8. For wherefore art thou disturbed? Thine heart is disturbed by the pressing troubles of the world, as that ship was, in which Christ was asleep. Lo! what is the cause, stout-hearted man, that thy heart is disturbed? That ship in which Christ is asleep, [2721] is the heart in which faith is asleep. For what new thing, what new thing, I ask, is told thee, Christian? "In Christian times is the world laid waste, the world is failing." Did not thy Lord tell thee, the world shall be laid waste? Did not thy Lord tell thee, the world shall fail? Why when the promise was made, didst thou believe, and art disturbed now, when it is being completed? So then the tempest beats furiously against thine heart; beware of shipwreck, awake up Christ. The Apostle says, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." [2722] Christ dwelleth in thee by faith. Present faith, is Christ present; waking faith, is Christ awake; slumbering [2723] faith, is Christ asleep. Arise and stir thyself; say, "Lord, we perish." See what the Heathen say to us; and what is worse, what evil Christians say! Awake up, O Lord, we perish. Let thy faith awake, and Christ begins to speak to thee. "Why art thou troubled?' I told thee beforehand of all these things. I foretold them, that when evils came, thou mightest hope for good things, that thou mightest not faint in the evil." Wonderest thou that the world is failing? Wonder that the world is grown old. It is as a man who is born, and grows up, and waxes old. There are many complaints in old age; the cough, the rheum, the weakness of the eyes, fretfulness, and weariness. So then as when a man is old; he is full of complaints; so is the world old; and is full of troubles. Is it a little thing that God hath done for thee, in that in the world's old age, He hath sent Christ unto thee, that He may renew thee then, when all is failing? Dost thou not know that He notified this in the seed of Abraham? "The seed of Abraham," says the Apostle, "which is Christ. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of One, And to thy seed, which is Christ." [2724] Therefore was there a son born to Abraham in his old age, because in the old age of this world was Christ to come. He came when all things were growing old, and made them new. As a made, created, perishing thing, the world was now declining to its fall. It could not but be that it should abound in troubles; He came both to console thee in the midst of present troubles, and to promise thee everlasting rest. Choose not then to cleave to this aged world, and to be unwilling to grow young in Christ, who telleth thee, "The world is perishing, the world is waxing old, the world is failing; is distressed by the heavy breathing of old age. But do not fear, "Thy youth shall be renewed as the eagle's." [2725]
9. See, they say, in Christian times it is that Rome perishes. Perhaps Rome is not perishing; perhaps she is only scourged, not utterly destroyed; perhaps she is chastened, not brought to nought. It may be so; Rome will not perish, if the Romans do not perish. And perish they will not if they praise God; perish they will if they blaspheme Him. For what is Rome, but the Romans? For the question is not of her wood and stones, of her lofty insulated [2726] palaces, and all her spacious walls. All this was made only on this condition that it should fall some other day. When man built it, he laid stone on stone; and when man destroyed it, he removed stone from stone. Man made it, man destroyed it. Is any injury done to Rome, because it is said, "She is falling"? No, not to Rome, but to her builder perhaps. Do we then its builder any injury, because we say, Rome is falling, which Romulus built? This world itself will be burnt with fire, which God built. But neither does what man has made fall to ruin, except when God wills it; nor what God has made, except when He wills. For if the work of man fall not without God's will, how can God's work fall by the will of man? Yet God both made the world that was one day to fall for thee; and therefore made He thee as one who was one day to die. Man himself, the city's ornament, man himself, the city's inhabitant, ruler, governor, comes on this condition that he may go, is born on this condition that he may die, entered into the world on this condition that he may pass away; "Heaven and earth shall pass away:" [2727] what wonder then if some time or other there should be an end of a single city? And yet peradventure the city's end is not come now; yet some time or other come it will. But why does Rome perish amid the sacrifices of Christians? Why was her mother Troy burnt amid the sacrifices of Heathens? The gods in whom the Romans have placed all their hope, yea the Roman gods in whom the Heathen Romans placed their hope, removed from the flames of Troy to found Rome. These very gods of Rome were originally the gods of Troy. Troy was burnt, and Æneas took the fugitive gods; yea rather himself a fugitive he took away these senseless gods. For they could be carried by the fugitive; but they could not flee away themselves. And coming with these gods into Italy, with these false gods, he founded Rome. It is too long to go through the whole story; yet would I briefly mention what their own writings contain. An author of theirs well known to all speaks thus; "As I have received the account, the Trojans who under the guidance of Æneas were wandering about as fugitives without any settled abode, originally built and inhabited Rome." [2728] So they had their gods with them, they builded Rome in Latium, and there they placed the gods to be worshipped, which before were worshipped in Troy. Juno is introduced by their poet, incensed against Æneas and the fugitive Trojans, saying,
"A race of wandering slaves abhorred by me,
With prosperous passage cuts the Tuscan sea,
To fruitful Italy their course they steer,
And for their vanquished gods, design new temples
there." [2729]
Now when these vanquished gods were carried into Italy, was it as a protecting deity, or [2730] as a presage [2731] of their future fall? "Love" therefore "the law of God, and nothing shall be an offence to you." We pray you, we beseech you, we exhort you; be meek, sympathize with the suffering, bear the weak; and on this occasion of the concourse of so many strangers, and needy, and suffering people, let your hospitality and your good works abound. Let but Christians do what Christ enjoineth, and so will the Heathen blaspheme only to their own hurt.
[2694] Ps. viii. 4.
[2695] Matt. xviii. 7.
[2696] Ps. cxix. 165.
[2697] Rom. ii. 13.
[2698] Gal. v. 6.
[2699] Ps. xxxvii. 11.
[2700] Ps. xciv. 12, 13.
[2701] Job ii. 9, Sept.
[2702] Job ii. 10, Sept.
[2703] 1 Cor. iii. 7.
[2704] Jas. iv. 6.
[2705] John i. 10.
[2706] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[2707] Matt. xviii. 8, 9.
[2708] Matt. xvi. 23.
[2709] Matt. xvi. 17.
[2710] Matt. iv. 6.
[2711] Ps. cxvi. 11.
[2712] Wisd. i. 11.
[2713] Corpus, dicis tu, premit: dico ego, perimit.
[2714] Deut. v. 20.
[2715] Ps. v. 6.
[2716] Matt. x. 28.
[2717] Ps. xiv. 2, 3.
[2718] John i. 12.
[2719] Ps. lxxxii. 6.
[2720] By the inundation of the Goths, Serm. lv. (cv. Ben.).
[2721] Matt. viii. 24.
[2722] Eph. iii. 17.
[2723] Oblita.
[2724] Gal. iii. 16.
[2725] Ps. ciii. 5.
[2726] Insulis.
[2727] Matt. xxiv. 35.
[2728] Sallust in Catil. 6.
[2729] Æn. i. 71, 2.
[2730] De Civit. Dei, lib. i. c. 3. Immo vero victos deos tanquam præsides ac defensores colere, quid est aliud quam tenere non numina bona sed omina mala?
[2731] Numen erat, an omen.
Sermon XXXII.
[LXXXII. Ben.]
On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xviii. 15, "If thy brother sin against thee, go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone;" and of the words of Solomon, he that winketh with the eyes deceitfully, heapeth sorrow upon men; but he that reproveth openly, maketh peace.
1. Our Lord warns us not to neglect one another's sins, not by searching out what to find fault with, but by looking out for what to amend. For He said that his eye is sharp to cast out a mote out of his brother's eye, who has not a beam in his own eye. Now what this means, I will briefly convey to you, Beloved. A mote in the eye is anger; a beam in the eye is hatred. When therefore one who has hatred finds fault with one who is angry, he wishes to take a mote out of his brother's eye, but is hindered by the beam which he carries in his own eye. A mote is the beginning of a beam. For a beam in the course of its growth, is first a mote. By watering the mote, you bring it to a beam; by nourishing anger with evil suspicions, you bring it on to hatred.
2. Now there is a great difference between the sin of one who is angry, and the cruelty of one who holds another in hatred. For even with our children are we angry; but who is ever found to hate his children? Among the very cattle too, the cow in a sort of weariness will sometimes in anger drive away her sucking calf; but anon she embraces it with all the affection of a mother. She is in a way disgusted with it, when she butts at it; yet when she misses it, she will seek after it. Nor do we discipline our children otherwise, than with a degree of anger and indignation; yet we should not discipline them at all, but in love to them. So far then is every one who is angry from hating; that sometimes one would be rather convicted of hating, if he were not angry. For suppose a child wishes to play in some river's stream, by whose force he would be like to perish; if you see this, and patiently suffer it, this would be hating; your patient suffering him, is his death. How far better is it to be angry and correct him, than by not being angry to suffer him to perish! Above all things then is hatred to be avoided, and the beam to be cast out of the eye. Great is the difference indeed between one's exceeding due limits in some words through anger, which he afterwards wipes off by repenting of it; and the keeping an insidious purpose shut up in the heart. Great, lastly, the difference between these words of Scripture; "Mine eye is disordered because of anger." [2732] Whereas of the other it is said, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." [2733] Great is the difference between an eye disordered, and clean put out. A mote disorders, a beam puts clean out.
3. In order then that we may be able well to do and to fulfil what we have been admonished of to-day, let us first persuade ourselves to this, above all things to have no hate. For when there is no beam in thine own eye, thou seest rightly whatever may be in thy brother's eye; and art uneasy, till thou cast out of thy brother's eye what thou seest to hurt it. The light that is in thee, doth not allow thee to neglect thy brother's light. Whereas if thou hate, and wouldest correct him, how dost thou improve his light, when thou hast lost thine own light? For the same Scripture, where it is written, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer," hath expressly told us this also. "He that hateth his brother is in darkness even until now." [2734] Hatred then is darkness. Now it cannot but be, that he who hateth another, should first injure himself. For him he endeavours to hurt outwardly, he lays himself waste inwardly. Now in proportion as our soul is of more value than our body, so much the more ought we to provide for it, that it be not hurt. But he that hateth another, doth hurt his own soul. And what would he do to him whom he hateth? What would he do? He takes away his money, can he take his faith away? he wounds his good fame, can he wound his conscience? Whatever injury he does, is but external; now observe what his injury to himself is? For he who hateth another is an enemy to himself within. But because he is not sensible of what harm he is doing to himself, he is violent against another, and that the more dangerously, that he is not sensible of the evil he is doing to himself; because by this very violence he has lost the power of perception. Thou art violent against thine enemy; by this violence of thine he is spoiled, and thou art wicked. Great is the difference between the two. He hath lost his money, thou thine innocence. Ask which hath suffered the heavier loss? He hath lost a thing that was sure to perish, and thou art become one who must now perish thyself.