shows that our prayers and fasts are of less power unless they are aided by almsgiving; that petitions alone avail little to obtain what they ask, unless they are made full by the addition of deeds and works. The angel reveals and makes plain and confirms that by almsgiving our petitions are made effective, by almsgiving life is redeemed from dangers, by almsgiving souls are freed from death. 6 Nor, dearest brothers, do we put these things forward without confirming what the angel Raphael said by the testimony of truth. In the Acts of the Apostles the proof of the fact is set down, and it has been established by the evidence of a thing done and accomplished that by almsgiving souls are freed not only from the second death but also from the first. When Tabitha, much given to righteous works and to giving alms, fell sick and died, Peter was summoned to the lifeless corpse. When he had come promptly, out of apostolic kindness, the widows stood around him weeping and pleading, showing the cloaks and tunics and all the garments they had received before, and pleading for the dead woman not with their own words but with her works. Peter perceived that what was asked in this way could be obtained, and that Christ's help would not fail the pleading widows, since Christ himself had been clothed in the widows. So when he had knelt and prayed, and, as a fit advocate of the widows and the poor, had carried to the Lord the prayers entrusted to him, he turned to the body, which lay already washed on the bier, and said: “Tabitha, arise in the name of Jesus Christ.” Nor did he fail to bring help to Peter at once, he who had said in the Gospel that whatever was asked in his name would be given. So death is suspended and the spirit is given back, and, to the wonder and amazement of all, the body, revived, is animated again to the light of this world. So much could the merits of mercy do, so much did righteous works avail! She who had bestowed on the toiling widows the means of living deserved to be called back to life at the widows' request. 7 And so in the Gospel the Lord, the teacher of our life and the master of eternal salvation, who gives life to the people of believers and provides forever for those to whom he has given life, among his divine commands and heavenly precepts commands and enjoins nothing more often than that we should persist in giving alms, and not brood over earthly possessions but rather lay up heavenly treasures. “Sell your goods,” he says, “and give alms.” And again: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and eating destroy and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor eating destroys and where thieves do not dig through. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” And when he wished to show one who had kept the law how to be perfect and complete, he said: “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Likewise in another place he says that the merchant of heavenly grace and buyer of eternal salvation ought, having sold all his goods, to purchase with the whole of his patrimony the precious pearl, that is, eternal life, precious by the blood of Christ. “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like a merchant seeking good pearls; and when he found a precious pearl, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” 8 He calls sons of Abraham those whom he sees working at helping and feeding the poor. For when Zacchaeus had said, “See, half of my goods I give to the needy, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore fourfold,” Jesus answered: “Salvation has come to this house today, since he too is a son of Abraham.” For if Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, surely he who gives alms according to God's command believes God; and he who has the truth of faith keeps the fear of God; and he who keeps the fear of God thinks of God in showing mercy to the poor. For he works because he believes in God, because he knows that what was foretold by the words of God is true, and that Holy Scripture cannot lie: that unfruitful trees, that is, barren men, are cut down and cast into the fire, and that the merciful are called to the kingdom. In another place too he calls those who work and bear fruit faithful, but denies faith to the unfruitful and barren, saying: “If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you what is true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is your own?” 9 But you are afraid and fear that if you begin to work generously, your patrimony will be used up by your lavish giving and you may perhaps be reduced to want. Be fearless on this score; be secure. That cannot be used up from which spending is made for the uses of Christ, from which the heavenly work is carried out. Nor do I guarantee this to you on my own account; I promise it on the faith of the holy Scriptures and the authority of the divine promise. The Holy Spirit speaks through Solomon and says: “He who gives to the poor will never be in need; but he who turns away his eye will be in great want,” showing that the merciful and those who work cannot be in need, but rather the stingy and barren afterwards come to poverty. Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, full of the grace of the Lord's inspiration, says: “He who supplies seed to the sower will also provide bread to eat, and will multiply your sowing and increase the growth of the fruits of your righteousness, that you may be enriched in all things.” And again: “The ministry of this service will not only supply what the saints lack, but will also abound through much thanksgiving in the Lord”; because, while thanksgiving is directed to God by the prayer of the poor for our alms and works, the wealth of the one who works is increased by God's repayment. And the Lord in the Gospel, already considering the hearts of such men and denouncing the faithless and unbelieving with foreknowing voice, testifies and says: “Do not be anxious, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the nations seek these things. For your Father knows that you need all these. Seek first the kingdom and righteousness of God, and all these things will be added to you.” He says that all things will be added and given to those who seek the kingdom and righteousness of God; the Lord says that, when the day of judgment comes, those who have worked in his church will be admitted to receive the kingdom. 10 You fear that your patrimony may fail if you begin to work generously from it, and you do not know, wretched one, that while you fear that your property may fail, life itself and salvation are failing; and while you watch that nothing of your goods be diminished, you do not see that you yourself are being diminished, a lover of mammon more than of your own soul; and while you fear to lose your patrimony for your own sake, you yourself perish for the sake of your patrimony. And so the apostle rightly cries out and says: “We brought nothing into this world, nor can we take anything out. Having therefore sustenance and covering, let us be content with these. But those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many harmful desires which plunge a man into ruin and destruction. For the root of all evils is covetousness, which some have sought after and made shipwreck of the faith, and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” 11 You fear that your patrimony may fail if you begin to work generously from it? But when has it happened that the righteous could lack support? For it is written: “The Lord will not kill a righteous soul with hunger.” Elijah is fed in the wilderness by ravens ministering to him; and for Daniel, shut up by the king's command in the den as prey for the lions, a meal is prepared by God. And do you fear that food will be lacking to one who works and deserves well of the Lord, when he himself, in the Gospel, to rebuke those whose mind is doubtful and whose faith is small, testifies and says: “Look at the birds of the sky, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more worth than they?” God feeds the birds, and daily food is provided to the sparrows; and those who have no sense of divine things lack neither drink nor food; and do you think that anything will be lacking to a Christian, to a servant of God, to one devoted to good works, to one dear to his Lord? 12 Unless perhaps you think that he who feeds Christ is not himself fed by Christ, or that earthly things will be lacking to those to whom heavenly and divine things are granted. Where does this unbelieving thought come from, this impious and sacrilegious reflection? What is a faithless heart doing in the house of faith? Why is one who does not believe Christ at all called and named a Christian? The name of Pharisee suits you better. For when the Lord in the Gospel was speaking about almsgiving, and faithfully and wholesomely warned us beforehand to make for ourselves friends from earthly gain by provident working, who would afterwards receive us into eternal dwellings, Scripture added after this, saying: “But the Pharisees, who were very covetous, heard all these things and mocked him.” We now see some such in the church, whose closed ears and blinded hearts admit no light from spiritual and saving admonitions; about whom we need not wonder that they despise the servant in his discourses, since we see that the Lord himself was despised by such people. 13 Why do you applaud yourself with these foolish and silly thoughts, as though you were held back from works by fear and anxiety for the future? Why do you hold out the shadows and illusions of a vain excuse? Rather confess the truth, and since you cannot deceive those who know, bring out the secret and hidden things of your mind. The darkness of barrenness has besieged your soul, and as the light of truth has withdrawn from it, the deep and profound fog of avarice has blinded your fleshly heart. You are the captive and slave of your money; you are bound with the chains and fetters of covetousness; and you whom Christ had already set free are bound again. You keep money which, though kept, does not keep you; you heap up a patrimony which burdens you with its weight; nor do you remember what God answered the rich man who boasted with foolish exultation of the abundance of his overflowing crops: “Fool,” he says, “this night your soul is required of you; then whose will be the things you have prepared?” Why do you brood alone over your riches? Why do you pile up the weight of your patrimony for your own punishment, so that the richer you are to the world, the poorer you become to God? Divide your revenues with your God; share your fruits with Christ; make Christ a partner in your earthly possessions, so that he may also make you a fellow heir of the heavenly kingdoms. 14 You err and are deceived, whoever you are who believe yourself rich in this world. Hear in the Apocalypse the voice of your Lord rebuking such men with just reproaches: “You say,” he says, “I am rich and have grown rich and need nothing; and you do not know that you are wretched and poor and blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich; and white clothing, that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness may not appear in you; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.” You, then, who are wealthy and rich, buy for yourself from Christ gold refined by fire, so that, your filth burned away as by fire, you may be pure gold, if you are cleansed by almsgiving and righteous works. Buy for yourself white clothing, so that you who, according to Adam, had been naked and were before hideous and misshapen may be clothed in the white garment of Christ. And you, a wealthy and rich matron, anoint your eyes, not with the devil's antimony but with Christ's eye salve, so that you may come to see God, while you deserve well of God both by your conduct and by your works. 15 But you who are such cannot do works in the church; for eyes overspread with blackness, covered with darkness and night, do not see the needy and poor. Wealthy and rich, do you think you celebrate the Lord's Supper, you who do not look at the offering box at all, who come to the Lord's Supper without a sacrifice, who take a part of the sacrifice which the poor person offered? Look in the Gospel at the widow, mindful of the heavenly precepts, doing works amid the very pressures and straits of poverty, throwing into the treasury the two small coins which were all she had. When the Lord noticed and saw her, weighing and considering her work not by her patrimony but by her heart, not how much but from how much she had given, he answered and said: “Amen, I say to you, that this widow has put more into the gifts of God than all. For all these have put into the gifts of God out of what they had in abundance; but she out of her want has put in all the living she had.” Greatly blessed and glorious is the woman who deserved to be praised by the voice of the Judge even before the day of judgment. Let the rich be ashamed of their barrenness and unhappiness. A widow, and a needy one, is found at work; and though everything that is given is bestowed on orphans and widows, she gives who ought to receive, so that we may know what punishment awaits the barren rich man, when by this example even the poor ought to do works. And so that we may understand that these works are given to God, and that whoever does them deserves well of God, Christ calls them “gifts of God,” and says that the widow put two farthings into the gifts of God, so that it may be more and more manifest that he who has mercy on the poor lends to God. 16 Nor, dearest brothers, let this hold back and call a Christian away from good and righteous works, that someone thinks he can be excused by the benefit of his children; since in spiritual expenditures we ought to think of Christ, who has declared that he receives them, and we should prefer to our children not our fellow servants but the Lord, as he himself instructs and warns: “He who loves father or mother more than me,” he says, “is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Likewise in Deuteronomy the like is written for the strengthening of faith and the love of God: “Those who say to father and mother, I do not know you, and have not acknowledged their own children, these have kept your precepts and observed your covenant.” For if we love God with our whole heart, we ought to prefer neither parents nor children to God. John too sets this down in his letter, that the love of God is not in those whom we see unwilling to work for the poor: “He who has this world's goods,” he says, “and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart, how does the love of God abide in him?” For if God is lent to by the alms of the poor, and when it is given to the least it is given to Christ, there is no reason why anyone should prefer earthly things to heavenly, or set human things before divine. 17 So the widow in the third book of Kingdoms, when in drought and famine everything had been consumed, and from the little meal and oil that remained she had made a hearth cake, after eating which she was to die with her children, Elijah came and asked that he be given it to eat first, and that then she and her sons should eat of what remained. Nor did she hesitate to obey, nor did the mother prefer her children to Elijah in famine and want. Rather, in the sight of God what pleases God is done: what was asked is offered promptly and willingly, and not a portion from abundance but the whole from a little is given; and while her children are hungry, another is fed first; nor in poverty and famine is food thought of before mercy, so that, while in a saving work life is despised according to the flesh, the soul may be saved according to the spirit. Elijah, therefore, bearing the type of Christ, and showing that Christ repays each person for mercy, answered and said: “Thus says the Lord: the jar of meal shall not fail, and the cruse of oil shall not diminish, until the day when the Lord gives rain upon the earth.” According to the faithfulness of the divine promise, what the widow gave was multiplied and heaped up, and the vessels of meal and oil were filled as they took increase and growth from her righteous works and the merits of her mercy. Nor did the mother take from her children what she gave to Elijah, but rather she bestowed on her children what she did kindly and dutifully. And she did not yet know Christ, had not yet heard his precepts, had not been redeemed by his cross and passion, so as to repay food and drink for his blood; so that from this it may appear how greatly he sins in the church who, putting himself and his children before Christ, keeps his riches and does not share his abundant patrimony with the poverty of the needy. 18 But there are many children in your house, and the number of your children holds you back from persisting generously in good works. Yet for this very reason you ought to work the more, because you are the father of many children. There are more for whom you must pray to the Lord; the sins of many must be redeemed, the consciences of many cleansed, the souls of many freed. As in this worldly life, in feeding and supporting children, the greater the number, the greater the expense, so also in the spiritual and heavenly life, the larger the number of children, the greater ought to be the expenditure on works. So Job offered numerous sacrifices for his children; and as great as the number of children in the house was, so great also was the number of victims given to God. And since there cannot fail to be daily sin in the sight of God, daily sacrifices were not lacking by which sins could be wiped away. Scripture proves it, saying: “Job, a true and righteous man, had seven sons and three daughters, and he cleansed them, offering victims to God for them according to their number, and for their sins one calf.” If, then, you truly love your children, if you show them the full and fatherly sweetness of love, you ought to work the more, so as to commend your children to God by righteous works. 19 Nor should you think of that father for your children who is both temporary and weak, but obtain for them the one who is the eternal and strong Father of spiritual children. Assign to him the means you are keeping for your heirs; let him be guardian to your children, let him be trustee, let him be protector with divine majesty against all worldly injuries. A patrimony entrusted to God neither the state seizes, nor the treasury invades, nor any lawsuit of the forum overturns. An inheritance is placed in safety that is kept with God as its guardian. This is to provide for dear children for the future; this is to care for future heirs with fatherly devotion, according to the faithfulness of holy Scripture, which says: “I have been young and have grown old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed seeking bread. All day long he shows mercy and lends, and his seed will be in blessing.” And again: “He who lives without reproach in righteousness will leave blessed children.” You are therefore a betrayer and traitor as a father, unless you care faithfully for your children, unless you provide for their preservation with religious and true devotion. Why do you strive for an earthly rather than a heavenly patrimony? Do you prefer to commend your children to the devil rather than to Christ? You sin twice and commit a twofold and double crime: both because you do not prepare for your children the help of God the Father, and because you teach your children to love their patrimony more than Christ. 20 Be rather such a father to your children as Tobias proved to be. Give your children useful and saving precepts such as he gave his son; command your children what he also commanded, saying: “And now, son, I command you: serve God in truth and do before him what pleases him; and command your children to do righteousness and almsgiving, and to be mindful of God and bless his name at all times.”⁠c And again: “All the days of your life, son, keep God in mind and do not transgress his precepts. Do righteousness all the days of your life, and do not walk in the way of iniquity; for if you act in truth, there will be regard for your works. Give alms from your substance, and do not turn your face away from any poor person; so it will be that the face of God is not turned away from you. As you have, son, so do: if your substance is abundant, give more alms from it; if you have little, share from that very little. And do not be afraid when you give alms; you are storing up a good reward for yourself against the day of necessity, for almsgiving delivers from death and does not allow one to go into darkness. Almsgiving is a good gift for all who do it before the most high God.”⁠d 21 What a show this is, dearest brothers, whose presentation is given with God as spectator! If, in the shows of the pagans, it seems a great and glorious thing to have proconsuls or emperors present, and the preparation and expense of the givers of the show are greater so that they may please their superiors, how much more illustrious is the show, and how much greater its glory, to have God and Christ as spectators! How much richer the preparation and more lavish the expense must be here, where the powers of heaven gather for the spectacle, where all the angels gather, where the giver of the show seeks not a four-horse chariot or a consulship but is granted eternal life; where the empty and passing favor of the crowd is not courted, but the everlasting reward of the heavenly kingdom is received! 22 And so that the lazy and barren, who through love of money do nothing toward the fruit of salvation, may be more ashamed, so that the blush of their disgrace and shame may strike their sordid conscience more, let each one set before his eyes the devil leaping forth into the midst with his servants, that is, with the people of perdition and death, and, in the presence of Christ himself and with Christ as judge, challenging the people of Christ to a test of comparison, saying: “For these whom you see with me I neither received blows, nor endured scourges, nor bore the cross, nor shed my blood, nor redeemed my household at the price of suffering and blood; nor do I promise them a heavenly kingdom, nor do I call them back again to paradise with immortality restored. And yet what precious, what great shows, sought with how excessive and long a labor, they provide for me with most costly preparations, pledging or selling their property to procure the show; and unless a creditable presentation follows, they are driven out with abuse and hisses, and sometimes nearly stoned by the fury of the people. Show me such givers of shows of yours, Christ, those rich men, those overflowing with abundant wealth: do they give a show of this kind in the church, with you presiding and watching, having pledged or sold their property, or rather transferred it to heavenly treasures, their possessions changed for the better? In these perishable and earthly shows of mine no one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is sustained by the comfort of any food or drink. Everything perishes, between the frenzy of the giver and the error of the spectator, in the prodigal and foolish vanity of deceiving pleasures. There, in your poor, you are clothed and fed; you promise eternal life to those who work; and yet your people, who are honored by you with divine wages and heavenly rewards, are scarcely equal to mine, who lose everything.” 23 What shall we answer to this, dearest brothers? By what reasoning shall we defend the sacrilegious barrenness of the rich and their minds covered as with a night of darkness? By what excuse shall we clear them, we who are less than the devil's servants, so that we do not repay Christ even in small things for the price of his passion and blood? He has given us precepts; he has taught what his servants ought to do; he has promised a reward to those who work and threatened punishment to the barren; he has pronounced his sentence; he has foretold how he will judge. What excuse can there be for the idle, what defense for the barren? Only that, if the servant does not do what is commanded, the Lord will do what he threatens. He also says: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will set the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand: Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you covered me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? Then the King will answer and say to them: Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of these least of my brothers, you did it to me. Then he will say to those at his left: Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you did not give me to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not come to me. Then they too will answer, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not serve you? And he will answer them: Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. And these will go away into eternal fire, but the righteous into eternal life.” What greater thing could Christ proclaim to us? How could he more strongly call forth our works of righteousness and mercy than by saying that whatever is provided to the needy and poor is provided to him, and by saying that he is offended if it is not provided to the needy and poor? So that he who is not moved in the church by regard for his brother may at least be moved by the contemplation of Christ; and he who does not think of his fellow servant in labor and need may at least think of the Lord present in the very one he despises. 24 And therefore, dearest brothers, we whose fear is inclined toward God, and whose mind, having despised and trampled on the world, is lifted up to things above and divine, let us give obedience to the Lord with full faith, devoted mind, and continual working, so as to deserve well of him. Let us give Christ earthly garments, so as to receive heavenly clothing. Let us give worldly food and drink, so as to come to the heavenly banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Let us sow much, so that we do not reap little. Let us provide for our security and eternal salvation while there is time, as the apostle Paul admonishes and says: “Therefore, while we have time, let us work what is good toward all, but especially toward those of the household of faith. And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in its own time we shall reap.” 25 Let us think, dearest brothers, what the people of believers did under the apostles, when in the very beginnings the mind flourished with greater virtues, when the faith of believers was still glowing with the new heat of faith. Then they sold houses and estates and willingly and generously offered the proceeds to the apostles to be distributed to the poor; selling and disposing of their earthly patrimony, they transferred their lands to where they might gather the fruits of an eternal possession, buying houses there where they might begin to live forever. Such then was the abundance of their works as was the harmony of their love, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: “The multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and mind, and there was no distinction among them, nor did they count anything of the goods they had as their own, but they had all things in common.” This is truly to become a son of God by spiritual birth; this is to imitate the equity of God the Father by the heavenly law. For whatever is God's is common in our use, and no one is kept from his benefits and gifts so as to prevent the whole human race from enjoying the divine goodness and generosity equally. So the day gives light equally, the sun shines, the rain waters, the wind breathes, and there is one sleep for those who sleep, and the splendor of the stars and of the moon is common. By this example of equality, the owner of property on earth who shares his revenues and fruits with the brotherhood, while he is fair and just in common by free gifts, is an imitator of God the Father. 26 What will be the glory of those who work, dearest brothers, how great and supreme the joy, when the Lord begins to review his people, and, distributing to our merits and works the promised rewards, to grant heavenly things for earthly, eternal for temporal, great for small; to offer us to the Father, to whom he has restored us by his sanctification; to bestow on us eternity and immortality, for which he has renewed us by the life-giving power of his blood; to bring us back again to paradise; to open the kingdoms of heaven by the faithfulness and truth of his promise! Let these things cling firmly to our minds; let them be understood with full faith; let them be loved with the whole heart; let them be purchased by the magnanimity of unceasing works. A splendid and divine thing, dearest brothers, is saving work: a great consolation of believers, a wholesome safeguard of our security, a bulwark of hope, a protection of faith, a remedy for sin, a thing placed in the power of the doer, a thing both great and easy, a crown of peace without the danger of persecution, a true and very great gift of God, necessary for the weak, glorious for the strong, by whose help the Christian carries out spiritual grace, deserves well of Christ as judge, and counts God as his debtor. For this palm of saving works let us contend willingly and promptly; let us all run in the contest of righteousness, with God and Christ watching; and we who have already begun to be greater than the age and the world, let us not slow our course by any desire for the age and the world. If the day either of our release or of persecution finds us unencumbered, swift, and running in this contest of works, the Lord will never fail to reward our merits: to those who conquer in peace he will give a white crown for their works; in persecution he will add a second, purple one for their suffering.

On the Benefit of Patience

1 As I am about to speak of patience, dearest brothers, and to proclaim its benefits and advantages, where better could I begin than with this, that I see patience is necessary even now for your hearing, so that you cannot even do this very thing, hearing and learning, without patience? For only then is saving teaching and reasoning learned effectively, if what is said is heard patiently. Nor do I find, dearest brothers, among the other ways of heavenly discipline by which the path of our hope and faith is directed toward obtaining the divine rewards, anything more useful for life or greater for glory than that we who rely on the Lord's precepts with the obedience of fear and devotion should above all guard patience with complete observance. 2 The philosophers also profess to pursue it, but their patience is as false as their wisdom. For how can anyone be either wise or patient who knows neither the wisdom nor the patience of God? For he himself warns about those who think themselves wise in the world and says: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the prudence of the prudent.” Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, full of the Holy Spirit and sent to call and form the nations, testifies and instructs, saying: “See that no one plunders you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ, for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead.” And in another place he says: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise, let him become a fool to this world, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written: He catches the wise in their own craftiness. And again: God knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are foolish.” Therefore, if there is no true wisdom there, there cannot be true patience either. For if the patient man is the one who is humble and meek, and we see that the philosophers are neither humble nor meek but very pleased with themselves, and displeasing to God by the very fact that they please themselves, it is plain that there is no patience there, where there is the insolent boldness of affected freedom and the shameless display of a bared and half-naked chest. 3 But we, dearest brothers, who are philosophers not in words but in deeds, who display wisdom not in dress but in truth, who know the consciousness of virtues rather than the boasting of them, who do not speak great things but live them, let us, as servants and worshipers of God, show by spiritual obedience the patience we learn from heavenly teaching. For this virtue we have in common with God. From there patience begins; from there its glory and dignity take their origin. The origin and greatness of patience proceed from God as its author. The thing that is dear to God is to be loved by man; the divine majesty commends the good it loves. If God is our Lord and Father, let us pursue the patience of one who is both Lord and Father, for servants ought to be obedient, and it does not befit sons to be degenerate. 4 And what and how great is the patience in God! For, most patiently enduring the profane temples and earthly images and sacrilegious rites set up by men to the insult of his majesty and honor, he makes the day to be born and the light of the sun to rise equally upon the good and the evil; and when he waters the earth with showers, no one is excluded from his benefits, but he bestows the rains without distinction on the just and the unjust alike. We see that, by God's will, with an inseparable equality of patience, toward the guilty and the innocent, the religious and the impious, the thankful and the unthankful, the seasons obey, the elements serve, the winds blow, the springs flow, the abundance of the harvests grows, the fruits of the vines ripen, the trees overflow with fruit, the groves put forth leaves, the meadows flower. And though God is provoked by frequent, indeed continual, offenses, he tempers his indignation and patiently awaits the day of retribution once appointed; and though he has vengeance in his power, he prefers to keep patience long, bearing, that is, with mercy and delaying, so that, if it can be, malice long drawn out may at some time change, and man, wallowing in the contagion of errors and crimes, may turn to God even late, as he himself warns and says: “I do not will the death of the one who dies, so much as that he return and live.” And again: “Return to me, says the Lord.” And again: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and kind and patient and of great mercy, and one who bends his sentence against the evils inflicted.” The blessed apostle Paul, recalling this and calling the sinner back to repentance, sets it forth and says: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the patience and goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up anger for yourself on the day of anger and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay each according to his works.” He called God's judgment righteous because it is late, because it is long and greatly delayed, so that the long patience of God may provide for man's life. Punishment is then paid out to the impious and the sinner when repentance for sin can no longer help. 5 And so that we may understand more fully, dearest brothers, that patience is a thing of God, and that whoever is gentle, patient, and meek is an imitator of God the Father, when the Lord in his Gospel was giving precepts for salvation and, bringing forth divine admonitions, was training his disciples to perfection, he laid it down and said: “You have heard that it was said: You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and rains on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors do so? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing? Do not even the pagans do the same? You therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” So he said that the sons of God become perfect; so he showed and taught that those restored by the heavenly birth are brought to completion, if the patience of God the Father remains in us, if the divine likeness which Adam lost by sin is shown and shines in our actions. What glory it is to become like God, what and how great a happiness to have in one's virtues what can be equal to divine praises! 6 Nor, dearest brothers, did Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, teach this only in words; he also fulfilled it in deeds. And he who had said that he came down to do the will of the Father, among the other wonders of his mighty works, by which he expressed the signs of the divine majesty, also kept the Father's patience by the constancy of his endurance. In short, all his action from his very coming is marked by patience as its companion: first, in coming down from heavenly sublimity to earthly things, the Son of God does not disdain to put on man's flesh, and, though he was not himself a sinner, to bear the sins of others. Laying aside immortality for a time, he allows himself to become mortal, so that the innocent might be put to death for the salvation of the guilty. The Lord is baptized by a servant; and he who was to give remission of sins does not himself disdain to wash his body in the washing of regeneration. He fasts forty days, by whom others are fed; he hungers and felt famine, so that those who had been in a famine of the word and of grace might be filled with heavenly bread. He contends with the devil when tempted, and, content only to have conquered the enemy, attempts nothing beyond words. He did not preside over his disciples as over servants with lordly power, but, kind and meek, loved them with brotherly love, deigning even to wash the feet of the apostles, so that, while the Lord is such toward his servants, he might teach by his example what a fellow servant ought to be toward his peers and equals. Nor is it to be wondered that he was such toward the obedient, since he could bear Judas to the very end with long patience, take food with his enemy, know the enemy of his own household and not reveal him openly, and not refuse the traitor's kiss. And in bearing with the Jews, what equanimity and what patience: to bend the unbelieving to faith by persuasion, to cherish the ungrateful with kindness, to answer the contradicting gently, to bear the proud with mercy, to yield humbly to persecutors, to wish to gather the killers of the prophets, always rebellious against God, up to the very hour of the cross and passion! 7 And in the very passion and cross, before it came to the cruelty of death and the shedding of blood, what abusive insults he heard patiently, what mockeries of contempt he endured! He received the spittle of those who insulted him, who a little before had formed the eyes of a blind man with his own spittle; he, in whose name the devil with his angels is now scourged by his servants, himself suffered scourges; he was crowned with thorns who crowns the martyrs with eternal flowers; he was struck on the face with palms who gives true palms to the victors; he was stripped of his earthly garment who clothes others with the garment of immortality; he was fed with gall who gave heavenly food; he was given vinegar to drink who offered the cup of salvation. He, the innocent, he, the righteous, indeed innocence itself and righteousness itself, is counted among criminals, and truth is overborne by false testimonies; he who is to judge is judged, and the Word of God is led silent to the cross. And when at the Lord's cross the stars are confounded, the elements disturbed, the earth trembles, night shuts out the day, and the sun withdraws both its rays and its eyes so that it would not be forced to look on the crime of the Jews, he does not speak, nor is he moved, nor does he declare his majesty even in the passion itself. Everything is endured to the end, perseveringly and continually, so that full and perfect patience might be completed in Christ. 8 And after these things he still receives his murderers, if they turn and come to him; and with saving patience, kind in preserving, he closes his church to no one. Those adversaries, those blasphemers, those who were always enemies of his name, if they repent of their offense, if they acknowledge the crime committed, he admits not only to pardon of their crime but to the reward of the heavenly kingdom. What more patient, what kinder, can be said? Even he who shed Christ's blood is given life by Christ's blood. Such and so great is the patience of Christ; and had it not been such and so great, the church would not have the apostle Paul either. 9 But if we too, dearest brothers, are in Christ, if we have put him on, if he is the way of our salvation, we who follow Christ in the footsteps of salvation should walk by Christ's examples, as the apostle John instructs, saying: “He who says he abides in Christ ought himself also to walk as he walked.” Likewise Peter, on whom the church was founded by the Lord's graciousness, sets it down in his letter and says: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow his footsteps, who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but he handed himself over to one who judged unjustly.” 10 In short, we find that the patriarchs and prophets and all the righteous, who bore the figure of Christ as an image going before, guarded nothing more for the praise of their virtues than that they held to patience with strong and steady equanimity. So Abel, first beginning and consecrating the origin of martyrdom and the suffering of the righteous, does not resist or struggle against his fratricidal brother, but, humble and meek, is patiently slain. So Abraham, believing God and first laying the root and foundation of faith, when tested in his son does not doubt or hesitate, but obeys God's precepts with all the patience of devotion. And Isaac, prefigured as a likeness of the Lord's sacrifice, is found patient when he is offered by his father to be sacrificed. And Jacob, driven by his brother from his land, patiently departs, and afterwards, with greater patience, as a suppliant brings back to concord, by peace-making gifts, his still more impious persecutor. Joseph, sold and banished by his brothers, not only patiently forgives them, but also generously and mercifully gives them free grain when they come. Moses is often despised and nearly stoned by an ungrateful and faithless people, and yet, gentle and patient, he prays to the Lord for them. And in David, from whom Christ's birth according to the flesh arises, how great and wonderful and Christian a patience: that he often had it in his hand to kill King Saul, who persecuted him and desired to kill him, and yet preferred to spare him when he was subject and delivered to him; and did not repay his enemy, but, when he was killed, even avenged him besides. So many prophets killed, so many martyrs honored with glorious deaths, all came to heavenly crowns by the praise of patience. For the crown of sorrows and sufferings cannot be received unless patience in sorrow and suffering goes before. 11 But so that it may be known more plainly and fully, dearest brothers, how useful and necessary patience is, let us consider the sentence of God which Adam received at the very beginning of the world and of the human race, when he forgot the precept and transgressed the law he had been given. Then we shall know how patient we ought to be in this world, we who are born in such a way that we labor here with afflictions and struggles. “Because you have listened,” he says, “to the voice of your wife and have eaten from that tree from which alone I had commanded you not to eat, cursed shall the earth be in all your works; in sorrow and groaning you shall eat of it all the days of your life. It shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat the fodder of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for you are earth, and to earth you shall go.” We are all bound and constrained by the chain of this sentence until, death having been completed, we depart from this world. We must be in sorrow and groaning all the days of our life; we must eat bread with sweat and labor. 12 Hence each one, when he is born and received into the lodging of this world, begins with tears; and though still unaware and ignorant of everything, he knows nothing else at that very first birth than to weep. By a natural foresight it laments the anxieties and labors of mortal life, and at its very beginning the untaught soul bears witness by its wailing and groaning to the storms of the world it is entering. For as long as one lives here, one sweats and labors. Nor can any other consolations help those who sweat and labor more than those of patience. And while these are fitting and necessary for all in this world, they are more so for us, who are shaken more by the devil's assaults, who, standing daily in the battle line, are wearied by the struggles of an old and practiced enemy; for whom, besides the various and constant battles of temptations, in the contest of persecutions too patrimonies must be abandoned, prison undergone, chains borne, lives spent, and the sword, beasts, fire, crosses, in short all kinds of tortures and punishments endured by faith and the strength of patience, as the Lord himself instructs and says: “These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace; but in the world, affliction. But take courage, for I have overcome the world.” And if we who have renounced the devil and the world suffer the afflictions and attacks of the devil and the world more often and more violently, how much more ought we to hold to patience, with whose help and company we may endure all hostile things. 13 It is the saving precept of our Lord and Master: “He who endures to the end, he will be saved.” And again: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” We must endure and persevere, dearest brothers, so that, having been admitted to the hope of truth and freedom, we may be able to attain truth and freedom themselves; for this very thing, that we are Christians, is a matter of faith and hope. But for hope and faith to reach their fruit, patience is needed. For we do not pursue present glory but future glory, as the apostle Paul also warns, saying: “We have been saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what one sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through expectation.” Waiting and patience are necessary, so that we may complete what we have begun to be, and may receive, as God presents it, what we hope for and believe. In another place, too, the same apostle instructs and teaches the righteous and those who do works, and who store up heavenly treasures for themselves from the increase of the divine interest, to be patient as well, saying: “Therefore, while we have time, let us work what is good toward all, but especially toward those of the household of faith. And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in its own time we shall reap.” He warns that no one should grow weary in working through impatience, that no one, either called away or conquered by temptations, should stop in the middle of the road of praise and glory, and what went before be lost, while what had been begun ceases to be completed; as it is written: “The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him on whatever day he goes astray”; and again: “Hold fast what you have, so that no one else takes your crown.” This saying exhorts us to persevere patiently and bravely, so that one who strives for the crown, with praise already near, may be crowned as his patience endures. 14 Patience, moreover, dearest brothers, not only guards good things but also repels adverse ones. Favoring the Holy Spirit and cleaving to heavenly and divine things, it struggles with the bulwark of its virtues against the deeds of the flesh and the body, by which the soul is stormed and captured. Let us look at a few things out of many, so that from the few the rest may be understood. Adultery, fraud, murder are mortal crimes. Let patience be strong and steady in the heart, and neither is the sanctified body, the temple of God, polluted by adultery, nor is innocence dedicated to righteousness stained by the contagion of fraud, nor, after carrying the Eucharist, is the hand stained with the sword and blood. 15 Love is the bond of brotherhood, the foundation of peace, the tenacity and firmness of unity; it is greater than both hope and faith; it goes before both works and martyrdom; it will remain with us always, eternal, in the heavenly kingdom. Take patience from it, and, made desolate, it does not last; take away the substance of bearing and enduring, and it continues with no roots or strength. So the apostle, when he spoke of love, joined endurance and patience to it. “Love,” he says, “is magnanimous, love is kind, love is not jealous, is not puffed up, is not provoked, does not think evil, loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” He showed from this that it can persevere tenaciously, because it knows how to endure all things. And in another place he says: “Bearing with one another in love, taking care to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He proved that neither unity nor peace can be kept unless the brothers cherish one another with mutual forbearance and guard the bond of concord through the mediation of patience. 16 Then, that you should not swear or curse; that you should not demand back what has been taken from you; that, when you have received a slap, you should offer the other cheek to the one striking you; that you should forgive a brother who sins against you not only seventy-seven times but absolutely all his sins; that you should love your enemies; that you should pray for your adversaries and persecutors: will you be able to bear these things except by the firmness of patience and endurance? We see this done in Stephen, who, when he was being killed by the Jews with violence and stones, asked not vengeance for himself but pardon for his murderers, saying: “Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge.” It was fitting that the first martyr of Christ should be such, so that, going before the martyrs to follow by a glorious death, he might be not only a preacher of the Lord's passion but also an imitator of his most patient gentleness. What shall I say of anger, of discord, of rivalry, which ought not to be in a Christian? Let there be patience in the heart, and these cannot have a place there; or if they try to approach, they are quickly shut out and depart, so that there may remain a peaceful dwelling in the heart, where it pleases the God of peace to live. So the apostle warns and teaches, saying: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamor and blasphemy be taken away from you.” For if a Christian has come out of the rage and strife of the flesh as from the whirlwinds of the sea, and has now begun to be tranquil and gentle in the harbor of Christ, he ought to admit neither anger nor discord into his heart, since it is not lawful for him to return evil for evil or to hate. 17 Patience is also necessary for the various disadvantages of the flesh and the frequent and hard torments of the body by which the human race is daily wearied and shaken. For since in that first transgression of the precept strength of body departed together with immortality, and weakness came with death, and strength cannot be regained unless immortality too has been regained, we must always struggle and contend in this frailty and bodily weakness; and this struggle and contest can be sustained only by the strength of patience. And to examine and test us, various pains are brought upon us, and manifold kinds of temptation are inflicted: losses of property, burning fevers, torments of wounds, the loss of dear ones. And nothing distinguishes the unrighteous and the righteous more than that in adversity the unrighteous complains and blasphemes through impatience, while the righteous is proved by patience, as it is written: “In pain endure, and in your humiliation have patience, for gold and silver are tried in the fire.”⁠a 18 So Job was examined and proved, and raised to the highest summit of praise by the virtue of patience. How many darts of the devil were launched against him, how many torments applied! The loss of his property is inflicted, the bereavement of his numerous offspring imposed; the master rich in wealth and the father richer in children is suddenly neither master nor father. Then comes the devastation of sores, and the devouring punishment of worms consumes his wasting and running limbs. And so that nothing at all might remain that Job did not experience in his temptations, the devil arms his wife as well, using that ancient device of his wickedness, as if he could deceive and mislead all through a woman, as he did at the beginning. Yet Job is not broken by his heavy and thick conflicts, but amid those straits and pressures he proclaims the blessing of God with victorious patience. Tobias too, tested by the loss of his eyes after the magnificent works of his righteousness and mercy, deserved of God greatly by the praise of patience in proportion as he bore his blindness patiently. 19 And so that the good of patience may shine more, dearest brothers, let us consider, on the contrary, what evil impatience brings. For as patience is the good of Christ, so, on the contrary, impatience is the evil of the devil; and as the one in whom Christ dwells and abides is found patient, so the one whose mind the devil's wickedness has possessed is always impatient. Let us look at the very beginnings. The devil bore impatiently that man was made in the image of God; hence he both perished first and destroyed others. Adam, impatient of the deadly food against the heavenly precept, fell into death, and did not keep the grace received from God with patience as its guard. And that Cain killed his brother, it was because he was impatient of his brother's sacrifice and gift. And that Esau came down from greater things to lesser, he lost his birthright through impatience for lentils. What of the Jewish people, faithless and ungrateful toward the divine benefits: was it not the crime of impatience that they first departed from God? While they could not bear the delays of Moses speaking with God, they dared to demand profane gods, so as to proclaim a calf's head and an earthly image as the leaders of their journey; nor did they ever desist from the same impatience, but, always impatient of teaching and of divine guidance, by killing their prophets and all the righteous they rushed on even to the cross and blood of the Lord. Impatience also makes heretics in the church, and, after the likeness of the Jews, drives rebels against the peace and love of Christ into hostile and furious hatreds. And, not to go through everything one by one, absolutely everything that patience builds up by its works to glory, impatience destroys to ruin. 20 Therefore, dearest brothers, having carefully weighed both the goods of patience and the evils of impatience, let us hold with full observance the patience through which we abide in Christ and can come with Christ to God. It is abundant and manifold, not confined within a narrow limit or restrained by short boundaries. The virtue of patience extends widely, and its richness and generosity proceed indeed from the source of a single name, but, with overflowing veins, it spreads through many paths of glory; nor can anything in our actions advance to the completion of praise unless it receives from patience the firmness of completion. It is patience that both commends us to God and keeps us for him. It is patience that tempers anger, bridles the tongue, governs the mind, guards peace, rules discipline, breaks the onset of lust, suppresses the violence of pride, extinguishes the fire of rivalry, restrains the power of the rich, refreshes the want of the poor, protects in virgins their blessed integrity, in widows their laborious chastity, in those joined and married their undivided love. It makes us humble in prosperity, brave in adversity, meek against injuries and insults. It teaches us to forgive offenders quickly, and, if you yourself offend, to ask pardon long and much. It overcomes temptations, endures persecutions, completes sufferings and martyrdoms. It is patience that firmly fortifies the foundations of our faith. It is patience that raises aloft the growth of our hope. It directs our action, so that we can keep to the way of Christ while we walk by his endurance. It brings it about that we persevere as sons of God while we imitate the patience of the Father. 21 And since I know, dearest brothers, that very many, either from the weight of distressing injuries or from resentment against those who attack and rage against them, desire to be avenged quickly, this too must not be passed over in silence at the end: that, set as we are in these whirlwinds of a tossing world and in the persecutions of Jews or pagans and heretics too, we should wait patiently for the day of vengeance and not hurry with complaining haste to avenge our pain, since it is written: “Wait for me, says the Lord, on the day of my resurrection for a testimony, for my judgment is to the assemblies of the nations, that I may receive kings and pour out my anger upon them.” The Lord commands us to wait and to endure with brave patience for the day of future vengeance. He also speaks in the Apocalypse, saying: “Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is now near; and let those who persist in harming harm, and let him who is filthy be filthy still; but let the righteous do still more righteous things, and likewise the holy still holier things. See, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me, to repay each according to his deeds.” Hence even the martyrs, crying out and, with bursting pain, hastening to their vengeance, are commanded to wait still and to show patience until the times are completed and the martyrs filled up. “And when he had opened,” he says, “the fifth seal, I saw under the altar of God the souls of those slain for the word of God and their witness, and they cried out with a loud voice, saying: How long, Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who live on the earth? And a white robe was given to each of them, and they were told to rest a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers should be filled up, who would afterwards be killed after their example.” 22 But when the divine vengeance for righteous blood will come, the Holy Spirit declares through the prophet Malachi, saying: “See, the day of the Lord comes, burning like an oven, and all the foreigners and all the wicked will be stubble, and the coming day will set them on fire, says the Lord.” We read this likewise in the Psalms, where the coming of God the Judge is proclaimed, to be revered for the majesty of his judgment: “God will come manifest, our God, and will not keep silent. Fire will burn before him, and around him a great storm. He will call the heaven above and the earth, to separate his people. Gather to him his righteous ones, those who establish his covenant with sacrifices. And the heavens will declare his righteousness, for God is judge.” And Isaiah foretells the same, saying: “For see, the Lord will come like fire, and his chariots like a storm, to repay vengeance in anger. For by the fire of the Lord they will be judged, and by his sword they will be wounded.” And again: “The Lord God of powers will go forth and crush the war; he will stir up the contest and cry out against his enemies with strength: I have kept silent; shall I keep silent forever?” 23 But who is this who says that he kept silent before and will not keep silent forever? Surely he who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, without a voice, did not open his mouth. Surely he who did not cry out, nor was his voice heard in the streets. Surely he who was not stubborn and did not contradict, when he gave his back to the scourges and his cheeks to the blows of the palm, and did not turn his face away from the foulness of spitting. Surely he who, when he was accused by the priests and elders, answered nothing, and, to Pilate's wonder, kept a most patient silence. This is he who, though he was silent in his passion, will not be silent afterwards in vengeance. This is our God, that is, the God not of all but of the faithful and believing, who, when he comes manifest in his second coming, will not keep silent. For though he was hidden before in humility, he will come manifest in power. 24 Let us wait for him, dearest brothers, our judge and avenger, who will avenge together with himself the people of his church and the number of all the righteous from the beginning of the world. Let him who hastens and hurries too much to his vengeance consider that he who avenges has not yet been avenged himself. God the Father commanded that his Son be worshiped; and the apostle Paul, remembering the divine command, states: God has exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and below the earth. In the Apocalypse the angel resists John when he wishes to worship him, and says: “See that you do not do it, for I am your fellow servant and of your brothers. Worship the Lord Jesus.” What and how great is the patience of the Lord Jesus, that he who is worshiped in heaven is not yet avenged on earth! Let us think of his patience, dearest brothers, in our persecutions and sufferings. Let us respond to his coming with obedient expectation, and let us not, as servants, hasten with irreligious and shameless haste to be defended before our Lord. Let us rather persist and labor, and, watching with our whole heart and steadfast for all endurance, keep the Lord's precepts, so that, when that day of anger and vengeance comes, we may not be punished with the impious and sinners but honored with the righteous and those who fear God.

On Jealousy and Envy

1 To be jealous of what you see to be good and to envy those better than you seems to some, dearest brothers, a light and small offense; and while it is thought light and small it is not feared; while it is not feared it is despised; while it is despised it is not easily avoided; and it becomes a blind and hidden ruin which, being too little perceived to be guarded against by the prudent, secretly afflicts imprudent minds. But the Lord commanded us to be prudent, and charged us to keep watch with careful concern, so that the adversary, himself always watchful and always lying in wait, when he has crept into the heart, does not blow sparks into a blaze, magnify the smallest things into the greatest, and, while he flatters the careless and unwary with a gentler breeze and a softer breath, does not stir up storms and whirlwinds and contrive the ruin of faith and the shipwreck of salvation and life. We must therefore keep guard, dearest brothers, and labor with all our strength, so that with anxious and full vigilance we may resist the raging enemy, who aims his darts at every part of the body where we can be struck and wounded, as the apostle Peter forewarns and teaches in his letter, saying: “Be sober, keep watch, for your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking something to devour.” 2 He goes about each one of us, and, like an enemy besieging those shut up inside, he examines the walls and tests whether there is some part of the members less steady and less trustworthy, through whose entrance he may penetrate to the inner parts. He offers the eyes enticing forms and easy pleasures, to destroy chastity through sight. He tempts the ears with tuneful music, to loosen and soften Christian vigor by hearing sweeter sounds. He provokes the tongue to abuse; he incites the hand, when injuries provoke it, to the insolence of murder. To make a man a cheat, he sets unjust gains before him; to capture the soul with money, he thrusts ruinous profits upon it; he promises earthly honors to take away heavenly ones; he displays false things to steal away true ones; and when he cannot deceive secretly, he threatens openly and plainly, holding out the terror of turbulent persecution, always restless and always hostile in fighting down the servants of God: crafty in peace, violent in persecution. 3 Therefore, dearest brothers, against all the devil's snares, whether deceitful, or his open threats, the mind must stand prepared and armed, always as ready to resist as the enemy is always ready to attack. And since his weapons that creep up secretly are more frequent, and his hidden and secret shooting, the less it is perceived, the more grievously and frequently it advances to wound us, let us keep watch to understand and repel these too. Among them is the evil of jealousy and envy. If anyone examines it closely, he will find that nothing is more to be guarded against by a Christian, nothing more carefully provided against, than that anyone be caught by envy and spite, that anyone, entangled in the blind snares of the deceiving enemy, while a brother is turned by jealousy to hatred of his brother, should himself unknowingly perish by his own sword. And so that we may gather this more fully and see it more plainly, let us go back to its head and origin. Let us see from where jealousy began, and when, and how. For so ruinous an evil will be more easily avoided by us if both the origin and the greatness of that evil are known. 4 From this the devil, at the very beginning of the world, both perished first and destroyed others. He, supported by angelic majesty, he, acceptable and dear to God, after he saw man made in the image of God, broke out into jealousy with malevolent envy; not casting down another by the impulse of jealousy before he himself had first been cast down by jealousy; captive before capturing, lost before destroying; while, driven by envy, he snatches from man the grace of the immortality that had been given him, he himself also lost what he had been before. What an evil it is, dearest brothers, by which an angel fell, by which that lofty and splendid sublimity could be circumvented and overthrown, by which he himself who deceived was deceived! From then on envy rages on the earth, as one who is to perish by envy obeys the master of perdition, as one who is jealous imitates the devil, as it is written: “But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world.” So those who are on his side imitate him. 5 From this, in short, began the first hatreds of the new brotherhood; from this, unspeakable murders of kin, when unrighteous Cain is jealous of righteous Abel, when the evil man persecutes the good with envy and spite. So strong was the fury of rivalry to accomplish the crime that neither love of his brother, nor the enormity of the crime, nor the fear of God, nor the punishment of the offense was considered. He was unjustly struck down who had first shown righteousness; he suffered hatred who knew not how to hate; he was impiously killed who did not resist as he died. And that Esau became the enemy of his brother Jacob was jealousy: for because the one had received his father's blessing, the other blazed up with the torches of envy into the hatred of persecution. And that his brothers sold Joseph, the cause of the sale came from rivalry: after he had simply explained to his brothers, as a brother, the good fortune that had been shown him in visions, their malevolent minds broke out into envy. And King Saul too: that he hated David, that he wished with often repeated persecutions to kill an innocent man, merciful and patient with mild gentleness, what else provoked him but the goad of jealousy? Because, when Goliath had been killed and so great an enemy destroyed by God's help and favor, the people in admiration burst out in praise of David with acclamation, Saul conceived out of envy the furies of rivalry and pursuit. And not to make it long by going through them one by one, let us consider the destruction of a people that perished once for all. Did not the Jews perish from this, while they preferred to envy Christ rather than believe him? Disparaging the mighty works which he did, they were deceived by blinding jealousy and could not open the eyes of the heart to know divine things. 6 Considering these things now, dearest brothers, let us fortify, watchfully and bravely, the hearts dedicated to God against so ruinous an evil. Let the death of others profit our salvation; let the punishment of the imprudent bring health to the prudent. But there is no reason for anyone to think that this evil is contained in one form, or confined within brief boundaries and a narrow limit. The manifold and fertile ruin of jealousy spreads widely. It is the root of all evils, the source of disasters, the seedbed of offenses, the material of faults. From it hatred arises; from it animosity proceeds. Jealousy inflames avarice, when someone cannot be content with his own, seeing another richer. Jealousy stirs up ambition, when someone sees another raised higher in honors. When jealousy blinds our senses and brings the secret places of the mind under its dominion, the fear of God is scorned, the teaching of Christ neglected, the day of judgment not provided for. Pride puffs up, cruelty embitters, faithlessness betrays, impatience shakes, discord rages, anger boils; nor can he any longer restrain or govern himself who has been brought under another's power. From this the bond of the Lord's peace is broken; from this brotherly love is violated; from this truth is adulterated, unity is split, people rush into heresies and schisms, while priests are disparaged, while bishops are envied, while someone either complains that he himself was not ordained instead or disdains to bear another set over him. From this he kicks back, from this he rebels, proud from jealousy, perverse from rivalry, an enemy, through animosity and envy, not of the man but of the office. 7 What a moth of the soul it is, what a wasting of the thoughts, what a rust of the heart, to be jealous of another's virtue or happiness, that is, to hate in him either his own merits or God's gifts; to turn the good of others into one's own harm; to be tormented by the prosperity of the eminent; to make the glory of others one's own punishment; to bring executioners, as it were, up to one's own breast, and to set torturers upon one's own thoughts and feelings, to tear oneself with inward torments and to beat upon the secrets of the heart with the claws of ill will. For such people no food can be glad, no drink pleasant. They are always sighing and groaning and grieving; and since the envious never lay aside their jealousy, the besieged heart is torn day and night without respite. Other evils have a limit, and whatever wrong is done ends when the wrong is completed. In the adulterer the crime ceases once the act of lust is done; in the robber the wickedness rests once the murder is committed; the seizure of the booty puts an end to the plunderer's greed, and the completion of the fraud sets a limit to the forger. Jealousy has no limit: it is an evil that lasts continually and a sin without end; and the more the one who is envied advances in better success, the more the envious man blazes up with the fires of jealousy into a greater conflagration. 8 Hence the threatening look, the grim glance, pallor in the face, trembling on the lips, gnashing of the teeth, raging words, unbridled abuse, a hand ready for murderous violence, even if for the moment it is empty of a sword, yet armed with the hatred of a maddened mind. And therefore the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: “Do not be jealous of him who prospers in his way.” And again: “The sinner will watch the righteous and gnash his teeth at him. But God will laugh at him, for he foresees that his day will come.” The blessed apostle Paul marks and points out such people when he says: “The poison of asps is under their lips, and their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways; they have not known the way of peace; there is no fear of God before their eyes.” 9 The evil is much lighter and the danger smaller when the limbs are wounded by the sword. The cure is easy where the wound is plain to see, and what can be seen is quickly brought back to health when a remedy comes to its aid. The wounds of jealousy are hidden and secret; they do not admit the remedy of a healer's care, since they have shut themselves up with blind pain inside the hiding place of the conscience. Whoever you are, envious and malicious man, see how treacherous, how ruinous, how hostile you are to those you hate: yet you are the enemy of no one's salvation more than your own. Whoever it is that you pursue with jealousy can slip away and avoid you; you cannot flee from yourself. Wherever you are, your adversary is with you; the enemy is always in your breast; destruction is shut up within; you are bound and fettered by an inescapable tangle of chains; you are a captive with jealousy for your master, and no comfort comes to your aid. It is a persistent evil to persecute a man who belongs to the grace of God; it is a calamity without remedy to hate the happy. 10 And therefore, dearest brothers, the Lord, taking thought for this danger so that no one runs into the snare of death through jealousy of his brother, when the disciples asked him who among them was the greatest, said: “Whoever is least among you all, he will be great.” By his answer he cut off all rivalry; he dug out and cut away every cause and occasion of biting envy. A disciple of Christ may not be jealous, may not envy. Among us there can be no contest for exaltation: from humility we grow to the heights; we have learned how to please. And so the apostle Paul too, instructing and admonishing that we, who have been enlightened by the light of Christ and have escaped the darkness of the night's way of life, should walk in the deeds and works of light, writes and says: “The night has passed, and the day has drawn near. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk becomingly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lusts and impurity, not in quarreling and jealousy.” If the darkness has departed from your breast, if the night has been scattered from it, if the gloom has been wiped away, if the brightness of the day has lit up your senses, if you have begun to be a man of light, do the things that are Christ's, for Christ is the light and the day. 11 Why do you rush into the darkness of jealousy? Why do you wrap yourself in the cloud of envy? Why do you put out all the light of peace and love with the blindness of envy? Why do you go back to the devil, whom you had renounced? Why do you turn out like Cain? For the apostle John declares in his letter that whoever is jealous of his brother and hates him is bound by the crime of murder, saying: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” And again: “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” Whoever hates his brother, he says, walks in darkness and does not know where he is going. For he goes unknowing into Gehenna; ignorant and blind, he is hurled headlong into punishment, departing, that is, from the light of Christ, who warns and says: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” And he follows Christ who holds fast to his commands, who walks the way of his teaching, who follows his footsteps and paths, who imitates what Christ both taught and did, as Peter too exhorts and admonishes, saying: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his footsteps.” 12 We ought to remember by what name Christ calls his people, by what title he names his flock. He calls them sheep, so that Christian innocence may be like that of sheep; he calls them lambs, so that simplicity of mind may imitate the simple nature of lambs. Why does the wolf hide under sheep's clothing? Why does he who falsely calls himself a Christian disgrace the flock of Christ? To put on the name of Christ and not to go by Christ's way, what else is it than a betrayal of the divine name, a desertion of the way of salvation? For he himself teaches and says that he comes to life who has kept the commandments; that he is wise who has heard his words and done them; that he also is called greatest in the kingdom of heaven who has taught and has so done; that what has been well and usefully preached will then profit the preacher if what is uttered by the mouth is fulfilled by the deeds that follow. What did the Lord impress more often on his disciples, what among his saving admonitions and heavenly precepts did he command to be kept and observed more than that we too should love one another with the same love with which he himself loved the disciples? And how does he keep either the peace of the Lord or his love who, with jealousy coming between, can be neither peaceable nor loving? 13 Therefore the apostle Paul too, when he set out the merits of peace and love, and when he firmly asserted and taught that neither faith nor almsgiving nor even the very suffering of a confessor and martyr would profit him unless he kept the bonds of love whole and inviolate, added and said: “Love is magnanimous, love is kind, love is not jealous,” teaching, that is, and showing that whoever is magnanimous and kind and a stranger to jealousy and envy can keep love. Likewise in another place, admonishing that a man already filled with the Holy Spirit and made a son of God by heavenly birth should pursue only spiritual and divine things, he writes and says: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal ones, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not food; for you were not yet able, and even now you are not able; for you are still carnal. For where there is jealousy and strife and dissension among you, are you not carnal and walking in a merely human way?” 14 The vices and sins of the flesh must be crushed, dearest brothers, and the harmful stain of the earthly body trampled down with spiritual strength, so that, while we roll back again into the way of life of the old man, we do not become entangled in deadly snares, as the apostle forewarns of this very thing with foresight and for our salvation: “Therefore, brothers,” he says, “let us not live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will begin to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the works of the flesh, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” If we are sons of God, if we have already begun to be his temples, if, having received the Holy Spirit, we live holily and spiritually, if we have lifted our eyes from earth to heaven, if we have raised to things above and divine a heart full of God and Christ, let us do only what is worthy of God and Christ, as the apostle rouses and exhorts us: “If you have risen with Christ,” he says, “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God; set your minds on the things that are above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” We, then, who in baptism have both died and been buried as to the carnal sins of the old man, who have risen with Christ by heavenly regeneration, let us both think and do the things that are Christ's, as the same apostle again teaches and admonishes, saying: “The first man is from the clay of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the one from clay, so are those from clay; and as is the heavenly one, so are the heavenly. As we have borne the image of him who is from clay, let us also bear the image of him who is from heaven.” But we cannot bear the heavenly image unless, in what we have now begun to be, we show the likeness of Christ. 15 For this is to have changed what you were and to have begun to be what you were not: that the divine birth may shine in you, that a godly discipline may answer to God the Father, that God may be glorified in man by the honor and praise of his life, as he himself exhorts and admonishes and promises a return to those who glorify him: “Those who glorify me,” he says, “I will glorify, and he who despises me will be despised.” Forming and preparing us for this glorification, the Lord and Son of God, impressing on us the likeness of God the Father, says in his Gospel: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be like your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” If it is a joy and a glory to men to have children like themselves, and if begetting delights them more when the offspring that follows answers to the father with like features, how much greater is the joy in God the Father when someone is so born spiritually that a divine nobility is proclaimed in his deeds and praises! What palm of righteousness is it, what crown, to be such a one that God does not say of you: “I have begotten and raised sons, but they have despised me”? Let Christ rather praise you and invite you to the reward, saying: “Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” 16 With such meditations, dearest brothers, the mind must be strengthened; by exercises of this kind it must be made firm against all the darts of the devil. Let the divine reading be in our hands, the thought of the Lord in our minds; let unceasing prayer never stop at all; let saving work continue. Let us always be busy with spiritual activities, so that whenever the enemy approaches, as often as he tries to draw near, he may find the heart closed and armed against him. For a Christian's crown is not only the one received in time of persecution. Peace too has its crowns, with which we are crowned as victors in varied and manifold combat, when the adversary has been laid low and subdued. To have subdued lust is the palm of self-control. To have fought back against anger and injury is the crown of patience. To despise money is a triumph over avarice. To endure the adversities of the world in confidence of things to come is the praise of faith. He who is not proud in prosperity gains glory from humility. He who is inclined to mercy in caring for the poor obtains the reward of heavenly treasure. And he who does not know how to be jealous, and who loves his brothers with one mind and gently, is honored with the reward of love and peace. In this stadium of virtues we run every day; to these palms and crowns of righteousness we come without pause. 17 That you too may be able to reach these, you who had been possessed by jealousy and envy, cast away all that malice by which you were held before, and reshape yourself for the way of eternal life with saving steps. Tear out of your breast the thorns and thistles, so that the Lord's seed may enrich you with a fruitful yield, so that a divine and spiritual crop may overflow into the abundance of a rich harvest. Vomit out the poisons of gall, shut out the venom of discord; let the mind be cleansed that the serpent's envy had infected; let all the bitterness that had settled within be softened by the sweetness of Christ. From the sacrament of the cross you take both food and drink: let the wood that at Marah availed in figure to make the taste sweet avail for you in truth to soothe your heart, and you will not have to labor for a remedy to restore your health. Be healed by the very thing by which you had been wounded. Love those whom you hated before; cherish those whom you envied with unjust slanders. Imitate the good, if you can follow them; if you cannot follow them, at least rejoice with your betters and congratulate them. Make yourself their partner in united love; make yourself their co-heir in the fellowship of love and the bond of brotherhood. Your debts will be forgiven you when you yourself have forgiven; your sacrifices will be accepted when you come to God as a peacemaker. Your thoughts and acts will be directed by God when you think on what is divine and just, as it is written: “Let the heart of a man think just things, that his steps may be directed by God.” 18 You have many things to think about. Think of paradise, to which Cain, who killed his brother out of jealousy, does not return. Think of the heavenly kingdom, into which the Lord admits only those who are of one heart and one mind. Think that only those can be called sons of God who are peacemakers, who, united by divine birth and law, answer to the likeness of God the Father and of Christ. Think that we stand under the eyes of God, that we run the course of our conduct and life with him watching and judging, that we can at last attain to seeing him only if we now delight him who sees us by our deeds, if we show ourselves worthy of his grace and indulgence, if we please him first in this world so as to please him forever in the kingdom.

To Fortunatus: An Exhortation to Martyrdom

1 You have asked, dearest Fortunatus, that, since the weight of afflictions and persecutions presses upon us, and since at the end and consummation of the world the hostile time of Antichrist has already begun to draw near, I should compose from the divine Scriptures exhortations for preparing and strengthening the minds of the brothers, with which I might rouse the soldiers of Christ for the spiritual and heavenly contest. I had to comply with so necessary a wish, so that, as far as our modest ability suffices, aided by divine inspiration, some arms, as it were, and defenses might be brought out from the Lord's precepts for the brothers who are about to fight. For it is too little that we rouse the people of God with the trumpet of our voice unless we strengthen the faith of believers, and their courage dedicated and devoted to God, by the divine reading. 2 What better fits our care and concern than to prepare by constant exhortations the people divinely entrusted to us, an army set in the heavenly camp, against the weapons and darts of the devil? For no one can be a fit soldier for war who has not first been trained on the drill field; nor will he who seeks to win the athlete's crown be crowned in the stadium unless he first practices the use and skill of his strength. The adversary with whom we wage battle is old, the enemy ancient. Six thousand years are now almost completed since the devil first attacked man. By long experience itself he has learned every kind of temptation and every art and snare for throwing us down. If he finds the soldier of Christ unprepared, if untrained, if not watchful with an anxious and whole heart, he surrounds him in his ignorance, deceives him in his carelessness, cheats him in his inexperience. But if anyone, keeping the Lord's precepts and clinging bravely to Christ, stands against him, he must be conquered, for Christ, whom we confess, is unconquered. 3 And so as not to draw my discourse out at length, dearest brother, and weary the hearer or reader with the abundance of a fuller style, I have made a compendium: I have set out headings which everyone ought to know and hold, and under them I have joined passages of the Lord's words, and I have confirmed what I set out by the authority of the divine reading, so that I may seem not so much to have sent you a treatise of my own as to have supplied material to those who compose treatises. This serves each person with greater usefulness. For if I were to give a garment already made and finished, it would be my garment for another to use, and perhaps, made for someone else, it would be found to fit poorly the build of his stature and body. But as it is, I have sent the very wool and purple from the Lamb through whom we have been redeemed and given life; when you receive it, you will make yourself a tunic as you wish, and you will rejoice the more in it as your own, your personal garment. You will also show what we have sent to others, so that they too may make it up as they judge best, and so that all, their old nakedness covered, may wear the garments of Christ, clothed with the sanctification of heavenly grace. 4 I have also foreseen this useful and wholesome plan, dearest brother, in an exhortation so necessary, one that is to make martyrs: that the delays of our own words must be cut away, and the circuits of human speech withdrawn, and only those things set down which God speaks, by which Christ exhorts his servants to martyrdom. The divine precepts themselves must be supplied like weapons to those who fight. Let them be the exhortations of the military trumpet; let them be the battle signal for the fighters. From them let ears be roused, from them let minds be instructed, from them let the strength of both soul and body be made firm for every endurance of suffering. Let us only, who by the Lord's permission have given believers the first baptism, prepare each one for the other also, instilling and teaching that this baptism is greater in grace, loftier in power, more precious in honor: a baptism in which angels baptize, a baptism in which God and his Christ exult, a baptism after which no one sins any more, a baptism that completes the growth of our faith, a baptism that joins us to God at once as we depart from the world. In the baptism of water the remission of sins is received; in the baptism of blood, the crown of virtues. This is a thing to be embraced and desired and sought with all the prayers of our petitions, so that we who have been servants of God may also be his friends. In exhorting and preparing our brothers, then, and arming them with firmness of courage and faith for proclaiming their confession of the Lord and for the battle of persecution and suffering, it must be said in the first place: I. That idols which man makes for himself are not gods (for things that are made are not greater than their maker and fashioner, nor can they protect and save anyone, since they themselves perish from their temples unless they are saved by man); and that neither are the elements to be worshiped, which serve man according to the arrangement and command of God. II. When the idols have been destroyed and the nature of the elements shown, it must be shown that God alone is to be worshiped. III. Then must be added what threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols. IV. Further, it must be taught that God does not readily pardon idolaters. V. And that God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death. VI. After this must be joined that, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ, because he put nothing before us, and for our sake he preferred evil things to good, poverty to riches, servitude to lordship, death to immortality; whereas we in our sufferings are to prefer the riches and delights of paradise to the world's poverty, eternal lordship and kingdom to temporary servitude, immortality to death, God and Christ to the devil and Antichrist. VII. It must also be impressed that those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world must not, if they begin to be in straits and afflictions, wish to go back again to the world and lose what they have escaped. VIII. That rather one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown. IX. That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved. X. That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack. XI. And so that no one is terrified and disturbed at the afflictions and persecutions we suffer in this world, it must be proved that it was foretold that the world would hate us and would stir up persecutions against us, so that from the very fact that these things happen the faithfulness of the divine promise may be evident in the rewards and prizes that will follow afterwards; and that nothing new happens to Christians, since from the beginning of the world the good have labored and the righteous have been oppressed and killed by the unrighteous. XII. In the last part must be set out what hope and what reward await the righteous and the martyrs after the conflicts and sufferings of this time. XIII. And that we shall receive more in the recompense for suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself.

That idols are not gods, and that the elements are not to be worshiped in place of gods.

5 In Psalm 134: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have a mouth and do not speak; they have eyes and do not see; they have ears and do not hear; for there is no breath in their mouth. Let all who make them be like them.” Likewise in the Wisdom of Solomon: “They considered all the idols of the nations to be gods, which have neither the use of eyes for seeing, nor nostrils for drawing breath, nor ears for hearing, nor fingers on their hands for handling, and their feet too are slow to walk. For a man made them, and one who has borrowed his breath fashioned them. But no man can fashion a god like himself; for, being mortal, he fashions a dead thing with lawless hands. He himself is better than the things he worships, since he has lived, but they never.”⁠a Likewise in Exodus: “You shall not make for yourself an idol nor the likeness of anything.” Likewise in Solomon, concerning the elements: “Nor, while paying heed to the works, did they recognize who was the craftsman; but they thought either fire or wind or swift air or the circle of the stars or the great water or the sun or the moon to be gods. If they supposed these to be gods because of their beauty, let them know how much more beautiful than these is their Lord; or if they marveled at their powers and works, let them understand from them that he who established these mighty things is mightier than they.”⁠b

That God alone is to be worshiped.

6 As it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” Likewise there: “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal; and there is none who can rescue from my hands.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim over the earth to all nations and tribes and tongues and peoples, saying with a loud voice: Fear God rather, and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them.” So also the Lord in the Gospel recalls the first and second commandment, saying: “Hear, Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord,” and: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hangs the whole Law and the Prophets.” And again: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only and true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

What threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols.

7 In Exodus: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, unless to the Lord alone.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “They sacrificed to demons and not to God.” Likewise in Isaiah: “They worshiped what their fingers had made; and man was bowed down and the man was humbled, and I will not forgive them.” And again: “To them you have poured out drink offerings, and to them you have laid sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things? says the Lord.” Likewise in Jeremiah: “Do not walk after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, and do not provoke me with the works of your hands to destroy you.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives the mark on his forehead and on his hand, he too shall drink of the wine of the anger of God, mixed in the cup of his anger, and shall be punished with fire and sulfur before the eyes of the holy angels and before the eyes of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torments shall go up for ever and ever; and they shall have no rest day or night, whoever worship the beast and its image.”

That God does not readily pardon idolaters.

8 Moses in Exodus prays for the people and does not obtain it: “I pray you, Lord,” he says, “this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold and silver. And now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses: “If anyone has sinned before me, I will blot him out of my book.” Likewise, when Jeremiah was interceding for the people, the Lord speaks to him, saying: “And you, do not pray for this people and do not make request for them in entreaty and prayer, for I will not hear in the time when they call on me, in the time of their affliction.” Ezekiel too proclaims this same anger of God against those who sin against God: “And the word of the Lord came to me,” he says, “saying: Son of man, whatever land sins against me so as to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand upon it and crush its staff of bread and send famine into it and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men were in its midst, Noah and Daniel and Job, they will not deliver sons or daughters; they alone will be saved.” Likewise in the first book of Kingdoms: “If a man sins by offending against a man, they will pray to the Lord for him; but if a man sins against God, who will pray for him?”

That God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death.

9 In Deuteronomy: “But if your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife who is in your bosom, or your friend who is equal to your own soul, asks you secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, the gods of the nations, you shall not consent to him and you shall not listen to him, and your eye shall not spare him, and you shall not conceal him; you shall surely denounce him. Your hand shall be first upon him to kill him, and the hand of all the people afterwards; and they shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God.” And again the Lord speaks and says that not even a city is to be spared, even if the whole of it has consented to idolatry: “Or if you hear in one of the cities which the Lord your God will give you to live in, people saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, you shall surely kill all who are in the city with the slaughter of the sword, and you shall burn the city with fire, and it shall be without inhabitant for ever. It shall not be rebuilt even now, so that the Lord may turn from his fierce anger. And he will give you mercy and have mercy on you and multiply you, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God and observe his commandments.” Mindful of this command and its force, Mattathias killed the man who had come up to the altar to sacrifice. But if these commands concerning the worship of God and the scorning of idols were kept before the coming of Christ, how much more must they be kept after the coming of Christ, since he at his coming exhorted us not by words only but also by deeds, suffering after every injury and insult and being crucified as well, to teach us by his example to suffer and to die, so that there may be no excuse for a man who does not suffer for himself when he suffered for us; and since he suffered for the sins of others, much more ought each one to suffer for his own sins. And therefore he threatens in the Gospel and says: “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “For if we die with him,” he says, “we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny, he too will deny us.” Likewise John: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; whoever confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father.” Hence the Lord exhorts and strengthens us to despise death, saying: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can kill both soul and body in Gehenna.” And again: “Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

That, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ.

10 In the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not my disciple.” As it is written in Deuteronomy: “Those who say to father and mother, I do not know you, and did not acknowledge their own children, these have kept your precepts and observed your covenant.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “Who shall separate us,” he says, “from the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we overcome for the sake of him who loved us.” And again: “You are not your own, for you were bought at a great price. Glorify and carry God in your body.” And again: “He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.”

That those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world ought not to return to the world again, so that they do not lose what they have escaped.

11 In Exodus the Jewish people, prefigured as a shadow and image of us, when with God as protector and avenger they had escaped the harshest slavery of Pharaoh and Egypt, that is, of the devil and the world, were faithless and ungrateful toward God and muttered against Moses, looking back at the hardships of the desert and the toil and not understanding the divine benefits of freedom and salvation; and they sought to return to the slavery of Egypt, that is, of the world, from which they had been set free, when rather they ought to have trusted and believed in God, since he who frees his people from the devil and the world protects them once freed. “What is this you have done to us,” they say, “in bringing us out of Egypt? It was better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in this wilderness.” And Moses said to the people: “Trust; stand and see the salvation that is from the Lord, which he will work for us today. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be silent.” Warning us of this in his Gospel, that we should not return again to the devil and the world, which we have renounced and from which we have escaped, the Lord says: “No one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” And again: “And let him who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife.” And so that no one is held back from following Christ by any desire for possessions or by fondness for his own family, he added and says: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

That one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown.

12 In Chronicles: “The Lord is with you as long as you are with him; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” Likewise in Ezekiel: “The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him on whatever day he goes astray.” Likewise in the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “He who perseveres to the end, he will be saved.” And again: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Forewarning us also that we must always be ready and stand firmly equipped and ready, he added and says: “Keep your belts fastened and your lamps burning, and you like men waiting for their master, when he comes from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds watching when he comes.” Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, that our faith may advance and grow and reach the summit, exhorts and says: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the palm? So run that you may win. And they run to receive a perishable crown, but you an imperishable.” And again: “No one serving as a soldier of God entangles himself in worldly affairs, that he may please him who approved him. And even if one contends, he will not be crowned unless he has fought lawfully.” And again: “I therefore urge you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God; and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewal of your mind, to prove what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God.” And again: “We are sons of God; and if sons, also heirs, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” And in the Apocalypse the exhortation of the divine preaching says the same thing: “Hold fast what you have, so that no one else takes your crown.” This example of persevering and holding on is set forth in Exodus, where Moses, to overcome Amalek, who bore the figure of the devil, raised his outstretched hands in the sign and sacrament of the cross, and could not conquer the adversary until he persevered steadily in the sign with his hands continually raised. “And it came to pass,” it says, “when Moses raised his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he had let his hands down, Amalek grew strong. And they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur held up his hands on this side and that; and the hands of Moses became steady until the setting of the sun. And Joshua put Amalek and all his people to flight. And the Lord said to Moses: Write this, that it may be a memorial in a book, and speak it into the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved.

13 In Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God tests you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” And again in Solomon: “The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of affliction proves righteous men.”⁠c Paul too testifies to the same and says: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And Peter in his letter writes and says: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that comes upon you, which comes to test you, and do not fall away, as though something new were happening to you. But as often as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice in all things, that at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice and exult. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the name of the majesty and power of the Lord rests on you; by them indeed it is blasphemed, but by us it is honored.”

That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack.

14 John proves it in his letter, saying: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in this world.” Likewise in Psalm 117: “I will not fear what man may do to me; the Lord is my helper.” And again: “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of our God. They were bound by the feet and fell, but we have risen and stand upright.” And the Holy Spirit, teaching and showing still more strongly that the camp of the devil is not to be feared, and that if the enemy declares war on us our hope rests rather in that very war, and that such a conflict brings the righteous to the reward of the divine throne and of eternal salvation, writes and says in Psalm 26: “Though a camp be arrayed against me, my heart will not fear; and though war rise up against me, in it I hope. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Likewise in Exodus the divine Scripture declares that we are rather multiplied and increased by afflictions, saying: “And the more they oppressed them, the more numerous they became and the stronger they grew.” And in the Apocalypse divine protection is promised in our sufferings: “Fear none of the things,” it says, “that you are about to suffer.” Nor does anyone else promise us safety and protection but he who also speaks through the prophet Isaiah, saying: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you and called you by your name; you are mine. And if you pass through water, I am with you, and the rivers shall not overwhelm you; and if you pass through fire, you will not be burned, the flame will not burn you; for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who saves you.” He also promises in the Gospel that divine help will not fail the servants of God in persecutions, saying: “But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And again: “Settle it in your hearts not to prepare your defense beforehand; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which your adversaries will not be able to resist.” As in Exodus God speaks to Moses when he hesitated and trembled to go to the people, saying: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God? And now go, and I will open your mouth and instruct you in what you are to say.” Nor is it hard for God to open the mouth of a man devoted to him and to breathe into his confessor steadfastness and boldness of speech, since in Numbers he even made a donkey speak against the prophet Balaam. Therefore in persecutions let no one think what danger the devil brings, but rather consider what help God gives; let not human hostility make the mind totter, but let divine protection strengthen faith, since each one, according to the Lord's promises and the merits of his faith, receives as much of God's help as he believes he receives; and there is nothing the Almighty cannot grant, unless the failing faith of the receiver gives way.

Chapter 11

15 That it was foretold that the world would hate us and would stir up persecutions against us, and that nothing new happens to Christians, since from the beginning of the world the good have labored and the righteous have been oppressed and killed by the unrighteous. The Lord forewarns and foretells in the Gospel, saying: “If the world hates you, know that it hated me first. If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own; but because you are not of the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you too.” And again: “The hour will come when everyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God; but they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have spoken these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.” And again: “Truly, truly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” And again: “I have spoken these things to you so that in me you may have peace, but in the world affliction. But take courage, for I have overcome the world.” And when he was asked by his disciples about the sign of his coming and of the consummation of the world, he answered and said: “Take care that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will deceive many. And you will begin to hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed; for this must happen, but it is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes and pestilences in various places. But all these are the beginnings of birth pains. Then they will hand you over to affliction and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and will lead many astray; and because lawlessness abounds, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end, he will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. When therefore you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything from the house, and let him who is in the field not turn back to fetch his garment. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing in those days. Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great affliction, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or, Look, there, do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders to lead into error, if possible, even the elect. But you, take care; see, I have told you everything beforehand. If then they say to you, Look, he is in the wilderness, do not go out; Look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as the lightning that comes out of the east and shines as far as the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will gather. And immediately after the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. And he will send his angels with a great trumpet, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from the heights of the heavens to their farthest bounds.” Nor are these things new or sudden that now happen to Christians, since the good and righteous, devoted to God by the law of innocence and the fear of true religion, have always walked through afflictions and injuries and the heavy and manifold punishments of their persecutors along the difficult narrow way. So at the very beginning of the world righteous Abel is the first to be killed by his brother; Jacob is put to flight; Joseph is sold; King Saul persecutes the merciful David; King Ahab tries to crush Elijah, who asserted God's majesty steadfastly and bravely; the priest Zechariah is killed between the temple and the altar, so that he himself became a victim there where he used to offer victims to God. So many martyrdoms of the righteous, in short, have often been celebrated; so many examples of faith and courage have been set forth for those who came after. The three youths, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, equal in age, one in love, firm in faith, constant in courage, stronger than the flames and punishments that pressed upon them, proclaim that they serve God alone, know him alone, worship him alone, saying: “King Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you on this matter. For the God whom we serve is able to rescue us from the furnace of burning fire, and he will deliver us from your hands, king. And if not, let it be known to you that we do not serve your gods and do not worship the golden image that you have set up.” And Daniel, devoted to God and full of the Holy Spirit, cries out and says: “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who made heaven and earth.” Tobias too, though under royal and tyrannical servitude, yet free in mind and spirit, keeps his confession to God and proclaims loftily the divine power and majesty, saying: “In the land of my captivity I confess him and show his power to a sinful nation.”⁠d And what of the seven brothers in Maccabees, alike in the lot of their birth and of their virtues, filling up the number seven with its sacred sign of perfect completion? So the seven brothers are joined in martyrdom as, in the divine arrangement, the first seven days contain the seven thousand years; as the seven spirits and the seven angels who stand and go about before the face of God; as the seven-branched lamp in the tabernacle of witness, and the seven golden lampstands in the Apocalypse, and in Solomon the seven pillars on which Wisdom builds her house. So here too the number of the seven brothers, by the measure of its number, embraces the seven churches, as we read in the first book of Kingdoms that the barren woman has borne seven. And in Isaiah seven women take hold of one man, whose name they ask to be called upon them. And the apostle Paul, who remembers this lawful and fixed number, writes to seven churches. And in the Apocalypse the Lord directs his divine commands and heavenly precepts to seven churches and their angels. This number is now found here in the brothers, so that a lawful completion may be fulfilled. With the seven children, clearly, is joined the mother also, the origin and root who afterwards bore seven churches, she herself the first and the one, founded upon the rock by the Lord's voice. Nor is it without meaning that in the sufferings the mother is alone with her children. For the martyrs, who in their suffering bear witness that they are sons of God, are now considered to have no father but God, as the Lord teaches in the Gospel, saying: “Call no one on earth your father; for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” And what proclamations of confession did they put forth, what glorious, what great proofs of faith did they give! The hostile king Antiochus, or rather Antichrist portrayed in Antiochus, sought to defile with the contagion of swine's flesh the glorious mouths of the martyrs, unconquered by the spirit of confession; and when he had beaten them severely with scourges and could make no progress, he ordered frying pans to be heated. When these were heated and glowing, he commanded that the one who had spoken first, and had most provoked the king by the steadfastness of his courage and faith, should be brought to them and fried, his tongue, which had confessed God, having first been drawn out and cut off. This happened the more gloriously for the martyr: for the tongue that had confessed the name of God ought itself to go first to God. Then for the second, more cruel punishments having been devised, before torturing his other limbs he tore the skin from his head with the hair, in hatred, surely, of this very thing: for since the head of man is Christ and the head of Christ is God, he who mangled the martyr's head was persecuting God and Christ in the head. But he, trusting in his martyrdom and promising himself the reward of resurrection from God's recompense, cried out and said: “You, powerless man, destroy us out of this present life; but the King of the world will raise us, who have died for his laws, to the eternal resurrection of life.” The third, when his tongue was demanded, quickly put it out, for he had already learned from his brother to despise the penalty of having the tongue cut out. He also steadfastly stretched out his hands to be cut off, greatly blessed in this kind of punishment, for it was granted to him, with his hands stretched out to the penalty, to imitate the likeness of the Lord's passion. And the fourth too, despising the torments with equal courage and answering with a heavenly voice to repel the king, cried out and said: “It is better, when given over to death by men, to await from God the hope of being raised again by him; for you there will be no resurrection to life.” The fifth, besides trampling with the vigor of faith on the king's butchery and his hard and varied tortures, was also moved by the divine Spirit to foreknowledge and knowledge of things to come, and prophesied to the king the indignation of God and the vengeance that would swiftly follow. “Having power among men,” he said, “though you are corruptible, you do what you will. But do not think that our race has been forsaken by God. Wait, and see his great power, how he will torment you and your offspring.” What relief that was for the martyr, how great, how grand a comfort in his tortures, to think not of his own torments but to foretell the punishments of his torturer! In the sixth, not courage alone but also humility is to be proclaimed: that the martyr claimed nothing for himself, nor fanned the honor of his confession with proud words, but rather ascribed it to his own sins that he suffered persecution from the king, and left it to God that he would afterwards be avenged. He taught that martyrs are to be modest, to trust in vengeance, and to boast of nothing in their suffering. “Do not err in vain,” he said, “for we suffer these things on our own account, having sinned against our God. But do not think that you will go unpunished, you who have undertaken to fight against God.” Admirable too is the mother, who, neither broken by the weakness of her sex nor shaken by the loss of so many children, watched her children die willingly, and counted not the pains of her dear ones but their glories, offering to God as great a martyrdom by the courage of her eyes as her sons had offered by the torments and suffering of their limbs. When six had been punished and killed and one of the brothers remained, to whom the king was promising riches and power and much else, so that his cruelty and savagery might be soothed by the comfort of subduing at least one, and when he asked the mother too to plead with him to bring her son down, she did plead, but as became the mother of martyrs, as became one mindful of the law and of God, as became one who loved her sons not softly but bravely. For she pleaded, but that he should confess God. She pleaded that the brother should not be separated from his brothers in the fellowship of praise and glory, reckoning herself the mother of seven sons only if it were granted her to have borne seven sons for God rather than for the world. And so, arming and strengthening him, and bearing her son then in a happier birth, she said: “Son, have pity on me, who carried you in the womb ten months and gave you milk for three years and nourished you and brought you up to this age. I beg you, son, look at heaven and earth, and when you have looked at all that is in them, understand that God made them out of nothing, and that the human race comes into being in the same way. And do not fear this executioner, but become worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in that mercy I may receive you back with your brothers.” Great is the mother's praise in her exhortation to courage, but greater in her fear of God and the truth of her faith, in that she promised nothing to herself or her son from the honor of the six martyrs, nor believed that the prayer of the brothers would avail for the salvation of one who denied, but rather persuaded him to become a partner in the suffering, so that on the day of judgment he might be found with his brothers. After this the mother too dies with her children: for nothing else was fitting than that she who had both borne martyrs and made them should be joined to them in the fellowship of glory, and that she herself should follow those whom she had sent ahead to God. And so that no one, when the occasion of a certificate or anything else by which he might deceive is offered him, embraces the evil gift of the deceivers, Eleazar must not be passed over in silence. When the king's ministers offered him the chance of taking meat that he was allowed to eat and pretending, to get round the king, that he was eating what was being forced on them from the sacrifices and forbidden foods, he would not consent to this deceit, saying that it did not befit his age or his nobility to feign a thing by which others would be scandalized and led into error, thinking that Eleazar at ninety years of age had gone over to the ways of foreigners, abandoning and betraying the law of God; and that it was not worth so much to gain the brief sufferings of this life as to offend God and incur eternal punishment. And after being tortured long, and now at the point of death, dying amid blows and torments, he groaned and said: “Lord, who have holy knowledge, it is plain that, though I could be freed from death, I endure the harshest pains of the body, beaten with scourges; but in my soul I suffer these things gladly for fear of him.” Sincere faith indeed, and courage whole and pure enough, to have thought not of King Antiochus but of God the judge, and to have known that it could not profit him for salvation to mock and deceive a man, since God, who is the judge of our conscience and alone to be feared, can be neither mocked nor deceived at all. If, then, we too live dedicated and devoted to God, if we make our way upon the ancient and holy footsteps of the righteous, let us go on through the same proofs of punishments, through the same martyrdoms of suffering, counting it the greater glory of our own time that, while the ancient examples can be counted, Christian martyrs, since then, by the overflowing abundance of courage and faith, cannot be counted, as the Apocalypse testifies and says: “After this I saw a great crowd which no one could number, from every nation and from every tribe and people and tongue, standing in the sight of the throne and of the Lamb; and they were clothed in white robes, and palms were in their hands, and they cried with a loud voice: Salvation to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb. And one of the elders answered and said to me: These who are clothed in white robes, who are they and where have they come from? And I said to him: Lord, you know. And he said to me: These are those who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are in the sight of the honor of God, and they serve him in his temple.” If so great a people of Christian martyrs is shown and proved, let no one think it hard or difficult to become a martyr, when he sees that the people of the martyrs cannot be numbered.

What hope and what reward await the righteous and the martyrs after the conflicts and sufferings of this time.

16 Through Solomon the Holy Spirit shows and foretells, saying: “And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been troubled a little, they will be greatly blessed, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself. Like gold in the furnace he proved them, and as a whole burnt offering he accepted them, and in their time there will be regard for them. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord will reign for ever.” Likewise in the same author our vindication is described and the repentance of those who persecute and harass us is foretold. “Then,” he says, “the righteous will stand in great boldness against those who afflicted them and took away their labors. Seeing it, they will be troubled with dreadful fear and will be amazed at the suddenness of the unexpected salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: These are those whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools thought their life madness and their end without honor. How have they been counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints? So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise on us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and we walked through hard deserts, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What did pride profit us, or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow.” Likewise in Psalm 115 the price and reward of suffering is shown: “Precious,” it says, “in the sight of God is the death of his righteous ones.” Likewise in Psalm 125 the sadness of conflict and the joy of recompense is expressed: “Those who sow in tears,” it says, “will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” And again in Psalm 118: “Blessed are the blameless in the way, who walk in the light of the Lord. Blessed are those who search out his testimonies; with their whole heart they seek him.” Likewise the Lord in the Gospel, himself the avenger of our persecution and the rewarder of our suffering, says: “Blessed are those who have suffered persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And again: “Blessed will you be when men hate you and separate you and cast you out and curse your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and exult; for your reward is great in heaven.” And again: “Whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” Nor do the rewards of the divine promise await only those who have been punished and killed; but even if suffering is lacking to the faithful, yet if their faith has remained whole and unconquered, and the Christian has shown that he follows Christ by despising and leaving all that is his, he too is honored by Christ among the martyrs, as he himself promises and says: “There is no one who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who does not receive sevenfold as much in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Likewise in the Apocalypse he says the same thing: “And I saw,” it says, “the souls of those slain for the name of Jesus and the word of God.” And having put the slain in the first place, he added, saying: “And whoever did not worship the image of the beast nor received the inscription on their forehead or on their hand.” All of these, seen by him together in the same place, he joins and says: “And they lived and reigned with Christ.” He says that all live and reign with Christ, not only those who were killed, but also all who, standing firm in their faith and the fear of God, did not worship the image of the beast nor consent to its deadly and sacrilegious edicts.

That we receive more in the reward of suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself.

17 The blessed apostle Paul proves it, who, by divine favor caught up to the third heaven and into paradise, testifies that he heard things that cannot be told; who boasts that he saw Jesus Christ with the witness of his own eyes; who professes what he both learned and saw with the truth of a greater knowledge. “The sufferings of this time,” he says, “are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” Who then would not labor in every way to come to so great a glory, to become the friend of God, to rejoice at once with Christ, to receive divine rewards after earthly torments and punishments? If it is glorious for the soldiers of the world to return to their homeland in triumph when the enemy is conquered, how much better and greater is the glory, when the devil is conquered, to return in triumph to paradise, and to bring back victorious trophies to the place from which Adam the sinner was cast out, having laid low him who had deceived him before; to offer to the Lord the most acceptable gift, an uncorrupted faith, an unharmed strength of mind, the illustrious praise of devotion; to accompany him when he begins to come to take vengeance on his enemies; to stand at his side when he sits to judge; to become a fellow heir of Christ; to be made equal to the angels; to rejoice with the patriarchs, the apostles, and the prophets in the possession of the heavenly kingdom! What persecution can conquer these thoughts, what torments can overcome them? The mind founded on religious meditations endures strong and steady, and the soul that a sure and solid faith in things to come strengthens stands unmoved against all the terrors of the devil and the threats of the world. In persecutions the earth is shut, but heaven lies open; Antichrist threatens, but Christ protects; death is inflicted, but immortality follows; the world is snatched from the one who is killed, but paradise is displayed to the one restored; temporal life is extinguished, but eternity is made present. What dignity and what security it is to go out from here gladly, to go out gloriously amid afflictions and distress; to close in a moment the eyes with which men and the world were seen, and to open them at once to see God and Christ! How swift so happy a departure! You are suddenly withdrawn from the earth to be set in the heavenly kingdom. These things we must embrace in mind and thought; on these we must meditate day and night. If persecution finds such a soldier of God, his courage, ready for battle, cannot be conquered. Or if a summons comes first, the faith that was prepared for martyrdom will not be without reward; without loss of time the reward is given with God as judge: in persecution service is crowned, in peace the conscience.