On the Priesthood, Book 5

1. We have said enough to show how much skill a teacher needs in contending earnestly for the truth. But I have to mention one more matter besides this, which causes countless dangers. For my part, though, I would rather say that the thing itself is not the cause, but those who do not know how to use it rightly, since in itself it helps toward salvation and much other good whenever you find that earnest and good men are managing it. What, then, do I mean by this? Spending great labor on preparing discourses to be delivered in public. To begin with, most of those under the preachers’ charge are not inclined to treat them as teachers. Instead, scorning the role of learners, they take on the attitude of people who sit and watch the public games. And just as the crowd there splits into factions, with some attaching themselves to one side and some to another, so here too people are divided and become partisans now of this teacher, now of that, listening to them out of favor or spite. And this is not the only hardship; there is another just as great. For if a preacher happens to weave any part of other people’s works into his sermons, he is exposed to greater disgrace than those who steal money. In fact, often when he has not borrowed anything from anyone at all, but is merely suspected of it, he has suffered the fate of a thief. And why do I speak of other people’s works, when he is not even allowed to use his own resources without varying them? For the public is used to listening not for profit but for pleasure, sitting like critics at tragedies and musical performances. And that facility of speech we spoke out against just now becomes desirable in this case, even more than with lawyers, who are obliged to contend against each other. A preacher, then, needs a loftiness of mind far beyond my own smallness of spirit, so that he can correct this disorderly and unprofitable pleasure on the crowd’s part and lead them over to a more useful way of listening, so that his people follow and yield to him, and he is not led away by their whims. And this cannot be achieved except by two means: indifference to their praise, and the power to preach well.

2. For if either of these is lacking, the other becomes useless because it is cut off from its partner. If a preacher is indifferent to praise but cannot produce the teaching “which is with grace seasoned with salt,” the crowd despises him, and he gains nothing from his own nobility of mind. If, on the other hand, he succeeds as a preacher but is overcome by the thought of applause, equal harm is done in turn, both to himself and to the crowd, because in his desire for praise he takes care to speak more to please than to profit. And just as the man who is neither swayed by good opinion nor skilled in speaking does not give in to the crowd’s pleasure, yet cannot do them any good worth mentioning because he has nothing to say, so the man who is carried away by the desire for praise, though he could serve the crowd better, instead provides the kind of food that suits their taste, because that is how he buys the uproar of acclamation.

3. So the best kind of Bishop must be strong in both these points, so that neither one displaces the other. For if he stands up in the congregation and speaks words meant to make the careless wince, and then stumbles, stops short, and has to blush at his failure, the good of what he has said is immediately wasted. Those who are rebuked, stung by what they have been told and unable to get back at him any other way, taunt him with jeers about his ignorance, thinking they can screen their own disgrace that way. So, like a very good charioteer, he ought to come to an accurate judgment about both these good qualities, so that he can handle each as he needs to. For when he is beyond reproach in everyone’s eyes, then he will be able, with exactly as much authority as he wants, both to correct and to excuse from correction all those under his rule. But without this, it will not be easy for him to do so. Yet this nobility of soul should not stop at the limit of indifference to praise; it should go further, so that the gain won this way does not in turn become fruitless.

4. What else, then, should he be indifferent to? Slander and envy. As for unwarranted evil speaking, however (for of course the Bishop endures some groundless criticism), it is good that he neither fear and tremble at it excessively nor ignore it entirely. Rather, even if it happens to be false or to be brought against us by the common herd, we ought to try to put it out immediately. For nothing magnifies both a bad and a good report like an undisciplined mob. Used to hearing and speaking without stopping to look into anything, they repeat at random whatever comes their way, with no regard for whether it is true. So the Bishop should not be unconcerned about the crowd, but should nip their evil suspicions in the bud right away, persuading his accusers, even if they are the most unreasonable people on earth, and leaving nothing undone that can dispel an ugly rumor. But if, after we have done all this, our critics still will not be persuaded, from then on we should not worry about them. For if anyone is too quick to be discouraged by such incidents, he will never be able to produce anything noble and admirable. For despondency and constant worry have great power to destroy the powers of the mind and reduce it to extreme weakness. So the Priest must behave toward those in his charge as a father behaves toward his very young children. And just as we are not disturbed by such children’s insults or blows or wailing, and do not make much of it even when they laugh and rejoice with us, so we should neither be puffed up by these people’s praise nor cast down by their criticism when it comes from them unwarrantedly. But this is hard, my good friend, and perhaps, I think, even impossible. For I do not know whether anyone has ever succeeded in trying not to be pleased when he is praised. And the man who is pleased by it is likely to want to enjoy it as well, and the man who wants to enjoy it will inevitably be thoroughly upset and beside himself whenever he misses out on it. For just as those who revel in being rich are grieved when they fall into poverty, and those used to living in luxury cannot stand to live shabbily, so too those who crave applause—not only when they are blamed without cause, but whenever they are not constantly being praised—waste away in soul as if from famine, especially when they themselves have grown up receiving praise, or when they hear others being praised. How many annoyances and how many pangs do you think a man has who enters the trial of preaching with desires like these? The sea can no more be without waves than that man can be without worries and grief.

5. For even if the preacher has great ability (and you would find this in only a few), even then he is not released from constant toil. Since preaching comes not by nature but by study, suppose a man reaches a high standard in it: it will then abandon him if he does not cultivate his power by constant application and practice. So the wiser have more work than the unlearned. For negligence does not bring the same degree of loss to the one as to the other; the loss is exactly proportional to the difference between what each possesses. No one would blame the unlearned, since they offer nothing worth noticing. But the wise, unless they are constantly producing material that surpasses the reputation everyone holds of them, meet with heavy criticism on all sides. Besides this, the unlearned would win considerable praise even for small achievements, while the efforts of the wise, unless they are especially wonderful and striking, not only fail to win applause but meet with many fault-finders. For the audience sets itself up as critics, judging not so much what is said as the reputation of the speaker, so that whenever someone excels everyone else in oratorical power, he above all others needs laborious study. This man is not allowed to fall back on the usual plea human nature offers, that no one can succeed at everything. Instead, if his sermons do not consistently live up to the great expectations people have formed, he will go away having gained nothing but countless jeers and criticisms. And no one takes into account that discouragement, pain, anxiety, and often anger may come in, cloud the clarity of his thoughts, and keep what he produces from coming out pure; and that, on the whole, being only a man, he cannot always be the same or succeed every time, but naturally must sometimes fall short of the mark and seem less able than usual. None of these things, as I said, are people willing to consider; instead they find fault with him as though they were sitting in judgment on an angel. And in other cases, too, a person tends to overlook his neighbor’s good achievements, however many and great they are, while if a flaw shows up anywhere, even by accident, even if it occurs only at long intervals, it is quickly noticed and always remembered. And so small, trivial matters have often diminished the glory of many great deeds.

6. You see, my excellent friend, that the man who is powerful in preaching has a special need for more study than others, and besides study, for greater patience than all those I have already mentioned need. For many keep rising up against him in a vain and senseless spirit and hate him, though they have no fault to find with him except that he is generally well regarded; and he must nobly bear their bitter malice. Since they cannot hide this cursed hatred they so unreasonably harbor, they revile him, criticize him, slander him in private, and defame him in public; and a mind that has begun to feel pain and irritation at each of these occasions will not escape being corrupted by grief. For they will not only take revenge on him by their own actions but will try to do so through others. Often they pick someone who cannot speak a word, extol him with praise, and admire him beyond what he deserves. Some do this out of ignorance alone, some out of ignorance and envy, in order to ruin the other man’s reputation, not to prove that a man who is not wonderful is wonderful. And the noble-minded man has to struggle not only against these people but often against the ignorance of the whole crowd. For not everyone who gathers can be educated; the chances are that most of the congregation is made up of uneducated people, and that even the rest, who are clearer-headed than they, fall as far short of being able to judge sermons as the others fall short of them, so that only one or two people sitting there have this ability. It inevitably follows that the man who preaches better than others gets less applause, and perhaps goes home without any praise at all. He must be ready to face such anomalies nobly, to forgive those who commit them out of ignorance, to weep for those who go along with them out of envy as wretched and pitiable people, and not to think his abilities have diminished for either of these reasons. For if a preeminently good painter, superior to everyone in his art, sees the portrait he has drawn with great accuracy held up to ridicule, he should not be discouraged and consider the picture poor because of the judgment of the ignorant, just as he would not consider a truly poor drawing wonderful and lovely because people with no knowledge of art are amazed by it.

7. For let the best craftsman be himself the critic of his own designs, and let his works be judged good or poor according to the verdict of the mind that designed them. But let him not even consider the outside world’s opinion, so mistaken and ignorant of art. So let the man who takes on the strain of teaching never pay attention to the good opinion of the outside world, nor be discouraged in soul because of such people. Rather, let him labor at his sermons in order to please God (for let this alone be his rule and aim in carrying out this finest kind of workmanship—not acclamation or good opinion). If he is in fact praised by people, let him not reject their applause; and when his hearers do not offer it, let him not seek it or be grieved. For a sufficient consolation in his labors, and greater than any other, is being able to know in his own conscience that he is arranging and ordering his teaching with a view to pleasing God.

8. For if he is first carried away by a desire for indiscriminate praise, he will gain nothing from his labors or from his power in preaching, because the mind, unable to bear the crowd’s senseless criticism, loses heart and throws aside all earnestness about preaching. So it is especially necessary to be trained to be indifferent to every kind of praise. For knowing how to preach is not enough to preserve that power unless this is added. And if anyone examines carefully the man who lacks this skill, he will find that he needs to be indifferent to praise no less than the other, for he will be forced into many wrongs by putting himself under the control of popular opinion. Lacking the energy to match those who are renowned for the quality of their preaching, he will not hold back from plotting against them, envying them, criticizing them without reason, and many such disgraceful practices. He will risk everything, even if it means ruining his own soul, to bring their fame down to the level of his own insignificance. On top of this, he will give up exerting himself in his work, as a kind of numbness, as it were, spreads over his mind. For a great deal of toil rewarded by scanty praise is enough to crush a man who cannot despise praise and put him into a deep lethargy, since even a farmer who spends time on some miserable piece of land and has to till a rock quickly gives up the work, unless he has great earnestness about it or the fear of famine is hanging over him. For if those who can speak with considerable power need such constant practice to preserve their talent, what about the man who collects no material at all but is forced to think things up in the middle of his efforts? What difficulty, what confusion, what trouble he will go through just to collect a few ideas with great labor! And if any of the clergy under his authority, placed in the lower order, can show to better advantage in that position than he does, what a godlike mind he must have not to be seized by envy or cast down by despondency! For a man placed in a position of higher dignity to be surpassed by his inferior in rank, and to bear it nobly, would take no ordinary mind—certainly not one like mine—but one as hard as adamant. And if the man with the greater reputation is very patient and modest, the suffering is that much easier to bear. But if he is bold, boastful, and vain, the other man would wish he could die every day, so bitter will his rival make his life—insulting him to his face, laughing at him behind his back, wresting much of his authority from him, and wanting to be everything himself. But the man who has the greatest security in all these circumstances is the one who preaches fluently, has the crowd’s earnest attention, and enjoys the affection of all those in his charge. Don’t you know what a passion for sermons has burst into the minds of Christians these days? And that those who practice preaching are held in special honor, not only among the heathen but among those of the household of the faith? How then could anyone bear the disgrace of finding that everyone sits silent while he preaches, feels burdened, and waits for the sermon to end as if for release from work, while they listen eagerly to another man even if he preaches long, are sorry when he is about to finish, and are almost angry when he means to stop? If these things seem small and easy to dismiss to you, it is because of your inexperience. They really are enough to quench zeal and paralyze the powers of the mind, unless a man withdraws from all human passions and strives to shape his conduct on the pattern of those incorporeal powers who are not driven by envy, or by craving for fame, or by any other unhealthy feeling. If, then, there is anyone so constituted that he can subdue this wild beast—so hard to capture, so unconquerable, so fierce—I mean public fame, and cut off its many heads, or rather prevent them from growing at all, he will easily be able to fend off these many violent assaults and enjoy a kind of quiet haven of rest. But the man who has not freed himself from this monster entangles his soul in struggles of every kind and constant agitation, and in the burden of despondency and other passions. But why should I go through the rest of these difficulties, which no one can describe, or learn about, without having experienced them firsthand?