23. But who is this that says that he has held his peace before, and will not hold his peace for ever? Surely it is He who was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer is without voice, so He opened not His mouth. Surely it is He who did not cry, nor was His voice heard in the streets. Surely He who was not rebellious, neither contradicted, when He offered His back to stripes, and His cheeks to the palms of the hands; neither turned away His face from the foulness of spitting. Surely it is He who, when He was accused by the priests and elders, answered nothing, and, to the wonder of Pilate, kept a most patient silence. This is He who, although He was silent in His passion, yet by and by will not be silent in His vengeance. This is our God, that is, not the God of all, but of the faithful and believing; and He, when He shall come manifest in His second advent, will not be silent. [3637] For although He came first shrouded in humility, yet He shall come manifest in power.
24. Let us wait for Him, beloved brethren, our Judge and Avenger, who shall equally avenge with Himself the congregation of His Church, and the number of all the righteous from the beginning of the world. Let him who hurries, and is too impatient for his revenge, consider that even He Himself is not yet avenged who is the Avenger. God the Father ordained His Son to be adored; and the Apostle Paul, mindful of the divine command, lays it down, and says: "God hath exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things heavenly, and things earthly, and things beneath." [3638] And in the Apocalypse the angel withstands John, who wishes to worship him, [3639] and says: "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren. Worship Jesus the Lord." [3640] How great is the Lord Jesus, and how great is His patience, that He who is adored in heaven is not yet avenged on earth! Let us, beloved brethren, consider His patience in our persecutions and sufferings; let us give an obedience full of expectation to His advent; and let us not hasten, servants as we are, to be defended before our Lord with irreligious and immodest eagerness. Let us rather press onward and labour, and, watching with our whole heart, and stedfast to all endurance, let us keep the Lord's precepts; so that when that day of anger and vengeance shall come, we may not be punished with the impious and sinners, but may be honoured with the righteous and those that fear God.
[3584] Having at the outset distinguished true patience from the false patience of philosophers, he commends Christian patience by the patience of God, of Christ, and of all righteous men. He further proves, as well by Scripture as by reason, and, moreover, by the instances of Job and Tobias, that not only is patience useful, but that it is needful also; and in order that the excellence of patience may shine forth the more by contrast with the vice opposed to it, he sets forth what is the evil of impatience. Finally, he reproves the desire of vengeance, and teaches that revenge ought, according to Scripture, to be left to God rather than to be arrogated to ourselves. If in any writing Cyprian is an imitator of Tertullian, assuredly in this he imitates that writer's treatise On Patience. [See vol. iii. p. 707.]
[3585] [Hermas, vol. ii. 23, 49; also Tertullian, iii. 714, and elucidation, p. 717.]
[3586] Isa. xxix. 14.
[3587] Col. ii. 8, 10.
[3588] 1 Cor. iii. 18-20.
[3589] The Oxford edition (Treatise ix.), and many others read "patient."
[3590] "Inseparabili."
[3591] The original here is read variously "maturescere" and "mitescere."
[3592] Ezek. xviii. 32.
[3593] Mal. iii. 7. The Oxford edition omits this quotation, and introduces the next with the words, "And again the prophet."
[3594] Joel ii. 13.
[3595] Rom. ii. 4-6.
[3596] ["Deus patiens quia æternus" (Augustine).]
[3597] Matt. v. 43-48.
[3598] Baluzius reads, "compares obaudientes"--His obedient peers. The mss. have "obaudientes" only.
[3599] Erasmus adds, "with patience."
[3600] [This sublime passage recalls Bacon's Paradoxes. See p. 237, note 3, supra.]
[3601] Some editors insert "and patient."
[3602] [1 Tim. i. 3. A striking suggestion, put in our author's terse way.]
[3603] 1 John ii. 6.
[3604] [See Elucidation VII. The Trent Council itself (on Matt. xvi. 18) affirms this of the Creed, not Peter. Vol. iv. pp. 99 and 101.]
[3605] 1 Pet. ii. 21-23, with a singular departure from the received text.
[3606] According to some, "parricidal."
[3607] Gen. iii. 17-19.
[3608] [How practical this treatise in an age when to be a Christian meant to be prepared for all these things! "Fiery trials" the chronic state.]
[3609] John xvi. 33.
[3610] Matt. x. 22.
[3611] John viii. 31, 32.
[3612] Rom. viii. 24, 25.
[3613] A common reading here is "giving" instead of "showing," scil. "præstante" for "representante."
[3614] Gal. vi. 10, 9.
[3615] Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
[3616] Rev. iii. 11.
[3617] The older editions have "gustatam," "tasted," instead of "gestatam," "carried," as above. [See page p. 350, supra. Also St. Cyril. Elucidation VIII.]
[3618] 1 Cor. xiii. 4-7.
[3619] Eph. iv. 2, 3.
[3620] Manutius, Pamelius, and others add, "not only seventy times seven times."
[3621] Or, "them with the stedfastness of patience," etc.
[3622] Acts vii. 60.
[3623] Eph. iv. 30, 31.
[3624] Ecclus. ii. 4, 5.
[3625] [Admirably worked out in Messias and Anti-Messias, by the Rev. C. I. Black, ed. London, Masters, 1854.]
[3626] [The downfall of Novatian and of Arius and others seems largely attributable to this sin. They could not await God's time to give them influence and power for good. See quotation from Massillon, vol. iii. p. 718, this series. Also Tertull., iii. p. 677.]
[3627] The Oxford edition adds here, according to some authorities, "and will not put off the recompense of evils until that day of last judgment, we exhort you, for the meanwhile, embrace with us this benefit of patience, that," etc.; and it omits the following ten words.
[3628] On the authority of one codex, Pamelius here adds, "and envious."
[3629] Zeph. iii. 8.
[3630] "Dearest brethren," Oxford edit.
[3631] Rev. xxii. 10-12.
[3632] Rev. vi. 9-11.
[3633] Mal. iv. 1.
[3634] Ps. l. 3-6.
[3635] Isa. lxvi. 15, 16.
[3636] Isa. xlii. 13, 14.
[3637] [Ps. l. 3.]
[3638] Phil. ii. 9, 10.
[3639] [Origen, vol. iv. p. 544, this series.]
[3640] Rev. xxii. 9; [also xix. 10. And compare Acts x. 26, and xiv. 14, 15; also Col. ii. 18.]
Treatise X. [3641]
On Jealousy and Envy.
Argument. [3642] --After Pointing Out that Jealousy or Envy is a Sin All the More Heinous in Proportion as Its Wickedness is Hidden, and that Its Origin is to Be Traced to the Devil, He Gives Illustrations of Envy from the Old Testament, and Gathers, by Reference to Special Vices, that Envy is the Root of All Wickedness. Therefore with Reason Was Fraternal Hatred Forbidden Not in One Place Only, But by Christ and His Apostles. Finally, Exhorting to the Love of One's Enemies by God's Example, He Dissuades from the Sin of Envy, by Urging the Rewards Set Before the Indulgence of Love.
1. To be jealous of what you see to be good, and to be envious of those who are better than yourself, seems, beloved brethren, in the eyes of some people to be a slight and petty wrong; and, being thought trifling and of small account, it is not feared; not being feared, it is contemned; being contemned, it is not easily shunned: and it thus becomes a dark and hidden mischief, which, as it is not perceived so as to be guarded against by the prudent, secretly distresses incautious minds. But, moreover, the Lord bade us be prudent, and charged us to watch with careful solicitude, lest the adversary, who is always on the watch and always lying in wait, should creep stealthily into our breast, and blow up a flame from the sparks, magnifying small things into the greatest; and so, while soothing the unguarded and careless with a milder air and a softer breeze, should stir up storms and whirlwinds, and bring about the destruction of faith and the shipwreck of salvation and of life. Therefore, beloved brethren, we must be on our guard, and strive with all our powers to repel, with solicitous and full watchfulness, the enemy, raging and aiming his darts against every part of our body in which we can be stricken and wounded, in accordance with what the Apostle Peter, in his epistle, forewarns and teaches, saying, "Be sober, and watch; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking any one to devour." [3643]
2. He goeth about every one of us; and even as an enemy besieging those who are shut up (in a city), he examines the walls, and tries whether there is any part of the walls [3644] less firm and less trustworthy, by entrance through which he may penetrate to the inside. He presents to the eyes seductive forms and easy pleasures, that he may destroy chastity by the sight. He tempts the ears with harmonious music, that by the hearing of sweet sounds he may relax and enervate Christian vigour. [3645] He provokes the tongue by reproaches; he instigates the hand by exasperating wrongs to the wrecklessness of murder; to make the cheat, he presents dishonest gains; to take captive the soul by money, he heaps together mischievous hoards; he promises earthly honours, that he may deprive of heavenly ones; he makes a show of false things, that he may steal away the true; and when he cannot hiddenly deceive, he threatens plainly and openly, holding forth the fear of turbulent persecution to vanquish God's servants--always restless, and always hostile, crafty in peace, and fierce in persecution.
3. Wherefore, beloved brethren, against all the devil's deceiving snares or open threatenings, the mind ought to stand arrayed and armed, ever as ready to repel as the foe is ever ready to attack. And since those darts of his which creep on us in concealment are more frequent, and his more hidden and secret hurling of them is the more severely and frequently effectual to our wounding, in proportion as it is the less perceived, let us also be watchful to understand and repel these, among which is the evil of jealousy and envy. And if any one closely look into this, he will find that nothing should be more guarded against by the Christian, nothing more carefully watched, than being taken captive by envy and malice, that none, entangled in the blind snares of a deceitful enemy, in that the brother is turned by envy to hatred of his brother, should himself be unwittingly destroyed by his own sword. That we may be able more fully to collect and more plainly to perceive this, let us recur to its fount and origin. Let us consider whence arises jealousy, and when and how it begins. For so mischievous an evil will be more easily shunned by us, if both the source and the magnitude of that same evil be known. [3646]
4. From this source, even at the very beginnings of the world, the devil was the first who both perished (himself) and destroyed (others). He who [3647] was sustained in angelic majesty, he who was accepted and beloved of God, when he beheld man made in the image of God, broke forth into jealousy with malevolent envy--not hurling down another by the instinct of his jealousy before he himself was first hurled down by jealousy, captive before he takes captive, ruined before he ruins others. While, at the instigation of jealousy, he robs man of the grace of immortality conferred, he himself has lost that which he had previously been. How great an evil is that, beloved brethren, whereby an angel fell, whereby that lofty and illustrious grandeur could be defrauded and overthrown, whereby he who deceived was himself deceived! Thenceforth envy rages on the earth, in that he who is about to perish by jealousy obeys the author of his ruin, imitating the devil in his jealousy; as it is written, "But through envy of the devil death entered into the world." [3648] Therefore they who are on his side imitate him. [3649]
5. Hence, in fine, began the primal hatreds of the new brotherhood, hence the abominable fratricides, in that the unrighteous Cain is jealous of the righteous Abel, in that the wicked persecutes the good with envy and jealousy. So far prevailed the rage of envy to the consummation of that deed of wickedness, that neither the love of his brother, nor the immensity of the crime, nor the fear of God, nor the penalty of the sin, was considered. [3650] He was unrighteously stricken who had been the first to show righteousness; he endured hatred who had not known how to hate; he was impiously slain, who, dying, did not resist. And that Esau was hostile to his brother Jacob, arose from jealousy also. For because the latter had received his father's blessing, the former was inflamed to a persecuting hatred by the brands of jealousy. And that Joseph was sold by his brethren, the reason of their selling him proceeded from envy. When in simplicity, and as a brother to brethren, he set forth to them the prosperity which had been shown to him in visions, their malevolent disposition broke forth into envy. Moreover, that Saul the king hated David, so as to seek by often repeated persecutions to kill him--innocent, merciful, gentle, patient in meekness--what else was the provocation save the spur of jealousy? Because, when Goliath was slain, and by the aid and condescension of God so great an enemy was routed, the wondering people burst forth with the suffrage of acclamation into praises of David, Saul through jealousy conceived the rage of enmity and persecution. And, not to go to the length of numbering each one, let us observe the destruction of a people that perished once for all. [3651] Did not the Jews perish for this reason, that they chose rather to envy Christ [3652] than to believe Him? Disparaging those great works which He did, they were deceived by blinding jealousy, and could not open the eyes of their heart to the knowledge of divine things.