Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity

THE MIRROR OF CHARITY.

BOOK ONE.

Showing the excellence of charity.

CHAPTER I.

That nothing is more fitting than that the Creator be loved by His creature.

Thou hast stretched out, O Lord, Thy heaven like a skin, setting in it the stars to give us light in this night, in which the beasts of the forest pass through, the lions' whelps roaring to seize their prey and to seek us as food for themselves: Thou who also coverest its upper parts with waters, with which, through certain most secret floodgates, Thou wouldst rain upon the earth of our heart, so that it may be multiplied by the fruit of its corn, wine and oil; and that we may not seek our bread with fruitless sweat, but seeking may find, and finding may be fed, and may taste that Thou art sweet, O Lord. My soul, a dry soul, a barren and unfruitful soul, thirsts to be rained upon by these most sweet droppings, so that to it also that heavenly bread may appear which feeds the angels, which the little one sucks; and that every delight may savour of it to my inner palate, and I may no longer sigh for the fleshpots which I left behind in Egypt, where, at Pharaoh's exacting, even with the straw taken away, I paid my tale of bricks of clay. Let Thy voice, then, sound in my ears, good Jesus, that my heart may learn how to love Thee, my mind love Thee, the very inward parts of my soul love Thee; let the inmost marrow of my heart embrace Thee, my one and only true good, my sweet and delightful joy. But what is love, my God? A wondrous delight of the mind, unless I am mistaken, the sweeter the chaster, the more pleasant the more sincere, the more joyful the wider: and it is the palate of the heart to which Thou art savoury, because Thou art sweet; the eye by which Thou art seen, because Thou art good; and it is a place capable of Thee, Who art the highest. For he who loves Thee takes Thee in; and he takes in as much as he loves, because Thou Thyself art love, because Thou art charity. This is that richness of Thy house with which Thy beloved shall be inebriated, failing from themselves that they may pass over into Thee. And how, Lord, except by loving Thee? But this with the whole of themselves. Let there descend, I beseech Thee, Lord, into my soul some small portion of this so great sweetness of Thine, by which the breads of its bitterness may grow sweet to it. Let it foretaste by the experience of a certain little sip what it should desire, what it should long for, for what it should sigh in this its pilgrimage. Let it foretaste by hungering, drink by thirsting. For those who eat Thee shall hunger still, and those who drink Thee shall thirst still; but they shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear, when that great multitude of Thy sweetness shall be made manifest, which Thou hast hidden for those who fear Thee, which

Thou dost not reveal, except to those who love Thee. Meanwhile, Lord, let me seek Thee, and let me seek Thee by loving; for he who advances in loving Thee, Lord, assuredly seeks Thee; and he who loves Thee perfectly, Lord, is the one who has already found Thee. And what is more just than that Thy creature should love Thee, which has received from Thee this very thing, that it is able to love Thee? For irrational or insensible things cannot love Thee: that is not their measure. They too indeed have their own measure, their own form, their own order; not that by which they may be blessed, or could be so by loving Thee; but that by which, being beautiful and good and well ordered from Thee, they may serve the glory of those who can be blessed, because they can love Thee.

CHAPTER II.

On nature, form and use, which have been conferred in common on all creatures.

For our God, to Whom belongs supreme and unchangeable being, to Whom belongs being ever the same, as David says: Thou art always the selfsame (Ps. 101:28), has distributed in common to all His creatures these three: nature, form, use. Nature, by which they are good; form, by which they are beautiful; use, so that, well ordered, they may serve some purpose. For He who made them to be made them also to be good, to be beautiful, to be well ordered. For since they are from Him Who is supremely and unchangeably, therefore all things are; since He from Whom they are is supremely and unchangeably beautiful, all things are beautiful; from Him Who is supremely and unchangeably good, all things are good; from Him Who is supremely and unchangeably wise, all things are well ordered. They are therefore good by nature, beautiful by form, well ordered for the comeliness of the universe itself. God saw, it says, all things that He had made, and they were very good (Gen. 1:31). Inasmuch, then, as they are, they are good; inasmuch as each part fits its whole, they are beautiful; inasmuch as in the universe itself each thing holds the place, the time and the measure suited to it, they are excellently ordered. For each thing has a place that befits it, in which it is: for instance, the angel heaven, irrational things the ground, man, being in the middle, the paradise in the middle. Likewise a time, when or for how long they are, or, that is to say, that in the beauty of the universe itself one thing begins all at once as a whole but never ceases, as the angelic nature; others, that they by no means all begin at once, yet once begun by no

means do they themselves cease, as men; others, that they neither begin together and at some time cease to be, as irrational things. Further, lest we seem to have kept silent about measure, in what way each creature subsists, what measure befitting itself all things are allotted: what is more befitting a rational creature than blessedness, if it is just? What suits it more than misery, if it is wicked? Lastly, for an irrational and likewise insensible creature, what measure is more apt than that, since it can itself be neither blessed nor miserable, it should serve the salvation of the former and heap up the unhappiness of the latter? Most truly indeed is it said by a certain wise man: Water, fire and iron; milk, and bread, and honey; the cluster of the grape, oil, and clothing: all these things shall turn to good for the holy, so for the impious and sinners they shall turn to evil (Ecclus. 39:31–32). Nor let man complain that he now shares a common place with the beasts, he who, when he was in honour, did not understand, and therefore was compared to the beasts of burden and became like them, and not in place only. For who could easily say, once the divine likeness, though not the image, was effaced in the rational mind, how great a likeness to the irrational beasts of burden has grown up in its place? But of this elsewhere. Now the wisdom of the Creator must be noticed and at the same time proclaimed: Who, though He is not the Creator or the instigator of evils, is yet the most prudent orderer of those very evils. Why, then, should my most sweet and at the same time most almighty Lord not permit evil to be, which could not in the least shake His eternal purpose; by which, moreover, His very omnipotence might appear more manifest, His wisdom more wonderful, His mercy sweeter, when He should make good things out of evil almightily, set in order disordered things wisely, and confer blessedness on the wretched mercifully?

CHAPTER III.

That man was made to the image of his Creator, and is capable of blessedness.

To man, then, in the very creation of the universe He gave not only to be, nor, as to the rest, merely to be good; nor only to be something beautiful or ordered, but over and above to be something blessed. But just as no creature either is from itself, or is beautiful or good from itself, but from Him Who supremely is, Who is supremely good and beautiful, and is therefore the goodness of all good things, the beauty of all beautiful things, the cause of all existing things: so neither is it blessed from itself, but from Him Who is supremely blessed, and is through this the blessedness of all the blessed. Of this blessedness the rational creature alone is capable. For, being made to the image of its Creator, it is fit to cleave to Him Whose image it is: which alone is the good of the rational creature, as holy David says: But for me to cleave to God is good (Ps. 72:28). This cleaving is plainly not of the flesh but of the mind, in which the Author of natures has implanted three things, by which it is made possessed of the divine eternity, a sharer of wisdom, a taster of sweetness. These three I call memory, knowledge, love or will. For memory is capable of eternity, knowledge of wisdom,

and love of sweetness. Made in these three to the image of the Trinity, man held God by memory without forgetfulness, knew Him by knowledge without error, embraced Him by love without desire for anything else. Hence he was blessed.

CHAPTER IV.

That by love, in which lay the fuller taste of blessedness itself, man withdrew from God; and, being thus made wretched, corrupted the image of God in himself, yet did not abolish it.

But although blessedness is perfected in these three, or by these three, yet in this third lies properly the taste of blessedness itself. For although to take delight in the worst things is most wretched, yet where there is no delight, there is no blessedness either. Further, where there is no love, there is no delight. Lastly, the greater the love of the highest good itself, the greater the delight, and the greater the blessedness too. Let memory bring forth much, let knowledge grasp things profound, yet there is no delight unless the will turns towards what has been brought forth or known. Now our first parent, endowed with free choice, could indeed, though aided by the grace of God, take delight in God Himself in His memory and knowledge by loving Him perpetually, and abide blessed perpetually; he could also bend that very love of his back towards something lesser, and so, by withdrawing from His love, grow cold and give himself over to misery. For just as for the rational creature there is no other blessedness than to cleave to God, so this is its misery, to withdraw from God. But he, when he was in honour, did not understand. What? Perhaps that which a certain man understood, entering the sanctuary of God and understanding not only in the present but also in the last things: for behold, he says, those who remove themselves far from Thee shall perish: Thou hast destroyed all who go whoring away from Thee (Ps. 72:27). He did not understand that those who go whoring from God through pride roll down into folly, and he who by robbery usurps the likeness of God deservedly puts on the likeness of the beasts of burden. Having therefore made ill use of free choice, he turned his love aside from that unchangeable good and, blinded by his own desire, bent it back towards that which was lesser; and so, withdrawing from the true good and failing towards that which of itself was not good, where he was hunting for advancement he found decline; and by perversely loving himself he lost both himself and God. And so it was most justly brought about that he who against God sought the likeness of God, by that in which he wished through curiosity to become more like, should through desire become also more unlike. The image of God, therefore, was corrupted in man, not wholly abolished. Accordingly he has memory, but liable to forgetfulness; knowledge too, but subject to error; and no less love, but prone to desire. There still persists in the rational soul, in this trinity, though wretched, the impress of the blessed Trinity itself, which is left to the very substance of the soul, which both remembers itself, knows itself, loves itself: which loves, knows and remembers its very memory of itself, remembers, knows and loves its very knowledge of itself; likewise loves, remembers and knows its very love of itself: and in substance a unity, and in these three terms which we have touched upon

it displays a trinity. Hence the Psalmist: Surely man passes as an image, yet he is also disquieted in vain (Ps. 38:7). Briefly indeed, but clearly enough, holy David in these words implies that the human soul lacks neither of the two: the image from nature, and the corruption from sin. For forgetfulness corrupts memory, error clouds knowledge, desire constricts love.

CHAPTER V.

That after the Saviour's coming the image of God is renewed in man; and that the perfection of that renewal is to be hoped for not here but in the future.

Further, now that through the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the debt has been paid to which human nature was held liable, the bond cancelled by whose security the dire pride of the ancient enemy held us bound, the principalities and powers despoiled to which divine justice had made us over, and God the Father at last appeased by that singular victim on the cross, memory is at length restored through the teaching of sacred Scripture, understanding through the sacrament of faith, love through the daily increase of charity. The reformation of the image is perfect if forgetfulness does not interrupt memory, no error clouds knowledge, no desire importunes love. But where is that, and when is that? Let this peace, this tranquillity, this happiness be hoped for in the fatherland, where there is no place for forgetfulness for those living in eternity, no stealing-in of error for those enjoying the truth, no assault of desire for those absorbed in divine charity. O eternal and true charity, O true and dear eternity, O eternal and true and dear Trinity! Here, here is rest, here peace, here happy tranquillity, here tranquil happiness, here happy and tranquil delight. What are you doing, O human soul, what are you doing? Why are you swept away among divers things? But one thing is necessary. Why many things? Whatever you seek in many things is in one. If to excel, if to know, if to take delight, if to abound: the whole is here, and perfectly here, and nowhere but here. For is there true excellence in this pit of misery and mire of dregs? Is there perfect knowledge in this region of the shadow of death? Is there true delight in this place of horror and of vast solitude, true abundance among so many hardships? Further, what excellence is there in the world which fear does not cast down? How great is the knowledge of man, who does not even grasp himself? Lastly, if you take delight in the flesh, so do the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. If in glory, if in riches: when you die you shall not take all things with you, nor shall your glory go down with you. There, then, is true excellence, where there is nothing higher to be striven for; there true knowledge, where nothing is unknown; that is true delight which is not lessened by satiety; that true abundance which is never exhausted. Woe to us, because we have withdrawn from Thee, Lord! Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! (Ps. 119:5.) When shall I come and appear before Thy face? (Ps. 41:3.) Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest? (Ps. 54:7.) Meanwhile, Lord Jesus, let

my soul, I beseech Thee, grow its feathers in the nest of Thy discipline; let it rest in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow of the wall. Let it meanwhile embrace Thee crucified; let it take a draught of Thy most sweet blood. Let this sweet meditation meanwhile occupy my memory, lest forgetfulness wholly darken it; let me meanwhile judge myself to know nothing but the Lord, and Him crucified, lest vain error lead my knowledge away from the solidity of faith; let this wonderful love of Thine claim for itself the whole of my love, lest worldly desire swallow it up. What then? Should I wish this for myself alone? Let it be fulfilled, Lord, I beseech Thee: let that prophetic word be fulfilled: All the ends of the earth shall remember and shall be turned to the Lord (Ps. 21:28). They shall remember, he says. He understood, then, that the memory of God in the rational mind is hidden, not wholly buried, so that you may perceive not so much something new implanted as that ancient thing restored. For unless human reason, by nature in some manner, sparked even a little towards the very memory of God, there would not be, I think, anything from which even the fool could say in his heart: There is no God (Ps. 13:1).

CHAPTER VI.

A disputation against the fool who said in his heart: “There is no God” (Ps. 13:1).

Tell me, I say, whoever you are who are so foolish as to have said in your heart: There is no God, do you think anyone wise? Perhaps yourself. So be it: are you then so wise that you cannot also become foolish? Or, if foolish, so far that you cannot also become wise? If you deny either of these, I should say not that you are foolish but rather that you are not alive. If you, then, have become foolish, do you suppose that wisdom perishes? But you can also become wise. From where, I ask, other than from wisdom? There will therefore be wisdom even while you are foolish. There will be, you say, but in a wise man. But who is the man who cannot become foolish? If, then, all men become foolish, there will nonetheless be wisdom; otherwise they could not be wise again. But in the angels, you say. But that they too, by nature at least, can become foolish is shown by that so great multitude of foolish angels, whose nature indeed is equal to the rest, but whose grace is unequal. No creature, then, is wise of itself. From where, then, unless from wisdom? And where does the fool find it, so as to be wise again? If he finds it, there is surely wisdom, to be found by the fool so that he may be wise; otherwise how is that found which is not, unless it has first begun to be? No, you say, I do not find it so; but by meditating and exercising I make myself wise. So you make your own wisdom? Why should I not have made it? I had put you forward as foolish, and behold, you have become so wise that you are even able to make wisdom. Or is this to be wise in a small way, to make a wise man? But if anyone should say that a fool can make a wise man, who that hears it will not laugh? From where, then, does the fool get wisdom? Perhaps from any wise man you please. And he, from where is he wise? Did he make himself wise? But before he made himself wise, what was he but foolish? The aforesaid absurdity will therefore follow, that a fool has made a wise man. If you should say that an angel too can make a wise man, he himself also

whence wise? If he too made himself wise, the aforesaid absurdity will follow none the less. It remains, then, that Wisdom, which makes all others wise, was not made. It cannot be foolish, because wisdom cannot be folly, just as death cannot be life, although the death of Christ is our life; just as light cannot be darkness, although we were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord. For neither was John the light, but [he came] to bear witness to the light. For that was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world (John 1). It is Wisdom which passes into holy souls, so that they too may be wise. Is this too little for you, O fool? I ask again whether you know that you exist. Who, you say, would not know this? Not even an Academic, plainly. Have you always existed? Whence, then, did you receive your being? Did you make yourself? But how could you, who were not anything, make so great a something? Whence, then, have you being? From another man? And he, whence? From an angel, perhaps? And the angel, whence? It remains, then, that Being, from which all other things have being, was not made, just as Wisdom, from which all other things have wisdom, was not made. Let this and that kind of wisdom, this and that kind of being, fall silent for you: let Wisdom itself and Being itself speak to you in your heart, and you will no longer say in your heart: There is no God, seeing plainly in Him that you who would say in your heart, There is no God, could not even exist unless God also existed. Again I ask whether you will to exist and to be wise. I think you do not refuse. Join these three: to be, to know, to will. Return then, transgressor, to the heart. Consider in these three how great a unity, how great an equality there is. And when you have found that these three are in you, and are not from you, think of the eternal Will, and do not say in your heart, There is no God, but rather, remembering, turn to the Lord your God, with all the ends of the earth.

CHAPTER VII.

That man departed from God by the affection of the mind.

Thy knowledge, O Lord, has become wonderful from me; it is made strong, and I shall not be able to reach it (Ps. 138:6). Meanwhile I will embrace Thee, Lord Jesus, a little one a little One, a weak one a weak One, a man a Man, and, I will say more, a poor One. For Thou too, poor Lord, wast sitting upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass (Matt. 21:5). So then I will embrace Thee, Lord. For all my greatness is nothing but what is little in Thee; all my strength, what is weak in Thee; all my wisdom, what is foolish in Thee. I will run, Lord, in the fragrance of these ointments (Song 1:3). Do you wonder that I call ointments those things which heal the infirm, strengthen the feeble, gladden the sorrowful? I will follow Thee, then, Lord Jesus, roused by the fragrance of these ointments, refreshed by their sprinkling. I will follow Thee, Lord, if not on the mountains of spices, where Thy bride found Thee (Song 8), then in the garden, Lord, where Thy flesh was sown (John 18). There indeed Thou leapest; here Thou sleepest. Here, Lord, here Thou sleepest: here Thou liest, here Thou keepest a certain sweet Sabbath rest. Let my flesh be buried together with Thee, Lord, so that what already

I live in the flesh, I may live not in myself but in Thee, Who didst give Thyself up for me. Let the myrrh of chastity be anointed upon me together with Thee, Lord, so that sin may no longer reign in my mortal body, and I may not become like a beast of burden rotting in its own dung. But whence didst Thou come into the garden? Whence, but from the cross? Would, Lord, that I too might take up Thy cross and follow Thee. But how shall I follow Thee? How, Thou sayest, did you withdraw from Me? I think, Lord, not by the step of the feet, but by the affection of the mind. For, unwilling to keep the substance of my soul for Thee, I took it to myself, and, willing to possess myself without Thee, I lost myself as well. And I became a burden to myself; I became to myself a place of misery and darkness, a place of horror and a region of want. I will arise, then, and go to my Father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you (Luke 15:18).

CHAPTER VIII.

That by the affection of charity man is re-formed into the image of God.

It is plain, unless I am mistaken, that, just as human pride, withdrawing from the highest good not by the step of the feet but by the affection of the mind, and growing old in itself, corrupted the image of God in itself, so human humility, approaching God by the affection of the mind, is renewed into the image of God Who created it. Hence the Apostle: Be renewed, he says, in the spirit of your mind; and put on the new man, who has been created according to God (Eph. 4:23–24). And how will this renewal come about, if not by the new commandment of charity, of which the Saviour says: A new commandment I give to you? (John 13:34.) Accordingly, if the mind has put on this charity perfectly, it will surely re-form those two things which we said were likewise corrupted, namely memory and knowledge. Therefore the summary of this one commandment is most wholesomely enjoined upon us, in which consist the stripping off of the old man, and the renewal of the mind, and the re-forming of the divine image. For our love, infected with the poison of cupidity and wretchedly entangled in the clinging birdlime of pleasure, which was always borne downward by its own weight, that is, from vice to vice, when charity flows in from above and dissolves its inborn torpor with its warmth, raises itself to higher things, and so, putting off oldness and putting on newness, obtains the silvered wings of a dove, by which it may fly up to that sublime and pure Good from which it also draws its lineage: as blessed Paul declared quite openly to the Athenians. For when he had discoursed subtly and at length about God, and was most insistently proving from the books of the philosophers too that God is one, in Whom we live, and move, and are, he said among other things: For we also are His offspring (Acts 17:28). And he added: Being therefore the offspring of God. Nor let anyone think that the Apostle so called us the offspring of God as to prove that we are of the same nature or substance as God; otherwise we could never be mutable, nor corruptible, nor indeed wretched, just as His Only-begotten cannot be, Who, born of His substance, is shown to be equal to the Father Himself in all things; but he asserts that we are the offspring of God, or rather does not deny it, because, created after His image,

the rational soul is known to be able to participate in His very wisdom and beatitude. Charity, therefore, lifts our soul up to that for which it was made; but cupidity presses it down to that into which it has flowed down of its own accord.

CHAPTER IX.

That our love is divided against itself by contrary appetite, from charity and from cupidity.

But since only that portion of our soul which is more usually called love is capable of charity or of cupidity, it is this which is evidently divided against itself, as by a certain contrary appetite, from the new infusion of charity and from the remnants of the old cupidity. Of this the Apostle too says: I do not do what I will (Rom. 7:15). And again: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to each other, so that you do not do whatever things you will (Gal. 5:17). It is surely to be understood that by the names of spirit and flesh the Apostle by no means described two contrary natures in one man, as the impure Manichaeans dream; but by the name of spirit expressing the newness of the mind from the infusion of charity, for the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit Who is given to us (Rom. 5:5); and by the word flesh too intimating the wretched servitude of the soul from the remnants of oldness, he asserts that between our old, ingrown self and the new, unaccustomed one a continual conflict arises in one mind.

CHAPTER X.

That free choice holds a middle place in the soul, yet is not equally sufficient for good and for evil.

Between these two, namely the concupiscence which the Apostle says is of the flesh (Gal. 5), not because all evil concupiscence is from the flesh, since the demons, who lack flesh, by no means lack it, but because it is not from God but from man, whom it is not doubtful that the Scriptures call flesh. Between this concupiscence, then, which is most fittingly called cupidity, and that of the spirit, which we shall not undeservedly call charity, which is indeed of the spirit, not ours but God's: for the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Who is given to us (Rom. 5:5): between these two, I say, that which in man is called free choice holds in a manner a middle place, so that to whichever of them the soul turns, it does so by free choice indeed. Let no one, surely, be so foolish as to dare to ascribe to man from free choice an equal capacity for good and for evil, since we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, since it is God Who works in us both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will; since, finally, it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God Who shows mercy. What then? By all these things is it denied that free choice is in man? Far from it. For free choice is that power of the soul, or of the nature, or, if anything else can be more fittingly said, that [faculty] of man by which to any thing

it consents, not without the judgement of reason; it is not the consent to this or that thing, good or bad, but that by which consent is given. For just as sight is one thing and seeing another, since sight is one of the five senses of the body, while seeing is the act of that sense, so we call the consent itself one thing, and that by which consent is given another. For consent is a certain action of the soul; free choice is a certain power and nature of the soul by which it consents, having a judgement implanted in it by which it chooses to what thing it will consent. But since consent is made by the will, and judgement by reason, these two, will and reason, constitute free choice. Reason, as it were, proposes things good or evil, just and unjust, or those which are indifferent; the will consents, and to whatever thing it consents, it does so only by the will. And where there is will, there is also a certain freedom. From these two, then, as we have said, free choice seems to consist, namely from the freedom of the will and the judgement of reason. You see, therefore, how little it prejudices free choice, from whatever source a good will arises in a man, since neither in a good nor in an evil will does it lose the will, and therefore neither freedom, nor reason, and so neither judgement. For what? Because it is God Who works in us to will, have we therefore lost willing? Or because it is of God that we use reason well, do we therefore not use reason? Or because whatever good we accomplish is to us from God, do we therefore not accomplish good? Or because we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, since our sufficiency is from God, is there therefore no sufficiency? In all these things, although it is from the grace of God that we act, yet we act, and we do not act without the will, nor without reason; and therefore we do not act without free choice.

CHAPTER XI.

That grace does not take away free choice.

For in those who lack both will and reason, and therefore free choice, such as cattle, God works nothing of this kind, and therefore neither do they themselves work anything of this kind. But whatever good God works through us, or out of us, without our will, is God's alone, not ours as well; but whatever [He works] with our will is both His and ours. For if I do this willingly, says the Apostle, I receive a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship is entrusted to me (1 Cor. 9:17). Therefore, so that the work which He works in us or through us may be ours as well, He inclines the will so that we consent; and thus from His grace the reward is ours. For if I do this willingly, I receive a reward; but that I may be willing in a good work, it is God Who works even the willing. Then, rousing the will itself to ask, to seek, to knock, He gives grace for grace, namely accomplishing in return for good will. Finally, since eternal life is the reward of good works, in giving it He crowns His own gifts, which He willed to be our merits. See all this in Paul: I who was, he says, a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and insolent (1 Tim. 1:13). Here is will, but evil; merits, but the worst. But mercy

I obtained, that I might be faithful (1 Tim. 1:13). Behold a good will; but see whence. Not because any good in me went before, but because His mercy went before me. For I obtained mercy, that I might be faithful. Indeed, as blessed Augustine says, a man can go to church, hear the word of God, receive the sacrament of Christ, unwillingly: no one can believe except willingly. Hear also about work. I have laboured more than all of them (1 Cor. 15:10). Have you this, Paul, which you did not receive? Nay, I received it. And indeed I laboured more than all of them, yet not I (ibid.). How are both true: I, and not I? Not I, because not from myself; not by my own strength; not by my own wisdom; not, finally, by my own merits; but the grace of God (ibid.). What then? Is it so, that it should take away your free choice, destroy your will, consume the judgement of reason? Far from it! I said, not I, because the grace of God is with me. How with me? Acting, namely, so that I consent to work, and thus myself co-operate, and co-operate willingly, lest, if He work out of me or through me against my will, I should not be one who can say: I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith (1 Tim. 4 [= 2 Tim. 4:7]). Free choice, therefore, is not sufficient for any good, but in it, or with it, or through it, God accomplishes many good things. In it, when by hidden inspiration He raises it up to some good; with it, when He joins free choice itself to Himself through consent; through it, when, God working, the one makes progress through the other. There is laid up for me, he says, a crown of justice (ibid.). What crown, but eternal life? There is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord will render to me on that day (2 Tim. 4:8). He will render, he says. Therefore, because it is rendered, eternal life is a reward. A reward plainly, because a good work went before. For I have fought the good fight. But whence this work? Yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Our merits, therefore, are the grace of God. On account of which merits He gives eternal life; grace for grace. Finally, He will render to each according to his works. But only those works are rewarded with the heavenly recompense which are first bestowed by His gift. For hear him on this, that eternal life is grace: For the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life (Rom. 6:23). Grace, I say, is eternal life, and a twofold grace. Grace, because given for grace; grace, because the glory outweighs the merits. For the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which shall be revealed in us (Rom. 8:18).

CHAPTER XII.

That free choice is taken away neither from the saved nor from the damned, and that grace works only in free choice.

But surely in that glory we shall not be either without will, by which to consent to so great a good, or without reason, by which to judge this good to be ours? Therefore neither [shall we be] without free choice; not so that we shall be capable of any evil, but so that we may be capable of that good. For cattle can be neither liable to damnation nor capable of salvation, certainly because they are devoid of reason and will. For infants indeed, in

in whom, though grace is not greater, yet it is more evident; in whom there are no merits even from gift, since, although on account of the infirmity which befalls them from the penalty of sin they both live and die without free choice, yet, once stripped of this covering of flesh by which they are hindered, they are by no means to be believed to share in eternal happiness, or in deserved damnation, without rational will. Of these, as many as are saved are saved by a more evident grace, since they lack free choice, to which merits could be ascribed; but that grace seems to me more abundant by which both merits and rewards are given. In nothing, therefore, must we glory, since nothing is ours. For who distinguishes you, O man? Free choice? Yes, plainly, but from beasts of burden, not from the unjust. For the unjust too have free choice, without which they could not even be unjust. Excepting only original sin, which on another account binds even all the unwilling, no one can be just except by will, no one can be unjust except by will; and accordingly not without free choice. But grace alone raises the will to justice; into injustice it casts itself down. Further, wherever there is will, there is also freedom. For wherever it is by will, there it is not compelled, so as to be by necessity. The will, therefore, has freedom in a manner inborn in it, since it can suffer no necessity. Do you wish to hear of a certain freedom even in injustice? Hear the Apostle: For when you were the servants of sin, you were free in regard to justice (Rom. 6:20). Do you see that freedom is not lacking to the will even in the servitude of sin? But surely in the freedom of an unjust will the judgement of reason is not lacking, by which it distinguishes what it wills from what it does not will, by which it judges as advantageous to itself, or good, or pleasurable, even that which it wills wrongly? For if either of these were lacking, it could perhaps desire only pleasurable things, but not dissent from them by any rational judgement: which belongs to free choice. For that man can abuse reason even for evil is proved by that prophetic word: They are wise to do evil (Jer. 4:22). For neither in the punishments of hell is free choice lacking, by which they voluntarily, and therefore freely, dissent from the evils which they suffer; nor the judgement of reason, by which they accuse and judge themselves, because they suffer such things by their own deserts. The reasoning is plain, unless I am mistaken, that neither does grace destroy free choice, nor does free choice diminish grace. For how could grace take away free choice, when grace works only in free choice? For this grace of which we speak does not work either in brute animals or in insensible things, but only in those who, being capable of command or prohibition, hear: Do this, and do that; and do not do this, and do not do that. These things are beyond doubt not said except to those in whom there is free choice, by which they can will this or that. But that they may will the good, the grace of God works; not destroying free choice so that they will nothing, but inclining it to this, that they will the good. Therefore, when you do anything good, do not think that you do it by your own strength; yet do not estrange it from your own will, since not

is a work to be called good unless it is also voluntary.

CHAPTER XIII.

The reason why free choice is not equally sufficient for good and for evil.

But someone will say: I assent now, and indeed it has been sufficiently proved that the grace of God can so work all things in all, that it in no way prejudices the freedom of choice. But whether it is so, who knows? What is the reason that, while it needs no one's help for evil, it is not sufficient of itself for good? And who is there for whom it is not enough that the Catholic faith agrees with this assertion, that the daily experience of everyone who is making good progress proves it, that the testimonies of the prophets and of the apostles alike affirm it, and, what is greater than these, that sentence of that truthful mouth in which He says: Without Me you can do nothing (John 15:5)? Further, to eyes cleansed by this faith reason will not be lacking, understanding will be present, the light of truth will press itself upon them. Let him, then, who can, see; let him who cannot see, believe. Let him who sees rejoice, but humbly; let him who does not see believe, but perseveringly, for unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa. 7:9). Let him see, I say, that since every creature was made from nothing, and made mutable, by a certain natural impulse of its mutability it always tends towards that from which it was made, that is, towards nothing. And truly it is very easy to see that everything which is mutable by nature needs something immutable in order not to be changed. For nothing mutable has immutability in itself, otherwise it would not even be mutable; how much less does it confer it on another? But if a creature, propped up by the protection of none, is changed, who would not easily see that it is changed more naturally, so to speak, and more markedly, by a certain necessary impetus, towards that from which it was made? Wherefore, that it may not flow down to lower things by its mutability, that it may restrain its mutability in that which it is, that it may raise itself to higher things under a happier auspice, it always needs the grace of Him by Whose power it was created.

CHAPTER XIV.

What [difference] there is between the grace which the first men had in paradise and that which the predestined have in the world; and that an evil will is justly imputed to man, although the faculty of free choice is not sufficient for obtaining a good one.

Hence for the angel in heaven also, and for man in paradise, although no infirmity constrained them, over whom no iniquity held sway, yet because each was of mutable nature, this grace was necessary to both; and if it had not been conferred, each would have sinned excusably. But since by creating grace a good will had been conferred on them, and by assisting grace, if they themselves willed, the faculty of persevering in it, no excuse remains on the ground of mutable nature: for the sustaining and advancing of which the divine goodness would not have been lacking, had not their own iniquity deserted it. But whether even now such grace is at times conferred on the reprobate, so that a good will is both inspired in them and grace added by which, if only they themselves will, the faculty of persevering is not lacking, I do not dare to rush to a judgement. Certainly for the elect, because a greater misery weighs upon them than upon the first men in paradise, there is conferred a greater

grace also: and the greater the infirmity that assails, the more abundant the faculty of resisting that is supplied. For to those, as has been said, we know that it was given to be able to persevere, if they willed; to these, moreover, that they do persevere. But what fault, you say, is it of man's if he has not a good will, which he can neither acquire by his own strength nor, once obtained, retain by his own strength? But he who was created with a good will, by whose fault was he made worse? Why should not that very impotence be most justly imputed to him, which the Creator did not impose on him, but to which he himself submitted of his own accord? And if perhaps it does not seem fair that he should be blamed on this account, if he now has not a good will, which indeed he cannot have unless he receives it, is it unjust that it should be imputed to him that he lost it after receiving it? Unjust that the evils should be imputed which he committed with no one compelling him?

CHAPTER XV.

That the damnation even of little children is most just.

To this, you say, reason most justly condemns those who, being capable of reason, lack neither the judgement of choosing nor the will of consenting; but what reason consigns to damnation little children, whom neither their creation made evil nor their own will made unjust? For what? Do you think it unjust that fire should consume a useless and fruitless tree? Think, I pray, of the whole human race as a dry tree, a fruitless tree, a tree corrupted in its very root, as being infected with the poison of the ancient serpent, most justly consigned to the flames, destined for the fire, adjudged to damnation. What then? Do you show yourself ungrateful, O useless tree, because certain little branches, cut off from your dead root, are snatched from the burning, so that, grafted on to a certain fruitful stock, they may be endowed with their former beauty? See that green tree, the tree of life, the tree whose leaves do not fall, all of whose doings prosper, how in His own most sweet side, which for this reason He willed to be opened on the cross, He has given place to branches set apart from that damned root by His mercy alone; so that, grafted into Him and planted together, and made one with Him, not by their own virtue, which is none, but by participation in His Spirit, they may revive and grow green, and, having received that voluntary rain which God sets apart for His inheritance, while the sun of divine charity also grows warm, taking up anew the sap of heavenly grace, they may bear spiritual fruits, to be stored, indeed, in the barns on high. But I am left behind, says that useless branch. Left behind, plainly. Why do you complain? Is your eye evil because I am good? To many I have given what I owed to none; and do you on this account become evil, on this account envious, on this account object, on this account build up a slander? But since, you say, an equal damnation holds both little children entangled, why is the one chosen, the other rejected? Hear why. Because Jacob, He says, I have loved, but Esau I have hated (Rom. 9:13). You cry out that it is unjust. Does the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour (ibid.)? If, then, man from the vessels

which he makes, appoints those he will to honour, exposes those he will to dishonour; and there is no one who complains of injustice, do you slander God if, out of vessels all of which are exposed to most just dishonour, He takes up those He will, leaves those He will, re-forms those He will to their former honour, and inflicts deserved damnation on those He will? If, I say, in distinguishing the vessels which a potter fashions from the same clay, his very will is justice, how much more, in distinguishing, ordering, taking up, distinguishing, saving, damning all the things which the Almighty created from nothing, is His very will the highest justice? Therefore He has mercy on whom He will; and shows mercy to whom it pleases Him; and whom He will He hardens, by most justly deserting him; and whom He will He softens, by most lovingly having mercy; and whatever He will He does, and does nothing unjust, since between just and unjust His will alone distinguishes, which is nothing other than equity itself; nor does His will depend on another law of justice, but the law of justice depends entirely on His will. We have said these things lest the damnation of little children should seem unjust. Therefore, O man, be not high-minded, but fear. For if God does not spare the branches with which your condition is equal and your merit alike, perhaps He will not spare you either. See, then, the severity and the goodness of God. In those who are left, severity; but towards you goodness, if only you abide in goodness. Otherwise you too will be left. Further, that you may not be left, but rather be distinguished from those who are left, do not presume on yourself, do not despair of the goodness of God, do not be negligent in working, do not be slothful in praying with the Prophet, who says: Distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy (Ps. 42:1). But, that you may persevere in this goodness, do not flatter yourself about your own strength, but presume on Him to Whom the Prophet likewise cries: Thou, O Lord, wilt preserve us, and keep us from this generation for ever (Ps. 11:8). That generation, namely, of which he at once adds: The wicked walk round about (ibid.). These are they who, like Samson, with the hair of their virtues cut off and the eyes of knowledge and reason dug out, are put to the mill, so that, deserting the short way of charity, they keep to the round of cupidity.

CHAPTER XVI.

That nothing of perfection is lacking to charity.

What of you, O my soul, have you been entangled enough in this round? The head, it says, of their compassing, the labour of their lips shall cover them (Ps. 139:10). What, I ask, is the profit of this labour? Anything other than the husks of swine? Not even satiety comes from it; and if perhaps satiety, of what kind? O how much sweeter, how much more pleasant, how much more welcome, in short, is the hunger of charity than the satiety of cupidity! As for beatitude, there is no comparison. For the more fattened anyone is with cupidity, the emptier he is of truth, and so the more wretched too. Wherefore, O my soul, hearing the reproach of the many who dwell in

that round, be as a lost vessel, so that, failing from yourself and passing over wholly into God, you may not know how to live to yourself, nor to die to yourself, but to Him Who died for you and rose again. O who will grant me to be made drunk with this saving cup, to be flooded with this stupor of mind, to be lulled to sleep in this sweetest lethargy! so that, loving the Lord my God with my whole heart, and with my whole soul, and with all my strength, I may never seek the things that are mine, but the things that are Jesus Christ's; and, loving my neighbour as myself, I may not seek what is profitable to me, but what is profitable to another. O word that completes and cuts short in equity! word of charity, word of love, word of dilection, word of all perfection! A word that completes, to which nothing can be lacking; a word that cuts short, on which hang the whole law and the prophets. O Jew, what need is there of so many things? Here is circumcision, here the Sabbath, here the saving victims, here the fragrant sacrifice, here the incense of all sweetness. Hold to charity, and none of these will be lacking; neglect charity, and none of these will profit.

CHAPTER XVII.

On the spiritual circumcision which is contained in charity.

Here, plainly, is not the carnal amputation of a single member, but rather the true and perfect circumcision of the inner and outer man, cutting away pleasure, extinguishing lust, restraining gluttony, curbing anger, utterly overturning envy, conquering pride, the mother of all vices. This, tempering the gnawing goads of sadness with a certain spiritual sweetness, meets the languor of acedia that follows on it. This, piercing the plague of avarice with the most welcome blade of liberality, frees and preserves the soul from the vice of idolatry. What, I ask, is more perfect than this circumcision, by which the members of the vices are cut away, the body of sin is destroyed, the shaggy hide of our first parents is laid aside, and the whole stain and squalor of ancient oldness is cast off? For a mind which the sweetness of charity has filled, fear does not straiten, lust does not defile, anger does not tear apart, pride does not exalt; the empty smoke of vainglory does not fan it about; fury does not drive it, the goad of ambition does not disembowel it; avarice does not contract it, sadness does not cast it down, envy does not waste it away. For charity is not envious, does not act perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice over iniquity (1 Cor. 13:4–6). You see that this spiritual circumcision is destructive of all the vices; it also purifies all the senses of the body with a certain divine knife, cutting off the wantonness of the eyes, scraping away the itching of the ears, driving off the superfluous delicacies of taste, drawing back the forwardness of the tongue, shutting out meretricious odours from the nostrils, uprooting the pernicious softness of touch.

CHAPTER XVIII.

That the true and spiritual Sabbath is in charity.

Now let the Jew consider what manner of sabbath this is; if indeed a worthless little man, groaning under the burden of sins, bound fast in the nets of the passions, who has certainly tasted nothing, or very little, of this sweetness, can say anything about it. O, if there were granted me even a little rest from the taskmasters of Pharaoh, so that I might let my soul repose for even half an hour in the silence of this Sabbath, surely I would be silent, sleeping in peace in the selfsame, and in my sleep I would rest with kings and counsellors, who build themselves solitudes and fill their houses with silver! But whence such hope for a wretch? I will seek, I will seek that sabbath; if perchance Thou hearest the desire of the poor man, O Lord; and, having drawn me at last out of the pit of misery and the mire of dregs, grant me to learn, by the experience of at least some little drop, how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou hast hidden for those who fear Thee (Ps. 30:20), because Thou dost not reveal it except to those who love Thee. For those who love Thee rest in Thee: and there is true rest, true tranquillity, true peace, the true sabbath of the mind. But for you, Jew, whence is the sabbath? Because, you say, God rested on the seventh day from all His works (Gen. 2:2). What then? Did He not rest in the six preceding? Nay, you say, in six days God made heaven and earth, on the seventh He rested. Hence, then, you are commanded to keep leisure, to keep leisure, I say, not to dance. O, if you knew how to keep leisure, and to see that Jesus Himself is God, the darkness of unbelief would surely soon be taken away, and with unveiled face you would behold the perfect sabbath-keeping in charity, nor would you any longer greatly covet the carnal feasts of your carnal sabbath, but, having entered into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and praise, the sound of one feasting, you would break forth rejoicing into that song: We will exult and rejoice in Thee, remembering Thy breasts more than wine (Song 1:3). And taking up also that word of Habakkuk to heap up your gladness: But I will rejoice in the Lord; and I will exult in God my Jesus (Hab. 3:18).

CHAPTER XIX.

How far the seventh day is preferred to the others; and that in it the charity of God is commended.

But now let us consider in a few words the prerogative of the seventh day. Great indeed was that day on which, the darkness shaken off, light shone forth at God's command: great also that on which the divine voice, the firmament set between, divided the lower and the upper waters. Precious no less that on which, the waters being gathered into one by the word of God, the dry land is clothed with grasses, made comely with trees, adorned with flowers, made fruitful with fruits. Nor is that one inferior on which the heaven is adorned with lights, by which the succession of days, the changes of seasons, the course of the year, the orders of the signs are disposed. What eminence, too, has that one on which the water, bringing forth the kinds of diverse living creatures, plunged part in its depths and sent part across into the air! Nor is [it] without

wonder the sixth day, on which four-footed beasts and creeping things are brought forth from the earth, on which at last man, formed from the clay, is quickened by the divine breath. But none of these seems comparable to the seventh day, on which no creation of nature indeed, but the rest of God Himself and the perfection of all creatures is commended. For thus you have it: And God completed on the seventh day His work which He had made, and He rested from all the work which He had accomplished (Gen. 2:2). Great is this day, great the rest, great the sabbath. O, if you would understand! Unless I am mistaken, this day is not run through by the course of this visible sun, is not begun by its rising, nor ended by its setting; in short, it has no morning, no evening. Further, concerning the first day, if indeed it is to be called first; for Scripture does not call it first, but one. But how, you say, is the following one called second, if this one is not first? See whether perhaps one day is not said a second time, said a third time also; so that, one day being repeated six times, the number six may be commended to us. But however that obscurity may stand: there was made, it says, evening and morning one day (Gen. 1:5). And below: There was made evening and morning the second day (ibid.). The same also of the rest. I think that by these words the mutability of all creatures is signified, decline and advance, beginning and end. Of the seventh day, nothing of the kind. To it is ascribed no evening, no morning; no end, no beginning. Therefore the day of God's resting is not temporal, but eternal. You a little before had imagined God labouring in time, resting in time as though wearied. This was not to think of God, but to fashion an idol. You must beware lest, having no idol in the temple of Jerusalem, you have it in your heart. He did not make anything by labouring; because He spoke, and it was made. He did not rest, wearied, on just some one day; because the day of His resting is eternal. Therefore His rest is His eternity. You had supposed Him like yourself, and therefore that He had created something as though in want, by which He might be delighted in beholding it, or in which He might rest in enjoying it: for that reason His rest is not described in any creature, so that you may know Him to be in need of nothing, but sufficient to Himself in all things; and that He created nothing to provide for His own want, but to satisfy His own most full charity. Further, He created that all things might be; He sustains, that all things which remain may remain; He Himself brings all things to their due ends. Nor does He do this by any necessity, but by His own most sweet will alone. In short, He reaches from end to end mightily, by His most present and all-powerful majesty; but He orders all things sweetly, ever at rest and resting in His most peaceful charity. This is His unchangeable and eternal rest, His eternal and unchangeable tranquillity; His eternal and unchangeable Sabbath. This alone is the cause why He created what was to be created, rules what is to be ruled, administers what is to be administered, moves what is to be moved, advances what is to be advanced, perfects what is to be perfected. Therefore most fittingly, where His rest is recalled, there the perfection of all things is shown. For His charity,

is His will; it is also His goodness: nor is this whole anything other than His being. For to Him, to rest always in His most sweet charity, in His most peaceful will, in His most abundant goodness, is what it is to be always. Wherefore, just as by the days following one another, and as it were varying their turns with morning and evening, in which all things are related to have been created, the mutability of the creature is signified; so by this day, a day to which nothing comes, from which nothing passes, to which nothing succeeds, which is neither straitened by a beginning nor closed by an end, His very eternity is not undeservedly commended: in which His rest is most fittingly described, lest He be thought to have created anything in want or in labour. But why there the number six, here the number seven? On this too take such a demonstration as we can give.

CHAPTER XX.

Why the number six is commended in the work of God, the number seven in His rest.

The number six indeed seems to contain the greatest perfection. For it consists of all its parts, and does not exceed them. Its parts are one, two, three. For if you ask what part of six one is, the answer is the sixth; what part two is, it can be answered the third; what part three is, the answer is the half. Now in six there is no other number of which it could be answered what part of it it is. All the parts of six, therefore, are one, two, three. Join these, and you will find neither more nor less than six. This number, then, was kept in the creation of the world, so that you may judge nothing superfluous, nothing imperfect, in the whole of the creature. Further, the number seven is dedicated in the rest of God. The rest of God we have said to be His charity. And not undeservedly. The Father, He says, loves the Son; and shows Him all things that He Himself does (John 5:20). And again: As I have kept the commandments of My Father, and abide in His love (John 15:10). And the Father Himself: This is, He says, My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased (Matt. 3:17). This mutual love of the Father and the Son, most sweet love, gracious embrace, most blessed charity, by which the Father reposes in the Son, the Son in the Father: this plainly, this is the imperturbable rest of both, sincere peace, eternal tranquillity, incomparable goodness, indivisible charity: this one [thing] of both, nay, in which both are one, sweet, gentle, delightful, we call the Holy Spirit: Who for that reason also is believed to have taken this name as His own, because it is evidently common to both. For though the Father and the Son are each Spirit, each holy, yet He Who is of both, namely the charity and consubstantial unity of the two, is properly called the Holy Spirit. Who, although He is one, and one with the Father and the Son, yet because of the sevenfold grace which is believed to flow from the fullness of that fountain, is designated in the Scriptures by the number seven. Whence also in one stone, according to Zechariah, seven eyes are seen (Zech. 3:9): and according to the Apocalypse, there are seven spirits before the throne of God (Rev. 5:6). You see, then, how great is the excellence of charity, in which of all

the Creator and Ruler keeps a certain perpetual and ineffable Sabbath.

CHAPTER XXI.

That in all creatures a certain trace of the divine charity appears: and therefore all things tend as it were to a Sabbath, that is, to rest.

Further, if you contemplate more closely every creature from the first to the last, from the highest to the lowest, from the highest angel to the least little worm, you will surely discern the divine goodness, which we call nothing other than His charity; not by local infusion, not by spatial diffusion, not by moving to and fro; but by the stable and incomprehensible simplicity of a substantial presence abiding in itself, containing all things, encompassing all things, penetrating all things, joining the lowest to the highest, binding contraries to contraries, cold to hot, moist to dry, rough to smooth, soft to hard, in a certain concordant peace; so that in the very universe of the creature nothing can be adverse, nothing contrary; there is nothing unseemly, nothing that disturbs, nothing that discolours the very beauty of the universe, but in the tranquillity of that order which He has set before the universe, all things rest as it were in a most tranquil peace. Hence that which, swelling outward, oversteps the order of the divine goodness is at once taken up by the order of His most invincible power, so that, although in itself it is restless and disordered, yet it not only does not harm the tranquillity of the universe itself, but even greatly benefits it, since by comparison with it things that are beautiful are judged more beautiful, things that are good better. Hence it is that each and every thing tends to its own order, seeks its own place, is restless outside its own order, at rest when ordered. For if you poise a stone in the air, does it not at once, as though it had suffered violence, set itself down by its own weight upon solid ground, to have rest only where it will neither swerve to the sides nor slip lower through the resistance of something solid? But if you pour oil beneath other liquids, at once, impatient of its abasement, it makes its way to the top, and does not otherwise lay aside its effort until, rising above the rest, it gains the quiet of its own order. What of herbs, what of shrubs? Do they not, that they may bear fruit more plentifully and abundantly, seek as it were, these a firmer soil, these a softer, these a richer, these a clayey, these a sandy? And when they have been placed or transposed, planted or transplanted, according to the order of their nature, they testify by the very voice of their growth that they desire nothing further. Finally, if you attend carefully to every single body, you will indeed discern that each consists of its parts; that the parts are bound to the parts as by a certain bond of unity, keep the order of their nature, and in it rest as in a kind of peace; so that if you wish to move a thing from the mode in which it is, the peace of the parts is in some way disturbed, until, drawn into the mode you wish, they rest again with a certain tranquillity regained. Further, for irrational animals what a labour it is to guard their safety, to avoid what is harmful,

to seek the satiety of carnal appetites: which once gained, since they have nothing further to desire, they rest? For being without reason and knowledge, they cannot even desire what exceeds the sense of the flesh.

CHAPTER XXII.

That the rational creature rests only in the attainment of beatitude, and why, though it desires beatitude, it yet with strange unhappiness abandons the way by which it might obtain it.

For to you, O rational soul, this prerogative is reserved above the other living things: that, rising out of the senses of the flesh, you strive towards higher things: and never satisfy your appetite until by a happy inquisitiveness you arrive at that which is highest, that which is best, that than which nothing is higher, nothing more excellent. Wherever you stop below it, though it be judged lofty, though great, though delightful, you will without doubt remain wretched. Wretched, because needy. Needy, because there remains something for you to seek; there remains something for which to pant; there remains, lastly, beatitude itself, to desire which a certain natural force drives the rational soul. Wherefore, since each person's conscience is witness that all men wish to be happy, since this will can in no way be abolished, it is plain that the rational creature obtains the rest desired by all only in the attainment of beatitude. Hence the blind perversity of wretched man is greatly to be lamented: who, though he vehemently desires beatitude, not only does not do the things by which he may gain what he desires, but with a readier inclination commits the things by which he heaps up his misery the more. Which, in my opinion, he would by no means do, were not a certain false image of happiness deluding him on the one side, and on the other a likeness of true misery frightening him. For who does not see that poverty, mourning, hunger, thirst are no small portion of misery? By which nevertheless true misery is for the most part guarded against, eternal beatitude acquired. For blessed are you poor, says Jesus, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who mourn, for you shall be comforted. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled (Luke 6:20–21; cf. Matt. 5:3–6). Poverty, then, is rewarded with eternal riches; mourning is changed into eternal gladness; for the hungry eternal satiety is kept. For that all these, namely riches, gladness, satiety, are not lacking to beatitude, there is no one to doubt. But because in each reprobate, in whatever inclination of his will, a certain appearance of gladness deceives him, a false delight dissolves him in the fulfilment of his desires, the wretch not knowing how great is the consolation of the elect even in afflictions, and their rejoicing in hope. He shudders indeed at that image of unhappiness which appears on the surface, but under the colour of happiness he takes up true unhappiness, preferring a false gladness, which does not escape true pain, to that misery which true beatitude follows. Just as if some sick man vehemently desired health, but because of the present discomfort fled from the knife, shrank from cautery, and, lured by a certain present soothingness, sought fomentations of oil, although the disease is of such a kind that by this gentleness it would rather

grow hot, and not abate without the pain of cautery or the knife. So wretched man, thus either deceived, while he thinks that to be happiness which is not, or enticed by the sweetness of present things, which is false, both gives himself over to misery and does not lose the appetite for beatitude: and so, toiling in an unhappy circle, never rests. For indeed, since God alone is superior to the rational soul, the angel its equal, and all other things are judged inferior, what is so near to madness as, the superior being abandoned, to hunt for rest in those things than which the soul itself is better?

CHAPTER XXIII.

On the prerogative of the rational creature: and that the rest which it naturally desires is to be sought neither in the health of the body nor in the riches of this world.

O wondrous creature, inferior to the Creator alone, whither do you cast yourself down? Do you love the world? But you yourself are higher than the world. Do you admire the sun? But you yourself are brighter than the sun. Do you philosophize about the situation of this revolving heaven? But you are loftier than heaven. Do you search out the hidden causes of creatures? But no cause is more hidden than you. Do you doubt, when you judge of all these things, but none of them of you? But if you wish to judge, yet do not love. Nay, do not love even the judging itself. Love Him Who set you over all these things, not under them. He set you over them, not that you might be the more blessed from them, but that there might be something over which you were superior, subjecting all things to you for the fullness of honour, keeping Himself for you for the fruit of beatitude. Why then do you follow fleeting beauties, when your own beauty neither withers with old age, nor grows squalid with poverty, nor pales with sickness, nor even perishes in death itself? What you seek, seek; but not there. You seek that nothing be lacking to your will, and so to rest. Seek this, then. Where, you say? Not in the health of the body: which, if it be so loved that this rest is sought in it, consider, if it be lacking, with how much labour it is acquired, by what painful destruction a painful disease is for the most part driven out. Further, if it be present, with how much care it must be kept, how many diseases lie in wait for it, how many fevers, how many plagues, how many deaths, in short. What then? In riches perhaps? But what labour in acquiring them, what anxiety in keeping them; what fear lest they be lost; what grief if they slip away? You have increased your money, and have increased your fear no less. The powerful man is feared, lest he take it away; the robber is feared, lest he diminish it; the little servant is feared, lest he lose it. Then, who could say how often that also happens which a certain wise man says: Riches kept to the harm of their owner (Eccl. 5:12)? The poor man, then, rests more. For the empty-handed and naked traveller, as someone says, does not fear the robber's ambush. The poor man sleeps secure from thieves by night, though he fortify no bolts. Hence too that line of the poet:

The empty-handed traveller will sing before the robber.

Moreover, a certain wise man, mocking quite elegantly the gnawing cares of the rich: The surfeit of the rich man, he says, does not let him sleep (Eccl. 5:11). Which, although it often happens literally, that some rich man, glutted to nausea, while with an overloaded stomach he gathers himself

to rest, is roused by frequent belchings; yet it is rather to be understood as said of that sleep in which the bride glories in the Canticles: I, she says, sleep, and my heart keeps watch (Song 5:2). Of which also the Psalmist: In peace in the selfsame I will sleep and rest (Ps. 4:9). This is the sleep in which, the senses of the flesh lulled and temporal cares thrust out from the inner chambers of its heart, the holy soul rests in the sweetness of God, tasting and seeing how sweet the Lord is (Ps. 33:9); how blessed is everyone who hopes in Him (Ps. 33:9). Far be it, then, that you should think any rich man is lulled in this sleep, who, ever gaping after gain, the more he has heaped up, with the more insatiable greed covets what he has not. Whence Solomon: The covetous man, he says, will not be satisfied with money; and he who loves riches will take no fruit from them (Eccl. 5:9). He incurs also that prophetic curse: Woe to him who gathers what is not his. And at once the same [prophet], mocking his heap of metals: Why does he load himself with thick clay? (Hab. 2:6.)

CHAPTER XXIV.

What [the difference] is between the elect and the reprobate rich.

It is to be noted indeed that Solomon does not say: He who has riches, but, he who loves riches, he says, will take no fruit from them (Eccl. 5:9). For surely all the elect, even if perhaps they have riches, yet do not love them, and so do not seek rest in them, but, hearing the Apostle charging the rich not to be high-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches (1 Tim. 6:17), but to give readily, to share, to lay up for themselves a good foundation, that they may lay hold on the true life, they receive no small fruit from their riches, being sure to hear from the Lord: Come, blessed of My Father: for I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat, etc. (Matt. 25:34–35). These indeed do not toil in acquiring riches, fearing that word of the Apostle, that those who wish to become rich fall into the snare of the devil (1 Tim. 6:9); no empty anxiety torments them in keeping them, as they rehearse more deeply the pledge of the Lord, Who both forbids anxiety and pledges what is necessary. Do not, He says, be anxious, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink? And a little after: Seek first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things will be added to you (Matt. 6:31, 33). Lastly, they do not murmur at the loss of them; nay, they even accept the plundering of their goods with joy, considering that they have a better and abiding substance (Heb. 10:34). But with the perverse it turns out the contrary way. For while they think that the appetite of the rational soul, for which God alone is enough, can be lulled by a most worthless abundance of worldly things; because they gain nothing by the heaping in of things however great, they neither strip themselves even a little of their unhappy cares, nor ever lay aside their labour: and yet, what is more wretched, they swell with vain blindness at the acquisition of such things. And this indeed in the present; but what is the end of these men? Let us rather hear their last words, which holy Scripture does not keep silent: They will say, it says, among themselves, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit; and it adds their words beneath:

among which are these: We are wearied in the way of iniquity and perdition, and we have walked difficult ways; but the way of the Lord we have not known. What has pride profited us, and what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow, and like a messenger running before, and like a ship that passes through the surging waters, of which, when it has gone by, no trace is to be found; so we also, being born, forthwith ceased to be; and of virtue indeed we were able to show no sign; but we are consumed in our wickedness. Such things those who sinned said in hell: for the hope of the wicked is as down, which is carried away by the wind; and as foam, which is scattered by the storm, and as smoke which is dispersed by the wind; and as the remembrance of a guest of one day passing by (Wis. 5:7–15). Elsewhere, then, this rest and this Sabbath seems to be sought.

CHAPTER XXV.

That rest is not to be sought in worldly friendship either.

But to love, you say, and to be loved, what is more tranquil? Indeed, in God and for God's sake, I do not disapprove, nay, I approve it very much. But if according to the flesh or the world, see how many envyings, how many suspicions, how many burning scourges of a jealous mind shut out the quiet of the mind. And if none of these things happens, death, which all must experience, will sunder this unity; it will bring grief to the one who lives, pain to the one who departs. And yet even in this life we have known grave enmities to arise between the closest friends. Of that love, indeed, which is among the good, we shall discourse elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXVI.

That rest is found neither in the pleasure of the body nor in the power of the world.

We are compelled to insert as it were a certain blemish into this body, namely a discourse on carnal pleasure; of which one ought indeed to keep silent, did we not see many, as though stripped of the man, so clothed with a certain bestial likeness that they think the whole fruit of their life is to be placed in the pleasure of the belly and of the things that are beneath the belly. Lest anyone, then, should think the rest of his mind is to be sought in these, something must be said of it in a few words. For what is more perverse than to place the good of the rational mind in the gluttony of the belly, and to lay that which excels in man beneath some most worthless portion of his flesh, especially when he sees that in these things he can differ in nothing from the most stupid beasts? In short, hunger brings forth torment, and satiety disgust. For if it is to satisfy pleasure, it must needs exceed the bounds of necessity; but if it exceeds the measure of nature, it is impossible to avoid pain of body. Further, to take delight in the filth of lusts, and to wallow like a most unclean sow in the mire of turpitude, just as nothing is more shameful, nothing fouler, nothing more to be blushed at, nothing so worthy of confusion; so surely nothing is more restless, nothing so empty of all quiet and tranquillity. For what is to be said of its foulness, since this most foul plague both defiles the flesh and unmans the mind; and whatever is honourable in the soul, whatever seemly,

and whatever, lastly, is manly, it overwhelms and overturns alike? And indeed, whereas the other vices for the most part cloak themselves with certain coverings of virtues, and so not only do not blush before human eyes, but even swell with pride before them: this alone at its very first appearance bears such a horror of itself that at the very hour when it seizes the flesh and claims it for itself, it vehemently flees the eyes. Indeed, even upon the very members set honourably in the human body by the most wise Creator it has heaped, by its obscenity, so much shame that he who chose to look upon them rather than reverently even to cover them is punished with a father's eternal curse: while those on whom their nakedness laid the mark of modesty are rewarded with the grace of a perpetual blessing. Nor is it to be wondered at that, now that the Cross of Jesus, that vanquisher of softness, triumphs and shines everywhere, the filth of this passion is betrayed and laid bare, since among that demon-worshipping people, in which by a most cunning faction of demons the crimes of false gods were worshipped as sacred rites, and men danced in the theatres as it were in reverence of them, not even under most filthy Jove did any filthy man ever put off the mark of confusion. For even by the very worshippers of adulterous gods adultery was punished and chastity greatly praised. What then must those do who worship the Son of the Virgin, the author of virginity? Surely they must beware lest that befall anyone which the prophet says of certain men: The beasts have rotted in their dung (Joel 1:17). By which words he expressed quite properly the end and measure of this most filthy passion; declaring that he whom the Charybdis of lust has swallowed up is corrupted by the filth of his flesh as by the voiding of his own dung, so that you would judge him not only extinguished, or swallowed up; but, like a buried corpse, you would perceive him rotting and stinking with the gore of a most unclean itch flowing out. It must needs be, then, that the mind in which this wicked spirit has settled is driven by certain furies, and, assailed by the fiery goads of lust, drunk and wandering, the rein of all honour being loosed, is driven to every sort of crime, and, the fire of one passion once conceived being quenched, is kindled no less into another with a more vehement heat. It is utterly absurd, then, to hunt for the rest of the rational mind in pleasure of this kind; especially since we read that a greater punishment is never inflicted by the divine justice in the present life than when someone is handed over to his own desires to be defiled, as Scripture says: And My people did not hear My voice; and Israel did not attend to Me: and I let them go according to the desires of their heart (Ps. 80:12–13). And the Apostle more plainly concerning those who changed the glory of God into idols: Wherefore, he says, God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, so that they dishonour their bodies among themselves (Rom. 1:24). Not that God, as an instigator of evils, drove them to these disgraces; but that, most justly forsaken by Him, they could not avoid these crimes. I suppress in silence many things that suggest themselves to my mind against this most unclean plague, fearing indeed your most chaste eyes,

my most loving and most longed-for [friend], for whom I have destined the present little work. For I seem to myself as it were to see your modest face suffused, at these things that have been written, with the mark of honourable shame, and with a most gentle nod of the eyes bidding me be silent. For I know that most chaste breast, suffused with such sweetness of charity and filled with the flowers of sweet-smelling purity, to breathe so heavenly and divine a fragrance that even to hear of the stench of this filth is burdensome to it. Passing on, then, to other things, concerning the pleasure of the ears, or of the eyes and the other senses, concerning dominion and power, let that most wealthy king, most powerful, most delicately living, but most wise, namely Solomon, be consulted; nay, in him let Wisdom herself be most attentively heard. First, then, speaking in his own person or in that of others: I said, he says, in my heart: I will go and abound in delights, and enjoy good things (Eccl. 2:1). And below: I built houses; I planted vineyards; I made gardens and orchards: and I set them with trees of every kind. And adding many things of this sort, he added: I possessed menservants and maidservants, and a very great household. I heaped up for myself silver and gold; the wealth of kings and provinces. And when he had added, concerning the pleasure of the ears: I made for myself men singers and women singers; after a little he subjoined: Whatever my eyes desired, I did not deny them; nor did I withhold my heart from enjoying every pleasure; and from delighting itself in the things I had prepared (Eccl. 2:4–10). What, I ask, more delicate? What sweeter? What, according to this life, more delightful? But hear that nothing is more vain. And when I had turned myself, he says, to all my works and my labours, in which I had sweated in vain, I saw in all things vanity and affliction of spirit; and that nothing abides under the sun (Eccl. 2:11). And therefore he had set down beforehand a general sentence, saying: I saw all things that are done under the sun: and behold, all is vanity and affliction of spirit (Eccl. 1:14). Let us add also that sentence of our Saviour: Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8:34). Let these three, then, be joined: Vanity, slavery, and affliction of spirit. Where, then, is rest, where the Sabbath; especially since the law says: You shall do no servile work on it? (Lev. 23:7.) Surely everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. Where, then, is sure leisure from this servile work; where is the contagion of this slavery guarded against, where is the true and perfect sabbath-keeping made? In short, there is no just man upon earth who does not sin (Eccl. 7:21). Further, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me, says holy David (Ps. 50:7).

CHAPTER XXVII.

That charity is that sweet yoke under which true rest, as the true Sabbath, is found.

Let us hear, therefore, Him Who says: If the Son shall make you free, then you will be free indeed (John 8:36). Him, I say, let us hear calling, crying out, and inviting those who labour to rest and to the Sabbath: Come, He says, to Me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Matt. 11:28). Behold the refreshment, as it were the preparation of the Sabbath. Now let us hear the Sabbath itself: Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me,

because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. Behold rest, behold tranquillity, behold the Sabbath. And you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is sweet, and My burden light (Matt. 11:29–30). Truly this yoke is sweet and the burden light; therefore you shall find rest for your souls. This yoke does not press down, but unites; this burden has wings, not weight. This yoke is charity; this burden is brotherly love. Here one rests, here one keeps sabbath, here one is free from servile works. Indeed, charity does not deal perversely, and thinks no evil (1 Cor. 13:4–5); and the love of neighbour works no evil. You see, O Jew, where the Sabbath is: in which, even if there should befall some stealing-in of sin, not indeed from charity but from some weakness, yet because charity covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8), the keeping of the Sabbath holiday does not perish. And rightly is this rest dedicated to the seventh day, because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Who is given to us (Rom. 5:5). Moreover, we have already said above that the Holy Spirit is signified by the number seven.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

An example from himself, and his own conversion.

Behold, sweet Lord, I have walked through the world and the things that are in the world, for whatever is in the world (says that one who knew Thy secrets) is either the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life. I sought in these things rest for my unhappy soul; but everywhere toil and groaning, sorrow and affliction of spirit. Thou didst cry out, Lord, Thou didst cry out, Thou didst call, Thou didst terrify, Thou didst break through my deafness; Thou didst strike, Thou didst scourge, Thou didst overcome my hardness; Thou didst grow sweet, Thou didst give savour, Thou didst lay bare my bitterness. I heard, but alas, too late, Thee crying: Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened (Matt. 11:28). And I said: To the work of Thy hands Thou wilt stretch out Thy right hand (Job 14:15). For I lay polluted and wrapped round, bound and taken captive, ensnared in the birdlime of clinging iniquity, crushed by the mass of inveterate habit. And so I turned my attention on myself: who I was, where I was, what kind of man I was. I shuddered, Lord, and was terrified at my own likeness; the foul image of my unhappy soul frightened me. I was displeasing to myself because Thou wert pleasing. I wished to flee from myself and to flee to Thee, but I was held back in myself. There held me back, as someone says, the trifles of trifles and the vanity of vanities, my old mistresses; the chain of my worst habit fettered me, the love of my own blood bound me, the bonds of companionable favour drew tight, above all the knot of a certain friendship, sweet to me beyond all the sweetnesses of that life of mine. These things had savour, these things pleased, but Thou more. For attending to each of them, I saw that sweet things were mixed with bitter, sad with glad, adverse with prosperous. The pleasant bond of friendship pleased, but offence was always feared, and a separation sometime to come was certain. I considered the beginnings of those delights, I attended to their progress, I looked ahead to their end. I saw that neither their beginnings [were free] from reproach, nor

in their middle [free] from offence, nor could their end be without damnation. Death, held in suspicion, terrified me, because certain punishment awaited such a soul after death. And men said, noticing certain things round about but not knowing what was happening within me: O how well it is with him! O how well it is with him! For they did not know that it was ill with me there where alone it could be well. For my wound was deep within, tormenting, terrifying, and corrupting all my inward parts with an intolerable stench; and hadst Thou not quickly put forth Thy hand, unable to bear myself, I might perhaps have applied the worst remedy of despair. I began therefore to guess, as far as I could without experience, nay rather as far as Thou didst grant, how great is the delight in loving Thee, how great the tranquillity with that delight, how great the security with that tranquillity. The choice of him who loves Thee does not err, because nothing is better than Thou; his hope is not deceived, because nothing is loved more fruitfully; excess of measure is not feared, because in loving Thee no measure is prescribed; death, the severer of worldly friendship, is not dreaded, because life does not die. In loving Thee offence is not feared, because there is none, unless love itself be forsaken; no suspicion intervenes, because Thou judgest by the testimony of the conscience itself. Here is delight, because fear is shut out; here tranquillity, because anger is restrained; here security, because the world is despised. Meanwhile Thou didst begin little by little to give savour to my palate, though it was hardly sound, and I said: O that I might be healed! And I was carried away to Thee; but again I fell back into myself. And the things which I delightfully felt through the flesh held me as one in fetters, by a certain force of habit; but the things which the mind gathered by the force of reason pleased me more. And I often said, even in the hearing of others: Where, I ask, are now all our delights, all our pleasures, all our enjoyments, which we have enjoyed up to this hour? Now, at this moment of time, what do we feel from them? Whatever was pleasant, that has gone: this alone remains of them all, that which pricks the conscience, that which strikes in the fear of death, that which consigns us to eternal damnation. Let there be compared, I pray, with all our riches, all our delights, all our honours, this one thing of the servants of Christ, that they do not fear death. I grew cheap in my own eyes at these words, often, and I wept sometimes with a most bitter striving of soul. Whatever I looked upon grew cheap to me, but the habit of carnal delight pressed upon me. But Thou who hearest the groans of the fettered, and settest free the children of the slain, didst burst my bonds; and Thou who offerest Thy paradise to harlots and publicans didst convert to Thee me, the first of all sinners. And behold, I breathe again under Thy yoke, and rest under Thy burden, because Thy yoke is sweet, and Thy burden is light.

CHAPTER XXIX.

How greatly they err who complain of the harshness of the Lord's yoke, since whatever toil is felt [comes] from the remnants

of cupidity; whatever rest, from the infusion of charity.

They err, Lord, they err; they are deceived who, not knowing themselves and not noticing what is going on within them, complain of the harshness of this yoke and the heaviness of the burden. What then, you say, do you, who seem to have put your neck under this yoke and set your shoulders beneath the burden, never toil? Nay, very often. For today too I toiled not a little. For when a word had leapt out of me somewhat incautiously, a certain very dear friend of mine took it so ill that he even betrayed his offence in his face, and was rather slow to raise me up when I had thrown myself at his feet. Nor has my mind yet fully sweated out that grief: Lord, Thou knowest; not because I was raised up slowly, but because he was offended, and I was overtaken by an incautious word. And perhaps because of the singular familiarity with which I have been accustomed to speak to him more openly, this word stole in on me the more easily, according to what is commonly said: an indulgent master makes a foolish slave. And now, Lord, Thou who seest my weakness, physician of my soul, sole hope of my salvation, against Thee only have I sinned, even in that I sinned against him. For it is not a sin because I offended him, but because Thou didst forbid me to offend. Against Thee, Lord, against Thee only sins whoever sins; because when sin is committed, either what Thou commandest is not done, or what Thou forbiddest is done. Homicide, Lord, is a sin, because Thou hast said: You shall not kill (Exod. 20:13). And therefore when Thou didst once say: Kill, not only was it no sin to kill, but it was the greatest crime to refuse to kill when Thou didst command. Thy law also condemns fraud; and yet when, at Thy command, the Hebrews despoiled Egypt with borrowed vessels and garments (Exod. 15), since they obeyed Thee, they certainly did not sin. Thou sayest likewise: You shall not commit fornication; and therefore to commit fornication is a most monstrous crime; and yet, at Thy command, Thy Prophet did not hesitate to take to himself a wife of fornications, that he might beget children of fornications (Hos. 1:2): which surely he would not have done had he joined her to himself in the bond of marriage. Although it is doubted whether it was done so according to the letter. Against Thee only, then, have I sinned (Ps. 50:6). Nor does one readily meet in the Scriptures this said to a man, against you have I sinned, although it has been said: I have sinned against you. It hints at something great, I know not what, that it is said, against Thee. What then is: Against Thee only have I sinned, unless: by Thy judgement my sin is to be weighed, by Thy judgement judged, by Thy judgement punished? Against Thee only have I sinned. Why does the Jew make ready a stone? Against Thee only have I sinned. He who is without sin among you, He says, let him first cast a stone at her (John 8:7). Against Him only, then, have I sinned, to Whom judgement concerning sin belongs; it is of His judgement that this is established to be sin. Do Thou therefore, Lord, do Thou pardon what I have sinned, because against Thee only have I sinned. Yet because I sinned against him too, I will cast myself again at his feet; but do Thou inspire him, that he too may pardon my having offended him in that; although, as Thou knowest, I did not then think, did not wish, to offend him. But to return to what went before:

is this toil of mine from the Lord's yoke, and not rather from my own sickness? I feel indeed that whatever I have of tranquillity, whatever of peace, whatever of delight, all this is brought forth for me by this most sweet yoke; but whatever there is of toil, whatever of weariness, whatever, in short, of heaviness, comes from the remnants of worldly concupiscence. For under that yoke which the prince of Babylon, that is, of confusion, laid upon my most unhappy neck, my strength was weakened, my bones were crushed: although in some part the captivity has been loosed, there yet remains from the old oppression a certain weakness, by which the serenity of a sweetness already in some small measure experienced is often troubled, until He Who is propitious to all my iniquities heals also all my infirmities, and, redeeming my life from destruction, crowns me with mercy and compassions (Ps. 102:3–4): when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, and the word that is written shall be fulfilled: Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:54). Meanwhile, from the sweetness of this yoke [there is] no small consolation, and against the weakness implanted [in us] some struggle.

CHAPTER XXX.

That those who complain of the heaviness of the Lord's burden are rather crushed by the burden of the world.

Accordingly, those who complain of the harshness of this yoke have perhaps either not fully thrown off the most heavy yoke of worldly concupiscence, or, having thrown it off, have taken it up again to their greater confusion; and displaying the Lord's yoke outwardly, but inwardly putting their shoulders under the pack of secular business, they impute to the heaviness of the Lord's burden the toils and sorrows to which they consign themselves; and so, disdaining the commandments of the Lord, which, as John says, are not heavy (1 John 5:3), and like dogs feeding again on their own vomit, under the habit of the abstinent they worship the belly; under the tunic of penitents they pant after worldly glories and honours; under the sacred garb of the continent they are stained with the filth of the flesh; under the lamb's fleece, bearing a wolf's mind and seething with insatiable avarice, they join house to house and field to field, they do not spare widows, they have no pity on orphans, they claim for themselves the patrimonies of the poor; for these they are prone to lawsuits and contentions, ready for the courts; for these they are disembowelled by continual cares, inflamed with hatreds, torn apart by anxious thoughts; because it is not the yoke of the Lord but that of the world that is harsh, and the burden of the world that is heavy. But the yoke of the Lord is sweet, and the burden of the Lord is light.

CHAPTER XXXI.

How great is the perfection in charity, and how it differs from the other virtues.

For what is sweeter, what more glorious, than to see oneself through contempt of the world loftier than the world, and, standing on the summit of a good conscience, to have the whole world beneath one's feet, to see nothing that one should desire, no one whom one should fear, no one whom one should envy; nothing

that can be taken away by another as being one's own; nothing that can be inflicted on one by another as being evil; and, while one directs the gaze of the mind towards that inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens, to despise by a certain nobility of mind secular riches as corruptible, carnal allurements as defiled, all the pomps of the world as fading, and to exult in that prophetic word: All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of the grass; the grass is withered and the flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord abides for ever? (Isa. 40:6–8.) What, I ask, is sweeter, or what more tranquil, than not to be stirred by the turbulent motions of the flesh, not to be scorched by the fires of carnal incitements, to be moved by no alluring sight, but to have the flesh, cooled by the dew of chastity, laid beneath the spirit, no longer an enticer to carnal pleasures, but a most obedient helper in spiritual exercises? What, finally, is so near to the divine tranquillity as not to be moved by insults offered, to be terrified by no punishment and no persecution, to have one and the same constancy of mind in prosperity and in adversity, to look upon enemy and friend with the same eye; to conform oneself to the likeness of Him Who makes His sun rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust? (Matt. 5:45.) All these things together are in charity, and only in charity are they all together; and accordingly in it is true tranquillity, true sweetness, because it is itself the yoke of the Lord, which if we bear at the Lord's invitation, we shall find rest for our souls, because the yoke of the Lord is sweet and the burden light (Matt. 11:29–30). Indeed, charity is patient, is kind; it is not envious, does not deal perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious (1 Cor. 13:4–5), and the rest. Accordingly, the other virtues are to us either as a carriage to the weary, or as provisions to the traveller, or as a lamp to those in darkness, or as arms to those who fight; but charity, which, though like the other virtues it must be in all of them, is yet more especially itself both rest to the wearied, and a lodging to the traveller, and full light to him who arrives, and a perfect crown to the victor. For what is faith but our carriage, by which we are carried to the fatherland? What is hope but our provision for the way, by which we are sustained in the miseries of this life? What are those four virtues, temperance, prudence, fortitude, justice, but our arms, with which we fight? But when, through charity, which is perfected only in the vision of God (for those, that is, in whom it is begun here in faith), death shall have been more fully swallowed up, neither will there be faith, because He Who is seen and loved need not be believed; nor will there be hope, because nothing remains to be hoped for by one who embraces God in the arms of charity. Again, temperance fights against lusts, prudence against errors, fortitude against adversities, justice against inequalities; but in charity is perfect chastity, and therefore no lust against which temperance fights; in charity is perfect knowledge, and therefore no error against which prudence should fight; in charity is true beatitude, therefore no adversity which

fortitude should overcome; in charity all things are at peace, therefore there is no inequality against which justice should keep watch. But neither is faith a virtue unless it work through love; nor hope, unless what is hoped for be loved. Moreover, if you consider more subtly, what is temperance but love which no pleasure entices; what is prudence but love which no error leads astray; what is fortitude but love bravely enduring adversities; what is justice but love which, being equitable, sets in order the inequalities of this life by a certain governance? In faith, then, charity is begun, and in the other virtues it is exercised, in itself it is perfected.

CHAPTER XXXII.

How the works of the six days are fitted to the other virtues, while the rest of the seventh day is assigned to charity.

Let faith, then, be to us as it were the first day, by which we the faithful are separated from the unfaithful as light from darkness. Let hope be the second, by which, dwelling in heavenly things and for the merits of faith hoping only for the things above the heavens, we are, as God advances us, distinguished from those who, savouring the earth and begging of God earthly things alone, slip away and float like waters beneath the firmament of heaven. Let temperance dawn on us as the third day, in which, as we mortify our members which are upon the earth and restrain carnal concupiscences, like most bitter waters, within their necessary bounds, the dry and waterless land of our heart may appear, thirsting for the Lord its God. Then let prudence break forth as the light of the fourth day, by which we may divide between things to be done and things not to be done, as between day and night: by whose help the light of wisdom may shine out like the splendour of the sun; the light of spiritual knowledge, which in some things grows in us and in some wanes, may appear like the beauty of the moon; by which also the devout mind may look up to the examples of the fathers who went before as to the orbs of the stars; by which it may divide between days and years, months and hours; that is, may discern with even examination what difference there is between those who were before the law and under the law, what between these and those who are under grace, what befits each, what precepts, what times, what manners, what sacraments. Let fortitude be to us as the fifth day, by which we may endure the storms of this great and wide sea, that is, of this world; and, made spiritual fish by God's working, may keep our life among the waves and tempests; and, raising the desires and affections of our mind together towards heavenly things like winged birds, and savouring the things that are above, may render, God blessing, the manifold fruits of good works. Further, let justice dictate the sixth day to us, by which, clothed again with the divine likeness, we may rule with noble authority over the most savage beasts of the vices, and over earthly desires as over creeping things, and over the motions of the body as over cattle, so acting that the body be subject to the mind and the mind to God; and thus, justice dictating, to each be given what is its own. Here again there is a blessing, not on cattle, not on creeping things, but on men. We are plainly admonished by this narrative, although according to the letter

to be gathered spiritual fruits, in that we read that God's blessing came upon the fishes of the sea and the birds of heaven; yet we do not see that the divine largesse bestowed it on beasts and cattle, or on the creeping things of the earth, although they too grow and multiply, a gift which God is seen to have granted to the birds also by the aforesaid blessing. For thus it is written: God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds be multiplied upon the earth (Gen. 1:22). To beasts and cattle none of these things. Assuredly, to the virtues and holy affections, which we believe are to be compared to fishes and birds, blessing is due, multiplication is due, succession by spiritual generation is due. But as to man, created to the image and likeness of God, beasts and cattle are subjected, God blessing; so to him who is restored by the merits of justice to that same image and likeness, the spiritual beasts, of which the Psalmist says: Deliver not, he says, to the beasts the soul that confesses to Thee (Ps. 73:19), to which no succession is due, are laid low beneath the command of God. There remains the seventh day, that is, the Sabbath, in which all these works are consummated, in which true rest is taken up, in which a term and end is proclaimed to our toil. Charity itself is the consummation of all the virtues, the sweet refreshment of holy souls, the seemly ordering of manners. It is the root from which all good works are perfected. It, the seventh day, refreshes us with divine grace; it is the seventh month, in which, after the flood of temptations, the ark of the heart sweetly rests. Temperance serves it; prudence keeps watch; fortitude does battle; justice waits upon it.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

That in this life the other virtues are servants to charity; and after this life they are to be poured over into the fullness of charity.

For since it belongs to temperance to check and blunt the alluring motions of flesh or mind, lest, that is, the mind, enticed, should prefer the sweetness of noxious pleasure to the sweetness of true love; and to the ever-watchful care of prudence to discern between things to be loved and things not to be loved, lest cupidity, cloaked in the colour of charity, should take the unwary heart by surprise; and since the strength of fortitude sets itself against the adversities of this world for no other reason than that, when things go less according to one's wish, or even when all manner of harsh things rush upon one in a mass, the mind, though oppressed, should in no way overstep the law of charity: it is plainly evident that these three are to be reckoned under the name of virtues only if their use is directed in every way to obtaining or preserving charity. Otherwise not even temperance is accounted a virtue; for although it may cover over or rein in the itch of the flesh, yet while the mind under the name of chastity abuses itself in the avarice of base gain, it does not restrain so pernicious a wantonness of the inner man. Nor is that to be judged the virtue of prudence by which anyone, skilled in deceiving, discerns not between things to be loved and things not to be loved, but between temporal gains and losses, and, with nothing left of charity, strives to procure some advantage for himself to the ruin of others.

But far be it that the fortitude of Catiline should be numbered among the virtues; for although he was able to bear all adversities in an incredible manner, yet, seeking for this fortitude no reward but worldly power, or at least his own pleasure, he cheated himself of the prize due to virtue. Accordingly, however temperate a man greedy of popular glory may seem, however prudent and astute some moneyed man may be reckoned in the judgement of the crowd, though even some philosopher, hardening in a monstrous insensibility, be moved by no adversities: whatever has not sprouted from the root of charity our philosophers have judged must be set apart from the fruits of the virtues; whatever part of the structure is not directed in a straight line to that one cubit, they have subtly perceived must be measured outside the building of the spiritual ark. True temperance, therefore, acts so that the rational mind may not, enticed, overstep the rule of charity; true prudence, that it may not, deceived; true fortitude, that it may not, oppressed. But when perfect charity shall have carried over its followers into the kingdom of its tranquillity, all the allurements of the flesh being by then consumed together with the very mortality of the flesh, all the darkness of errors shaken off by the contemplation of the divine light, and sure security succeeding to the troubles of this world, it will lay aside, so to speak, the arms which it uses in this time of war, and will itself refresh the victors with its sweetness alone. For then the other virtues will so pour themselves back into the fullness of charity that in that felicity nothing other than charity will be thought to be temperance, prudence, fortitude; [a charity] so chaste that it is tempted by no allurements; so lucid that it is falsified by no errors; so strong that it is assailed by no adversities whatever. Promising us the state of this tranquillity in mystical speech, the Lord says: And I will take away the evil beasts from the land, and I will make you sleep confidently (Lev. 26:6). For when the most savage beasts of the passions have been taken away from our land, namely the flesh which we bear, He will cause us to be lulled in a heavenly sleep, when, swallowed up in that immense sea of the divine brightness and lifted ineffably beyond ourselves, we shall perfectly call, and shall see, that the Lord Himself is God, celebrating that everlasting Sabbath of charity which the holy prophet Isaiah describes: And there shall be, he says, month after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath (Isa. 66:23); when, that is, from this Sabbath, in which, tasting certain beginnings of charity, we keep holiday from busy activities as far as the evil of the day permits, we shall have been brought into that perfect one, where, with no trouble interrupting, no misery of the flesh hindering, we shall love the Lord our God with all our soul, and with all our strength, and with all our powers, and our neighbours as ourselves (Deut. 6:5). Further, justice, by which to each is rendered what is his own, according to that saying of the Apostle: Render to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour (Rom. 13:7), I might call a certain incentive to brotherly love, whose beginning indeed is to harm no one; its progress, to show oneself blameless towards all. For very much

wins for himself the minds of others by the sweetness of goodwill, who by his quiet way of life offends no one, obeying his elders, keeping in tune with his equals, condescending to the younger; showing to the first fear and reverence, to the middle honour and favour, to the last a humble compassion. In money matters too this virtue provokes those who observe it to the good of charity; for according to the precept of the Apostle cited above it does not put off a debt until an importunate collector demands it, but rather anticipates the one who asks for it back with a certain cheerfulness. If, then, this virtue embraces only the dispensations of temporal things, I do not hesitate to withhold it from the tranquillity of that most happy state, in which, that supreme Quiet dispensing to each according to his merits either rewards or punishments, some are struck with the irrevocable sentence of damnation, others are endowed with the reward of eternal beatitude, so that, since there will be eternity on either side, there can be no variation of temporal things. But if you contemplate the rules of justice itself more deeply, no one renders better, no one more perfectly, to each what is his own than he who loves what is to be loved, and loves it as much as it is to be loved: God, that is, above himself, his neighbour as himself; God for nothing but His own sake, himself and his neighbour for nothing but God's sake. You see, unless I am mistaken, that the perfection of justice hangs on the perfection of charity, so that justice seems to be nothing other than charity set in order: in which, as far as each has made progress, so far also does he rest.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The death of a friend intervening, the consideration of the threefold concupiscence is put off, and this first book ends in his epitaph.

Therefore those three things seem to call for consideration which the holy apostle describes as being in the world: The concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16), lest perhaps whatever less pleasant thing we bear under the Lord's yoke should proceed from the poisonous root of these passions. But grief forbids me to go further, and the recent death of my Simon drives me violently rather to the business of weeping. Hence perhaps that nocturnal fear, troubling my mind. Hence that terror of dreams, robbing me of needful rest; because, that is, my dearest one was to be suddenly snatched from the earth. Nor is it to be wondered at if my mind, by a certain disturbance of itself, foreboded the departure of him whose life it enjoyed so delightfully. Behold, now the fear that I feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has befallen. Why do I dissemble? Why am I silent? Perhaps for that reason this tribulation remains upon me. Let what is hidden in the heart come forth to the eyes, come forth to the tongue; if perhaps by little drops of tears and droplets of words the heart of the grieving man may sweat out the sorrow conceived in his inmost breast. Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you who are my friends, because the hand of the Lord has touched me (Job 19:21). Marvel at a man weeping; nay, marvel rather at a man living. For who would not marvel that Aelred lives without Simon, save one who does not know how sweet it was together

to live, how sweet it would have been to return together to the fatherland? Bear patiently, then, my tears, my groaning, the roaring of my breast. And you, my beloved, although, brought into the joy of your Lord, you feast delightfully at the table of that supreme Father of the household, and with your Jesus are happily inebriated with that new fruit of the vine in the kingdom of the Father, suffer me nevertheless to pour out my tears to you, to unloose my affection to you, to pour back to you, if it can be, my whole soul. Do not forbid these tears, which the sweet memory of you, my dearest brother, draws out. Let not this groaning be a burden to you, which not despair but affection stirs up; nor restrain these tears, which devotion calls forth, not a failure of faith. And surely, if you remember whence you have come, what you have escaped, where you have left that familiar friend of yours, you will see indeed how just is my grief, how much my wound is to be wept over. Let me be, then, that I may lament my grief a little. Mine: for your death is not to be wept over, which a life so praiseworthy, so lovable, so pleasing to all went before, which that astonishing conversion of yours commends, that way of life of yours worthy to be proclaimed, that blessed perseverance of yours. Truly astonishing was your conversion! For who would not be astounded, who would not marvel, that a boy tender and delicate, of illustrious family, conspicuous in beauty, should have taken such a road, and taken it so? You withdrew, my sweet brother, knowingly ignorant and wisely untaught; you who, like that first patriarch, going out from your country and from your kindred and from your father's house (Gen. 12:1), went whither you knew not, came whither you were ignorant. But He knew, Who was leading you, Who had kindled your still tender heart with the flame of His love, and you ran in the odour of His ointments. There went before you that One beautiful in form above the sons of men, that One anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows (Ps. 44:3, 8), anointed with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety (Isa. 21); and you ran in the odour of these ointments (Song 1:3). There went before you that humble and spiritual One over steep and mountainous places, sprinkling His ways with the spices of myrrh and frankincense and of every powder of the perfumer; and you ran in the odour of these ointments. The boy Jesus went before His boy, showing him the manger of His poverty, the couch of His humility, the chamber of His charity, filled with the flowers of His grace, rich with the honey of His sweetness, sprinkled with the balm of His consolation; and you ran in the odour of these ointments. Something great, something ineffable, I know not what, that mind had already then foretasted, which believed that to the little body failing with hunger, as to a tiring beast, a fodder of hay should be given. The devout boy fled from the face of his father, but rather to the face of his Father. He willed indeed to forget his people and his father's house, that the King, the King's Son, might desire his beauty, and that they might be two in one spirit, so that He might become his Father by grace Who is the Father of the Other by nature. O wonderful devotion; O wonderful forgetfulness of self! It was too little for the emulator of the venerable

patriarch Joseph, leaving to the Egyptian woman the little cloak by which he was held fast (Gen. 39), slip naked from the hands of the one embracing him, but besides, as a vigorous performer of the Gospel's perfection, he took no thought for the morrow. At length, setting out on a journey laborious enough without provisions, his limbs now on the point of failing from want of food, "I have heard," he said, "that the servants of Christ are fed on herbs. Why not we too?" And turning aside a little from the road, he began to pluck them. "O," he says, "how sweet! O good boy, what did it taste of to you? What, I ask, was it that herb, or faith; hay, or charity? It had its savour indeed, but Jesus was in the heart, and therefore hay in the mouth. Whence, I ask, whence came these things to a boy? These things are Thine, Lord Jesus, Who givest and receivest, Who bestowest and demandest. For who gives Thee anything not Thine own? And even if anyone should wish to give what he has not received from Thee, Thou dost not deign to receive it." This boy, then, received, Lord Jesus; he received from Thee, and gave back; he received, and offered. He received and offered this devotion of mind, this fervour of faith, this ardour of love.

All things, then, are Thine, Lord, Who didst dedicate the beginnings of his conversion with these wonders, Who didst afterwards receive the pleasing sacrifice of his devout way of life, Who hast now mercifully borne that most acceptable whole burnt-offering into that lofty temple of Thine. There in Abraham's bosom rests my Simon, my sweetest friend, but Thy poor man, Lord Jesus: there he rests, carried over from death to life, from toil to rest, from misery to happiness. See, I who had begun to grieve have found cause to rejoice. I have found it indeed, but in you, my beloved brother, not in myself. "Do not weep," He says, "over Me; but weep over yourselves" (Luke 23). With you, my beloved brother, with you I rejoice; but for myself I grieve. You have cause to rejoice; I am to be wept for, I am to be grieved over, who can live without Simon. And yet it is a wonder if I am to be said to live, from whom so great a portion of my life has been taken away, so sweet a solace of my pilgrimage, so singular a relief of my misery. It is as though my bowels were torn out, as though my unhappy soul were rent in pieces. And am I said to live? O wretched, O grievous living! to live without Simon. The patriarch Jacob wept for his son (Gen. 37); Joseph wept for his father (Gen. 50); holy David wept for his dearest Jonathan (2 Sam. 1). All these the one Simon was to me: a son in age, a father in holiness, a friend in charity. Weep, then, wretched man, for your dearest father; weep for your most loving son; weep for your sweetest friend. Let the floodgates of this wretched head burst open; let the eyes pour down tears by day and night. Weep, I say, not because he has been taken up, but because you are left behind. My father, my brother, my son, who will grant me that I may die with you? For I would not wish to die for you: that would have been to provide not for you but rather for myself. Holy David indeed said this of his parricide son: "Absalom my son, my son Absalom, who will grant me that I may die for you?" (2 Sam. 18). Did he say this of Jonathan his friend? Did Joseph say this

of his father? It had to be said of a parricide; of a sinner this had to be said, because the death of sinners is very evil. It was a dutiful thing to wish to die for an ungodly man, so that there might be one who would repent, one who would weep, one on whom God would have mercy, lest he perish for ever. But those others, carried over to rest, were not to be called back again into this misery; they were not to be subjected once more to so many fears, so many sorrows.

So it was that Rachel, weeping for her children, would not be comforted (Jer. 31). What was weeping? Affection. Now affection would be comforted if the son were called back from the dead, if the mother might again enjoy the sight of him. This Rachel did not wish. Why? Because if he were called back from the dead, he would be rolled down from blessedness into misery. She did not wish, then, that the son be called back, but that she be taken up to her son into rest. Affection sought the children; reason withstood affection, lest they be called back; and divine providence delayed the mother's being taken up. Therefore Rachel, weeping for her children, would not be comforted. My case is like hers. I grieve that my most beloved, the one of one heart with me, has been snatched from me; I rejoice that he has been taken up into the eternal tabernacles. Affection seeks his sweet presence, on which it fed with delight; but reason does not consent that a soul dear to me, set free from the flesh, should again be made over to the miseries of the flesh. My soul longs to enjoy the embraces of Christ together with that portion of itself; but my weakness stands in the way, my iniquity stands in the way, divine providence also stands in the way. Surely he who was ready went in with the bridegroom to the wedding; for me, wretched as I am, the door is still shut (Matt. 25). Would that, Lord Jesus, would that it might some day be opened! Yet I hope in Thy mercy, Lord, that it will be opened at some time. I have sent ahead my first-fruits; I have sent ahead my treasure; I have sent ahead no small portion of myself. Let what remains of me follow to Thee. Where my treasure is, there let my heart be also. Let me follow his ways here, Lord, that in Thee I may enjoy his company. And I could indeed do so, Lord, though with slow foot, when his devout way of life was set before my eyes here; when his humility, as I looked on it, beat down my pride; when his tranquillity, as I considered it, checked my restlessness; when my lightness was held in by the bridle of his wonderful gravity. I remember that often, when my eyes were running hither and thither, at a single look from him I was suffused with such shame that, suddenly drawn back within myself, I restrained all that lightness with the hand of gravity, and, gathering myself to myself, began to busy myself with something useful. The authority of our order forbade us to speak together; but his look spoke to me, his gait spoke to me, his very silence spoke to me. A modest look, a sober gait, gravity in speech, silence without bitterness.

And then in this last year of his life, as though not unaware of his coming call, with what tranquillity, what peace, what circumspection he spent his life! He seemed as it were forgetful of all outward things, even of me, and

shut within certain narrow places of his mind, to have portrayed more expressly that man whom the holy prophet Jeremiah describes, saying: "It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and keep silence, because he shall raise himself above himself" (Lam. 3). He took up indeed the yoke of Thy discipline, Lord Jesus, in the flower of his age, choosing that narrow way which leads to life, to eat his bread in the sweat of his face, and to submit his will to another's judgement. He bore also from his very youth the heavy yoke of infirmity, with which Thou didst scourge him with a father's affection to his very end, for eight years, I think, without any intermission. And therefore, finding scarcely anything outside in which to take delight, he had shut himself up in the inner solitude of his mind, sitting alone and silent, yet not torpid with idleness. For he would write or read, or, as one whose sense was wakeful, would apply himself more privately to meditation on the Scriptures. He scarcely spoke even with the prior, and then only of necessary things. He went about like a deaf man who does not hear, and like a dumb man who does not open his mouth, made like a man who does not hear and has no rebukes in his mouth. But if anyone, taking the occasion, approached him with any kind of address, at once such sweetness breathed in his speech, such cheerfulness without any looseness appeared in his face, that his manner of speaking and his humility in listening showed how empty of bitterness, how full of sweetness his silence had been. See what I have lost: see what I have let go. Where have you gone, O pattern of my life, ordering of my conduct? Where have you gone, whither have you withdrawn? What shall I do? Where shall I turn? Whom shall I now set before myself to follow? How have you been torn from my embraces, withdrawn from my eyes, taken away from my eyes? I embraced you, beloved brother, not with the flesh but with the heart. I kissed you, not with the touch of the mouth but with the affection of the mind. I loved you, who from the very beginning of my conversion took me into friendship, who showed yourself more intimate with me than with the rest, who joined me to Hugh in the very depths of your soul. For so great was your love towards us both, so like your affection, so one your devotion, that, as I think I have gathered from your words, your affection preferred neither to the other, although sure reason judged that his holiness was by all means to be preferred to me. Why then did you pass over in my absence? Why did you not wish, in departing, to have present the one whom alone you had held present in place of two? Or did you judge that both were to be spared, namely both you and me, lest your departure should afflict my sight, and my grief should even a little sadden your glad and tranquil departure? Or perhaps, as I rather believe, divine goodness looked to you alone, to carry that tranquil and peaceful soul from the miseries of this life with all tranquillity into the homeland you desired, and to loose the bond of the bodily dwelling, while you were almost unaware, with such ease that not even a slight fear of death troubled the soul dear to it?

Indeed, he who was lying beside your little bed detected in you no sign of approaching death: rather, your face

more cheerful, your speech easier, increased the hope of recovering your health. Moreover, when, gently laying back your head, you had given up your spirit, he believed that you had fallen asleep, not died. For you, then, my beloved brother, for you it has been well provided, who passed over with such great tranquillity, who by your peaceful death showed most plainly that you were received by the ministers of peace. Nor is it a wonder. For you did not dread that hour but rather desired it, you who, on the day before you left us, told the prior of our monastery when he visited you that you wished for no further respite of life. What then have you gained, O bitter death? what have you gained? You have assailed, it is true, the tent in which he was a pilgrim, but you have broken the bond by which he was held. You have overthrown the dwelling which he used for a while, but you have taken away the burden by which he was weighed down. "We know," says the Apostle, "that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. 5). So now that soul, friend of the virtues, desirous of rest, eager for wisdom, victor over nature, having put off the wrapping of this flesh, flies away on freer wings, so to speak, to that lofty and pure good, and is received into the long-desired embraces of Christ. But the flesh, you say, committed to the earth, is dissolved into ashes. So indeed. But why do you exult? It is dead, that it may be quickened; it is dissolved, that it may be better restored. It is sown in corruption, but it will rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, but it will rise in glory. In short, it is sown a natural body; it will rise a spiritual one. "Where, O death, is your victory? where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Cor. 15). Surely, wherever you seem to have done something against him, there you are proved to have done him good. On me, then, you have vomited out all your venom; and in seeking him you have dealt me dreadful wounds. I, I it is who have borne whatever there is of bitterness, whatever of harshness, I from whom the guide of my journey has been taken away, the schooling of my way of life. But what is this, O my soul? that you looked on that sweet corpse so long without tears? What is it that you let that body, so dear to you, go without kisses? I grieved, wretch that I was, and groaned, and drew long sighs from my inmost heart; and yet I did not weep. And I perceived that I had so much to grieve for that I did not believe I was grieving, even when I grieved vehemently. So I felt afterwards. For such a stupor had seized my mind that, even when his limbs were already stripped for the washing, I did not believe that he had passed away. For I marvelled that he whom I had bound to myself with the close bonds of sweetest love had suddenly slipped from my hands; I marvelled that that soul, which was one with mine, could be stripped from the embraces of the body without mine. But now that stupor has given way to affection, has given way to grief, has given way to compassion. Now what are you doing, eyes? Do not, I beg you, spare; do not dissemble. Give at the funeral of my beloved whatever you have, whatever you can. Why do I blush? Do I weep alone? See how many tears on every side, how many groans, how many sighs! Are these tears to be blamed? But Thy tears excuse us, Lord Jesus, which Thou didst shed at the death of Thy friend (John 11),

expressing indeed our affection, but intimating Thy charity. Thou didst put on, Lord, the affection of our infirmity, but when Thou didst will: therefore Thou couldst also not weep. O how sweet are Thy tears! how pleasant! O how they savour to my anxious mind! how they console! "See," they say, "how He loved him" (ibid.). And see how my Simon was loved by all, embraced by all, cherished by all. But perhaps some strong men now judge my tears, thinking my love too carnal. Let them interpret them as they will; but do Thou, Lord, see them, regard them. Others see what is done outwardly; what I suffer inwardly they do not heed. There are Thine eyes, Lord. Certainly in my eyes this servant of Thine had nothing which might even be a hindrance to him in passing to Thine embraces. But no one among men knows what goes on in a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him. But Thine eye, Lord, pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And, as a certain praiseworthy servant says: "Woe even to the praiseworthy life of men, if it be examined with mercy set aside." See, Lord, whence my fear, see whence my tears. Attend to them, O most loving, most sweet, most merciful. Receive them, O my only hope, my one and only refuge, end of my intention, my God, my mercy. Receive them, Lord, a sacrifice which I offer Thee for my most beloved friend; and if any stains have remained on him, either pardon them or impute them to me. I, I am to be struck, I to be scourged, I to pay the whole; only, I beg, do not hide Thy blessed face from him, do not withdraw Thy sweetness from him, do not put off Thy loving consolation for him. Let him experience, my Lord, the sweetness of Thy mercy, which he so vehemently longed for, which he so confidently presumed upon, which he commended with such affection, which savoured so delightfully to him on that night when, the rest betaking themselves to sleep and one brother left with him to keep watch, into this

BOOK TWO.

In which the author meets the complaints of certain people.

CHAPTER I.

What he proposed for consideration in the first book; and that the manifestly vicious are to be excluded from this consideration.

In the former part of this little work, discoursing on the perfection of charity, we showed, as far as we were able, that the sum of all the virtues consists in it. For that is not to be called a virtue which this root has not brought forth; nor will that work be reckoned perfect which this end has not concluded. In it both the consummation of the law and the perfection of the Gospel are proved to lie, since

he burst out with a voice of thanksgiving: "Mercy, mercy, mercy." He was trying, they say, to sing that verse through entire: "Mercy and judgement I will sing to Thee, O Lord" (Ps. 100). But, as I think, drawn back by the sweetness of that first word, he lingered more intimately in repeating it, and at length, turning to the one who sat by his bed, repeated the same word again and again. And seeing him overspread, as it were, with a kind of stupor, as though indignant at his great insensibility, because he was not suffused with the like sweetness nor enjoyed the like savour, he began with his hand, as if wishing to rouse one asleep, and with a clearer and more urgent voice repeated: "Mercy, mercy." What is it that I behold, my Lord? I seem to myself surely to see as with my eyes that mind, melted with a certain unspeakable joy at the draught of this verse, as it saw that its sins, swallowed up in this immense sea of divine compassion, had left nothing to weigh it down, nothing to darken its conscience even a little. It is pleasing to behold that soul, washed in the fount of divine mercy, the weight of sins laid down, striving by its very natural impulse, with certain most light movements, towards the things above, and eager now at any moment to be stripped of the cast-off garments of the flesh, meditating only on that mercy of God on which it wholly leans. Come, return now, O soul, to your rest, because the Lord has dealt well with you; pass over to the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and praise, the sound of one feasting. I will follow you with my tears, I will follow you with such prayers as I have, I will follow you with my affection, I will follow you with the singular sacrifice of our Mediator itself. And you, father Abraham, again and again stretch out your hands to receive this poor man of Jesus, another Lazarus (Luke 16); open your lap, spread out your bosom, and lovingly receive, cherish, console him returning from the miseries of this life. To me also, wretched as I am, his lover such as I am, grant some day a place of rest with him in your very bosom. Amen.

…in it is both the spiritual circumcision of the inner and the outer man, the true sabbath-keeping of the mind, the reality of the sacrifices, and the whole fullness of the precepts. And of circumcision indeed we touched briefly above; we showed that the sabbath of the mind is nowhere, nor can be, except in charity. For it is that sweet yoke and light burden to which the clemency of the Saviour invites us. "And you shall find," He says, "rest for your souls" (Matt. 11). But since most of us, who seem to have put our necks under this yoke, are convicted of labouring in many things,

we have tried to show that it is the yoke of captivity that brings forth this labour. Hence we proposed for consideration those three things in which the evangelist John seems to have comprised every kind of cupidity, namely the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2). But the death of our most beloved intervened and the work was interrupted; and, giving some time to tears and lamentation, we reserved this consideration for another beginning. To take our start, then, from the words of Paul, we say that "the root of all evils is cupidity" (1 Tim. 6), just as, on the other side, the root of all virtues is charity. Accordingly, so long as this poisonous root remains in the very depths of the soul, though certain little branches be cut back at the top, others must needs sprout from the reviving shoot, until the root itself, torn out by the roots, leaves nothing further from which the most pernicious brood of vices may spring. Now there are some who, entangled in more manifest and, so to say, grosser vices, display the mark of their confusion at the very first glance: these I judge are to be set aside from the present consideration, since it has been sufficiently shown above that their mind is empty of all rest. But we who seem to have put the shoulders of the mind under the yoke of the Gospel, which the Saviour's own sentence declares most sweet, and under the Lord's burden, which His authority no less proves most light (Matt. 11), and yet are convicted of labouring, we, I say, the professed of the cross of Christ, taking up the key of the word of God, unlocking the bars of our breast and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, let us discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart; and, seeing through without flattering caress what lurks more secretly in the very recesses of the soul, let us rather try to dig out the very roots of the diseases.

CHAPTER II.

That outward labour is shaped according to the quality of the inward, and is sometimes lessened by it.

This labour, indeed, is not of the flesh but of the heart, just as the rest of which we treat is clearly of the heart, not of the flesh, although outward labour is shaped according to the inward quality, and no outward labour is to be called labour if there is no inward. For example, consider hunters or fowlers, or any followers of such vanities. If you look at the outward movements of the body, what more laborious? If at the quality of the mind, what more delightful? The same is very easy to show even in praiseworthy things. How great was the outward labour of the apostles, when they were delivered into prison, when they were bound with chains, when they were most sharply beaten with scourges! And yet "they went rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they had been counted worthy to suffer insult for the name of Jesus" (Acts 5). How many sacrilegious men then had a like punishment! but because their conscience was unlike, those wretches laboured on both sides, inwardly and outwardly; these exulted unto inward rest amid outward pains. Nor is it to be wondered at, since outward labour is often lessened by inward labour, and the heats of the heaviest bodily [labours]

are tempered by the heats of the mind. For what labour is there for adulterers? what punishment for robbers? For the former, that they may be received into embraces wickedly desired; for the latter, that they may enjoy the spoils of others. But the one, burning inwardly with the torch of lust, does not know what he suffers outwardly; the other, a more secret flame of avarice makes him not feel the manifest pains of the body. Of whom the prophet says: "They laboured to commit iniquity" (Jer. 9). These things, then, being carefully looked into, it is plain indeed that it is by no means the outward sufferings of the body that bring forth inward labour, but that the root residing in the inner parts shapes according to its own nature whatever falls outward. For what is it that, when two sit at the same table with the same food set before them, one exults and the other murmurs? What, that when the same wounds are received, one is cast down by the languor of sadness, the other is suffused with wonderful gladness; two are struck at once by the misfortune of bereavement or poverty, and yet this one blasphemes, that one gives thanks. The same sight is presented to the eyes of both, and one is basely moved, the other enjoys his accustomed peace. When an occasion is offered of seeking some honour, the one is inflamed with such a lust for domination that, in the hope of gaining the summit, he shrinks from committing no crime; the other is so free of this passion that even when the insignia of dignities are offered he consents to accept them either not at all or barely.

CHAPTER III.

That charity tempers all that befalls by its own tranquillity, while cupidity corrupts all by its own perversity.

Is it not manifest that the same thing happens with bodies too, so that, according to the quality of their health, the things that befall them from outside are felt as either troublesome or pleasant? For food which increases one man's sickness profits another's health, and the sun which takes the light from a bleary eye shines more pleasantly on a sound one. As, then, in bodies the things applied from outside are found either wholesome or harmful according to the manner of the inner nature, so from the indications set out above it is easily seen that the rest of the one and the labour of the other depend on the inward quality of the mind. For the mind which the most sweet and most tranquil yoke of the Lord, namely perfect charity, has possessed, will pour all that befalls it into the state of its own tranquillity, not suffering it to be moved by any disturbances of things, but compelling the very changes of things to turn out to the use of its progress. But if the mind has been bound over to the most heavy yoke of cupidity, so long as there is no occasion of disturbance, a slackened rest counterfeits the sweetness of the Lord's yoke; but when the cause of any indignation has arisen, at once, bursting forth from the recesses of the heart as from most hidden caverns, a savage beast tears and bloodies the wretched soul with the most dreadful bites of the passions, granting it no time for peace, none for rest. Let the yoke, then, rot away at the presence of the oil, the yoke, that is, of cupidity at the presence of charity; and at once the burden of Christ is felt, as someone says, how light it is, how sweet, how delightful,

how it snatches into heaven and snatches away from the earth. Wherefore, if we wish to experience the sweetness of this rest, let us anxiously search out the causes and roots of our labour, not with lukewarm affection, as with a blunted blade, cutting back only the outward things, but penetrating with more vehement desire to the very origins of the diseases.

CHAPTER IV.

That all inward labour arises from the threefold concupiscence.

I think, moreover, that if we search more finely, we shall know most manifestly that whatever labour arises for us is derived, as from certain poisonous springs, either from the concupiscence of the flesh, or from the concupiscence of the eyes, or from the pride of life. If, then, a rougher food still saddens me, it is carnal concupiscence that imposes the labour on me: nor do I labour because I have taken up the yoke of Christ, but because I have not wholly cast off the yoke of cupidity. What if, inflamed with desire for a more sumptuous dish, I am troubled when a meaner one is set before me; or if, when it is prepared less than usual, or more slowly, or more carelessly, I am consumed by the plague of murmuring? What brings forth these straits in me, the passion of cupidity or the sweetness of charity? What if some monk should demand of his superior a number of dishes for himself according to the number of the night lessons, and for the eminence of some solemnity should seek out richer fare and foreign savours? What if, when any of these is lacking for some reason, he should break out into quarrels and contentions, and, not enduring to bear the heat of the worst of passions, should disturb the peace of the brethren with importunate clamours and hidden whisperings? Has not worldly concupiscence brought on him the yoke of this wretched servitude and the straits of most vile labour? Rebuking such men well, James says: "Whence are quarrels and contentions among you? Are they not from your concupiscences, which war in your members?" (Jas. 4).

CHAPTER V.

Of the opinion of those who say that outward labours are contrary to charity and to inward sweetness.

But, you say, to waste the body with constant vigils, to afflict the flesh with daily labours, to undermine the vigour of the limbs with the vilest foods, is not only of no small labour, but is so plainly contrary to that very charity which you strive so hard to commend that, emptying out all the mind's sweetness, it renders it barren of all spiritual delight. This is that laughable opinion of certain people who place spiritual sweetness in a kind of pleasantness of the flesh, asserting that affliction of the body is contrary to the spirit, and that the sufferings of the outer man lessen the holiness of the inner. For since, they say, flesh and spirit cleave to one another by a natural affection, they must needs share their sufferings with each other; and so it is impossible that the cheerfulness of the one should not be disturbed by the oppression of the other, so that the spirit, cast down by a certain anxiety of grief, can by no means breathe again into that spiritual joy. These things seem to be acutely either investigated or proved. O shameful thing! according to the rules of Hippocrates spiritual grace

is sought. Thus indeed, thus do they err who lean on physical arguments rather than on apostolic precepts. Plainly this is a wisdom not descending from above, which is first indeed chaste, then peaceable; but wholly earthly, sensual, devilish. This is the wisdom of the word which, teaching the pleasantness of the flesh, strives to make void the cross of Christ: in which, surely, as far as the flesh is concerned, nothing is pleasant, nothing soft, nothing tender, nothing at all delicate. But that cross is not made void. Rather it overturns this delicate doctrine; the nails driven into the sacred limbs storm it; that lance, pressed into the sweet inward parts, vanquishes it with its saving point. I hold entirely the contrary, and boldly declare that affliction of the flesh, if a sound intention go before and discretion be kept (discretion which, however, must be taken not from one's own conjecture but from the examples of our elders, lest perhaps remissness and laxity cloak themselves under the colour of discretion), that affliction of the flesh, I say, is not contrary to the spirit, nor does it lessen divine consolation, but rather, I hold, calls it forth: so much so that I judge these two always to be matched, in this life at least, outward tribulation, namely, and inward consolation. What then, you say? Am I to believe your opinion rather than my own experience? And what if another testifies that he has experienced something far different? Which of you am I chiefly to believe? You, having taken up a stricter way of life, claim that spiritual grace has been diminished for you; he, the more he is afflicted, the greater the grace of divine sweetness he experiences. To whose opinion, then, is credence to be given? Shall we think that here too divine grace is to be made subject to physical reasons? Far be it, far be it! Plainly He has mercy on whom He will. Perhaps, then, He imparts the sweetness of His consolation to this man abounding in riches and delights, and withholds it with rigid severity from His poor little one who dies daily for Him. Far be it to think this of Him Who is most sweet, most gentle, most loving, most compassionate. But if I say it, you may doubt; if Christ says it, it is heretical not to believe.

CHAPTER VI.

The foregoing opinion is refuted by apostolic and prophetic authority.

Let him come forward, then, that most valiant athlete, most faithful witness, distinguished disputant, in whom Christ speaks, who dies daily for Christ, who suffers every tribulation, who has fightings without, fears within, who chastises his body and brings it into subjection, who does not eat his bread for nothing but works in weariness night and day, whose hands supply what is necessary both for himself and [for those] who are with him; who, finally, in labour and hardship, in many watchings, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, toils as a most keen soldier under the standards of Jesus: let him, I say, settle this question, and show whether so great tribulation, so wonderful weariness, withdrew spiritual consolation from him. Perhaps his head, dried of all natural moisture by so many watchings and labours, was unable to produce a single tear; and his heart, because of so many

withered by pressures, drew in nothing of spiritual sweetness. But I see him writing to certain people with much tribulation and anguish of heart, through many tears; I see him mourning certain people who sinned before and have not done penance; I see him rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; I hear him groaning, because he would not be stripped, but clothed over. What shall I say of his spiritual sweetness, when, for the sake of its most delightful taste, he counts even the things that seemed gains to him as dung? Is it not because he is called forth by a wondrous sweetness that he longs for the very embraces of Christ, saying, I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, for it is much better? (Phil. 1.) Is it not because he is inebriated with a wondrous love of Christ that he utterly forswears all glory, Except, he says, in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ? (Gal. 6.) Is it not because he is roused by the fervour of an exceeding charity that he anathematizes those who do not love the Lord Jesus, If anyone, he says, does not love our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, Maran Atha! (1 Cor. 16). Yet let him himself say whether he was left without consolation in his tribulation, and let him make plain what we are to hope for in our tribulation; and so let him pierce with the apostolic blade the serpent's head that hisses this harmful poison into human minds. For these things are his who creeps upon his belly, who eats the earth, who sleeps under the shade in moist places, who carries on the business of belly and lust under the colour of sanctity. For thus he plans to frighten all the simple more easily away from apostolic poverty and evangelical purity, if they should reckon that a greater grace of divine sweetness will be present to them in a laxer life; if they should believe it holier to show faces wet with tears amid feasts and wines, amid royal dishes and prepared banquets, amid idle chatter and nightly drinking, than to show pale faces with dry eyes in toil and hardship, in many vigils, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, and in the mortification of one's own will, in daily weariness, in contempt of the world and disdain of the flesh. Let Paul then say whether that kindly Consoler leaves His own without consolation in present tribulation, and let him forestall by his authority the heresy of Jovinian sprouting again. Yet this heresy seems more pernicious than Jovinian's; for while that one made feasting equal to abstinence, this one sets it above. Therefore those who place the greater consolation of divine sweetness in the pleasantness of the flesh rather than in tribulation, let them hear Paul saying: Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, Who consoles us in all our tribulation (2 Cor. 1). Whether, then, we are wasted with fasts, or worn with vigils, or ground down by labours, blessed be God, Who consoles us in all our tribulation; and if we are overwhelmed with stones, and if we are bound with chains, and if we are beaten with rods, and if we endure the straits of prison, blessed be God, Who consoles us in all our tribulation.

Let the world rage, let the world be savage, let it pursue with hatreds, assail with curses, plunder our substance, besmirch our name: blessed be God, Who consoles us in all our tribulation: That we too, he says, may be able to console those who are in every distress (ibid.). And here he promises his consolation not to those who are in riches and delights, but to those who are in every distress. And, leaving nothing to question, he added: For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also through Christ our consolation abounds. What could be plainer? This is clearly what we said a little before: namely, that these two are made equal, outward sufferings and inward consolations. Who then is so dull, so presumptuous, as to affirm with shameless vanity, against the most manifest truth and apostolic authority, leaning on natural reasonings, that sharing in the sufferings of Christ is contrary to the spirit and diminishes the grace of spiritual sweetness? To share in the sufferings of Christ is to be subject to the disciplines of the Rule, to mortify the flesh by abstinence, vigils and labours, to submit one's own will to another's judgement, to prefer nothing to obedience, and, to sum up much in brief, to carry out our profession, which was made according to the Rule of blessed Benedict; that is, to share in the sufferings of Christ, as that same lawgiver of ours bears witness, who says: "And so, persevering in the monastery until the end, let us share by patience in the sufferings of Christ, that we may deserve to be partakers of His kingdom." The Apostle says this very thing: Knowing, he says, that as you are partners of the sufferings, so you will be also of the consolation (2 Cor. 1). And how necessary the affliction of the outer man is, we are most plainly taught, as the same Apostle declares: Though our outer man is being corrupted, yet he who is within is being renewed. For that which is momentary and light in our present tribulation works in us, beyond measure, in sublimity, an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4). Lastly Solomon declares in mystical words upon whom divine consolation is to be poured, saying: Give strong drink to those who mourn, and wine to those who are of bitter mind. Let them drink and forget their want, and remember their sorrow no more (Prov. 31). In these words he plainly promises that wine which gladdens the heart of man, not to those slack with idleness, not to those who spend the day in guffaws and tales, but to those who are of bitter mind; and he declares that that strong drink, which is made from the fruits new and old that the bride keeps among the delights of the Bridegroom, is to be given not to those who feast and drink, but to those who mourn because of the straits of this life, and who labour in want and sorrow. Let them drink, he says, and forget their want, asserting, that is, that the greatness of their toil is to be lessened by divine consolation. With this sentence the Psalmist agrees most openly: According to the multitude, he says, of my sorrows in my heart, Thy consolations have gladdened my soul (Ps. 93).

Let no one, then, shudder at that steep way which leads to life; let no one, in timid unhappiness, go back to the laxer way which he once cast off; but, as our lawgiver says, let him endure without growing weary or departing: knowing that, according to the multitude of the labours which he bears for Christ, consolations will gladden his soul.

CHAPTER VII.

A question: why some are moved to compunction with greater sweetness in a laxer life than in a stricter one.

But what is it, you say, that when I lived somewhat more laxly, used richer foods, relaxed a little in drink, indulged in a little more sleep, and did not wear down my body with labour or with such roughness of clothing, nor was held down by so much silence, I was so moved to compunction, so affected, so melted with a certain sweetness of mind; but now, under this strictness, I go about so arid and dry that I cannot wring tears from my eyes even by force? And I ask you what you reckon should be judged of a man who, swallowed up in a monstrous whirlpool of vices, gave himself over to every filthiness and uncleanness and shrank from no shameful deed whatever, yet in such a life was often moved to compunction, often wept, and not only from fear of punishment and the remembrance of his sins, at which perhaps no one would wonder, but also, melted with a wondrous affection into the sweetness of the love of Jesus, seemed to embrace Him with a kind of kiss of the mind. What then? Is this man's life to be imitated, are these ways to be followed, is the flesh to be handed over to enticements and the members subjected to lust, so that we may enjoy a like sweetness? What utter madman would say this? Nor do I put these things forward as doubtful; but, as Jesus Himself knows, I declare them true and certain. I myself have known a brother who, after spending the whole day mingled with secular men and women, given to idle tales and drinking, on returning late to the monastery would so break out into tears and sighs that he would assail the ears of many with his unseasonable groans; and yet he did not for that reason restrain himself even a little from enticements of this kind. Is the strictness of the Rule, then, to be abandoned in the hope of such compunction, and is a like filthiness to be followed? Whose hearing does not recoil at this?

CHAPTER VIII.

That the cause of spiritual visitation is threefold.

Let us know, then, that a visitation of this kind does not always show sanctity; for often it calls forth to it, and often too it preserves it. Now the cause of this visitation, so far as occurs to me at present, is threefold. For sometimes it is given for rousing, sometimes for consolation, and often also as a reward. For rousing, to those who sleep; for consolation, to those who labour; as a reward, to those who sigh for heavenly things. The first, then, rouses the sluggish, the second refreshes those who labour, the third receives those who ascend. This first compunction calls to sanctity, the second preserves sanctity, the third rewards it. The first terrifies the one who scorns, or entices the one who fears; the second cherishes and furthers the one who strives, the third embraces the one who comes. The first is like a goad correcting the one who strays, the second like a staff supporting the weak, the third a couch

receiving the one at rest. As, then, the divine clemency often by a word, often by an example, sometimes by rebuke, and at times even by the scourge, calls to salvation those who live tepidly or wickedly, so too by a hidden compunction, which either fear arouses or affection begets, it invites them to the state of a better life. Now the cause of this visitation is twofold. For it is given to the elect for their progress, to the reprobate for judgement.

CHAPTER IX

That the first kind of compunction, like certain other graces, comes both to the reprobate for judgement and to the elect for progress.

Nor is it to be wondered at that this grace is often common to reprobate and elect, since we know that those more excellent charisms, namely the word of knowledge, prophecy, kinds of tongues, the grace of miracles, have been bestowed even on the reprobate. For Saul too was among the prophets, and Judas among the apostles. And many, He says, will say to me on that day, Did we not cast out demons in Thy name, and do many signs in Thy name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you (Matt. 7). That we may see the same of the grace of compunction: Balaam, moved to compunction, says, Let my soul die the death of the just, and let my last end be like theirs (Num. 23). He also, lamenting his own perversity, says: Balaam the son of Beor has spoken: the hearer of the words of God has spoken, who falling has his eyes open (ibid.). Yet he made no progress by this compunction, he who taught Balak to put a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to commit fornication, and to drink and eat of things sacrificed to idols. How often the sons of Israel in the desert, rebuked by Moses, wept before the Lord: yet that compunction profited them nothing, since they were again let loose into their former lusts (Num. 11 and elsewhere). And when they had been brought into the land of promise, and the angel spoke to them in the Place of Weepers, they lifted up their voice and wept: and nevertheless after this they went on to do evil before the Lord (Judg. 2). What of Judas? Did he not say in compunction: I have sinned in betraying just blood? (Matt. 27.) But how nothing such compunction profits those who repeat their perversity, the Wise man is witness, who says: He who is washed after touching a dead body and touches the dead again, what does his washing profit him? (Sir. 34.) He is washed after the dead who, moved to compunction, laments his life as devoid of all the warmth of fervour, or indeed as fetid and buried in vices. But such a washing will profit nothing unless amendment has followed. The elect, on the other hand, for whom all things work together unto good, are roused by compunction of this kind not to judgement but to progress; stirred by this heavenly visitation, they by no means grow sluggish with greater security in a laxer life, but the greater the sweetness of divine love they enjoy, the more ardently they gird themselves for the stronger exercises of the virtues.

CHAPTER X.

Of the twofold reason of the second visitation, and that one passes from it to the third, which is more excellent than the others.

As soon as they have shaken off tepidity and

have taken up the sweats and struggles for Christ, they are received by that more excellent kind of compunction which heals the sick, strengthens the weak, lifts up the despairing. It is consolation to those who groan, rest to those who labour, protection to the tempted, provision for the journey to travellers. This consolation those deprive themselves of who, recoiling at the first sweats, either roll back into their former torpor or seek out certain cheap consolations in frequent chatter, or in visits from friends, or indeed in the liberty of their own will. Despising these dregs of consolation, the holy Prophet says: My soul refused to be consoled (Ps. 76.) What then? Have you been left without any consolation? Far from it! I remembered God, and was delighted (ibid.). And the reason of this visitation likewise is twofold. For it comes sometimes to those who have been tempted, lest they fall; sometimes to those who are to be tempted, that they may bear it more lightly. By the first they are refreshed, by the other armed. Let no one, then, measure his sanctity by that first kind of visitation, which it is plain sometimes befalls even the reprobate; nor yet by this one, which, though it is more excellent, prepares sanctity but does not show it. For in the former it is, as it were, brought to birth; in this it is nourished. Indeed, one who in this second kind has been accustomed to frequent compunction, and fed with frequent little sips of divine sweetness, is carried up by a more excellent step into that higher one, which no longer strengthens and comforts the weak, but rewards the perfect victor, as it were, with a more abundant grace.

CHAPTER XI.

What God works in each of these visitations.

In the first state, then, the soul is roused, in the second it is purged, in the third it enjoys the tranquillity of the sabbath. In the first state mercy works, in the second loving-kindness, in the third justice. For mercy seeks the lost, loving-kindness reshapes the one found, justice rewards the one now perfected. Mercy raises the one lying down, loving-kindness helps the one fighting, justice crowns the victor. And truly, what could be a greater token of the divine compassion than that that sweetness, that delight, that wondrous serenity, into which nothing defiled enters, should bestow the grace of its visitation upon a soul still defiled; and not only shake it with terror, but, rending with its piercing power all the cloisters of the mind barred with the bolts of vices, should press a kind of kiss of its sweetness upon lips still foul, and with its ineffable sweetness coax the one who turns away, entice the one who hesitates, put heart into the one who despairs? O sweet Lord, what shall I render to Thee for all that Thou hast rendered to me? O how sweet is Thy spirit in all things! Truly, Lord, great is Thy mercy towards me, Who didst put forth Thy hand from on high, snatching and delivering me from many waters and from the hand of strangers' sons; Who didst snatch my soul from the lower hell, in which I licked up a certain drop of Thy sweetness; and I heard Thy voice as from afar. What are you doing, unworthy and filthy one? Why do you wallow in this filth, why take delight in these foul things? See what sweetness there is with Me, what pleasantness

what delight? Do you despair because of the monstrousness of your crimes? But shall I, Who pursue the one who flees, reject the one who comes? Shall I, Who embrace and draw to Me the one who turns his face away from Me, drive back the one who flees under the wings of My mercy? And Thy voice, Lord, is Thy inspiration. For whence comes such hope to a despairing soul, unless Thou, Lord, givest it, Who in wondrous ways curest our infirmities and givest form to our deformities? But now what is to be said of that second state, in which the divine loving-kindness works so wonderfully in man that he makes progress out of temptation and grows stronger out of weakness? And though every soul by nature flees labours, temptations and sorrows, it is so heartened by so many consolations in its temptations that it not only withstands them when they rush upon it, but even in a manner challenges and seeks them out when they are slow to come. To this state that holy man had advanced who says: Prove me, Lord, and try me (Ps. 25). And again: Prove me, Lord, and know my heart (Ps. 138). In this state the mind, accustomed to the countless incitements of heavenly affections, is carried little by little into that most sublime kind of visitation, known by very few, where it begins to foretaste certain first-fruits of its future reward, passing into the place of the wonderful tabernacle even to the house of God, and pouring out its soul above itself, is inebriated with the nectar of heavenly secrets; and, contemplating with most pure gaze the place of its future rest, cries out with the Prophet: This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it (Ps. 131). As, then, in that state where no merits go before, mercy alone works, so in this one, in which He crowns His own gifts, which He nonetheless willed to be our merits, justice works together with mercy.

CHAPTER XII.

That in the first visitation there is especially fear, in the second consolation, in the third love.

Further, I think it should be noted that, although in that first visitation He sometimes mingles the sweetness of delight with fear, while in the second He often applies the goad of fear together with sweetness, yet properly the former pertains to fear, the latter to the sweetness of consolation; for in the third perfect charity casts out fear. For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; but the consummation of wisdom is the love of the Lord. In fear is the beginning, in love the perfection. Here is toil, there the reward. By this one ascends to that, and yet one does not arrive at it except through it. For upon the mind which fear often afflicts, sorrow presses, despair casts down, sadness swallows up, and acedia gnaws, a certain drop of wondrous sweetness, coming down from the balsam of that rich mountain, that curdled mountain, pours itself over as it were with a most gentle gliding: at the splendour of whose radiant divine light all that mist of irrational feelings is dissolved; at whose most sweet taste all that bitterness is put to flight, the heart is enlarged, the mind is made rich, and the power of ascending is in a wondrous manner prepared. Thus tepidity is shut out by fear, and fear by the taste of the divine sweetness

is tempered. Lest the mind grow sluggish in the lowest things, fear rouses it; lest it fail in labouring, affection feeds it. By these alternating it is schooled until that whole mind, swallowed up in ineffable charity, no longer grows rich from love, but, burning for the most longed-for embraces of Him Who is beautiful in form above the sons of men, begins to desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, saying daily with the Prophet: Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged (Ps. 119). So the lawgiver will give a blessing, ministering to beginners the wine of compunction with His fear, to those advancing milk from the breasts of His consolation: and when they have been weaned from the milk, they will feast from the entrance of His glory. The first visitation, then, rebukes iniquity, the second sustains infirmity; the third indeed shows sanctity. Let no one, therefore, glory in the first, in which he is convicted as wicked or tepid; nor yet in the second, in which he is proved weak; but in the third let him who glories glory in the Lord.

CHAPTER XIII.

What the fruit is in each, and why some are deprived of the consolation of the second visitation.

The fruit of the first visitation, then, is true conversion to God; the fruit of the second, the mortification of one's own will and of all passions; the fruit of the third is perfect beatitude. Lastly, when the fruit of the first compunction has been received in the excellence of perfect consolation, that which has, so to speak, fulfilled its task now ceases, and at once there follows the proving of temptations and labours, so that rightly there succeeds that which is sweet devotion towards God. For the affection of this sweetness is not easily given without labour or temptation going before, or accompanying, or at least following at once; and it is given by no means for the merit of one's life, but to sustain infirmity or to lighten temptation. And therefore those who at the first temptations and labours at once recoil, and, scandalized like certain of the Lord's disciples, shrink from the communion of the Lord's body and blood, that is, from the imitation of His passion, saying: This is a hard saying, and who can hear it (John 6)? and so, being less fit for the kingdom of God, look back, or at any rate admit those most abject earthly and human consolations: these, I say, shut themselves out from the sweetness of this consolation, and, wretched everywhere, neither ascend to that sublime kind of visitation, and yet loathe the exercises of the virtues without consolation of this kind; while they do not dare to return to their former ways, since conscience resists. These perhaps might rightly complain of being deserted by divine consolation if, perfectly renouncing their former ways and fully mortifying their own will, they in no way preferred the cheap and abject consolations of the world to the consolation of God. But as it is, when they have entered on the way of a stricter rule of life, they at once begin to dream of I know not what fillets of dignities, and with most vain presumption to usurp liberty for themselves; nor do the wretches wait until it is said to them: Friend, go up higher (Luke 14); but they themselves, as far as they can, impudently towards higher things

thrust themselves, and covet, to use the words of the Gospel, the first chairs in the synagogues, the first places at table at suppers, the first greetings in the market-place, and to be called Rabbi by men (Matt. 23), aspiring, no doubt, to be masters, who have not learned to be disciples for even a single day: since, then, they are conscious to themselves of such follies, I wonder with what face or with what irreverence they reckon that divine sweetness is to be imparted to them, and that a soul defiled by earthly affections is to be cherished in the most sweet and most pure embraces of Jesus. Surely, if any drop of heavenly sweetness should flow out upon them, let it be certain that it comes not because of the merit of sanctity, nor as solace for toil, but for rousing, as to those placed in weakness; although to those who, after receiving knowledge of the truth and taking up the way of perfect purity, sin wilfully or grow sluggish in idleness, such grace is granted rarely or never. This indeed must be said: it is one thing merely to be tempted by those earthly affections; another to fall, scarcely and most rarely, into some one of them; another to yield and consent, or to give oneself up to them entirely; another to take up unwillingly any occupation of this kind if it is imposed.

CHAPTER XIV.

Certain divine testimonies are set forth, by which each may measure his own state.

Therefore, if you wish to see more clearly the causes and reasons of your visitation, first examine with shrewd scrutiny the state to which you have advanced, and the quality of your life and ways; examine it with subtle inquiry, not according to your own guess, but according to the rules of the Scriptures and the lines of the heavenly precepts and the norm of your own profession, with conscience as witness. For the Lord says: See that your hearts be not weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life (Luke 21). And again: Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement, and whoever says Raca will be liable to the council: and whoever says, Fool, will be liable to the gehenna of fire (Matt. 5). And elsewhere: Whoever would be greater among you, let him be the servant of all (Matt. 20). Again: Whatever good things you wish men to do to you, do you also to them (Matt. 7). And: Of every idle word that men speak they shall render account on the day of judgement (Matt. 12). And the apostle Paul says: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in strife and envy; but put on our Lord Jesus, and make no provision for the flesh in its desires (Rom. 13). And he again: No one who soldiers for God entangles himself in secular affairs (2 Tim. 2). And to the Galatians: If you bite and devour one another, see that you are not consumed by one another (Gal. 5). And to the Thessalonians: We beseech you, brethren, that you abound more, and take pains to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands, and to walk honestly towards those who are outside, and to desire nothing of anyone (1 Thess. 4). In the second Epistle to them also: For if anyone, he says, will not work, neither let him eat (2 Thess. 3). James also: My brethren, he says,

do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons (Jas. 4). Again: If you have zeal of souls, and contentions in your hearts, do not glory: for where there is zeal and contention, there is inconstancy and every evil work (ibid.). And a little after: Whoever would be a friend of this world will be made an enemy of God (ibid.). The same in what follows: Do not disparage one another, my brethren (ibid.). Let us come to the Prince of the apostles: I beseech you, he says, as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from carnal desires (1 Pet. 2). And in the same Epistle: Putting away all malice, and all guile, and pretences, and envies, and all detractions (ibid.). And below: If anyone speaks, [let it be] as the words of God (1 Pet. 4). And after a little, to the pastors: Feed the flock that is among you, not for the sake of base gain, nor, he says, lording it over the clergy. Likewise, you young men, be subject to the elders. And all of you instil humility in one another (1 Pet. 5). The same in the second Epistle: Fleeing the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world (2 Pet. 1). And again: Be sober and watch (2 Pet. 5). Now we must come to that disciple whom Jesus loved: He who says that he knows God, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar (1 John 2). And: Do not love, he says, the world, nor the things that are in the world (ibid.). And below: Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer (1 John 3). Jude the apostle too: Woe to them, he says, who have gone in the way of Cain, and have poured themselves out for reward in the error of Balaam, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. These are stains in their feasts, feasting together (Jude 11). And after a little: These are murmurers, complainers, walking according to their desires (ibid. 16). And below: Hating even the spotted garment which is carnal (ibid. 23).

Setting before yourself, then, these and the like testimonies of the gospel and apostolic teaching as a kind of spiritual mirror, contemplate the face of your soul more anxiously; and if you still find yourself floating in feasts, growing heated rather often with wine, entangled in secular business, stretched with the cares of the world, and brooding over the desires of the flesh; occupying the day with quarrels and idle tales, tearing your brother's flesh with the foul bites of detraction; flitting hither and thither in restless running about, slack with sluggish idleness, as though unsettled by any and every goad; and procuring delicacies for your belly not by your own labour but by the blood and sweat of the poor; if, lastly, you find yourself rather often stained by anger, impatience, envy, disobedience; and taking more anxious care of the belly than of the mind, and ceaselessly overstepping the bounds of your profession; if, then, in all these things you go about sleek and fat, do not, I beg you, glory much in your little tears; which perhaps, that we too may say something according to the natural philosophers, flow out more easily when the veins swell with wine and the humour of the head increases from the various savours of foods and flavours; or at any rate, if in this state you are moved to compunction by the fear of God or by affection, do not abuse so great a grace of God so impudently as to wallow the more securely in your filth,

and compel to vomiting by your tepidity God, Who by this token seems by no means yet to have cast you utterly away from the warmth of His heart; and your last state become worse than the first. That this happens to many we are thoroughly taught by daily experience.

CHAPTER XV.

By what ways one passes to spiritual consolations.

But if, roused by such goads of the affections, you have cast away the filthy pots of the Egyptians and preferred the poverty of Jesus to all the riches of the world; if you have exchanged royal dishes for the food of coarser bread and the cheapest herbs; if you have made up for honours with subjection and abasement; if, stripped of the cares and business of the world, you have chosen to seek your living not with the curses of peasants but by your own labour and the common labour of your brethren; if in place of talkativeness you have put on silence, and in place of frequent quarrels the affection of brotherly love; if you have now begun to pay your vows, which your lips have uttered; if, I say, by these and like tokens you find that you have gone out of Egypt and, like a true Israelite, have crossed the waves of this great and wide sea, that is, of this world, and if the manna of heavenly sweetness does not at once flow out to you: do not murmur against God, do not tempt God and say: Is God among us, or not? since the carrying out of His precepts is the plainest token of His presence, as He Himself says: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My commandments: and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him (John 14). Do not, I say, murmur, and fall into that blasphemy of saying: Vain is he who serves God; and what profit is it, we who have kept His precepts? (Mal. 3.) And that of the Psalmist: Then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent, and I have been scourged all the day, and my chastisement has been in the mornings, since sinners themselves, and those who abound in the world, have obtained riches (Ps. 72); and, what is the height of it, spiritual riches. If in greater riches a greater grace is also bestowed, why are we put to death all the day long, accounted as sheep for the slaughter? Is it not better to eat and drink, and to enjoy good things in this life and in the other? Is it not the part of a witless man to seek with immense torment of the body what could be got easily and without labour? But where is what Paul says: Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God? (Acts 14.) And to the Thessalonians: Let no one, he says, be shaken in these tribulations, for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this (1 Thess. 3). But you wonder that heavenly sweetness does not receive you at once. And yet the sons of Israel, who in Egypt had indeed been roused rather often by the glory of divine miracles and had been fed on the sacred flesh of that mystical lamb, did not at once, after the crossing of the Red Sea, merit the solace of the angelic food; rather, they were first led to the waters of Mara and there tempted, and thence, coming by the twelve springs to the hidden places of a more secluded desert, they are wondrously fattened with heavenly bread (Exod. 15).

You too, then, having gone out of Egypt, if you have passed over the swelling waves of this world with dry foot, must be led first to the waters of Marah, that is, the bitter waters, so that the bitterness of bodily labours may deter you, and you may experience that saying of the Gospel, that narrow is the way that leads to life (Matt. 7:14). And there you will be tried by the Lord, in case you may deserve to pass into the fellowship of those to whom He says: You are they who have remained with Me in My temptations (Luke 22:28). From there you will pass, by a more excellent step, to the twelve springs, that is, to the streams of the apostolic teaching, so that, made accustomed to assiduous meditation on the Scriptures, you may in a manner be set outside the world, and, having borrowed from the divine utterances, which are indeed silver tried by fire, the silvered wings of the dove, you may fly like a most chaste turtle-dove to the spiritual desert; where, if the Creator's loving-kindness pours out on you any drop of spiritual dew, know that it is not of your own choosing when you gather it, or how much you gather, or how long you keep what you have gathered. For if you go out on the Sabbath and try to gather any of the heavenly food, it will not even be able to be found. On the other days, a fixed quantity, a gomor, that is, the measure of the divine judgement, will prescribe for you. Further, if you try to keep anything for the morrow, so as to be fed on heavenly nourishment without the day's labour, your expectation will breed worms for you. But when you have tasted spiritual sweetness, do not straightway be relaxed in idleness; for soon a spiritual Amalek will rise up at your side, to be overcome not by arms but by prayers. Thus, with some consolations from the divine loving-kindness following one upon another, and many labours from your own concupiscences, after numberless contests you will ascend, to be rewarded, to that ineffable kind of visitation, so that, blazing wholly with the ardour of charity, you may be happily satisfied from the entry of the glory of God as from the fruit of the land of promise, and, with the fire of divine love utterly consuming the yoke of concupiscence, you may rest in the paleness of gold, in the splendour of wisdom, in the sweetness of divine contemplation; and you may experience wholly that the yoke of the Lord is sweet, and His burden is light (Matt. 11:30).

CHAPTER XVI.

That the resolve of a stricter life is not to be forsaken by anyone, although he does not experience that sweet affection.

But suppose that nothing of this sweetness flows forth, that no sweetness of tears soothes you. Even so you are not to return to your former ways; rather, the fruits of both ways of life are to be compared, and weighed on the balance of conscience with an even scale, lest perhaps in your estimation the lesser outweigh the greater, the worse be set on a level with the better, the doubtful prejudice the secure, or the fewer the more. For if you cannot otherwise, it is surely better for you, with one limb weakened, or, if need be, cut off, to walk strong and sound in the rest, than, with all your limbs withered, to lean too insistently on the soundness of one.

CHAPTER XVII.

The questions of a certain novice, and his own answers, are inserted.

When not long ago a certain brother, renouncing the world, had betaken himself to our monastery, and had been handed over by our most reverend abbot to my littleness to be instructed in the discipline of the Rule, he began at one time to ask in wonder what reason I thought there was why, while he was still set in the secular habit and way of life, he was so often moved to compunction, and was melted into a certain affection of divine love, and enjoyed such sweetness of spirit as now, he said, I am not able, I will not say to retain for long, but not even to taste now and then. Then I said: "Do you think that former way of life of yours was holier, and more acceptable to God?" "By no means," he said, "would I say that; especially since I now do many things of which, had I done any single one then, I would have been believed by all to be not only holy but, if I may so speak, to be adored." "I ask," I said, "in how many things did you experience that saying of the Apostle, that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God (Acts 14:21); and that of blessed Job: If I be just, I shall not wash my head, being filled with affliction and misery? (Job 10:15)." "I do not remember," he said, "having felt anything of these; but very often I felt myself love Christ more expressly and more sweetly." And I: "Did you then suffer for Christ as much as you suffer now?" "Not in a single hour," he said, "as much as I bear here without ceasing. For, to say nothing of the rest, in no way would I have let myself be held down by so great a silence even for one day, or by any means have kept myself from idle and vain talk. On the contrary, after those tears I spoke of, I would straightway go back to laughter and gossip, and be carried this way and that in restless running about as the impulse of my mind took me; and, possessing the freedom of my own will, I took delight in the presence of my parents, smiled at the chatter of my companions, attended lavish banquets, did not shrink from drinking bouts; I took my morning sleep at my pleasure, and was stuffed with food and drink even beyond the limits of necessity. I say nothing of the goads of anger by which I was sometimes driven, of quarrels, contentions, and the desires for worldly things, at which I aimed as far as I could." "But now," I said, "what are your manners, what your life, what your doings?" And he, smiling: "It is easy," he said, "to tell: for they do not allow themselves to be unknown. The food is sparer, the clothing rougher; the drink is from the spring, sleep for the most part over a book. Then, when our limbs are weary, a hard mat is spread beneath them; while sleep would be sweetest, we are made to rise when the bell strikes. I say nothing of how we eat our bread in the sweat of our face, how we speak to three men only, and that very rarely, and scarcely about necessary things. Is not that saying of the Apostle most manifestly fulfilled in us: Mortify your members which are upon the earth (Col. 3:5)? And that of the Psalmist: I am become as a beast of burden before Thee? (Ps. 72:23). Truly we are become as a beast of burden; going wherever we are led without contradiction, whatever

bearing without resistance whatever is laid upon us. There is no place for one's own will; no time for idleness or dissipation. Certain things I do not think should be passed over, which delight no less than those others weary. Nowhere are there lawsuits; nowhere contention; nowhere the querulous lament of country folk over cruel oppression; nowhere the pitiable cry of the wronged poor; no pleas, no secular courts. Everywhere peace, everywhere tranquillity, and a wonderful freedom from the tumults of worldly affairs. Among the brethren there is such unity and such concord that each thing seems to belong to all, and all things to each. And what delights me wonderfully, there is no respect of persons, no regard for birth. Need alone makes difference, infirmity alone makes inequality. For what is laboured at in common by all is distributed to each, not as carnal affection or private love may dictate, but as each has need. How wonderful this too, that for three hundred men, as I reckon, the will of one man is law, so much so that what has once fallen from his mouth is kept by all with such care as if all had sworn to it together, or had heard it from the mouth of God Himself. And to comprehend much in brief, I find nothing at all of perfection in the evangelical and apostolic precepts, nothing in the writings of the holy Fathers, I understand nothing in the sayings of the ancient monks, that is not in accord with this order and this profession." Then I said: "You are a novice; therefore I would assign this not to boasting, but rather to fervour. Yet I want you to be cautious, lest you think there is any profession at all in this life which does not have its pretenders; lest, if perhaps you see anyone go beyond bounds in word or deed, you be troubled as though something new had happened beyond your expectation. Nevertheless, do you reckon that all these things which you enumerate so fervently are to be compared with those tears of yours?" "Far from it," he said, "that outpouring of tears never rendered my conscience secure, never stripped me of the fear of death! But now I do not much care, nay, I even greatly desire, that after a little while my Maker may take me away. And although this is perhaps a matter of faint-heartedness, as you are wont to reproach me, namely that I would rather be released from these labours, yet in no way could I wish it without a sure hope of the divine mercy. Hence I wonder greatly why I loved God with a fuller love when I enjoyed less security." "I ask," I said, "if you had two servants, one of whom not only obeyed your commands most obediently, but even bore some labours for your sake, while the other, a daily transgressor of your commands, would have agreed to bear nothing at all adverse for you, and both said: I love my master, which would you rather choose to believe?"

"Who," he said, "would not see that this one is to be most abundantly rewarded, and that one to be convicted not only of transgression but also of excessive impudence?" "So," I said, "you must judge yourself between these two states of yours." "But what reason," he said, "will be able to persuade me not to believe my own experience?

"If anyone," I said, "were to ask you which is the better, he who loves God more or he who loves Him less, will you not without any hesitation pronounce him the better whom you know to love more?" "It is the part of an unsound head," he said, "even to hesitate here." "I beg you now," I said, "to set aside whatever still flatters you of worldly sweetness, as being a novice, whatever of pleasure once tasted plays upon you; and do not attend to what the flesh suggests, but to what reason dictates, and answer me according to the rules of truth and the testimony of your conscience, whether you would rather be now in that state than in this in which you now are." "Plainly," he said, "if I do not wish to deceive myself, nor to act so that my own mouth be the oil of the sinner to fatten my head, I must confess that if I had preferred that state, it would plainly be not for Christ's sake but for the world's, not from desire of greater perfection but from distaste for present labour, or certainly from appetite for greater delight." "Now then," I said, "as one aware of your fervour, I do not hesitate to affirm that you would not wish to be in that state now." "You are not mistaken," he said. "But if in that state," I said, "you loved God more, you were surely better. If you were better then, why are you now more secure? Do you choose to be more secure rather than better? But also, if anyone should say that he is the better who has applied himself more, rather than he who has applied himself less, to fulfilling the commandments of the Lord, I think you will not deny it." "I am hemmed in on every side," he said, "and, as it were, I am dashed from rock to rock by the thrust of reason, and I find no way out. For that I then loved God more, and more often drew breath into His love with certain sweet tears, I ought not to doubt, as of a thing experienced; yet I dare not deny that he is the better who has been more fervent in the love of God. Further, against my preferring that life to this way of life the whole authority of the holy Scriptures fights, reason resists, our very conscience cries out. Hence I judge it most insane to doubt that he is the better with whose conduct the authority of Scripture more agrees. But since there is no small contradiction in these things, I must consider where doubt is less dangerous: about the truth of the Scriptures, or about the most manifest reason, or rather about the conjecture of my own experience." "No Catholic," I said, "goes against Scripture, no peaceable man against manifest reason; but in a man's estimate of himself, into whom does deceit not easily creep? In short, experience is deceptive, and, as it is written: Not every spirit is to be believed, and sometimes Satan transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14)." "Nevertheless," he said, "although perhaps I then loved God more, yet because I now obey His will more, apply myself more to fulfilling His commandments, afflict myself more for His name's sake: hence the mind is more secure, the conscience more cheerful, and the soul, aware of so many labours, readier through hope of the rewards to undergo death itself." "You assert," I said, "two things much contrary to each other: namely, that you loved God more, and obeyed His will less. Which opinion

of yours the saying of the Saviour Himself makes void, Who says thus: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My commandments (John 14:23). And again: He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me (John 14:21). And again: He who does not love Me does not keep My words (John 14:24). Hence that disciple whom Jesus loved, for whom that sacred breast was made a resting-place for his head: In this is the charity of God, that we keep His commandments (1 John 5:3). Accordingly, as a certain saint says: "Whoever have violated the commandments of God by wicked word or deed or even thought believe in vain that they love God." Hence also blessed Gregory: "The love of God is never idle; for if it exists, it works great things; or if it scorns to work, it is not love. The proof of love, therefore, is the showing forth of the work (Homily 30)."

"What then?" he said. "Is that most sweet affection to be believed to have been vain, and shall we judge those tears deceptive?" "Not at all," I said. "Rather, their fruit is very great, if only you understand it. Know, then, first, that the love of God is by no means to be weighed according to that momentary and, so to speak, hourly affection; which is clear to see from contrary examples. For when in tragedies or in vain songs someone is represented as wronged or oppressed, whose lovable beauty, wonderful courage, and gracious affection are proclaimed, if anyone, hearing these things when they are sung, or seeing them if they are recited, is moved by a certain affection even to the shedding of tears, is it not utterly absurd to draw from this most vain piety a conjecture about the quality of his love, so as to affirm from it that he loves that fabled someone-or-other, for whose rescue, even if all these things were really being done before his eyes, he would not suffer even a small portion of his substance to be spent? Of like folly it surely is, nay, of much greater madness, if some lustful or lukewarm man, by a hidden dispensation of God, is moved to compunction by certain inward affections, to pass judgement on his love, so that he should on this account be believed to love God more than that man who has so subjected himself to the divine service that whatever he knows to be contrary to His will he detests with all horror, and whatever labour is laid upon him he embraces with all fervour for His name's sake." At these words he, suffused with a certain shame, with head bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, said: "Most true, most true. For even at the tales which are commonly invented about some Arthur or other, I remember that I was sometimes moved even to the shedding of tears. Hence I am not a little ashamed of my own vanity, who, if perhaps at the things that are devoutly read or sung about the Lord, or indeed are spoken in public sermon, I have been able to wring some tear from myself, straightway applaud myself on my holiness, as if some great and unwonted miracle had happened to me. And truly it is the judgement of a most vain mind to be fanned by vainglory over these affections, if perhaps they come for piety's sake, when it used to be pricked to compunction by tales and lies. But because

"you said a little before that no small fruit is in these affections: I ask that you go on with what you had begun." "Most gladly," I said. "For the knowledge of the truth is not to be denied to you, for whose sake you think you must not spare even yourself. For most people, if they happen to hear anything argued against sloth, contrive certain sophistical little reasonings by which to resist the truth, even with conscience crying out against them, and, inclining their heart to words of malice, love excuses in sins. It is surely better to confess to the Lord and say: Have mercy on me, for I am weak (Ps. 6:3), than to say: I am rich and wealthy and need nothing, when one is wretched, pitiable, blind, and poor, and naked (Rev. 3:17)." But let us come to our purpose.

CHAPTER XVIII.

In what things the love of God is to be believed to consist.

"Therefore, as we have said, the love of God is not to be reckoned according to these momentary affections, which no spiritual man is unaware are in no way subject to our will, but rather according to the abiding quality of the will itself. For to join one's own will to the will of God, so that to whatever the divine will prescribes the human will consents, so that there is no other reason why it wills this or that except that it knows God wills it: this indeed is to love God. For the will itself is nothing other than love; nor are good or bad wills to be called anything other than good or bad loves. Indeed, the very will of God is His love, which is nothing other than His Holy Spirit, through Whom charity is poured out in our hearts. This outpouring of charity is the joining of the divine and the human will. This takes place when the Holy Spirit, Who indeed is the will and love of God, and is God, bestows and pours Himself into the human will, and, lifting it from lower things to higher, transforms the whole of it into His own mode and quality, so that, cleaving to Him by the indissoluble glue of unity, it is made one spirit with Him, as the Apostle intimates this same thing more plainly: He who cleaves, he says, to the Lord is made one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Indeed this will is to be judged according to two things, namely suffering and action: that is, whether it patiently bears the things which God has brought upon it, or permitted to be brought upon it, and fervently fulfils the things which He has commanded. For the rest, as blessed Gregory says (Homily 20), let no one believe whatever his mind answers him about the love of God without works. For it is the sentence of Him Who does not lie: He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me (John 14:21). In whatever way, then, the judgements of God, which are a great deep, dispense these unwonted affections and inward visitations, for whatever causes too they are sometimes, so to speak, suddenly poured into these who neither seek nor knock, and withdrawn from those who labour with every effort to acquire them, whoever's will accords with the will of God, and who bears patiently the things God has brought upon him, and carries out fervently the things He has commanded, [loves] God

is without any hesitation to be said to love. Otherwise, if our love is to be measured by these affections, so that we are said to love God, or any man, only when we experience an affection of this kind, then we must be said to love not continually but at certain very rare intervals. It must indeed be said that if perhaps a just man should at some time will, for example, the salvation of someone, which God nevertheless does not will, yet his will is not at variance with the will of God, since it is indeed the will of God that works in him to will this, Who wills all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) precisely in that He makes His own wish for it. Further, this love has its beginning, its progress, its perfection. To discourse on all of these more minutely is perhaps neither for this time nor within our power. Accordingly, to feel those affections is not, as you suppose, to love God, but to have a foretaste, with a sweet drawing, of a certain drop of that sweetness offered, nay, poured into the mind, as though present to the inner palate. For it is one thing, desiring the sweetness of honey, to labour with all one's strength to obtain it; another, if it has been poured on the lips of someone who neither seeks nor loves it, to be unable to escape the sense of that sweetness. The one does not taste, yet loves; the other does not love, yet tastes. To use simpler words, then, so that you may understand more easily: he who applies himself as much as he can to possess God, namely by obeying His commandments and by living soberly and justly and godly according to the apostolic and evangelical precepts, even if he tastes nothing of this sweetness, is nevertheless to be said to love God, as He Himself testifies, Who says: He who keeps My commandments, he it is who loves Me (John 14:21). But he who experiences this affection daily and nonetheless sets his own desires before the divine will is to be believed, not indeed to love God, but merely to be unable not to feel the spiritual savour thrust into his mind by the divine dispensation."

CHAPTER XIX.

What the fruit of the various compunctions is, is explained to the novice who asks.

"Yet this experience of sweetness is, for the negligent, a great stirring-up to good works; for those toiling in good works, a needful consolation; for those standing on the summit of perfection, a sweet and secure refreshment. He, then, Who is wondrously merciful works our salvation in wonderful and ineffable ways: He Himself enlightening as wisdom, He Himself terrifying as justice, He Himself enticing as the sweetness of delight. As if you wished to kindle someone ignorant of honey to the desire of it, but, seeing him delighted with other flavours, though less savoury, and inflamed to the desire of it neither by speech nor by any praise of it, you were to take a small drop of that liquid and let it fall into his throat; and he, having taken the taste, so burned with desire for it that he would not shrink from undertaking even immense labours to obtain it; yet as often as you saw him, wearied by the enormity of the labour, grow lukewarm from the fervour he had begun with, you would soothe him with a like drop of sweetness

so the clemency of our most loving Saviour entices to salvation, by a certain taste of inward sweetness, those sunk in the allurements of the flesh, whom neither the light of reason nor the fear of the judgement to come avails to restrain from a wickedly flattering sweetness; until, drawn little by little by their own pleasure, according to that saying:

Each is drawn by his own pleasure, (Virgil, Eclogue II, line 65.)

He lays on them the yoke of His service. But since whoever comes to the service of God hears the Scripture saying: Stand firm, and prepare your soul for temptation (Sir. 2:1), it is necessary that, as often as the labour of temptation oppresses him, when he is already wavering and almost despairing, a certain spiritual savour should flow in; refreshed by its sprinkling, he may take up the struggle with the vices with keener ardour of mind, bear it magnanimously, and more easily overcome or avoid it. Look into yourself more carefully. After that experience of most sweet affection, when you had gone back to trifling and vain things, were you not confounded when you returned again to yourself, and kindled, so to say, with a saving hatred against yourself? Hence you thought of seizing on a stricter life, and of setting before yourself so great a necessity that, even if your will consented to such things, there would yet be no means of going back to them." "Entirely so," he said. "You see, then, that that fervent conversion of yours, this very strict way of life of yours, is as it were the fruit of those tears? For to this end they were given, this they were working little by little, nay rather God through them. What wonder, then, if, their business, so to speak, being accomplished, they have ceased? Now indeed labours are to be undergone by you for Christ, the virtue of patience to be exercised, the insolence of the flesh to be chastised by frequent vigils and fasts, temptations to be endured, and the mind to be called away from all earthly care; but above all one's own will to be mortified by the virtue of obedience. But as often as the mind is wearied beyond measure in these things, you must hasten with careful devotion of prayer to the motherly breasts of Jesus, so that, drawing from their abundance the milk of wonderful consolation, you may say with the Apostle: Blessed be God, Who comforts us in all our tribulation (2 Cor. 1:3–4); and: As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also through Christ our consolation abounds (2 Cor. 1:5). Thus that devout affection which before had roused you when sluggish, lest you perish, will console you when labouring, lest you fail, until after countless victories, made as it were a veteran soldier, with these temptations by which you are now wearied as a novice wholly lulled to rest, you repose in the sweetness of the virtues; and, admitted by the grace of the divine loving-kindness to that most sublime kind of consolation also, which is known to be as it were the reward of the just, you may say with the Prophet: How great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for those who fear Thee!" (Ps. 30:20). Then he, with tears welling up: "What you say pleases me," he said, "and pleases me greatly, for not only do I conjecture, with reason as my teacher, that these things are so, but I perceive it in myself more clearly than light. For that first kind of visitation I have experienced exactly as you assert; but the second,

which is now beginning to be at work in me, I perceive through your instruction; and that sublime and ineffable one I trust that I shall one day attain."

CHAPTER XX.

That novice is convicted of having loved God less by the very thing by which he proves that he loved Him more; and it is shown for whom the outpouring of tears is of profit.

"See then," I said, "how contrary to your opinion the matter has turned out." "How?" he said. "Lest perhaps," I said, "by that very thing by which you believed you loved God more, you be convicted of having loved Him less." "For a little while," he said, "this reasoning too glimmers through to me; yet I should like to know it more fully through your argument." "Will not each man," I said, "be proved the more imperfect in the love of God, the more negligent he has been, or the weaker in mind?" "It cannot be denied," he said. "But," I said, "as you say you now see yourself more clearly, that first affection rebuked you when you were straying; this second one sustains you when you are weak." "Exactly so," he said. "They convict you, therefore," I said, "of loving more imperfectly." Then he, sighing: "Oh," he said, "how miserably they are deceived, how they are betrayers of their own salvation, who, entangled in innumerable and damnable vices, if they experience some little of this affection of which you speak, not only promise themselves pardon for the past, but even return to the same things somehow more securely; nor do these things profit them at all by way of spiritual incitement, but, thinking themselves holier on this account, they wallow the more shamelessly in their filth or negligences. Perhaps of such the Apostle says: God gave them a spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear (Rom. 11:8). Does not this kind of compunction blind the eyes and stop the ears of those, at least, who reckon that the most monstrous filth of the vices is to be washed away without fruits of penance by these few tears?" "The outpouring of tears is indeed," I said, "a most pleasing and most acceptable sacrifice to God, a sufficient holocaust for all offences, if it be of those who repent and confess, but do not repeat the things of which they have repented; who flee with a spirit of humility and a contrite mind to the loving heart of Jesus, and who apply themselves as far as they can to worthy fruits of penance. Wherefore you, and everyone anxious for his salvation, must labour that this mortification of the flesh, this solicitude of vigils and labours, this cheapness of clothing, this roughness of food, this gravity of silence, this, I say, most acceptable holocaust as it were of all the members of the inner and outer man, may grow fat with the fat, so to speak, of tears and with the sweetness of most devout affections, so that, when the fire of charity has been let into the ark of the heart, it may give forth a sweet odour, and thus, according to the Prophet: May your holocaust be made fat (Ps. 19:4). But if you cannot have both, it is better to live without tears in apostolic poverty and evangelical purity than with daily tears to go daily against the divine commandments. For though they raise the dead, cast out demons, give light to the blind, nonetheless

they will hear from the Lord: Depart from Me (Matt. 7:23), whoever have been workers of iniquity."

CHAPTER XXI.

That from the things that have been inserted it can be perceived what charity, and what cupidity, works in one who is making progress.

These things we have perhaps not unprofitably inserted thus far: if they are all looked into attentively, diligently, and lastly humbly, it will be, unless I am mistaken, very easy to see that anyone converted is lifted up to higher things, by a new infusion of charity, with eager effort and with certain very light movements of his mind, but that, with cupidity pressing him down and always forcing whatever it has clung to towards the depths by a natural weight, he labours not a little in that very effort. And the more deeply the noxious thicket has fixed its roots in the very recesses of the soul, the greater the difficulty in tearing them out, and accordingly the less the ease in the ascent. But just as a lazy and slothful man, unskilled in husbandry, is slower in clearing and cleansing his field, though it be overgrown with thistles and thorns only in a small part, whereas one who is energetic, careful and diligent in this craft, even if they have taken over the whole surface of the field, uproots the thickness of the brambles more quickly, and renders it rich and fruitful from barren and unfruitful: so, surely, if someone renouncing the world is slow, lukewarm, and too little concerned for his own cleansing, though he was less defiled in the world, he will advance more slowly to serenity of conscience and to the freedom of charity; but if, fervent in spirit, diligent, careful, grounded in the virtue of discretion, he takes up the instruments of spiritual exercises and powerfully plucks out the offspring of the vices from the field of his heart, he will the sooner draw breath in the air of a purer conscience, and, having shaken off the yoke of cupidity and laid down the burden of the passions, he will find that the yoke of the Lord is sweet, and His burden light.

CHAPTER XXII.

How great the delight is in contempt of pleasures and victory over them.

And so the man of experience will prove that to be steeped in the sweetness of chastity is a thing not of no labour only, but of the highest delight, although it is burdensome to restrain with the bridle of temperance the natural incitements and unclean desires that arise from the concupiscence of the flesh. Likewise it is not only delightful but glorious besides, when the concupiscence of gluttony has been overcome, to see oneself not the slave of one's belly but its master, exulting with that wonderful exultation: But I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be sufficient: I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to hunger and to be filled, both to abound and to suffer want (Phil. 4:11–12). And also, if the love of the flesh has been perfectly lulled to sleep, or at least absorbed by the fire of divine love, there will be no labour in outward things, because the mind cannot be troubled by the affliction of that by whose love it cannot be undone. Although some shamefully abuse the allurements of scents, yet because those of whom we are now speaking, either little or not at all in the appetite for them or

labour under the loss, I forbear to say more on this. Moreover, the pleasure of the eyes and ears brings no small labour to very many, and it is in no way rightly ascribed to the Saviour's yoke, since it is rather perverse custom that brings forth the whole of it. Because they feel it burdensome to cut this off, they prefer to complain of the harshness of the Lord's yoke, whose gentleness they have not experienced; yet since that yoke consists in the contempt of pleasures, it surely confers on those who despise them no less freedom than the sweetness which those vain and sportive things bring forth to their harm.

CHAPTER XXIII.

On the vain pleasure of the ears.

But since we have thought that the openly wicked should be set aside from this consideration, let our discourse now be of those who cloak the business of pleasure under the appearance of religion: who usurp for the use of their own vanity those things which the ancient fathers practised to their profit as types of things to come. Whence, I ask, now that the types and figures have ceased, whence come so many organs, so many cymbals in the Church? To what end, I pray, that terrible blast of the bellows, expressing the crash of thunder rather than the sweetness of a voice? To what end that contracting and breaking of the voice? This one sings the under-part, that one sings apart; another divides and cuts up certain middle notes. Now the voice is tightened, now broken, now pushed in, now spread out with a more diffuse sound. Sometimes, what it is shameful to say, it is forced into the whinnyings of horses; sometimes, its manly vigour laid aside, it is sharpened into the thinnesses of a woman's voice; now and then it is twisted and twisted back with a certain artful winding about. You may see at times a man with open mouth, as if his breath were shut in, breathing out, not singing, and with a certain ridiculous catching of the voice as it were threatening silence; now imitating the agonies of the dying, or the swoon of sufferers. Meanwhile the whole body is shaken with certain play-actors' gestures, the lips are twisted, the shoulders roll and play; and a bending of the fingers answers to each single note. And this ridiculous dissoluteness is called religion; and where these things are most frequently carried on, there, it is proclaimed, God is served more honourably. Meanwhile the common people, standing by, trembling and astonished, marvel at the sound of the bellows, the clashing of the cymbals, the harmony of the pipes; but they watch the wanton gesticulations of the singers, the harlot-like alternations and breakings of the voices, not without guffaws and laughter, so that you would think they had come together not to an oratory but to a theatre, not to pray but to gaze. That dread Majesty before Whom they stand is not feared, nor is deference paid to that mystical manger at which they minister, where Christ is mystically wrapped in swaddling clothes, where His most sacred blood is [poured] in the chalice, where the heavens are opened; the angels stand by; where earthly things are joined to heavenly; where men are made companions of angels. Thus what the holy Fathers instituted so that the weak might be stirred to the affection of piety is taken up into the use of unlawful pleasure. For sound is not to be preferred to sense: but sound with sense is for the most part to be admitted as an incitement to greater affection. And therefore the sound ought to be such, so moderate, so grave, that it does not

carry off the whole mind to delight in itself, but leaves the greater portion to the sense. For the most blessed Augustine says (Confessions, Book X, ch. 33): "The mind is moved to the affection of piety when a divine song is heard: but if the desire of hearing should long for the sound more than the sense, it is reproved." And elsewhere: "When," he says, "the singing delights me more than the words, I confess that I have sinned in a manner deserving punishment, and I would rather not hear the singers." When, therefore, someone, having spurned that ridiculous and harmful vanity, has betaken himself to the moderation of the ancient Fathers, if honest gravity brings a monstrous distaste upon ears that itch at the memory of theatrical trifles; and so he despises and judges the whole holiness of the Fathers as if it were rusticity; preferring to the manner of singing which the Holy Spirit instituted through the most holy Fathers as through His instruments, namely Augustine, Ambrose, and above all Gregory, Iberian dirges, as the saying goes, or the most vain trifles of who knows what schoolmen. If, then, he is tormented on this account, grieves on this account, on this account pants anxiously after the things he had vomited up: what, I ask, is the origin of this labour, the yoke of charity, or the burden of worldly concupiscence?

CHAPTER XXIV.

On the concupiscence of the eyes, which lies in curiosity, and which afflicts those converted to the more perfect way.

But now a few things must be said of the concupiscence of the eyes, which the holy Fathers saw fit to call curiosity: for they judge that it pertains not only to the outer but also to the inner man. To curiosity of the outer man, then, pertains all superfluous beauty, which the eyes love in varied forms, in bright and pleasant colours, in diverse workmanships, in garments, shoes, vessels, paintings, sculptures and diverse fashioned things, going beyond necessary and moderate use: all of which the lovers of the world seek out as allurements of the eyes: following outwardly what they make, abandoning inwardly Him by Whom they were made, and destroying what they were made. Hence also in the cloisters of monks are cranes and hares, does and stags, magpies and ravens: not indeed the equipment of Antony and Macarius, but womanish delights: none of which in any way serves the poverty of monks, but they feed the eyes of the curious. If, then, anyone, preferring the poverty of Jesus to these allurements of the eyes, has shut himself up within the bounds of necessity, and in place of that superfluous breadth and needless height of buildings has sought the cells of certain poor brethren; when perhaps, entering an oratory built of unpolished stone, he meets nothing painted, nothing sculpted, nothing precious, no marble floors spread with carpets, no walls clothed in purple displaying the histories of the nations, the battles of kings, or at least a series of the Scriptures, not that astonishing blaze of tapers, not the splendour of gleaming metal in diverse utensils; when, then, none of these meets his gaze, if all that he sees begins to seem mean to him, and [he begins to think] himself cast out of a kind of paradise, and

should complain that he is plunged into a kind of prison squalor, whence this narrowness of mind, whence all this labour? I ask: if he had learned from the Lord Jesus to be meek and humble of heart, and to contemplate, according to the Apostle, not the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18): if he had tasted even a little the glory of that inner man, of which it is written: All the glory of the king's daughter is from within (Ps. 44:14); and that saying of the Apostle: Let each one prove his own work, and so he will have glory in himself, and not in another (Gal. 6:4): and if not in another man, how much less in dumb and senseless metal? If, I say, the yoke of divine love had been set upon the inner neck, and that sweet Jesus had tasted sweet there within, would he much, I ask, have affected these little outward glories? Now a few things must be said of that inner curiosity, which consists chiefly in three things: namely in the appetite for harmful or empty knowledge; in prying into another's life, not to imitate it, but to envy it if it is good, or to mock it if it is bad, or at any rate from mere curiosity alone, that it may be known whether it is bad or good; lastly in a certain curious restlessness for the knowledge of secular things or doings. From all of these, once minds are taken captive, no small labour arises, when they are either exercised intemperately or forbidden to those who willingly exercise them. Hence it is that many who have given their mind to empty philosophy, whose custom it also is to meditate the Bucolics along with the Gospels, to read Horace with the prophets, Tully with Paul, and then also to play with metre, and weave love-songs in long-winded verses, or provoke one another with invectives, when they have betaken themselves to the place where all these things are condemned by the strictness of the rule as seed-beds of vanity, or beginnings of quarrels, or incentives to lust: they begin to be saddened, to be angry: and since they have nothing into which to pour out the seeds of the vanity they have conceived, they seem to burst out into those words of Elihu: Behold, my belly is as new wine without a vent, which bursts new flasks (Job 32:19). Whence, then, this labour arises, it is easy to judge. Thence it is also that when, given over the whole day to empty spectacles or intent on hearing rumours, we have in a certain manner gone out of ourselves, returning again to ourselves we bring in the images of vanities, and, carrying a heart full of phantoms even to the place of our rest, we pass sleepless nights for the most foolish vanity; with most stupid presumption we paint as if before our eyes the battles of kings, the victories of generals, and in the very psalmody or in our prayers we order all the business of the kingdom in idle wanderings of thought. There is yet another, most evil kind of curiosity, by which, however, only those are assailed who are conscious to themselves of great virtues: namely the testing of their own holiness through the display of miracles: which is to tempt God. This kind of curiosity is forbidden thus by the Mosaic law: You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Deut. 6:16). Whence also the Apostle: Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them

tempted, and perished by serpents (1 Cor. 10:9). If anyone consents to this most evil vice, then, from excessive narrowness of mind, when he has not obtained his wish, he will fall either into the snares of despair or into the sacrilege of blasphemy.

CHAPTER XXV.

On the pride of life, and first on vanity.

There remains the third branch of the harmful root, which the holy Apostle named the pride of life. Since there are many kinds of it, it pertains to the present question to discuss two. And the first is that which pours in the love of vain praise; the second implants the lust of domination. How great a labour, then, arises from these, how great a narrowness of mind, who could easily say? Whenever, plainly, I am disturbed at being corrected or wronged, or am confounded by any detraction or contradiction whatever; or, what is more lamentable, am consumed by the plague of sadness, if I would trace out the causes of this labour more expressly, I find in the very recesses of the soul the root of vanity lurking deep, by which the mind, presuming great things of itself, deluded, paints itself as one who ought not only not to be reproved or rebuked, but moreover to be praised and honoured by all. Or at any rate, when, his mind infected with the poison of this abominable plague, he has feigned himself holy and admirable in the estimation of others, as soon as he perceives that others dissent from his vanity, cheated of his glory and joy, which he had placed, that is, by a false opinion in the estimation of others, he must needs be gnawed by the goads of sadness. From this most evil disease too are sought the first chairs, the first greetings, the first voice in councils, the first seats in the assembly: all of which disturb as much when denied or taken away as they delight when offered or acquired.

CHAPTER XXVI.

On the lust of domination.

But if the lust of domination has corrupted the mind, how much labour it imposes on it only he can know who, having experienced the tyranny of this most evil passion, has at length by God's help been freed from its dominion. For as soon as the insane mind has conceived this noxious poison, it lays itself down with degenerate baseness before him from whom it hunts the favour its desire seeks, and before that man is preferred to others, he himself becomes the most abject slave of all whom he perceives able to hinder or to help him. Thence, for fear of them, the suppression of truth; for their favour, base flattery; and so all freedom of speech is taken from him, so that he is compelled to praise what his conscience sees ought to be reproved, and to reprove what it has itself shown to be approved. Further, if he perceives anyone drawing nearer to the familiarity of him on whom he leans, at once his captive mind is pierced with the darts of suspicion; lest that man be sooner taken up to the honours he himself is canvassing, he is affected with the sickness of fear. And so he is beaten with the iron rods of envy, so that neither does food turn to his profit nor sleep come to him for rest. Then he turns to detractions and whisperings, and whatever he has perceived in the other that is to be reproved, he betrays and makes public; whatever he cannot reprove publicly, with a sinister interpretation he

defiles. But if, all his hope frustrated, another is advanced, what crosses then for that soul, what torments! He is confounded, crushed, troubled, scattered; and, not enduring to bear the heats within, either he is driven out of the community, battered by the blows of so many passions, or, if held fast by human shame he stays on in the community, he is wholly turned to the contrary, and, unable to bear the flame of ambition once conceived, he pants, he boils, he is tormented, so that bitterness appears in his silence and indignation in his words; and like an earthen vessel under the force of a hidden furnace he cracks unhappily through the movements of the outer man, speaking bitingly, looking savagely, and answering everything put to him with a swollen puffing-up. Then he openly resists, contradicts, and rails at those whom before he basely flattered, gnawing them in secret with malicious detraction, in public rebuking them without any reverence or decency. Then, curious to his own harm, attending to all the words of his seniors, he lies in wait for every syllable, spies out their deeds; and, scanning with shameless eyes all their movements and, so to speak, their goings, he reckons up everything, judges of everything, and interprets everything according to the spite of his own malice. And if perhaps, as human weakness goes, the senior has been overtaken by some excess, then at once, having found occasion, as it seems to him, of avenging his injury, he raises his brow, wrinkles his forehead, opens wide his lips in unseasonable clamours. But to make those who watch him believe the lie that he is driven by zeal for God, he sometimes forces out a few little drops of tears, brings forth deceitful sighs, complains in querulous enough tones that charity is forsaken; he groans that purity is transgressed, justice trampled underfoot. You would say, if you did not know, that he is driven by that spirit by which once the prophet Jeremiah, burning, said: The word of the Lord was made as a fire burning in my bones: and I fainted, not

BOOK III.

In which is shown how charity is to be practised.

CHAPTER I.

The law on the distinction of Sabbaths is set forth.

We read in the Old Testament of certain distinctions of Sabbaths (Lev. 23): to the consideration of these we dedicate the beginning of this book. For you have in the law three times of sabbath rest consecrated: namely the seventh day, the seventh year, and, after seven times seven, the fiftieth year. The first, then, is the sabbath of days, the second of years, the third is not undeservedly called the sabbath of sabbaths. For it consists of the seven sabbaths of years with one added, so that the number seven is concluded in unity: it both proceeds from unity and is perfected in unity. For every good work, too, is begun from faith in the one God, [and] by the sevenfold [gift] of the Spirit

bearing it (Jer. 20:9). So this man, proclaiming that his inward parts are consumed by the fire of zeal for God, lyingly claims that he is roused for justice, that he contends for order, that for charity he has even undergone hatred. What more? He proves at last so rebellious and stubborn that extreme necessity presses either for his expulsion, or at least for his being soothed with some liberty of his own will. Hence a certain strange abuse has arisen. When once the state of religion was managed quite purely, as the rule of truth requires, whoever were humbler, quieter to obey, readier for reproaches, more fervent in all good things, who least of all sought honours, such men were, I do not say promoted, but compelled to the ruling of others or to certain offices; now, on the contrary, while the insolence of some is feared, or their rebellion guarded against, or their wickedness dreaded, because they are querulous, because irascible, because fickle and slothful, not able to stand on their own feet in the house, now outside, now within; because, in short, they are feared, they are promoted; and what ought to have been for them a cause of abasement and humility becomes the tinder of swelling pride. But let this suffice concerning this threefold cupidity. If anyone will attend carefully to the face of his own soul in all these things, as in a kind of mirror, he will find, unless I am mistaken, not only what deformity he has, but will also recognize under the light of truth the hidden causes of the deformity itself, and so he will accuse not the harshness of the Lord's yoke, which is none, but his own perversity. These roots of the passions, then, the causes as it were of all our labour, being torn out utterly, and the shoulders of our mind being put under the yoke of charity, we shall learn from the Lord Jesus that He is meek and humble of heart, and we shall find rest for our souls, keeping sabbath, not with the Jews a carnal Sabbath, but in the sweetness of charity one eternal and spiritual.

is advanced, so that one may come to Him Who is truly one, where all that we are is made one with Him. And since in unity there is no division, let there be there no pouring out of the mind upon diverse things: but let it be one in the One, with the One, through the One, about the One: perceiving one thing, savouring one thing; and because always one, always at rest: and so keeping a perpetual sabbath. Meanwhile you have the sabbath of days, the sabbath of years, and, in a kind of foretaste, the sabbath of sabbaths. Who is so illumined by the Spirit of God that he borrows these distinctions of sabbaths not from the words of others, by way of memory, but, feeling them wrought in himself, speaks not only from memory but also from experience? Be present, Thou good Jesus, be present to this Thy poor little one, begging

begging, not the crumbs of the rich man clad in purple, but, like a little dog, the crumbs which fall from the table of my masters, Thy sons. For great is that son of Thine, and, because he is Thy son, my lord, namely holy Moses; admitted, indeed, to Thy table, he feasted on Thy bread in the litter of Solomon. And I know, my sweet Lord, for Thou hast said: It is not good to take the bread of the children and cast it to the dogs (Matt. 15:26). But since the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table, do Thou break this bread for Thy little dog, that he who is not equal to a crust may gather crumbs.

CHAPTER II.

That the distinction of these Sabbaths is to be sought in a threefold love: and what interweaving there is in the distinction of the threefold love.

Let us hear Him, then, as He breaks it: You shall love, He says, the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hangs the whole law and the prophets (Matt. 22:37–40). If, then, we believe, nay, because we believe the Truth, we must seek these distinctions of the Sabbaths in these two commandments; for they too are from the law. Further, if you look carefully at these two commandments, you find three things to be loved: namely yourself, your neighbour, God. For where it is said: You shall love your neighbour as yourself, it is plain that you ought to love yourself as well. This, however, is not a commandment, because it is implanted in nature. For no one ever, as the Apostle testifies, hated his own flesh (Eph. 5:29). And if not his flesh, much less surely his mind, which every man, even unknowingly, loves more than his flesh. For there is no one who would not rather live infirm in the flesh than insane in the mind. Let a man's love of himself, then, be the first Sabbath; let love of neighbour be the second; but the love of God the Sabbath of Sabbaths. Now, as we said above, the spiritual Sabbath is the rest of the soul, the peace of the heart, the tranquillity of the mind. And this Sabbath is sometimes felt in love of oneself, sometimes drawn from the sweetness of brotherly love; but in the love of God it is perfected without any ambiguity. This indeed must be provided for, that a man love himself as he ought; his neighbour as himself; but God above himself; since [he loves] neither himself nor his neighbour except for His sake. But how this love is to be shown even to the neighbour we shall note afterwards, if the Lord wills. Now, however, it must be considered that, although in this threefold love there is a manifest distinction, there is nevertheless in them a certain wonderful interweaving, so that each is found in all, and all in each; neither is one possessed without all, and when one wavers there is a falling away from all. For neither does he love himself who does not love either his neighbour or God; nor does he love his neighbour as himself who does not love himself. Further, he is convicted of not loving God by whom his neighbour is not loved. For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how

can he love God, Whom he does not see? (1 John 4:20). In a certain manner, then, the love of neighbour precedes the love of God, and love of self precedes the love of neighbour: it precedes, I say, in order, not in dignity. It precedes, but [only] that perfect love of which it is said: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind (Matt. 22:37). For assuredly some portion of this love, if not its fullness, must precede both the love of self and the love of neighbour, without which both of those are dead, and therefore are nothing. For it seems to me that the love of God is as it were the soul of the other loves, which both lives most fully in itself and imparts a living being to the others by its presence, and by its absence brings death. So that a man may love himself, then, the love of God is begun in him; so that he may love his neighbour, it is conceived in a more capacious bosom, as it were, so that that divine fire, growing a little warm, at length in a wonderful manner absorbs the other little sparks, as it were, into its own fullness, drawing the whole love of the soul away to that sublime and ineffable Good; where neither is a man loved by himself nor his neighbour, except in so far as each, failing from himself, is wholly carried over into God. Meanwhile these three loves are both conceived from one another, and nourished from one another, and kindled from one another: and further, all are perfected together. But it comes about in a wonderful and ineffable manner that, although these three loves are all possessed together, for it cannot be otherwise, yet they are not always equally felt: but now that rest, that delight, is felt in the purity of one's own conscience; now it is borrowed from the sweetness of brotherly love; now it is more fully acquired in the contemplation of God. For as some king possessing diverse storehouses of spices enters now this one, now that one, and is steeped now in the scent of this, now of that; so the mind, keeping certain cellars filled with spiritual riches within the enclosures of its conscience, walks now in this, now in that, and supplies the matter of its delight in diverse ways according to the diversity of its riches.

CHAPTER III.

How the spiritual Sabbath is felt in love of oneself.

For when a man has withdrawn from this outward tumult into the privy chamber of his mind, and, the door shut against the crowds of vanities clamouring round about, has surveyed his inner treasures, and nothing meets him that is unquiet, nothing disordered, nothing that gnaws at him, nothing that barks against him; but all is pleasant, all in concord, all peaceful, all tranquil, and the whole throng of thoughts, words and works, like some most well-ordered household, has smiled upon the soul itself as upon the father of the house: there springs up at once from this a wonderful security, from security a wonderful delight, and from delight a certain jubilation, bursting out the more devoutly into the praises of God the more clearly it perceives that whatever good it recognizes in itself is of His gift. This is the delightful solemnity of the seventh day, which six days, that is, the perfection of works, must precede, so that we first toil in good works,

and so at last let us rest in the tranquillity of conscience. For from good works is born purity of conscience, according to which a man's love of himself is judged. For as he who works or loves iniquity does not love but hates his own soul: so indeed he who loves and works justice does not hate but loves his own soul. This is the joyful solemnity of that first Sabbath, in which the servile works of the world are in no wise practised; in which neither is the base fire of concupiscence kindled, nor are the burdens of the passions borne.

CHAPTER IV.

What Sabbath is received from fraternal love, and how the six years that precede the seventh are fitted to charity.

Further, if from this more secret chamber, in which he first kept this Sabbath, he shall have betaken himself to that resting-place of his own breast, where he is wont to rejoice with those rejoicing, to weep with those weeping, to be weak with the weak, to burn with those who are made to stumble; and shall have felt his soul there united by the glue of charity with the souls of all his brethren, stirred by no goads of envy, inflamed by no heats of indignation, not worn away by the darts of suspicion, not consumed by the gnawing bites of sadness; and so shall draw all into a certain most tranquil bosom of his mind, where with a certain sweet affection he embraces and cherishes all, and makes with them one heart and one soul; then, at the sweetest taste of this pleasantness, every tumult of desires falls silent, and the din of vices is stilled, and there comes to be, within, a repose free from all harm, and, in the sweetness of fraternal love, a grateful and pleasant resting. For that, in the quiet of this Sabbath, fraternal charity permits no vice whatever to remain, the witness is the Apostle Paul, an unbroken keeper of this very Sabbath: for thus he says: You will not commit adultery, you will not commit theft, you will not speak false testimony, and whatever other commandment there is, it is summed up in this word: You will love your neighbour as yourself (Rom. 13). Steeped in the rest and sweetness of this Sabbath, the prophet David broke out into the sound of a rejoicing solemnity, saying: See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in one (Ps. 132). Truly good, truly pleasant. Good indeed, because nothing is more useful; pleasant, because nothing is more delightful. But as to that first Sabbath only a single day is dedicated, because it is, namely, a singular thing that consists in the tranquillity of each man's own conscience; so not undeservedly is a whole year consecrated to this [Sabbath]; because, just as a year is made up of many days, so out of many souls one heart, and one soul, is forged by the fire of charity. But if from those six years which precede this spiritual Sabbath you wish to draw out something mystical, know that there are six kinds of men, in loving whom a year must needs be spent. But as a year embraces many days, so in each of these several kinds many men are joined to us by the bond of love. First, then, our love, by a natural order,

is drawn down towards the members of our own household, of our own blood. That this love should be had [is natural], because it is implanted in nature itself; that it should not be had is exceedingly inhuman. Whence the Apostle: If anyone does not take care of his own, and above all of those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5). Nor let anyone think this apostolic saying to be contrary to the words of the Lord, in which He says: Whoever comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, and his own soul besides, cannot be My disciple (Luke 14). But we shall see of these things in what follows. Since, then, there are some who, more savage than beasts, pay no heed even to their own household, he who loves his own, as he ought, already advances a little towards this spiritual Sabbath. Now this love, since it proceeds from nature itself, is given the first place among the precepts pertaining to the love of neighbour, God Himself declaring: Honour your father and mother (Exod. 20). From this our love advances towards those who are joined to us by the bond of spiritual friendship, or by an exchange of good offices, and is in some manner loosened into a wider embrace. But this love does not go beyond the righteousness of the Pharisees, to whom it was said: You will love your friend, and you will hold your enemy in hatred (Matt. 5). Indeed, although each of these loves, when kept, earns but little reward — since natural law drives us to the one, and the grace bestowed upon us calls us to the other — yet neglected, it brings a heap of damnation. Of these the Lord says in the Gospel: If you love those who love you, He says, what wage will you have? Do not the heathen also do this? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing? (ibid.). That our love, then, may be stretched out to something more, let it embrace also those who are subject with us under the same yoke of profession. This love plainly will not be defrauded of its reward, because God is the cause for which it is shown. In this state the mind, glued to the garments of Jesus, licks up for itself something of His anointing: which, descending from the head, flows down even upon the beard of the true Aaron, and reaches to the hem of the garment, and, anointed with its richness, [the mind] is extended for a while; and first all those to whom that anointing, reaching them, imparts a share in the name of Jesus — so that from the Anointed they are called anointed, that is, from Christ, Christians — it receives in a wider embrace by loving them. Two kinds of men still remain; and if these be bound to our breast by the bonds of love, nothing indeed will stand in the way of our enjoying the rest of that true Sabbath. For as for those who are without — the heathen, that is, and the Jews, heretics and schismatics — we must grieve for their ignorance, have compassion on their weakness, weep for their malice, and with pious affection offer them the comfort of our prayer; that they too may be found with us in Christ Jesus our Lord. From there we must pass on to that in which the sum of fraternal charity consists, in which a man is made a son of God, in which the likeness of the divine goodness is more fully restored, as the Saviour says in the Gospel: Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you; and pray for those who persecute and slander you, that you may be sons of your Father

who is in heaven (Matt. 5). What will remain thereafter, save the seventh year, in which we are not permitted to press our debtors for payment, in which a slave is presented with liberty? For he who knows how to look even upon his enemies with a single eye, he it is who can truly say: Forgive us, as we also forgive (Matt. 6). For every one who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8). And to that deplorable slavery each man is made over for just so long, until he himself, forgiving and loving, be forgiven and loved, and out of a slave be made not only free but even a friend. Truly a time of peace, a time of quiet, a time of tranquillity, a time of glory and exultation. For what trouble, what disturbance, what grief, what anxiety will be able to interrupt the gladness of that man who, from that first Sabbath, in which he is fed upon the fruits of his own labours, advances by a fuller grace to this state of the divine likeness, so that, embracing the whole race of men in one love of the mind, he is moved by no man's injury; but, as some most indulgent father towards a son most dear to him labouring under frenzy, so is that man disposed towards his own enemies, so that the more he is injured by them, by so much the deeper an affection of charity does he suffer with those who inflict the trouble upon him? Possessed therefore of this virtue, he is to be said to keep this Sabbath most of all when, entering into his own heart, he bends his mind upon the sweetness of fraternal love, and, melted into a certain most delightful affection towards those dearest to him, tastes how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in one (Ps. 132).

CHAPTER V.

How each of these two loves is preserved by the love of God.

But since, as we said above, each of these two loves — that by which we take thought for our own salvation, and that by which we are joined to our neighbours with pure affection — must needs be animated by some portion of the divine love: it is to be known that it is the love of God which moves us and carries us forward to this twofold love, in respect of this: that the Word became flesh, and dwelt in us (John 1). For indeed in this twofold love is acquired innocence, which manifestly consists in two things. For he is innocent who harms neither himself nor another. But he harms himself who corrupts himself with the vices or with the stain of some baseness. And because it is pleasure above all, and the delight of the flesh, that drives [a man] to this corruption, anyone easily spits it out or avoids it in this way: if, clothed with a devout affection towards the flesh of our Saviour, he rejoices to look with spiritual eyes upon the Lord of majesty bowed down even to the narrowness of the manger, gaping after a virgin's breasts, pressed close in a mother's embraces, kissed by the happy lips of a trembling old man — of holy Simeon, that is. He who holds it sweet to picture to the gaze of his mind how mild He is in look, how sweet in speech, how compassionate to sinners, how condescending to the weak and the wretched; that with wondrous kindness He shrank neither from the harlot's touch nor from the banquet of publicans (Luke 7); that He took up the cause of the one adulteress

— that she should not be stoned (John 8); that He conversed with another, so that out of an adulteress an evangelist was in a manner made (John 8; John 4). Who is there for whom, at this sweet spectacle, every delight of stinking flesh does not grow foul? Thence certain sweet tears easily arise, by which every heat of concupiscences is quenched, the flesh grows cool, the voracity of the gullet is tempered, every titillation of vanities is stilled. Further, to the love of enemies, in which the perfection of fraternal charity consists, nothing so rouses us as the grateful consideration of that wondrous patience by which He, beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps. 44), offered His comely face to the impious to be spat upon; Who put those eyes, at whose nod all things are ruled, beneath the blindfold of the wicked; by which He exposed those sides of His to the scourges; by which He submitted His head, dreadful to the principalities and powers, to the sharpness of thorns; by which He made Himself over to reproaches and insults; by which at last He patiently bore the cross, the nails, the lance, the gall, the vinegar — in all things gentle, meek, tranquil. In fine, He was led like a sheep to the killing, and like a lamb before the one shearing it He fell silent, and did not open His mouth (Isa. 53). Consider, O human pride, O proud impatience: what He bore, Who bore it, how He bore it! Let these things be pondered, I ask, not written. Who is there whose anger does not at once cool away at this wonderful sight? Who, hearing that wonderful voice, full of sweetness, full of charity, full of unchangeable tranquillity: Father, forgive them (Luke 23), does not at once embrace his own enemies with every affection? Father, He says, forgive them. What of gentleness, what of charity, could have been added to this prayer? Yet He added more. To pray was too little; He willed also to excuse. Father, He says, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. They are indeed great sinners, but petty appraisers; therefore, Father, forgive them. They crucify; yet whom they crucify they know not, because if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2); therefore, Father, forgive them. They think Him a transgressor of the Law; they think Him a usurper of divinity; they think Him a seducer of the people. I hid My face from them, they acknowledged not My majesty; therefore, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. Therefore, that a man may love himself, let him corrupt himself with no delight of the flesh. But that he may not succumb to carnal concupiscence, let him stretch out his whole affection to the sweetness of the Lord's flesh. Further, that he may rest more perfectly and more sweetly in the delight of fraternal charity, let him bind even his enemies in the arms of true love. But lest this divine fire grow tepid in the state of injuries, let him always look with the eyes of the mind upon the tranquil patience of his beloved Lord and Saviour.

CHAPTER VI.

How the perfect Sabbath is found in the love of God, and how the fiftieth year is compared to this love.

But the mind purged by this twofold love longs, the more devoutly as the more securely, for the happy embraces of the Godhead itself,

so that, inflamed with exceeding desire, it passes beyond the veil of the flesh, and, entering into that sanctuary where Christ Jesus becomes spirit before its face, is wholly absorbed by that ineffable light, by that unwonted sweetness; and, silence being made from all things corporeal, from all things sensible, from all things mutable, it fixes a keen gaze upon that which is, and so always is, and is the Selfsame, upon that One; being at leisure, and seeing that the Lord Himself is God, and amid the sweet embraces of His love, keeping, without doubt, a Sabbath of Sabbaths. This is the jubilee year, in which man returns to his own possession — namely, to his own Author — so that, to be sure, he may be possessed and may possess, may be had and may have, may be held and may hold. This is that possession which was sold off at the base price of sin, when man's love flowed away from Him by whom he was made, and clung to the thing that was made. To this Sabbath the number fifty is not without reason dedicated, in which servile fear is driven out, and not only the desire of the flesh but even its very memory is lulled to sleep, and the spirit is conceived. Before, he says — that is, before Pentecost — the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7). Not that He was not given at all, but not with so great a fullness, not with so great a perfection. He is given indeed in the first Sabbath, given also in the second, but in the Sabbath of Sabbaths His fullness is poured out. For in that twofold Sabbath Jesus is beheld as small, not great; humble, not exalted; injured, not glorified. Therefore the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. But because charity is poured out in our hearts by no other means than through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us (Rom. 5), where the number seven is kept, yet by the multiplying of that same seven the progress of charity itself is discerned. For the seventh day is, as it were, the beginning of charity; the seventh year, its advance; the fiftieth year, which comes after seven times seven, is its fullness. In each there is rest, in each a leisure, in each a certain spiritual keeping of the Sabbath. First, rest in purity of conscience; then, in the most sweet union of many minds; and last, in the contemplation of God Himself. In the first Sabbath one rests from crime; in the second, from covetousness; in the third, from every dissension whatsoever. In the first, the mind tastes how sweet Jesus is in His humanity; in the second, it sees how perfect He is in charity; in the third, how sublime He is in His Godhead. In the first it is gathered into itself; in the second it is stretched out beyond itself; in the third it is caught up above itself.

CHAPTER VII.

What love is, what charity, what cupidity.

Place and time require that what we put off above — namely, how charity is to be shown — we should now pursue a little more fully. That this may become plainer, I see that it must be shown more exactly what charity is. And it is indeed plain that charity is love, though it is no less plain that not every love is charity. Wherefore a subtler

inquiry is needed, so that it may first be plain to one who looks what love is; so that, the genus being known, the species may not lie hidden from one who searches. That love, then, is spoken of in two ways, the usage of speech, when observed, shows. For love is called a certain power or nature of the rational soul, by which there is naturally in it the very faculty of loving or not loving something. And love is also called a certain act of the rational soul itself, exercising that power, when it uses it either on the things it ought or on the things it ought not: which act, indeed, is usually called love with an addition, for example love of wisdom, love of money; and this love must certainly be either good or bad. For that power or nature of the soul, by which this love, whether good or bad, is exercised, is something good of the soul, and in good and in evil it can never be not good. For it belongs to the very nature of its substance, which is from the supreme good itself, Who made each thing indeed good, but all things together very good. But man, endowed with free choice, uses this, as he uses the other goods of his nature, either well, helped by grace, or badly, left to himself by justice. Since, then, as someone says, it is only good or bad loves that make good or bad morals, the good use of the aforesaid good makes a good man, because it makes a good love; while its abuse, because it makes a bad love, certainly makes a bad man. Why then do we hesitate to call charity the right use of love itself, and its abuse cupidity?

CHAPTER VIII.

How the right or the perverse use of love consists in choice, in movement, in fruit.

Now let us distinguish somewhat more subtly between its right and its perverse use. Its use consists, as it seems to me, in three things: in choice, in movement, in fruit. Choice is from reason; movement is in desire and act; fruit is in the end. For the rational creature, just as it was created capable of beatitude, so is it ever eager for that beatitude; but for beatitude it is by no means sufficient to itself. Taught, then, by its own unhappiness, in that it is not sufficient to itself for beatitude, it sees that, in order to gain the beatitude it desires, it must enjoy some thing which is not itself. Accordingly each one, whether according to the measure of his faith and understanding, or according to the deceit of error, or according to the experience of sense, first places his beatitude in the enjoyment of some thing or other, or at any rate of some things or other. Then whatever it is by whose enjoyment he imagines he can be made blessed, he chooses for himself, without any hesitation, to enjoy. And this choice it is love that makes: for the rational soul does it by that power or nature of its own which we called love above. For love always has reason as its companion, not by which it may always love reasonably, but by which it may distinguish, with lively circumspection, the things it chooses from those it rejects. In short, it belongs to reason to distinguish between the Creator and the creature, between things temporal and eternal, between bitter and sweet, between harsh and delightful; but to love, whatever it has willed, to

to choose for enjoyment. Further, the choice itself is also called love, and it is a certain act of the soul; but, though the love itself by which it chooses is always good, yet this choice, which is nonetheless also called love, must be either good or bad, and on that account the love is good or bad. For if the mind, enticed by the experience of some delight, or at any rate deceived by some error, chooses for enjoyment things that are by no means to be enjoyed, it surely loves unhappily. Now we call it enjoying when we use [a thing] with delight and joy. Upon the choice itself there follows at once, or even accompanies it, a hidden movement of love itself, rousing in a certain way and moving the soul to desire of that thing which it thought should be chosen. And this movement of the soul likewise is an act, and is from love, and is called love: and if it is towards that which it ought, and as it ought, it is a good love; but if towards that which it ought not, or otherwise than it ought, it is a bad love. But if it has obtained, by fitting acts, as it wished, the thing which it chose for enjoyment and, having chosen it, desired, it soon rests in the use of it with joy and delight. And this use, to name it in one word, we call fruit. In these three, then, charity or cupidity seems to consist: namely in the soul's choice, in its movement, in its fruit. But choice is the beginning of love, whether good or bad; movement is the course of love itself; the fruit is the end of love itself. If therefore the mind chooses for enjoyment what it ought; if it is moved towards it as it should, or enjoys it as is fitting, then both so wholesome a choice and so profitable a fruit are not undeservedly judged to be reckoned under the name of charity. But in this choice charity is begun, by the movement it is extended, and in the fruit it is perfected. But if the soul chooses foolishly, is moved unbecomingly, abuses shamefully, it can easily be observed that by these, as by steps, cupidity is brought to completion. These are the two springs, namely the origins of good things and of evil things; since indeed the root of all evils is cupidity (1 Tim. 6:10), and the root of all good things is charity.

CHAPTER IX

What we ought to choose for enjoyment.

Since, then, we have distinguished between good and bad love, it remains now that we show what the soul ought to choose for enjoyment, and how it ought to be moved towards what it has chosen, as He in Whose hand are both we and our words may be pleased to inspire. Thus indeed we shall recognize both what is to be loved and how it is to be loved. This certainly must be said: that we are not to be said to love everything that we choose for our use, but only that which we choose for enjoyment. For that mind which, sunk in the dunghill of the flesh, strives to aspire to nothing subtle that goes beyond the grossness of sense, chooses for itself either deceitful riches, or useless honours, or bodily pleasures, or the favours of the world, or some one of these, or all of them together, as the appointed end of its intention, painting happiness, by a false opinion, in the enjoyment of such things. Yet not all strive towards the fruit of these by the same path. One

For one chooses to trade, another to serve as a soldier, another to practise some art or other; another makes for the appointed end by robberies and brigandage. Of all these, a man is to be said to love only that thing to the enjoyment of which his whole intention hastens; but to use the rest as certain supports, as it were, so that he may the more easily be able to arrive at the enjoyment of the thing desired. But the perverse mind, so long indeed as it does not possess what it wished for, paints an image of happiness in the enjoyment of those things; or, having gained its wish, when it feels itself labouring under its accustomed want, or at least recoiling from the things it has abused with a sort of disgust, it is kindled to the appetite for some other thing, not indeed to be sated, but to be again shamefully deluded by the same folly of vanity. This is the circuit of the ungodly, about whose wretched want enough and more than enough was argued in the first part of this work. But he whose mind is sounder, whose eye is purer, whose life is more cleansed, investigating the matter with a higher sense, since it is manifest that no one can be sufficient to himself for beatitude, surely sees that what is of an inferior and more abject nature can cast a man down through the love of it, not raise him higher, and entangle him in miseries rather than bring him the solace of true happiness. Hence, setting about to measure himself, and to weigh the privilege of his own nature, he surely perceives how worthily, how magnificently, how justly, in short, the divine law commands man: You shall adore the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve (Deut. 6:13; Matt. 4:10). Which it would by no means have said, if there were any nature more sublime, to which human nature owed that singular homage, or from which it could expect the reward of beatitude. He, then, is to be chosen by us before all things, that we may enjoy Him, which is the beginning of love; He is to be desired before all things, which is, as it were, a certain course and advance of love itself; and in the attaining of Him, since there will be perfect love of the perfect good, there will be perfect beatitude also. Rightly, then, did the divine law hand down the first and greatest commandment concerning the love of God, saying: You shall love the Lord your God (ibid.). But since each one, when we have attained this beatifying good, will enjoy it according to his capacity, and all together will be more capacious than each single one, beatitude itself will without doubt be the more abundant if what anyone less capacious cannot have in himself, he begins to have at least in another. But another's good will not be his own unless he loves this very good in the other. And this will be equally impossible unless he loves the other himself. Most fittingly, therefore, did divine authority ordain the second commandment: You shall love your neighbour (Matt. 5:43). But since our supreme good will be God, both in Himself and in us and in another, He Himself is commanded to be loved wholly. You shall love, therefore, the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with all your strength. And since the good of our neighbour will bring us just as much joy as our own, rightly is it said: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. It is plain, then, that two things are to be chosen by us that we may enjoy them, namely God and [our] neighbour,

though in different ways. For God, that we may enjoy Him in Himself and for His own sake; our neighbour, that we may enjoy him in God, nay rather that we may enjoy God in him. For although this word "enjoy" is usually taken more strictly, so that it is said that one is to enjoy no other thing but God alone, yet Paul, speaking to a man, says: Yes, brother, may I enjoy you in the Lord (Philem. 20). When, therefore, reason has also perceived, as we have said, that these two are to be chosen, and the consent of the mind has chosen them, all other things being despised in the contemplation of these, the love of God and of neighbour has surely been begun; since the turning of love itself is made towards that which it ought.

CHAPTER X.

That our love is moved to act and to desire, and that it is moved to these two sometimes by affection, sometimes by reason.

Let it suffice to have said this about choice, so that we may next pursue what is to be said about the movement of love itself. Its movement is towards two things: either inwardly to desire, or outwardly to act. To desire, when the soul extends itself by a certain inward movement and appetite towards that which it has judged is to be enjoyed. To act, when a certain hidden power of love itself drives the mind to do something outwardly as well. Accordingly I think it must be investigated what those things are by which, as by incentives, love itself is roused and moved to these two, and which in a certain way order and prescribe its course for it. Then it must be inquired more subtly which of them it ought to follow, or how far it ought to follow, or what it is proper to reject, what to admit, what to lessen, what to increase, so that the movement itself may be fitting. Now there are two things, as it seems to me, by which the soul is in a certain way moved and roused to those two which we set out above, that is, affection and reason. For sometimes by affection alone, sometimes by reason alone, our love is kindled either to public act or to hidden appetite; wherefore we shall try to discuss each of these, as far as shall seem necessary. This indeed must be said: since reason has taught above that two things are to be chosen for enjoyment, namely God and neighbour, all others being set aside, it must next be treated how our love ought to be moved towards these two. Let us see, then, of all the movements by which our love is variously altered, which is most to be followed. But first let us carry through what we have begun concerning the twofold origin of its movement.

CHAPTER XI.

What affection is, and how many affections there are, is declared; and that spiritual affection is taken in many ways is shown.

Affection, then, is a certain spontaneous and sweet inclination of the soul itself towards someone. And affection is either spiritual, or rational, or irrational, or dutiful, or natural, or else carnal. Spiritual affection can be understood in two ways. For the soul is roused by spiritual affection when, by a hidden and as it were unforeseen visitation of the Holy Spirit, [it is moved] into the sweetness of divine love, or of fraternal charity,

the mind, pierced with compunction, is melted. The manner and causes of this visitation I remember having shown above, as clearly as could be done by us. Contrary to this affection is that which is begotten by the devil's sending. By it, it is clear, those were enticed to every shameful thing of whom the prophet says: The spirit of fornication hath deceived them (Hos. 4:12). For the most unclean enemy pursues the chastity of the saints with a twofold torment: now kindling the flesh with an intolerable flame, now dissolving the mind with an affection of pernicious sweetness. Unless I am mistaken, Amnon the son of David, melted, by the sending of the most cunning enemy, with an affection of harmful sweetness, burned for the unlawful embraces of his own sister, and, defiling the house of so great a father with incest, provoked his brother's sword against himself (2 Kgs. 13), and sowed beforehand certain occasions and causes of the future parricide with which unhappy Absalom, greedy for the kingdom, assailed his father (2 Kgs. 15). Let no one indeed shudder because we call this affection spiritual, on the ground that it is begotten by spiritual vices; nor let him quarrel about the name, since the thing itself is manifest.

CHAPTER XII.

On rational and irrational affection.

Rational affection is that which arises from the consideration of another's virtue: namely when someone's virtue or holiness, explored with our own eyes, or learned through report spreading it abroad, or at any rate through reading, suffuses our mind with a certain sweetness of delight. This is the affection which, when we have heard of the triumphal passion of the martyrs, pierces us with a most sweet devotion, and paints the memorable deeds of those who went before as if before our eyes, in delightful meditation. Hence that voice by which the admirable athlete of Jesus, Paul I mean, commends his brave deeds, often draws from the eyes of those who hear it tears that betray the joy conceived, and, with a tenderness suddenly poured in, grips the soul that is even now longing to embrace him. For who, hearing of those perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils from his own race, perils from the Gentiles (2 Cor. 11:26), and moreover that voice of virtue, Everywhere and in all things I am instructed, both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer want; I can do all things in Him Who strengtheneth me (Phil. 4:12–13): who, I say, hearing or reading these things, would not be moved with a wonderful affection towards such a man? This affection consecrated the first-fruits of a most sacred love between David and Jonathan, and bound with the covenant of a most pleasing charity a bond of companionable grace not to be loosed even by a father's authority. For when he had seen the unchangeable constancy of that breast, by which an unarmed boy had laid low an armoured giant, what for another would have been a seed-bed of envy became for that excellent young man an increase of virtue, while, a friend of virtue, he is roused to affection for the virtuous youth, as Scripture says: The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, for Jonathan loved him as his own soul (1 Kgs. 18:1). He himself, wondrously merciful, mercifully transforming this affection into himself, looking upon the young man who had betrayed his virtues to him,

[he] loved him, as the evangelist says (Mark 10:21). Contrary to this affection is the irrational, which, upon some vice or other of a person being discovered, is moved towards him by a certain inclination of the mind. For many have inclined to themselves the minds of certain people on account of a most vain philosophy, or on account of a most foolish daring in military affairs. And, what is more lamentable, many, because they are prodigal, because they are dissolute, because they are betrayers and persecutors of chastity, because they are † [promoters] and abettors of the most shameful men, because they are the most vain but most intent spectators of empty shows, entice and incline to themselves the affection of some.

CHAPTER XIII.

On dutiful affection.

Further, we call that affection dutiful which is brought forth by reason of gifts or services. Holy Moses, when he was avoiding the snares of Pharaoh, gained for himself by a memorable service the affection of the priest of Midian: for when he, though a foreigner, had most steadfastly protected that man's virgin daughters from the wickedness of the shepherds, the man, admiring the young man's goodwill, asked to have him not only as his friend but also as his son-in-law (Exod. 2). Barzillai the Gileadite also, by gifts no less, roused the ready affection of King David, whom, as he fled from the face of Absalom, he had received with most dutiful devotion (2 Sam. 17:27–29): and this affection clung so perseveringly to the mind of that most constant man that the king, when about to die, enjoined on his son Solomon among his testamentary precepts the recompense of such great munificence (1 Kgs. 2:7).

CHAPTER XIV.

On natural affection

There is, moreover, a natural affection in each one towards his own flesh, in a mother towards her son, in a man towards the household of his own seed. For no man ever hated his own flesh (Eph. 5:29); and: A mother cannot forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb (Isa. 49:15); and: He who has not care of his own, and especially of those of his household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8). The first of these did not escape even the holiest men, who, by that affection by which no man ever hated his own flesh, being anxious about their burial, are related to have bound their descendants by oaths that, when dead, they should be laid not in a strange place but in the sepulchres of their fathers (Gen. 47). The second the most wise Solomon thought must be tested when harlot women were disputing in his presence over the surviving child (for the mother had overlain the other). At last, when a sword had been brought and the royal majesty had adjudged the division of the child, natural affection betrayed the mother, and she who had not yielded to wickedness yielded to affection: and she who had striven that she, the mother, should not be cheated of her own pledge began to strive that it should be handed over to the other. I beseech you, she says, give her the living child, and let it not be killed. On the other hand, she who, void of tenderness, had hardened herself towards another's offspring [said]: Let it be neither mine nor yours, but let it be divided (1 Kgs. 3:26). Further, the third, in the breast of the most holy Joseph, outweighed even a fratricidal injury; who, when with his fratricidal brothers, by a dispensing severity of examination, branded the crime [upon them],

seeing them not moderately wearied, and tormented by a rather late repentance over the betrayal of their brother, yielding to affection, as Scripture says, he turned himself away for a little, and wept (Gen. 42:24). This affection not even the savagery of a parricidal son scraped away from the tender heart of the patriarch David: for when he was being sought by him unto death, sending men to oppose his madness, forgetful of the injury, mindful of nature, so as to know himself a father while pretending not to know a persecutor, he said: Keep for me the boy Absalom (2 Sam. 18:5). This affection the Saviour Himself, pouring it into Himself with wonderful compassion, seeing the city which was His metropolis according to the flesh, from which were those fathers according to the flesh, moved with natural tenderness, bewailed with an outpouring of tears its coming destruction. His imitator Paul, pierced, as I think, with natural affection, once wished to be anathema from Christ for his brethren according to the flesh (Rom. 9:3).

CHAPTER XV.

On twofold carnal affection.

Of carnal affection a twofold origin presents itself. For often it is not indeed someone's virtue or vice, but a certain bearing of the outward man, that inclines to itself the soul of the one who looks on. For easily a somewhat elegant form, and a sweeter speech, and a mature gait, and a comely appearance in someone, call forth and grip the affection even of one who does not know what sort of man he is. This grace so shone forth in Moses while still a boy that, against the tyrannical command of Pharaoh, by which he had destined the males of the Hebrews to death, he was kept by his parents three months, as the Apostle says, because they had seen that he was a comely infant (Heb. 11:23; Exod. 2:2). Exposed, too, to danger, by the elegance of his form he drew to himself the compassion even of Pharaoh's daughter; adopted by her as a son, he was made great before all the servants of Pharaoh as well. Further, the man whom a wickedly flattering sweetness pierces, at the sight of some beauty or other, towards the memory of harmful pleasure, no one of sound mind will doubt to be moved by carnal affection. This affection overtook David unawares as he walked on the roof of his house, at the sight of Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11:2), dissolved him when overtaken, overwhelmed him when dissolved. And in a contrary way, him whom it had unnerved for the embrace of another's wife, it armed for the cruel death of his own soldier. This affection swallowed up the wisdom of Solomon, and cast him, dissolved by carnal lust, by the most abominable worship of idols into the abyss of spiritual fornication.

CHAPTER XVI.

What is to be thought of these affections.

These affections meanwhile present themselves to one who meditates; which I would call certain origins, or roots, of love, not loves. For we do not consider it highly praiseworthy to be roused or stirred by these affections if they are good, nor ruinous if they are bad. For even that which we placed first, though it is the best, many abuse to their own destruction, as we taught in the preceding book: and by this last, which is judged more fearsome than the rest, the best men sometimes, for the merit of their probation

are tickled. Wherefore it is not being moved by these affections, but being moved according to these affections, that we judge either useful or harmful. For when these affections move the mind, it is either a visitation or a temptation; when [the mind] is moved according to these affections, there is the full consent of the will itself. Consent, moreover, is either hidden or else manifest: hidden, when it is stirred inwardly by the consent of desire; manifest, when the desire itself breaks out outwardly into act. Whether, then, our love ought to be moved according to these affections, or how far it ought to be moved, we shall endeavour to investigate; provided, however, that we first set down a few things concerning reason, which we have called the other cause of its movement.

CHAPTER XVII.

How the mind is moved by reason to the love of God and of neighbour.

For the mind which, for the most part, no affection moves to the love of God and of neighbour, reason moves; and the more securely, the more purely, so much the more holily; and so much the more purely, in that nothing can be more useful or more pure than a rational love. Reason, then, in order to rouse the lukewarm mind to the desire of its Maker, relies on three arguments: namely our necessity or advantage, and His worthiness. Reason urges that God is to be loved because this is necessary for us, because it is profitable, because it is fitting. Necessary, that we may escape damnation; profitable, that we may obtain glorification; fitting, because He, having first loved us, rightly demands the return of His love. God is to be desired by man as his own good, without Whom he must needs be always wretched, with Whom he cannot be other than most blessed; Who, though He had no need of our goods, willed to be wretched for us. If therefore the mind consents to this reason, and, though not from affection, yet from the will, rouses itself to the desire of God, reason at once pursues its business, proving that, if it wishes to attain what it desires, it is necessary to apply itself diligently to fulfilling His commandments. Thus the desire inborn in the inmost heart proceeds to act under the compulsion of reason. And since among His commandments the greatest is found to be that a man should care for his neighbour as for himself, reason presses that the mind be moved to bestow benefit on the neighbour. Now every neighbour is either a friend, or not a friend, or even an enemy: a friend, because he does or did us good; not an enemy, because he does not harm us nor did harm us; an enemy, because he hinders or has hindered us. A friend by blood or by favour; not an enemy by innocence; an enemy by injury. Therefore, that a man may spend himself on a friend, reason sets forth three things; on one who is not an enemy, two; on an enemy, one. To a friend benefit is owed by nature, by duty, by precept: by nature, because he is a man, or even of one's household; by duty, because he is a friend; by precept, because he is a neighbour. To one who is not an enemy, by nature, because he is a man; by precept, because he is a neighbour. To an enemy only by precept

because that an enemy be loved is the Lord's commandment. The mind, then, yielding to these reasons, if it makes itself ready to bestow benefit not only on a friend but even on an enemy, will not lose the merit of charity, even though it does not feel the affection.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The distinction of the twofold love, between which the mind of one who is making progress wavers.

These two loves, then, are to be distinguished: one from affection, the other from reason. Between these two loves the mind of one who is making progress, and who desires to have an ordered love, often fears and wavers, while he thinks that he loves less him who is to be loved more, or loves more him who is to be loved less. For this is ordered love: that a man should not love what is not to be loved, but should love whatever is to be loved, yet should not love it more than it is to be loved; nor love equally things that are to be loved unequally, nor unequally things that are to be loved equally. Let us then set two men before our eyes, of whom the one is gentle, winning, tranquil, sweet, and fitted for the company of all good men, inviting others to familiarity with himself, pleasant in speech, temperate in manners, yet in certain virtues less perfect. The other, however, though more perfect in the highest virtue, is yet sadder in countenance, more severe in aspect, and with a brow wrinkled by austere manners; he does good to all, grants what is asked, yet is not pleasant in company, nor does he invite all by his kindliness. That he should love the former, then, the mind is moved by a certain spontaneous affection; that he should love the latter, reason and the ordered rule of charity urge him. So a man, feeling that his mind embraces the former with a certain sweetness, and grows hard, void of all sweetness, towards the latter, is distressed, grieves, and fears to exceed the rule of charity, thinking that he loves the former indeed beyond what is fitting, and the latter not so much as is fitting.

CHAPTER XIX.

Why it is that a kindly and sweet man, though less perfect, is loved with a greater and sweeter affection than one austere and more perfect, is proved by a twofold comparison; and it is shown how the love of both is not dangerous.

I wish now first to explore the hiding-places of my own conscience, lest this affection deceive me, should I happen to be ignorant of its cause and origin. Since, then, the one towards whom my mind is moved by a certain sweet inclination, though less perfect, is yet not vicious, but rather adorned with many virtues, why should this affection not be believed to have its source in virtue, and so be not feared but rather embraced? But if I should say that its origin or cause is virtue, why is it not directed by an easier, or at least a like, movement towards the other, whom I recognize to be more virtuous? Is this affection then to be judged carnal, being begotten by a certain fitness of the outward man? But if so, why another man equally [adorned] with outward

manners, do I not embrace with the sweetness of the same delight, because I judge him vicious? For it has sometimes happened to me that someone's outward bearing, so long as virtue was hoped for in him or vice was unknown, inclined my mind very much towards him; but when his vice was disclosed, it swallowed up all that affection and brought no small horror upon my mind. What then? Perhaps virtue or vice are to be reckoned as the food of the soul, either wholesome or harmful; but the austerity or the kindliness of the outward man to be judged as vessels, either rustic or elegant. And wholesome food is, for the most part, taken in unsightly vessels, whereas harmful food is not admitted even in precious ones. It happens, however, and indeed very often, that a somewhat cheaper food is admitted more gladly because of the beauty of the vessel, while the most precious is taken in with more distaste because of the vessel's ugliness. So it sometimes happens that a vicious man displeases even in the highest adornment of body, while virtue pleases very much even in a certain hardness and austerity of the outward man. Nevertheless it is plain that this too happens: that one sees a lesser virtue more willingly in a kindly and pleasant man, while a greater one in a hard and austere man has a less sweet savour. But the comparison will be more elegant, I think, because more expressive, if virtue be reckoned as truth and vice as falsehood; and excessive severity of manners as hard and rustic speech, but the agreeable sweetness of the outward man as polished and eloquent speech. As, then, in sweet speech falsehood is not to be admitted, so in hard and rustic speech truth is not to be despised. In like manner, neither should vice please in a man outwardly adorned, nor virtue displease in a man however hard and austere. Finally, if two men begin to urge something, of whom the one does it bluntly, clumsily, coldly, the other keenly, elegantly, sweetly, forcefully, then, so long as it is not known which of them rests on the truth and which flows with falsehood, it is no wonder if the hearer delights more in the speech of him who knows how by the power of speech to win over opponents and to rouse the slack, to make the hearer well-disposed, attentive and teachable by his exordium, and to tell those who do not know whither his discourse tends what they ought to expect. But if each is known to urge things equally true and equally great, in the words of the one wholesomeness is taken with a certain bitterness, while in those of the other both a sweet wholesomeness and a wholesome sweetness are received more gratefully and more eagerly. For the more a pleasant sweetness is sought in a true assertion, the more readily the wholesomeness profits. But if both [say] true things, yet the less eloquent attempts to assert greater and deeper things, then the things said sweetly, though lesser, glide more sweetly into the ears; but no small force is needed lest the mind be wearied of hearing those precious things because of the clumsiness of the words in which they are uttered, be unwilling to understand them, and in the end not care to believe them. It is not otherwise if two men be set before us, of whom the one is kindly, affable,

pleasing in look, agreeable in address, pours himself into the hearts of those who behold him by a certain sweetness of the outward man, while the other, hard and austere, strikes as it were fear into those who behold him by a certain excessive gravity: so long as the virtue or the vice of each lies hidden, who would blame it if the inward sense receives the former more sweetly, and the latter is rejected not by will or reason but by affection? But if one has come to know that both are equal in the other virtues, or even has found the more pleasant one less perfect in some, it is no wonder, nor void of reason, if inward virtue offered in outward sweetness has, for someone, a more pleasant savour, like truth in fair speech, while he receives virtue in an excessive austerity of manners, like truth in hard and rustic speech, with a certain anxiety of mind or even constraint. But just as there is a certain eloquence which becomes youthful age, and a certain one which becomes old age, and what in younger age is judged fervour and liveliness is judged levity in riper age; so assuredly, if in a youth kindliness is more cheerful, readier, more inclined to service, quicker to act, but in an older man is seemly, grave, without any looseness, cheerful, empty of levity, full of maturity, neither the one ought to be accused of levity nor the other of austerity. However, then, the affection of this lover may vary, if he grants to the one whom his mind embraces with affection neither his company nor anything else beyond what reason allows, and omits to grant the other nothing that reason has shown ought to be bestowed, he certainly does not exceed the rule of charity. For since these affections are by no means placed in our power, since we are sometimes moved by some quite against our will, and cannot experience others even if we wish, love is by no means from affection when affection has moved the mind, but when the mind has directed its own movement according to the affection. The same is to be held concerning the movement which is begotten from reason.

CHAPTER XX.

That there are three loves: from affection, from reason, from both.

There is, then, love from affection, when the mind has consented to affection; from reason, when the will has joined itself to reason; and a third love can be made from these two, namely when these three, reason, affection and will, have come together into one. The first is sweet but dangerous; the second hard but fruitful; the third perfect by a special privilege. To the first the sense of a sweetness experienced entices; to the second reason, being plain, compels; in the third it has savour. This last, however, differs from the first, because, although by that one even what ought to be loved is sometimes loved, yet it is loved rather for the sweetness of the affection itself; but by this one a thing is loved not because it is sweet, but because it is worthy of love; therefore it is sweet.

CHAPTER XXI.

A recapitulation of what has been said, and how true love of God is recognized.

Therefore, from all these things that have been said, [let us gather briefly] in what

the whole force of love consists, let us gather briefly. First, if the mind has chosen something for enjoyment, then has stretched itself out towards it with a certain inward desire, and lastly does that by which it may be able to reach what it desires, this without doubt is to be called loving. And the more fervently and urgently anyone has carried this through, the more he also loves; and if he has done it from affection, he certainly loves more sweetly, and therefore acts more easily. But if one man has done all this from affection and another from reason alone, the latter indeed loves less sweetly, but will not obtain what he desires any more slowly. Further, if the choice itself has been perverse, so that it chooses for enjoyment what it ought not, it will be clear that the things which follow upon that choice are perverse as well; and such love will be perverse, to be reckoned by the name of cupidity, not of charity. But, as we taught above, whatever else besides God in Himself, and the neighbour in God, the mind, either enticed or deceived, has chosen for enjoyment, exceeds the bounds of true love. Moreover, the choice itself can be sound, and yet each movement perverse. Both the choice and the movement following it in desire can stand by reason, and yet the other movement, which is in act, can corrupt the whole of love: which will be made plainer by examples. If, then, anyone has chosen God for enjoyment, that choice is sound. But if in the enjoyment itself he has desired something carnal, supposing that when he has come to God he will there, as the Jewish fables relate, both overflow with feasts and lie at ease amid pleasures, the integrity of the choice will profit nothing, followed as it is by so great a perversity of desire. And even if he has chosen God for the fruit of his happiness, and has desired nothing in God but God, yet if he has sought so great a good by acts other than he ought, for example by Jewish ceremonies, or by the sacrifices of the gentiles, or by some other superstition, he will wholly make void the fruit of love. Let the choice, then, be sound, the desire fitting, the act rational; and so it will not exceed the limits of charity. It matters indeed how far anyone has been affectionate, discreet and strong in this love: affectionate, that he may love sweetly; discreet, that he may love prudently; strong, that he may love perseveringly. Affectionate, that what he has chosen in desire may have savour for him; discreet, lest in act he exceed the measure; strong, lest some temptation turn him away from it. Affection avails against perverse sweetnesses, discretion against deceptions, fortitude against persecutions. And if anyone is known to be perfect in these three, he loves not only happily but also sweetly. If indeed he cannot be affectionate, let him nevertheless be discreet and strong; and if he does not make progress towards present happiness, he will none the less make progress towards future happiness.

CHAPTER XXII.

What consideration is to be had in the love of neighbour.

Let us consider these same things in the love of neighbour. If, then, we have chosen our neighbour for fellowship in that fruit which is in God, that choice is sound. But if a base desire or a disordered act follows upon this choice, the whole soundness of the choice is stained. But in the love of God we do not provide for Him but for ourselves

for He is our God, and has no need of our goods; but in mutual love, since we stand in need of one another, it is necessary that we provide for one another. Wherefore desire itself ought to be extended to two things, and act likewise to be exercised in two ways. For desire ought to be directed to this: that, as is fitting, we may enjoy one another in God, and that we may together enjoy God in Himself. And since man consists both of body and of soul, our act, so far as means allow, ought certainly to look to both. In these things, the more fervent and prudent anyone is, the more perfect he certainly is in charity also; and the more affectionate he is, the sweeter charity itself is found to be. And as to these things sometimes affection moves, as we have said, and sometimes reason, so each strives to order both the measure of the desire itself and the acts according to its own quality. Therefore careful consideration is needed that we may see, concerning the affections themselves, which is to be followed and how far it is to be followed.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Which affections are not to be admitted, and how far the spiritual affection which is from God is to be followed.

Therefore the spiritual affection which is from the devil, the irrational which is on account of vice, the carnal which tends to vice: these three affections are not only not to be followed, but are not even to be admitted; rather, so far as can be done, they are to be torn up by the roots from our hearts. But the spiritual affection which is from God is not only to be admitted, but is to be stirred up and increased in every way: and our desire follows it most wholesomely, so that the more sweetly so great an excellence makes itself known to us, the more fervently its desirable presence is desired. Indeed our act also ought to be stirred up by this affection, but ought not to be ordered according to it. It ought to be stirred up, so that the will to work well, nay perfectly, may never grow lukewarm; but the working itself ought not to be ordered according to the affection, lest it exceed the bounds of bodily possibility. For this body is a kind of instrument by which [the affection] has itself to be exercised; and since it is of the quality of clay, liable to innumerable sufferings, not able to bear the force of a fervent spirit, unless the outward act be tempered by a certain moderation, it will without doubt fail and give way with the business left undone. Now this is the property of affection: that for the most part it knows no measure, does not measure human strength, swallows up bodily sufferings, and, rushing upon the beloved with a certain blind impetus, thinks only of what it seeks and despises whatever is outside it; and, undertaking what is heavy, what is arduous, what is even impossible, as though it were a light work and free of toil, does not feel the most grievous injuries of the outward man for the delight of the inward affection. Therefore, that the will may glow with unceasing fervour, that one may bear patiently, nay joyfully, the sufferings brought upon him from without, this affection is to be borne along as far as the movement of desire itself; but, as it advances to voluntary acts, it is to be restrained by the moderation of reason, lest it exceed the bounds of bodily possibility. Some, not knowing this measure of life, and the whole impetus of their own affection

following it importunately, become weaker rather than holier; and so, the affection growing lukewarm through the immoderation of the act, the will itself, too immoderately oppressed, grows lukewarm also. Concerning the moderation of the act itself, which must be made according to reason, if the Spirit, the Inspirer and Orderer of good affections and only the Orderer of evil ones, shall be pleased to suggest anything useful, we shall note it in its place. Now let us pursue what we have begun concerning the distinction of the affections themselves.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Of the rational affection: how far it too is to be followed.

The rational affection, then, which arises from the contemplation of another's virtue, is plainly more perfect than the others by which we are kindled to the love of neighbour. For the very love of virtue is no small sign of virtue. Indeed, to consent to this affection is most useful, both for the emulation of the virtues themselves, which is the more easily stirred by this affection, and for the horror of vices, which grow foul through the careful consideration of the virtues. And our desire also, if it is directed according to this affection, I judge to be neither pernicious nor harmful; for it does no harm, nay rather it profits very much, if we desire the presence of one by whose example we may be corrected, if we are bad; if good, advanced; if equally perfect, strengthened by mutual converse. Now the temporal presence of the saints is indeed itself to be desired, but more that which will be eternal with Christ in heaven. And though we are stirred to the desire of both by a like affection, yet we do not attain to both by a like act. For to the bodily presence of the saints, if perhaps they are absent, [we come] by travelling over some stretches of land; to the eternal we tend by living holily, justly and piously. If, then, we are incited to both these acts by the same affection, the latter, as regards inward exercise, should follow its impetus without hesitation, for excess is not to be feared in inward holiness; but the outward exercise of the virtues, of which it is said, "Be not overmuch just" (Eccl. 7:17), is to be tempered by the moderation of reason. Further, the bodily presence of the saints, although it may be usefully desired, is yet not always to be sought; hence in this act reason is to be consulted, not affection followed. How welcome to the brethren of Antioch was the bodily presence of Paul and Barnabas! By their knowledge they were instructed, by their example strengthened, by their disputations defended against those who thought otherwise. Yet, hearing from the Holy Spirit, "Separate for Me Barnabas and Paul for the ministry to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2), although affection resisted, they nevertheless laid hands on them and, praying, sent them away. Did not Paul approve Timothy's affection from the outpouring of his tears? Had so great a man consented to it, [Timothy] would certainly have clung irrationally to Paul's footsteps. "I give thanks," he says, "to my God, making remembrance of you, mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy" (2 Tim. 1:3–4).

CHAPTER XXV.

The affection of service: in what respect it is to be guarded against, in what respect admitted.

There follows the affection of service, more dangerous than the others that are to be admitted; for it is indeed to be admitted, but to be guarded against most of all. For what is so fitting, so consonant with reason, as to return like for like to one who loves you, service to one who serves you, thanks to one who offers gifts? And then what is more to be guarded against than that, softened by services or enticed by gifts, you should either cherish vices or favour a vicious man? Nor am I speaking of those who love gifts and follow after rewards, who, holding justice for sale, favour not the man but the gifts; but of those who, provoked by services or gifts, embrace with a certain inward affection no longer the gifts but the man himself. This affection, I say, is to be admitted, but also guarded against: admitted, lest one be ungrateful for a service; guarded against, lest it be bestowed not so much on the man as on his vice. Therefore, although great discretion is to be had in receiving gifts or services, this is to be attended to: that when we are moved by a certain affection towards him whose benefits we enjoy or by whose services we are helped, the worth of his person be more carefully looked into; so that, if perhaps he be of merit, the affection of service itself may pass into the rational; and he whom we began to love because he was agreeable to us may begin to be loved because he is adorned with virtues. It sometimes happens that a very good man, on account of a certain outward austerity, as we said above, does not flow with ready affection into the heart of one who looks on him; but if on some occasion offered we have felt him to be generous towards us, then imperceptibly the affection itself, which that austerity had in a manner oppressed and overwhelmed, is raised up, so to speak, and aroused; and the virtue which before pleased but had no savour presses and pours itself with its own sweetness upon the affection itself, as upon the palate of the heart, though this was applied to something else; and so in a wonderful manner it delights and has savour. But if he should perhaps be such a one in whom there is no virtue to please, the affection is to be admitted so far as his correction can be desired; but that simple affection which, although it is moved and moves by certain particular causes, yet embraces the man without regard to any other cause, is to be tempered in all things. The very repayment of services or gifts, indeed, should be rendered to both according to affection. So too the desire by which their presence is desired, or the act by which that presence is procured, should follow reason, not affection.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Of natural affection; and what it is to love in God, what for God's sake.

Now let us inquire more carefully what measure is to be kept in natural affection. As it is impossible not to admit this affection, so not to follow it is a mark of the highest virtue. For no one has ever hated himself; and yet, "He who comes to Me," says the Saviour, "and does not hate his own soul, cannot be My disciple"

(Luke 14:26). Likewise He says, "He who comes to Me and does not hate father and mother cannot be My disciple" (ibid.). And on the other side the Apostle: "He who has no care of his own, and especially of those of his household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim. 5:8). What then? Are the master and the disciple, the servant and the Lord, truth itself and the friend of truth, to be reckoned to have held contrary views? God forbid! Those two loves, then, of which we spoke above, are to be distinguished: the one according to affection, the other according to reason. It is indeed natural that a man has affection towards himself and his own; but he ought not to have love according to affection, whereas according to reason he ought to have it. The affection itself is shown when it is said through the Apostle, "No one ever hated his own flesh" (Eph. 5:29). But love according to affection is forbidden by the authority of the Saviour Himself, Who says, "He who comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, and his own soul besides, cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26). Love according to reason is enjoined when the same Apostle says, "He who has no care of his own, and especially of those of his household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim. 5:8). Love according to affection is rebuked when the same Paul, foretelling evils to come, says among other things, "And men will be lovers of themselves" (2 Tim. 3:2). And that he understood here love according to affection, what follows teaches: "For men," he says, "will be lovers of themselves, covetous, proud; lovers of pleasures rather than of God" (ibid. 3:2–4). For this affection always suggests soft and sweet things; what is pleasant and tender, what is voluptuous, what is delicate, it gladly embraces; but what is arduous, what is harsh, what is contrary to its will, it flees and shuns with all horror. Wherefore the carrying out of this affection is a perverse love, stripping man of man and clothing him with the form of a beast; in a manner overwhelming and hiding what belongs to reason, what to honour, and lastly what to profit. This love properly befits beasts; it is excused in children, for into the former reason is not poured, in the latter it is asleep. Lastly, the Saviour Himself distinguishes both these loves briefly enough: "He who loves his soul," He says, "will lose it; and he who hates his soul in this world will find it unto life eternal" (John 12:25). Therefore, as that holy man says (Augustine, Tractate 51 on John), "If you have loved ill, then you have hated; if you have hated well, then you have loved." For he who loves according to affection certainly hates, because "he who loves iniquity hates his own soul" (Ps. 10:6). But he who hates according to affection loves according to reason. For to this end He added, "in this world"; because "whatever is in the world is either the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). He, therefore, who loves his soul according to affection loves it in this world, because he loves in the concupiscence of the flesh, in the concupiscence of the eyes, in the pride of life, all of which affection suggests. By this distinction that question too is solved which some ask: namely, what difference there is between the love which is in God and that which is shown for the sake of

God. For affection is not taken up for God's sake, but arises in the soul itself either carnally or by chance. Therefore, if to one into whom the mind pours itself back by a certain spontaneous and sweet inclination the whole of love is shown according to that affection itself, then he is loved neither in God nor for God's sake, but rather for his own sake. But if he whom this affection embraces is taken up equally into the love of God, so that the love has savour indeed from affection, but its showing depends on the moderation of reason, then his love is certainly not taken up in the first place for God's sake, but is exercised wholesomely in God. Further, if, in consideration of the divine precept, we have shown ourselves as we ought to him whom this same affection rejects and shuns, and have bestowed whatever reason has dictated according as he needed, he is loved not for his own sake but only for God's sake. Let the friend, then, who cannot but be loved, be loved in God; let the enemy, who cannot be loved for his own sake, be loved for God's sake: the one from affection, the other from reason. This measure, therefore, is to be kept in natural affection: that it be had indeed and felt, but in all things and through all things tempered by the moderation of reason. So holy Joseph first declares by tears his natural affection towards his brothers (Gen. 42:24); had the holy man followed it, setting reason aside, his brothers would by no means have been cleansed by a wholesome sorrow from the crime of betrayal. The Saviour too, having put on a loving affection towards His own, wept over the city that was to fall, with wonderful compassion (Luke 19:41); yet none the less, out of the rigour of justice, He chastised the crimes of that same city by the injury of the utmost calamity. Would that the rulers of the Church chastised their affection by this rule! Many of them, embracing all too carnally those of their own blood, not only restrain them by no rigour from the vanity and pleasure of the world, but even, with damnable presumption, provide for them out of the very price of Christ's blood the means to satisfy their lusts. Alas, for shame! So it is to enter the houses of certain of our bishops, and, what is more shameful, of men in cowls, as if one were entering Sodom and Gomorrah. Certain long-haired and effeminate youths come forth, their buttocks half-bare, in the garb of harlots, of whom the Scripture says, "And they have set boys in the brothel" (Joel 3:3). And for the lusts of such as these Thy blood is spent, Lord Jesus, Thy Cross is raised up, Thy wounds are laid open, the price of Thy death is consumed. That these men may have running hounds, flying hawks, foaming horses, Thy sides are laid bare in the poor, Thy scourgings are laughed at, Thy bowels are poured out. Thou seest these things, my Jesus, Thou seest these things and art silent; but wilt Thou be silent for ever? "Nay," Thou sayest, "I will speak as a woman in travail" (Isa. 42:14). But let us return to our purpose.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Of carnal affection: that it is neither to be wholly rejected nor fully admitted.

Carnal affection, then, which a certain adornment of the outward man brings forth, is neither wholly to be rejected;

nor is it to be admitted in such a way that it pours itself out. For close beside it lies that affection which leads to vices; and unless this one is guarded against rather prudently, that one slips in almost without the sufferer's perceiving it. This affection, then, is admitted with profit to this end, provided that it is admitted cautiously and, as it were, with measure: so that if virtue shines out in the person, it may be embraced the more readily; but if vice, one may press the more earnestly for its correction. For whatever we have said of the dutiful affection, let us judge that the same is to be thought of this one too. By those, however, who are still assailed by carnal vices this affection is wisely rejected, since by them it is very rarely felt without the tickling of vice.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

That not only the origin of an affection but also its course and end should be examined, and that one affection passes into another, is shown by examples.

Further, of these affections not only the origin is to be examined, but their very course and end are to be shrewdly watched. For sometimes, most subtly, one arises and ends in another, or at least is changed. Let it suffice to have shown this in two or three cases. Someone is stirred by the fame of some virgin who is proclaimed holy in body and spirit, of sincere faith, outstanding in discretion, grounded in the virtue of humility even to perfect contempt of herself, of remarkable abstinence and the highest obedience: because of his admiration for such great virtues he reveres her with the highest affection. This affection we named above the rational. If, then, he begins to enjoy her familiarity, to revere her with service, to be refreshed by conversation with her, to visit her frequently with blessed gifts or letters, or at least with certain little presents, this rational affection passes almost imperceptibly into the dutiful; and she who had begun to be loved for the merit of her holiness begins to be visited for the pleasure of mutual generosity. Then, while this affection stretches itself towards certain endearments, even that carnal one, which is more pernicious than the others, creeps in at the temptation of vice. I know it to have happened to men most chaste and most continent, who detested all uncleanness with the greatest horror, that when they saw certain girls, still of tender age, to have attained the highest virtues, and by a wonderful gravity of manners and holiness of life to have advanced incredibly into a certain, so to speak, spiritual grey hair, they both cherished and embraced them with a most devoted and most tender affection. And while they indulged them too readily with their company, and rested, so to say, too sweetly in the embrace of their sight, they were very greatly wearied by a certain vicious affection creeping in all too subtly: and men who would not merely refuse to look upon others conscious of that crime, but would rather cast them from the bosom of a nauseated mind with the utmost horror, could scarcely visit these most chaste, most grave, perhaps even serene with virginal comeliness, whom even an unchaste person would look upon only chastely out of very despair, without a certain tickling of vice. Why is this? Surely because the dutiful affection is more easily changed into carnal affection than either an unchaste person is embraced by a chaste breast, or in an unchaste one anyone

is assailed by one of manifest chastity. Accordingly, when our affection, though rational or even spiritual, has stretched itself out as far as a suspect age or sex, it is most advisable that it be held in within the very bosom of the mind, and not be allowed to flow out into certain empty endearments and soft tendernesses, unless perhaps it sometimes advances maturely and with measure to this end, that virtue loved and praised may be practised the more fervently.

CHAPTER XXIX.

That different affections often struggle in the same mind; and which is to be preferred to which.

Something further must be said of these affections: that several sometimes fight together in one mind and in a certain way strive to overthrow one another. When this happens, great discernment is needed, that it may be recognized which is to be preferred to which, and virtue is needed, lest the higher be driven out by the lower. Thus Abraham, commanded to sacrifice his own son, by no means hardened himself against his own flesh as one devoid of natural affection; but when the natural affection, by which he embraced his son, and the spiritual, by which he embraced God, fought together in the holy man's breast, he preferred the higher to the lower: nay, for the sake of the higher he despised the lower. So too that excellent young man Jonathan, bound to David by a sacred covenant, betrayed his father's plan, by which he had destined him to death, not to his father's injury; but by a lawful right he preferred the rational affection to the natural. Nor is it a wonder if the love of a friend effaced the affection for his father in his most sacred breast, since for its sake he despised with unchangeable virtue what was thought to be an injury to himself. Thus when this man of unconquered charity met David, fleeing from the face of Saul, in more secret places, to reveal to him his father's plans, and when amid embraces and kisses they had bathed each other in mutual tears and with loving weeping had declared their loving affection, the covenant being renewed once more, Jonathan added: You indeed shall be king, and I shall be second after you (1 Kgs. 20). O man to be extolled with the highest praises! A man free of envy, empty of covetousness, who preferred his friend to a kingdom; who willed that what seemed to be his own should belong to another. I, he says, shall be second after you. O breast of the highest humility! A man of royal seed, to whom the inheritance was hoped for by succession; whose hope of gaining the summit had been increased by his birth, his valour, the goodwill of the soldiers, the favour of the people, and even the wonderful fame of his triumph, when, supported by only one companion, he attacked the armed wedges of the enemy's host and won for his people an unhoped-for victory; casting himself down below a servant, he says: I shall be second after you. This man, I say, in whose praises it is still sung: The arrow of Jonathan never turned back, and his sword did not return empty (2 Kgs. 1); as though not knowing himself so that he might know his friend, he says: You shall be king, and I shall be second after you. Who, I ask, would think this even of his own brother born of the same womb without at least a monstrous envy? Who for a friend's sake would bring his whole hope down to despair? The sons of the patriarch Jacob (Gen. 37), [envying] the paternal favour by which one was cherished more tenderly than the rest,

envying it immoderately, brought slavery upon their brother and the greatest sorrow upon their father. That first of the high priests, together with his sister the prophetess, overtaken, if I am not mistaken, by envy, and disparaging his most meek brother, scarcely escaped the divine vengeance, and that through the prayer of Moses himself (Num. 12); the most wise Solomon, seizing any occasion whatever, did away with his brother, a rival for the kingdom (1 Kgs. 2); Jonathan alone, looking down on his father, his country and the kingdom as beneath his friend, says: You shall be king, and I shall be second after you. Had he said: I shall be king, but you shall be second after me, he would have violated neither the law of friendship nor the love of his friend. But they both wept, as Scripture says, but David more (1 Sam. 20). For there was at hand that separation, more bitter than death, by which those inseparable breasts would be cheated of the sight of one another: by which that sweet converse had to cease, that consolation which lightened every danger, that disclosure of mutual secrets which was to be preferred to life itself: therefore they both wept. Behold, I pray, a man of most ordered love. Jonathan owed his friend affection, but his father obedience; his friend love, but his father's old age protection. Had he followed affection and clung to his friend, he would have injured the rights of filial love. But had he, at his father's warning, nay even at his compulsion, withdrawn his love from his friend, he would have violated the law of the covenant they had entered upon and of a most sacred friendship. So by affection union pleased both; but by reason separation pleased. By weeping, then, they paid what they owed to affection; but by parting, though under compulsion, they yielded to reason. Each wept, because each loved. Why then did David weep more? Jonathan had foretold (1 Sam. 23:17) his own decline, in a certain way, and his friend's advance: that he himself was to be deprived of the kingdom, and David taken up into it. Therefore the law of friendship required that the one should weep in compassion for his friend's wrong, and the other, lest he seem to grieve at his friend's success, should for a while restrain his tears. He preferred, then, the natural affection to the rational, but ordered the act according to reason. David himself too, when his faithful army had won the victory over his parricidal son, yielding to natural affection, mourned the death of his son (2 Sam. 19); but, rebuked by a soldier, he preferred the dutiful affection to the natural: and, setting aside his mourning, he went out with rejoicing to meet the victorious people. Our Saviour too, when out of the natural affection, by which no one ever hated his own flesh (Eph. 5), He had cried out, Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me (Matt. 26), by the right of reason subjected it to the spiritual affection, by which He ever cleaved to the Father, saying: Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou [wilt] (ibid.). Accordingly, in these affections this order is to be kept: that the one by which our soul is stirred towards God be preferred to all others; then the rational to the dutiful, the dutiful to the natural, the natural to the carnal.

CHAPTER XXX.

What profit is to be sought in the affections.

When, then, what has been said about the distinction of the affections has been carefully considered, it is plain, unless I am mistaken, what profit is to be sought in them. This, namely, that in

the desire for those things which are to be loved we may be stirred up by the affections themselves, as by certain goads of love; that we may hold love itself more sweetly, through the sweetness the affections pour in, and therefore more diligently; that we may practise the very acts by which we tend towards what we desire, the more delightfully the more affectionately, and the more fervently the more delightfully. Desire itself, indeed, though it has to stir up affection, ought very rarely to follow affection, as was shown above. Likewise, it is most profitable for affection to be stirred up to the practice of good works and for us to be held by affection in the works themselves; but to order the works themselves according to affection is contrary to order. It remains, then, that we say in a few words, according to our small measure, how the works themselves are to be ordered according to reason. For desire itself, according to reason, is uniform, although in the love which springs from affection it is felt, while in that which springs from reason it is reckoned in the will alone.

CHAPTER XXXI.

By what acts we ought to tend towards God, and by what to provide for ourselves and our neighbours.

There are, then, certain acts by which we strive spiritually towards that highest good which is to be loved supremely and desired supremely; and there are also others by which we provide for our own need, and for the need and at the same time the salvation of our neighbours; and it is not doubted that this provision too is to be referred to that same end. Now the Apostle seems to have conveyed the whole state of the perfect life in a few words, saying: Let us live soberly, and justly, and piously in this world (Titus 2). For sobriety is a certain measure and temperance of human life, prudently avoiding excess on either side, and leading our course by the royal road between right and left. This virtue the wise of this world name frugality, whose excellence the most eloquent of them all sets out clearly enough. Let each, he says, take it as he will; I hold frugality, that is, measure and temperance, to be the greatest virtue. For since He towards Whom we supremely tend is a certain measure, to Whom nothing is lacking, Whom nothing hinders, in Whom nothing is superfluous, nothing falls short; and when we have come to Him there will be nothing outside that we shall long for, nothing within that we shall loathe: it is surely necessary that we keep ourselves in a certain measure and mode, and neither slip below what is necessary, nor be borne above what is fitting by a pestilent presumption. Justice, I judge, is named here by the Apostle as that by which, providing for the need or the salvation of our neighbours, and discerning in our very benefits what befits whom and who is to be preferred to whom, we render to each what is just. But to these two virtues, namely sobriety and justice, lest philosophers or any strangers to the faith of Christ should glory in them, he most wisely added piety, which consists in sincere faith and pure intention. And this intention seems to consist in the choice of love, about which we have already disputed. Here perhaps the reader will demand that the very mode of living which

to exceed which seems dangerous, nay pernicious, we should unfold more plainly. Who does not see how arduous and difficult a matter this is to treat? since there are as many qualities of men as there are men, and not rarely can even two be found together to whom all things are equally suited; since what is enough for one is too little for another; and by what this one advances, that one fails; and what is necessary for one is certainly superfluous for another. Yet it seems that something should be said which suits all, which each can apply to himself, and by which, with reason as guide, he can judge whether he exceeds the necessary mode of living.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Beginning to treat of the mode of human life, he shows what sobriety is to be kept in the natural order.

There appear, then, three orders of human conduct: the first natural, the second necessary, the third voluntary. The first is granted, the second imposed, the third offered. The first [comes] from power, the second from necessity, the third from will. To the first is due grace, to the second mercy, to the third glory. But let us set out, as clearly as we can, what seems to need saying about each. The natural order, then, is this: that one who has committed nothing unlawful may, if he wishes, use lawful things, yet lawfully. Lawful, for example, are the eating of meat, the drinking of wine, the use of marriage, the possession of riches. For as the Apostle says: All things are clean to the clean; and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving (Titus 1). For heretics too are condemned by the Apostle himself, who forbid to marry and command to abstain from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful (1 Tim. 4). But that the use of these things may be lawful, measure must be kept, and time, place and kind must be very carefully attended to. That a certain measure is to be kept by all, and not to be exceeded by anyone on any terms, the Saviour Himself prescribes, saying: See that your hearts be not weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life (Luke 21). And of the use of marriage Paul says: Let every one know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of desire (1 Thess. 4). Peter too, describing the use of clothing, says: Not in costly apparel (1 Tim. 2). In the use of lawful things, then, this measure is to be kept: that in taking food and drink one keep oneself short of surfeiting and drunkenness, in keeping riches put away anxious care, in the use of a wife avoid shameful passions, in the adornment of clothing seek not costliness but necessity. A fitting time too must be kept for the use of each thing: lest, for example, at those times when the tradition of the Church prescribes abstaining from foods, the fast be broken without reasonable necessity; lest at times when one must be free for prayer, the use of marriage be exercised; lest on days which Christian authority has hallowed for a wholesome leisure to hear the word of God, one be busy with worldly cares; lest on days on which holy religion has established that sorrow or penitence be shown by a change of clothing, anyone misuse festal garments. Likewise place, in every

use, is provided for as a necessary thing. For to take one's ease at banquets in a church, or to use one's wife, or to carry on business, who would not judge sacrilege? Writing to the Corinthians, the Apostle rebukes them for not having kept the lawful time in taking food and drink, saying: When you come together into one place, it is no longer to eat the Lord's supper; for each one takes beforehand his own supper to eat (1 Cor. 11). For they did not observe the fitting time, who before receiving the Eucharist took common food beforehand, against the apostolic decrees. Blaming these same people for transgressing the measure too, he added: And one is hungry, and another is drunk (ibid.). Then, reproaching their contempt of the place: Have you not houses, he says, to eat and drink in, or do you despise the Church of God? (ibid.) Lastly, the kind of those things which it is lawful to use is to be discerned more finely: not that any of God's creatures may be believed unclean without sacrilegious impiety; but because, with things known to have been offered in the sacrifices of demons, or proved to have been taken from others by theft or robbery, sacred authority compels us to abstain, lest their use seem to the impious, or to the weak, to be consent to impiety. Hence the Apostle: If anyone says: This has been sacrificed to idols, do not eat (1 Cor. 10). Holy Tobias too, when, blind in his eyes indeed but sound in mind, he noticed the bleating of the beast which his wife had brought home as the wage of her work, fearing lest unlawful eating should bring wrong upon a fellow citizen and a stain upon himself, said: See that it be not stolen (Tobit 2). Let this be said of the natural order, in which, though we have not noted all the things which men lawfully use, yet from these a diligent inquirer will find what measure is to be kept in the rest. Now let us touch briefly on some things concerning the necessary order.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The measure of satisfaction in the necessary order, and of purgation, is described.

For the necessary order is this: that one who has committed unlawful things should restrain himself from the use even of lawful things. In this restraint two things are to be considered: namely, the measure of satisfaction and the necessity of purgation. The measure of satisfaction: that the rigour of continence be extended according to the measure of the fault, so that, according to the voice of the Baptist, we may bring forth fruits worthy of penance. But since the very quality of satisfaction belongs to pastoral care, and books have been written and sentences fixed by the holy fathers, I forbear to say more. Yet not only is the measure of satisfaction to be kept, but the necessity of purgation must also be searched out. Nor is one to abstain from lawful things for satisfaction alone; but one must also persist in laborious works for expelling or lessening the passions which grow in through vicious habit. For the exercises of the outer man are the instruments of the inner man; by them both the vicious passions which infect the soul itself are more easily cut away, and the stains of the inner face, as by a certain preparation,

rougher, are washed away more fully. Accordingly, one who is solicitous for his own purgation must first attend to the passions by which he is assailed; then examine which they are by which he is most wearied; lastly, search out with shrewd circumspection which instruments best meet which passions. These things examined, let him set against each passion the fitting [instrument]; and let him press on with more fervent urgency that the one which assails him most may itself be overwhelmed. Thus restraint of the belly easily suppresses the passion of lust; the affliction of vigils weakens a wandering and unstable heart; silence soothes anger; the care of work chastises weariness of mind. Yet one must not press on the extinction of one passion with all one's vehemence in such a way that the bodily instrument fails for suppressing the others; nor labour so unseasonably that no passion at all is felt; but, when one has risen, that it be checked according to the judgement of reason. Let it suffice to have touched briefly on these things concerning the measure of purgation. For the rest, whoever desires to know more fully the assault of the vices and their remedies, let him read the book of John Cassian which he entitled On the Instruction of Renunciants; in it he has set out in a splendid style their origins, the manner of their assault, and the remedy for expelling them,

CHAPTER XXXIV.

What the voluntary order is, and what measure is to be kept in it.

The voluntary order follows, to be examined by us next, of which the Psalmist [says]: Voluntarily will I sacrifice to Thee (Ps. 53). For it is a free holocaust, an acceptable victim, a voluntary sacrifice, when one strives in liberty of spirit from the things which are granted, through those which are commanded, to those which are set before those who sigh for them as rewards of greater glory. Inviting all the more fervent to this summit of perfection, the Saviour says: If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have, and give to the poor: and come, follow Me (Matt. 19). And elsewhere: There are eunuchs, He says, who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven. He who can take it, let him take it (ibid.). Thus renunciation of the world, the resolve of chastity, the profession of any stricter life, are counted among voluntary sacrifices. For although, after renouncing the world, entry into the kingdom of heaven is not opened to one who looks back; although after the vow of chastity any corruption of the flesh is unlawful; although after the resolve of a stricter life it is ruin to slide down to laxer things; yet far be it that this perfection of life, which one has undertaken voluntarily, not under compulsion, should be numbered among things necessary and compelled, and not rather among things voluntary; since the very necessity which no one imposed on him against his will, but to which he subjected himself of his own accord out of desire for perfection, must be called voluntary, not compelled. Whoever, then, has betaken himself to these lofty and sublime things, let him first carefully examine the rule of his vow or resolve, in what things and in how great it consists; then let him weigh and discern on the balance of experience the strength of the inner and the outer man. I mean the inner strength by which, in daily exercise, he fights

against the wars of temptations; the outer strength by which he may bear the burdens of bodily labours with untiring long-suffering. Now although for one advancing towards any state the labour both of the inner and of the outer man is necessary, yet bodily exercises in particular wash the soul itself clean from the filth of the passions, while spiritual exercises, like certain heavenly spices, pour it over with the sweetness of spiritual perfumes. Accordingly, since that sweetness of anointing does not suit one who is foul with the squalor of vices, surely for one whom the passions of the flesh still assail the affliction of the outer man is the more necessary. But when the passions themselves are lulled or extinguished, it is permitted to ease off a little from outward exercises, and to practise the spiritual ones more urgently and more fervently. Yet not in such a way that one presumptuously exceeds the rule of one's profession, or destroys or confuses the distinctions of times prescribed in the rule to which one has submitted oneself; but, keeping for each work its appointed time, let one exercise oneself in them either more calmly or more fervently, as one knows to be profitable for oneself.

CHAPTER XXXV.

A disputation against someone's letter, concerning the rule and profession of monks.

Further, although it may not seem to belong altogether to the matter, I think it advisable that, taking counsel for ourselves who are called monks, we examine more carefully the force of our rule itself; and since many things are treated there concerning spiritual matters and many concerning bodily ones, let us track down by more diligent inquiry in which of them the force of the rule itself and the norm of our profession chiefly consist. I have read the letter of a certain man who answered someone inquiring on this question as follows: I am not afraid to say that the rule of the monastic condition, nay the virtue of the monastic order, nay the substance of the monastic profession, consists in those things which make a monk even when the others are lacking; and without which the rest, I do not say do not make [a monk], but do not even savour [of one]. But what are these? Those which we have sworn, to whose stability and observance we have called God and His saints to witness. And what are these? Stability, he says, in our monastery; conversion of our ways, and obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. And below: I desire to turn over the volume of Blessed Benedict for monks; and whatever I find to be in it of what I have set down as the substance of his Rule, which is ours, nay of the monastic profession, I will embrace in mind as necessary; I will strive with all devotion to render my vows and what I have sworn to, as the Lord shall grant me. The rest, however, not as the body of our Rule, but as things that help it and nourish it, I will try to fulfil in deed. We might perhaps doubt what these 'rest' were, had he not afterwards indicated it himself: namely, not to go out of the cloister, to do the work of hands; the quantity or multiplicity, or indeed the variety, of food and drink; the bedding of the bed; the use of drawers only by those sent on a journey. For what, he says? Would anything be permitted, even for a moment, to be dispensed in them, or anything in them to be changed, if they were of the substance of the monastic profession? Otherwise, there not being

the substance, I am not found to be a monk either, since I shall have destroyed in myself the substance of a monk. And at the end of the treatise: Thus, he says, beloved brother, thus, because in these things it is permitted to dispense, as blessed Benedict himself dispenses in the eating of meat for the altogether weak, and in the use of drawers at least for those sent on a journey; thus, I say, because in these things one can dispense and change, therefore they are not of the substance of the profession. So he. But as to what he said about the use of drawers and the use of meat, whether it ought to be called blessed Benedict's dispensation or his institution, let him see to it. Certainly he commanded that mercy be shown to the old and to children not by dispensation but by the authority of the Rule: Let the authority of the Rule, he says, provide for them. But let us return to what came before.

It is plain what he called the body of the Rule and the substance of the monastic profession: namely, stability of place, conversion of ways, and obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. But I wonder that, when he spoke of those things which he asserts to be not so much the Rule as things that help it, he was silent about reading. For since it admits dispensation, it is plain that by his reckoning it does not belong to the body of the Rule. Since, then, manual work, the quantity of bread and drink, the number of cooked dishes, the manner of clothing, the quantity of vigils, the kind of bedding, the gravity of silence, the length of reading, the chanting of psalms, the prolonging of the fast, the reception of guests, and whatever other things there are of this kind, are not to be held the body of the Rule or the substance of the monastic profession, since many dispensations and changes are found in them, so that throughout many monasteries they practise nothing in all respects according to what is laid down in the Rule: where, I ask, in the Rule shall I find the body of the Rule, the substance of the monastic profession? Is not the whole Rule put together out of all these, nay almost out of these alone? But, you will say, I call only those things which we profess the body of the Rule and the substance of the monastic profession: those three, namely, which we set down above. Of change of place, then, no dispensation can be made. What is it, then, that when the Rule had already been made and promulgated, Father Benedict himself sent Maurus into Gaul? If I had read a change of this kind described in the Rule, I would surely think it should be named not a dispensation but rather an institution of the Rule. But now, since I find it not prescribed by the Rule but done after the institution of the Rule, why should I not freely call it a dispensation, when he assigns to dispensation the eating of meat, which the authority of the Rule grants to the altogether weak? Do we not see dispensations of this kind made daily by our abbots? How often monks are transferred, I do not say from monastery to monastery, but even from regions to regions, by the dispensation of their abbots! How then will stability of place, liable to so manifold a dispensation, belong to the body of our Rule and the substance of the monastic profession, which admits no dispensation? What of the fact that very often those taken up into the clergy, I do not say from the stability of that place,

but are absolved by ecclesiastical authority even from obedience to their own abbot? Does so great a change destroy the substance of a monk? What, then, is the dispensation which, if it be made concerning stability of place, will destroy the monk? He will perhaps say: if he were to migrate from monastery to monastery without his abbot's consent, with no danger to his salvation compelling him. Is this a dispensation, and not rather a transgression? But if it is not a transgression, I say firmly that not even such a change destroys the monk. Perhaps, then, he will repent of his argument, and will affirm that these three are the substance of the monastic profession not because they admit no dispensation, but because the monk professes them alone. Meanwhile let us too grant this very thing. Let the body of the Rule and the substance of the monk, then, be stability of place, conversion of ways, obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. I ask: let us meanwhile shake hands, and inquire more carefully what this stability of place is, what this conversion of ways, what this obedience. Yet I should like to know whether he thinks that the monk professes those two former things according to the Rule, as he does this last, or simply, without specification. I should think this in no way worth inquiring into, had I not found certain men who say they made their profession in this way: that is, they affirm that they promised obedience alone according to the Rule, but the two former things not according to the Rule, rather without any specification. But since the Rule of Blessed Augustine, to which canons submit themselves by an interposed profession, is one thing, and that of Saint Benedict, to which monks [do so], is another, I ask what distinction there is between their professions. For both profess stability of place, conversion of ways, and obedience. But if those two former things are promised without specification, it seems that the Rule of Saint Benedict differs from other rules only in the profession of obedience. Will obedience according to the Rule of Benedict, then, be one thing, and obedience according to the Rule of Augustine another? Blessed Benedict commends an obedience which he wills to be neither slow nor lukewarm; not sad nor murmuring; not wearying under injuries or adversities, nor failing before death. Will that according to the Rule of Saint Augustine be different? Will that be different which a cleric owes to his bishop, a bishop to his archbishop, an archbishop to the bishop of bishops? Can that one be slow or lukewarm, or sad, or murmuring, or wearying under injuries or adversities, or failing before death? In what, then, does the difference of these professions consist? Or is obedience according to the Rule perhaps to be subject to the precepts of the Rule itself, to which the professors of other rules are not bound? What, then, are these precepts?

If they are those things which he discusses concerning charity, humility, patience and the other virtues, who, I do not say [what] canon, but even [what] Christian, is not bound by these precepts? Or does Benedict commend one charity in his [Rule] and Augustine another in his? Does not each rather [commend] that which Christ commends in the law and

in the Gospel? The same can be asked about the other virtues. For who of sound mind, exhorting to the virtues, would say that these are his own precepts, and not rather Christ's? What then will be the diversity of precepts in the diverse rules? Surely: to eat thus, to be clothed thus, to read thus, to chant psalms thus, to correct and be corrected thus, and the other things of this kind which are found to differ in the diverse rules. These are therefore called specially Augustine's or Benedict's, because they are not imposed on all Christians by the Gospel's authority, but are proposed; and on those who profess the rules they are no longer merely proposed, but also imposed. Or if these are not they, what are they? Surely, whatever they set down in their rules about charity, about humility and the other virtues, they commend not as their own but as the Lord's precepts; and they invite not monks only but any Christians whatever to them, not as to their own (for who would have believed them?), but as to Christ's precepts. If, then, obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict is to obey the precepts of that Rule, and the precepts of that Rule consist in the things we have mentioned above, since the obedience which we profess is the substance of the monastic profession, how does he keep the substance of the monastic profession who does not keep those things? But perhaps he may say, as indeed must be said, that those two former things also are not professed according to the Rule, and may affirm that this diversity of Rules does not consist in stability of place, or in obedience, which are enjoined alike on monks, clerics, canons and bishops, but only in conversion of manners. For as to stability of place, does not one necessity lie upon all? namely, that no one change his place by rash presumption without the consent of him who is set over him. Further, if we profess conversion of manners not according to the Rule but simply, without determination, so too do those who in the Church are called penitents, so too those fleeing from the shipwreck of fornication to the harbour of marriage.

For which of these does not profess conversion of manners? It remains, then, to inquire what conversion of manners according to the Rule of Saint Benedict is. But if here we take refuge in the virtues, so that, for example, he who until now was proud is henceforth found humble, he who until now was wrathful is henceforth found gentle, we say indeed that this conversion of manners is enjoined not so much on monks by the Rule of Saint Benedict as on all Christians from the Gospel. Accordingly, that some diversity may be found among the conversions of manners which diverse people profess according to diverse rules, there is nowhere for us to flee except to those things which alone are laid down differently in the diverse rules, about which enough has already been said. How then does he keep his profession who does not keep these things? But someone will say: If, then, a man has been proud, contumacious, impatient, yet has kept all those things which were mentioned above, is he to be said to keep the Rule of Saint Benedict? I say firmly that if a monk has committed any of these things against the Rule of God,

if he has corrected them according to the manner prescribed in the Rule, he will not be guilty against his profession. But what if someone should understand the Rule of Saint Benedict as a kind of instrument by which vices may be cut away more easily and the Gospel precepts fulfilled more carefully; and that it can happen that someone, misusing this excellent instrument, does not by it cut away his vices nor acquire the virtues, and so has the Rule indeed, to his own ruin, yet does not fulfil the precepts of Christ? Does not blessed Benedict himself suggest this very thing? "We must establish," he says, "a school of the Lord's service, in which we hope to lay down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if anything somewhat stricter," etc.

Here I first ask what is the strictness which he urges beginners not to dread. Surely he affirms that his own institution lies in this strictness. If patience, if humility, if the other virtues are meant, would he, as one about to institute something, say these as though they were something new? Surely there is nowhere for us to flee except to those things which he himself instituted as new, which neither the law nor a prophet nor Christ Himself commanded. To beginners, no small strictness indeed seems to be present in these, as they consider the small and mean quantity of food and drink, the roughness of the clothing, the affliction of fasts and vigils, the wearing toil of daily work, and the other such things which are found instituted by him in the Rule itself. But if anyone will not agree that the Rule consists in these alone, let him at least grant what is denied only by stubborn obstinacy, that our profession and Rule consist in both, namely in virtues and observances, and so let him not deny that both must of necessity be kept by us. Although the institutor of the Rule himself, in those words which we have begun to consider, seems to prove something else: "But if anything somewhat stricter," he says, "has proceeded at the dictate of the reason of equity, for the keeping of charity and the amendment of vices." I ask, why do we seek darkness in the light? Why a knot in a bulrush? Why do we grope at midday as though in the night? Is not, in every institution, the institution itself one thing and the cause of the institution another? Has he not here most plainly distinguished between the institution and the cause of the institution? Does he not here testify that the keeping of charity and the amendment of vices are the cause of his institution? But see, another rises up from the side: "Why do you object the Rule to me?" he says. "Have charity, and do whatever you will." Let us then eat and drink, not because tomorrow we shall die (Wis. 2), but because we are full of charity. Of charity, I ask, or of vanity? "What then?" you say. "Does he who has charity not fulfil the Rule?" How many holy canons, holy priests, holy bishops, and even holy married people feel that they have charity, who yet are not unaware that they have neither promised nor keep the Rule and profession of monks. But if it is said of those who profess this Rule, it is said truly, provided what is said is understood. "Why then," you say, "do you drive me to those harsh things by the authority of the Rule?" Nay, if you have charity, not

is it necessary that you be compelled to render your vows, which your lips have uttered. But if you scorn to render what you vowed, with a written document interposed and God and the saints called to witness, you are surely convicted of not having charity. For how do you love Him Whom you mock? So that if he does otherwise, he says, that is, than he promised, let him know that he will be condemned by God, Whom he mocks. What then? Do we condemn the dispensations in the Rule itself which have been made, or are made, by the fathers? Nay, we maintain that they can reasonably be made on this ground, that they are made concerning the precepts of man, not of God. For it is lawful for no man either to change or to diminish anything of the divine precepts. This indeed must be provided for, that the change or variation itself be a dispensation, not a destruction. For since the keeping of charity and the amendment of vices are the cause of the institution itself, the dispensation will surely be reasonable if the dispensation itself has furthered this cause. But if vices are nourished by the dispensation more than by the institution, and charity is violated, the dispensation itself is proved, if perhaps not ruinous, certainly perilous.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The measure to be kept in the voluntary order is again described.

Therefore let him who by the voluntary order aspires to the summit of perfection first look unceasingly at charity, by which we most draw near to God, nay by which we cleave to God and are conformed to Him, in which the fullness of all perfection consists, as at the appointed end towards which he is to direct his whole course; then let him strive towards its fullness with untiring eagerness of spirit by the way which the norm of his vow or profession prescribes for him. So let abstinence serve as a soldier for this end, let vigils serve it, let reading keep watch for it, let daily labour sweat for it. But if charity, for whose sake these things were instituted, is known to be violated by any of them, then at last the necessity falls upon him to whom the dispensation has been entrusted, so to temper and order all things that charity be not forsaken for their sake, but its fruit be sought in all; yet not so that any of the things instituted be omitted, or the fixed times assigned to particular exercises be confused, unless extreme necessity compels, for otherwise it will be not dispensation but destruction; but so that at fixed times the fixed exercises be moderated according to each one's quality and state of mind. This is what the holy man himself [meant] when he laid down the law about the work of the hands: "So," he says, "let him temper and order all things that souls may be saved, and that what the brethren do they may do without murmuring." And elsewhere: "Yet let all things be done in measure because of the faint-hearted." Did he say, let this or that be omitted because of the faint-hearted? "Nay, for the infirm too," he says, "and the delicate, let such a craft be enjoined that they be neither idle nor crushed by the violence of the labour." Therefore let the infirm and delicate work, but let their work be so tempered that they are not crushed. Whom, I ask, of

does he absolve from work, to which he compels even the infirm and delicate? This measure indeed it is useful for anyone to keep in the exercises themselves, that he so conduct himself in one as not to fail in the others; yet let him practise with greater fervour that in which he feels himself to make more progress. I have to hand on this matter the words of a certain wise man, and I judge it more fitting to insert those that are ready to hand than to compose new words on the thought. Meditation, he says, in matters of conduct first considers what things are owed, whether by precept or by vow, and judges that those are to be done first which, when done thus, have merit, so that, not done, they beget guilt. These, then, are to be done first which cannot be omitted without fault. After these, if anything is added over and above by voluntary exercise, it is to be done so that what is owed is not hindered. Some will what they ought not, who are not able for what they ought; others, although they are able for what they ought, bring on voluntary hindrances by willing what they ought not. Again, two evils are especially to be guarded against in good action, namely affliction and preoccupation. By affliction the sweetness of the mind is embittered; by preoccupation its tranquillity is scattered. Affliction is when one burns through impatience over the things one is not able for; preoccupation, when one is driven through intemperance in doing the things one is able for. Lest, then, the mind be wrongly embittered, let it bear its own inability patiently; and lest it be wrongly preoccupied, let it not stretch its ability beyond its own measure.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

What a man owes to himself and what to his neighbour is shown, and whether he ought to prefer himself to his neighbour or his neighbour to himself is declared.

These things have been said about the measure to be kept in each of the degrees, by which, as we strive towards Him Whom we discern to be loved supremely, we both provide for the salvation of the soul and grant to the body what is owed to nature. But since divine authority teaches that our neighbour is to be loved by us equally as ourselves, it is first necessary that it should not escape our understanding which order befits each person; then we must labour with all our might that no one exceed the manner of living prescribed in whatever order he is. But since it is plain that some are set over others, some are subject, some are fellows together, when the lawful measure is transgressed by any of these, the inferior ought indeed to suggest to the superior, an equal to correct an equal, the superior even, if it be necessary, to compel the inferior. Let the suggestion itself, or correction, or compulsion, be tempered according to the quality of each, so that in the suggestion subjection, in the correction recollection, and in the compulsion compassion may be felt. He who lives lawfully in a lower order can be admonished to ascend to higher things, but he cannot be forced. He who has of his own accord submitted himself to a superior ought to be dealt with according to the manner of his profession; but he ought not to be compelled to stricter things without his will being consulted. So let him indeed be solicitous about the love of his neighbour, whom he ought to love as himself, lest the measure of love

exceed that by which he ought to love himself: which happens when He is neglected Whom he ought to love above himself. For those are not to be listened to who think that what is said, You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Matt. 22), is to be taken thus: that he ought to love any one person as himself, but two or more above himself, and therefore ought to will his own perdition rather than that of others. But what exchange shall a man give for his soul? What does it profit him if he gain the whole world, even for salvation, but suffer the loss of his own soul? (Matt. 16.) It must also be noted that whatever is added to brotherly love on the reasoning set out above is wholly subtracted from the love of God. For since love of self is measured according to the measure in which one loves God, a man loves himself less only when he loves God less. Further, who that loves himself does not spare himself perdition? How then will he love another as himself who does not even love himself! For the Apostle too, when he says, I could wish at one time to be anathema from Christ for my brethren according to the flesh (Rom. 9), so that by setting forth his wonderful charity he might draw them to salvation, disclosed his affection, but did not express his counsel. And how different are the things that affection and reason suggest in one mind, we have shown sufficiently above. Hence the Apostle, when he said, I could wish to be anathema from Christ for my brethren, said what was true, because he expressed the affection which he felt. If he had afterwards said, I would rather the whole world perish than that I alone be separated from Christ, he would have said what was no less true, because he would have disclosed the counsel of reason. For the Saviour Himself too, out of the affection by which no one ever hated his own flesh (Eph. 5), which He voluntarily took from us and for us, wished that the hour of the passion might pass (Matt. 26); but out of the counsel of reason He Himself brought it about that it should not pass. And Scripture too advisedly does not say, You shall love your neighbour as much as yourself, but as yourself (Matt. 22). It prescribed, then, the manner of loving, not enjoined its quantity. Let a man's love be so shown to himself that he first provide for the salvation of his soul, which is the better part of him, and then for the needs of the body. But if at any time the necessity lies upon him of disregarding one of the two, let him suffer even the death of the body, so long as he does not sustain loss of the soul. Nor is this to hate the body, but to prefer the soul to the body in love. From this love of himself, then, let him never withdraw, but holding to it constantly and perseveringly, let him go securely to the task of providing for his neighbour. And let him take the manner of providing from the rule by which he provides for himself. Let him therefore do as much as he can with his neighbour, that he be safe in body and sound in mind. For if he neglects one of these, he surely does not love his neighbour, who consists of both. But if the neighbour be such that he does not come to the salvation of the soul without some loss, let him with a certain compassion and contrition of heart suffer the death of his flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. By no reason or precept

is a man compelled to purchase the salvation of a brother's soul by the perdition of his own soul, nor to ward off the death of a brother's body by the death of his own body. For our being commanded to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3) pertains to contempt of life, not to loss of the soul. For thus it is laid down not for perdition, but rather for salvation. Hence so to lay down one's life is surely to provide for that very soul. Further, those who ward off the temporal death of their temporal lords by their own temporal death, if they do it rightly, do it not so much for the salvation of another's body as for that of their own soul. For their conscience holds that faith must be kept with their lords, so that in such peril they judge the lords' life to be preferred to their own. But those who do it not to keep faith, but to win glory and to avoid reproach, do it foolishly indeed; and yet they do it not for another's body but for the price of their own fame. But this perhaps can be done praiseworthily, that out of love alone someone should put his own body in the way for another's body; but that, I do not say for one soul, but even for the salvation of the whole world, he should sustain loss of his own soul cannot be done with the order of true love preserved: for it is loss of the soul to withdraw from the love of Him Who is to be loved supremely. Who would say that this can at any time be done praiseworthily, or even only culpably? One withdraws from the love of God indeed when either something worthy of damnation is committed, or something without which there is no salvation is omitted. There are besides certain middle things, such as reading, meditation, bodily labour, fasting of the belly, the sweetness of prayer and the rest of this kind: all of which are to be dispensed, varied, changed, and sometimes even omitted for a brother's salvation. Of which the Apostle says: Each one seeking not the things that are his own, but those of others (Phil. 2). And again: As I also please all men in all things, not seeking what is profitable to myself, but to many, that they may be saved (1 Cor. 10). Lastly, what he says, I could wish to be anathema from Christ for my brethren (Rom. 9), can also not unfittingly be understood thus: that from that secret place of his prayers, in which he rested sweetly in the embraces of Jesus, from that height of ineffable contemplation, in which he surveyed with purest eyes the secrets of the heavenly mysteries, from that sweetness of most welcome compunction, which bedewed that soul thirsting for heavenly things with the sweetest droplets of spiritual affections, he wished to be called away to the din of the world for the salvation of the brethren. That calling away he does not hesitate to name a separation from Christ who, according to his small measure, is at leisure and tastes how sweet the Lord is (Ps. 45); how blessed is everyone who hopes in Him. Further, he who, provoked by brotherly love, has chosen to be thus separated from Christ, or has consented under constraint of the authority of superiors, must take care lest this necessity overwhelm him and that sweetness perish. But what we have said of reading or prayer must be held also of the comforts of the body, nay of the body itself, so that whatever for his salvation

he has perceived must be disregarded, spent or varied, he may recognize that the same is to be done for the salvation of his neighbour also.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Among neighbours themselves, which is to be put before which is distinguished.

Since, then, in treating of charity we have shown, according to its law, what a man owes to himself and what to his neighbour, and since so great a multitude does not allow us to suffice for all as to bodily necessity, it remains that reason, consulted, should discern among them which is to be put before which. Let us therefore consider the breadth of our heart as a kind of spiritual ark, built of incorruptible timbers, namely of good morals and virtues; in which, placing little rooms and third storeys, that is, spiritual receptacles, let us assign to each one its own, according to the dignity or rank of each. Let us then shut up in the lower parts the beasts, namely those raging after the manner of beasts and thirsting for our blood with savage fury, that is, our enemies; to whom let us offer both the solace of prayer and, after the others, the support of this common life. But since there are inner and outer little rooms, of this kind of men let the outer suffice for those who are outside; but those who, though only in appearance, share a common faith with us, let the inner room not repel. A higher place is granted to the creeping things and the cattle, who, though savouring earthly things and staining themselves with the filth of the belly and the uncleanness of lust, cast themselves down below man, yet contrive nothing inhuman, nothing cruel, nothing against us. To these let us offer the remedy of prayer, the help of exhortation, the cautery of correction, and, before the lower but after the higher, the supply of their necessity. Among them, let those who are nearer to us either by community of blood or by the kindness of service obtain the innermost places in this degree; let the rest not be excluded from the outer. Next let us place men in the higher parts: those, namely, who, although they are not carried above man by the desire of perfection, yet do not roll down into beasts by savagery, into cattle by pleasure, into creeping things by filth. In this too there is a gradation: the nearer anyone is to us in the flesh, or the dearer in friendship, or the more generous in the bestowal of benefits, the further within let him be in the dwelling of the breast. Further, let the loftier place yield to the birds; who, carried above man on the spiritual wings of the virtues, ought to be the higher in this spiritual ark the nearer they are to God. Among them, whoever are joined to us by the sweetest bond of spiritual friendship, let them be laid up more sweetly in the inner and more secret places of our breast, bound more closely, cherished more tenderly. There is besides a place more eminent than all the others, in which Jesus, at once the builder and the restorer of this spiritual ark, sitting alone without companion in His beauty and ordering all the lower things by His sweetness, may savour in all, be fragrant in all, give light in all, shine in all, and the whole lower breadth

may draw by a straighter line to the single cubit of His love. He alone in all things, He alone before all things, both moves our affection and demands our love; He requires for Himself a seat in the dwelling of our breast not only better, but also higher, and not only higher, but also more inward. Let this principle, then, be kept in this distinction: that, the will to provide for all being kept, when the present need suffices to reach all, the higher degree be put before the lower, and in each degree provision be made rather for the more inward.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Who they are whom we can enjoy in this life.

One thing still remains, which the plan of our division compels us to treat next. For we said that charity consists in this: that the mind choose for enjoyment what it ought, be moved as is fitting, and use competently. Of choice and of motion we have dealt sufficiently for the present work. But if the choice is sound and the motion whole, will the use be perverse? Yet in the very attainment of him whom it loves, both the motion can vary and the estimation be deceived. For someone can, even with a right intention and a competent motion, obtain the presence of him whom he has chosen for enjoyment, and yet in the very enjoyment and intention change and vary the motion and exceed the measure. But since a little above we set our neighbours in order in diverse degrees and diverse merits, we must indeed say whether we ought, or are able, to enjoy all, or at least some. Now there is a temporal enjoyment, by which we can enjoy one another in this life, as Paul enjoyed Philemon (Philemon 20); and there is an eternal enjoyment, by which we shall enjoy one another in heaven, as the angels enjoy one another in pure unity of minds. Accordingly, since to enjoy is to use with joy and delight, I think it plain that in the present we can by no means enjoy all, but only very few. For as it seems to me, we can indeed use some for testing, some for instruction, some for consolation, some for sustenance. For we use enemies for testing, masters for instruction, elders for consolation, those who minister necessities for the sustenance of life; but only those whom we embrace with a certain sweet affection, of whatever kind of these they may be, for the sweetness of life and the delight of the spirit. These, therefore, we can enjoy even in the present, that is, use with joy and delight. Wherefore charity in this life, as to the choice and the motion which is in act, can be shown to all by all; but as to enjoyment, it can be shown to all by few, or indeed by none. For there are few, if there are any, by whom the whole race of men is cherished not only with rational but also with affectionate love. Lastly, charity is shown to God Himself by many both in choice and in motion, by whom the fruit of that love is not eaten in this life, but is kept after this life in the most blessed vision of Him. For even those in whom a certain enjoyment of this sweetness is begun in the light of contemplation, in the sweetness of compunction, if you look to the joys to come, are not to be said to enjoy God Himself,

but rather to use Him. For it was shown sufficiently above that the most sweet taste of that sweetness is granted to most not so much as the enjoyment of love as for the sustaining of weakness. Further, it is no small solace in this life to have one whom you can unite to yourself by a certain inmost affection and the embrace of a most sacred love; to have one in whom your spirit may rest, to whom your mind may pour itself out; to whose welcome conversations you may flee, as to certain consoling songs, amid all sad things; to the most welcome bosom of whose friendship you may come securely amid so many scandals of the world; to whose most loving breast you may commit without hesitation the inmost depths of all your thoughts, as if to yourself; by whose spiritual kisses, as by certain healing poultices, you may sweat out the languors of tumultuous cares; who weeps with you in anxieties, rejoices with you in prosperity, seeks with you in doubts; whom by the bonds of charity you may lead into that secret chamber of your mind, so that though absent in body he is yet present in spirit, where alone with him alone you may confer; and, the din of the world being stilled, in the sleep of peace, in the embrace of charity, in the kiss of unity, with the sweetness of the Holy Spirit flowing between, alone with him alone you may rest: nay, may so join and apply yourself to him, and mingle mind with mind, that out of many one is made. These, then, we can enjoy in the present, whom we love not only from reason but also from affection: and among them most of all those who are joined to us more familiarly and more closely than the rest by the most welcome covenant of spiritual friendship. And lest this most sacred kind of charity should seem to anyone to be disapproved, our Jesus Himself, condescending to us in all things, suffering and suffering with us in all things, transforming [it] by the showing of His love, granted to one, not to all, the resting-place of His most sweet breast as a sign of special love, that the virgin head might be pillowed on the flowers of the virgin breast, and that the fragrant secrets of the heavenly bridal chamber might instil the fragrance of the spiritual ointments into virgin affections the more copiously, the more nearly. Hence it is that, although all the disciples were cherished by the most loving master with the sweetness of the highest charity, yet the prerogative of a more familiar affection granted this one this surname, that he was called that disciple whom Jesus loved (John 19).

CHAPTER XL

How we ought to enjoy one another.

He, then, who finds it sweet to enjoy a friend, let him see that he enjoy him in the Lord, not in the world; not in the pleasure of the flesh, but also in the gladness of the spirit. But you ask what it is to enjoy in the Lord? The Apostle says of the Lord: Who was made for us by God wisdom and justice and sanctification (1 Cor. 1). Since, then, the Lord is wisdom, sanctification and justice, to enjoy in the Lord is to enjoy in wisdom, to enjoy in sanctification, to enjoy in justice. By wisdom worldly vanity is shut out, by sanctification the filth of the flesh is cut off, by justice all flattery and adulation is restrained. For then it is charity, if it be, as the Apostle says, from a pure heart and

a good conscience and faith unfeigned (1 Tim. 1). A pure heart receives wisdom, chastity makes the conscience serene, faith unfeigned adorns justice. There are those who enjoy one another in vain and frivolous things, in the pomps of the age and the spectacles of the world, in the pursuit of vanity and the joy of falsehood. These do not enjoy one another in wisdom, and so not in Him Who is the power of God, the wisdom of God. Others, if not worse, are certainly filthier, in whom there is almost nothing of man, whom obscene foulness has transformed into beasts; who enjoy one another in luxurious banquets and unclean desires; because they do not enjoy one another in sanctification, which consists in the sweetness of chastity, they certainly do not enjoy in the Lord, Who was made for us by God sanctification. But those who enjoy one another flatteringly, caressing one another, agreeing with one another, who, while they guard against offending each other, incur mutual ruin, because they do not enjoy one another in the liberty of justice, do not enjoy in the Lord. Therefore, if the mutual exchange of words delights us, let the talk be of conduct, let the talk be of the Scriptures: now let us groan together over the miseries of this life; now let us rejoice together in the hope of the good things to come; now let us be refreshed by the revelation of a mutual secret; now let us sigh together for that blessed vision of Jesus and for the heavenly goods. But if, as is sometimes useful, we relax the strained mind towards certain lower and pleasant things, let the relaxations themselves be full of honour, empty of levity, even if they lack edification. Let us enjoy one another in sanctification, so that each one may know how to possess his vessel, that is, his own body, in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of desire. Let us enjoy in justice, so that in the spirit of liberty we may exhort one another, correct one another, knowing that better are the wounds of a friend than the deceitful kisses of an enemy (Prov. 27).

CHAPTER XLI.

Epilogue of the whole work, and the author's excuse for himself.

These, most loving Father, are my meditations on charity; in which, if its excellence, if its fruit, if the fitting manner of showing it, is displayed as a kind of image of it, let the book itself, as you have written, be named the mirror of charity. Yet I beseech you not to bring that mirror out in public, lest perhaps not charity shine in it, but rather the image of its author be sullied. But if you send it out, as I fear, to my confusion, I adjure the reader by that sweet name of Jesus not to think that I came to this work out of presumption, to which both fatherly authority and brotherly charity and my own necessity compelled me. For not to obey a superior is perilous; to converse in spirit of such things with my dearest one in his absence is sweet and pleasant; and I judged it necessary to bind the wandering and useless sallies of my rioting mind with the bonds of these meditations. But if anyone has profited from the reading of these things, either in affection or in knowledge, let him repay my sweat with this return: that he intercede for my innumerable sins before the just and merciful Judge.