6. Since you are not wholly independent but are bound to a wife who is your sister in the Lord, I entreat you--whether here or there--that you will avoid large gatherings, visits official and complimentary, and social parties, indulgences all of which tend to enchain the soul. Let your food be coarse--say cabbage and pulse--and do not take it until evening. Sometimes as a great delicacy you may have some small fish. He who longs for Christ and feeds upon the true bread cares little for dainties which must be transmuted into ordure. Food that you cannot taste when once it has passed your gullet might as well be--so far as you are concerned--bread and pulse. You have my books against Jovinian which speak yet more largely of despising the appetite and the palate. Let some holy volume be ever in your hand. Pray constantly, and bowing down your body lift up your mind to the Lord. Keep frequent vigils and sleep often on an empty stomach. Avoid tittle-tattle and all self-laudation. Flee from wheedling flatterers as from open enemies. Distribute with your own hand provisions to alleviate the miseries of the poor and of the brethren. With your own hands, I say, for good faith is rare among men. You do not believe what I say? Think of Judas and his bag. Seek not a lowly garb for a swelling soul. Avoid the society of men of the world, especially if they are in power. Why need you look again on things contempt for which has made you a monk? Above all let your sister [1783] hold aloof from married ladies. And, if women round her wear silk dresses and gems while she is meanly attired, let her neither fret nor congratulate herself. For by so doing she will either regret her resolution or sow the seeds of pride. If you are already famed as a faithful steward of your own substance, do not take other people's money to give away. You understand what I mean, for the Lord has given you understanding in all things. Be simple as a dove and lay snares for no man: but be cunning as a serpent and let no man lay snares for you. [1784] For a Christian who allows others to deceive him is almost at much at fault as one who tries to deceive others. If a man talks to you always or nearly always about money (except it be about alms-giving, a topic which is open to all) treat him as a broker rather than a monk. Besides food and clothing and things manifestly necessary give no man anything; for dogs must not eat the children's bread.
7. The true temple of Christ is the believer's soul; adorn this, clothe it, offer gifts to it, welcome Christ in it. What use are walls blazing with jewels when Christ in His poor [1786] is in danger of perishing from hunger? Your possessions are no longer your own but a stewardship is entrusted to you. Remember Ananias and Sapphira who from fear of the future kept what was their own, and be careful for your part not rashly to squander what is Christ's. Do not, that is, by an error of judgment give the property of the poor to those who are not poor; lest, as a wise man has told us, [1787] charity prove the death of charity. Look not upon
Gay trappings or a Cato's empty name. [1788]
In the words of Persius, God says:--
I know thy thoughts and read thine inmost soul. [1789]
To be a Christian is the great thing, not merely to seem one. And somehow or other those please the world most who please Christ least. In speaking thus I am not like the sow lecturing Minerva; but, as a friend warns a friend, so I warn you before you embark on your new course. I would rather fail in ability than in will to serve you; for my wish is that where I have fallen you may keep your footing.
8. It is with much pleasure that I have read the book which you have sent to me containing your wise and eloquent defence of the emperor Theodosius; and your arrangement of the subject has particularly pleased me. While in the earlier chapters you surpass others, in the latter you surpass yourself. Your style is terse and neat; it has all the purity of Tully, and yet it is packed with meaning. For, as someone has said, [1790] that speech is a failure of which men only praise the diction. You have been successful in preserving both sequence of subjects and logical connexion. Whatever sentence one takes, it is always a conclusion to what goes before or an introduction to what follows. Theodosius is fortunate in having a Christian orator like you to plead his cause. You have made his purple illustrious and have consecrated for future ages his useful laws. Go on and prosper, for, if such be your first ventures in the field, what will you not do when you become a trained soldier? Oh! that it were mine to conduct a genius like you, not (as the poets sing) through the Aonian mountains and the peaks of Helicon but through Zion and Tabor and the high places of Sinai. If I might teach you what I have learned myself and might pass on to you the mystic rolls of the prophets, then might we give birth to something such as Greece with all her learning could not shew.
9. Hear me, therefore, my fellow-servant, my friend, my brother; give ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the holy scriptures. All that we read in the divine books, while glistening and shining without, is yet far sweeter within. "He who desires to eat the kernel must first break the nut." [1791] "Open thou mine eyes," says David, "that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." [1792] Now, if so great a prophet confesses that he is in the darkness of ignorance; how deep, think you, must be the night of misapprehension with which we, mere babes and unweaned infants, are enveloped! Now this veil rests not only on the face of Moses, [1793] but on the evangelists and the apostles as well. [1794] To the multitudes the Saviour spoke only in parables and, to make it clear that His words had a mystical meaning, said:--"he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." [1795] Unless all things that are written are opened by Him "who hath the key of David, who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth," [1796] no one can undo the lock or set them before you. If only you had the foundation which He alone can give; nay, if even His fingers were but passed over your work; there would be nothing finer than your volumes, nothing more learned, nothing more attractive, nothing more Latin.
10. Tertullian is packed with meaning but his style is rugged and uncouth. The blessed Cyprian like a fountain of pure water flows softly and sweetly but, as he is taken up with exhortations to virtue and with the troubles consequent on persecution, he has nowhere discussed the divine scriptures. Victorinus, although he has the glory of a martyr's crown, yet cannot express what he knows. Lactantius has a flow of eloquence worthy of Tully: would that he had been as ready to teach our doctrines as he was to pull down those of others! Arnobius is lengthy and unequal, and often confused from not making a proper division of his subject. That reverend man Hilary gains in height from his Gallic buskin; yet, adorned as he is with the flowers of Greek rhetoric, he sometimes entangles himself in long periods and offers by no means easy reading to the less learned brethren. I say nothing of other writers whether dead or living; others will hereafter judge them both for good and for evil. [1797]
11. I will come to yourself, my fellow-mystic, my companion, and my friend; my friend, I say, though not yet personally known: and I will ask you not to suspect a flatterer in one so intimate. Better that you should think me mistaken or led astray by affection than that you should hold me capable of fawning on a friend. You have a great intellect and an inexhaustible store of language, your diction is fluent and pure, your fluency and purity are mingled with wisdom. Your head is clear and all your senses keen. Were you to add to this wisdom and eloquence a careful study and knowledge of scripture, I should soon see you holding our citadel against all comers; you would go up with Joab upon the roof of Zion, [1798] and sing upon the housetops what you had learned in the secret chambers. [1799] Gird up, I pray you, gird up your loins. As Horace says:--
Life hath no gifts for men except they toil. [1800]
Shew yourself as much a man of note in the church, as you were before in the senate. Provide for yourself riches which you may spend daily yet they will not fail. Provide them while you are still strong and while as yet your head has no gray hairs: before, in the words of Virgil,
Diseases creep on you, and gloomy age,
And pain, and cruel death's inclemency. [1801]
I am not content with mediocrity for you: I desire all that you do to be of the highest excellence.
How heartily I have welcomed the reverend presbyter Vigilantius, [1802] his own lips will tell you better than this letter. Why he has so soon left us and started afresh I cannot say; and, indeed, I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings. [1803] Still, mere passer-by as he was, in haste to continue his journey, I managed to keep him back until I had given him a taste of my friendship for you. Thus you can learn from him what you want to know about me. Kindly salute your reverend sister [1804] and fellow-servant, who with you fights the good fight in the Lord.
[1732] Matt. xii. 35.
[1733] Luke vi. 44.
[1734] Luke xiv. 10.
[1735] Wisd. iv. 9.
[1736] Nu. xi. 16.
[1737] Story of Susannah.
[1738] Acts ix. 15.
[1739] 1 Cor. xv. 10.
[1740] Ps. lv. 13: Consessu substituted for consensu of the Vulgate.
[1741] Virgil, Æn. xii. 603.
[1742] Matt. xxiii. 27.
[1743] Matt. xix. 21.
[1744] Compare Letter LII. § 5.
[1745] Cf. Luke xvi. 12.
[1746] Cicero, pro Murena, V.
[1747] Matt. xxiii. 37.
[1748] Ps. xlvi. 4.
[1749] Matt. v. 14.
[1750] Gal. iv. 26.
[1751] Phil. iii. 20, R.V.
[1752] Joh. iv. 24.
[1753] Joh. iii. 8, R.V. marg.
[1754] Ps. xxiv. 1.
[1755] Judg. vi. 36-40.
[1756] Luke xiii. 29.
[1757] Luke xvi. 22.
[1758] Ps. lxxvi. 1.
[1759] Ps. xix. 4.
[1760] Only the second sentence was spoken in the temple: the first was uttered in the chamber of the last supper.
[1761] Joh. xiv. 31.
[1762] Matt. xxiii. 38.
[1763] Luke xxi. 33.
[1764] Jer. vii. 4.
[1765] 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[1766] Rom. viii. 11.
[1767] Luke xvii. 21.
[1768] Hadrian died in 138 a.d.; Constantine became Emperor in 306 a.d.
[1769] Ps. lxxxv. 11, Vulg.
[1770] Ezek. viii. 14.
[1771] For the tradition that Christ was born in a cave Justin Martyr is the earliest authority (dial. c. Try. 78).
[1772] Adonis, killed by a boar and spending half his time in the upper, half in the lower world, is a type of summer overcoming and overcome by winter.
[1773] Cf. Luke vi.
[1774] Acts iv. 37.
[1775] Castella.
[1776] Monachus, lit. "a solitary." Men frequently at this time made vows, especially those of celibacy, without entering a monastery.
[1777] 2 Kings vi. 1, 2.
[1778] Jer. xxxv.
[1779] Jer. xxxv. 19.
[1780] This title occurs only in the LXX.
[1781] 2 Kings x. 15, 16.
[1782] Jer. xxxv. 11.
[1783] Therasia, the wife of Paulinus is meant.
[1784] Matt. x. 16.
[1785] Matt. xv. 26.
[1786] Matt. xxv. 40.
[1787] Cicero, de Off. II. xv.
[1788] Probably a quotation from memory incorrectly made up from Lucan's Nomina vana Catonis' (i. 313).
[1789] Persius, iii. 30.
[1790] Quintilian, Inst. Or. viii. Proem.
[1791] Plautus, Curc. I. i. 55.
[1792] Ps. cxix. 18.
[1793] 2 Cor. iii. 14, 15.
[1794] i.e., the new testament as well as the old may have its true meaning concealed from some.
[1795] Luke viii. 8, 10.
[1796] Rev. iii. 7.
[1797] Cf. Letter LXX. 5.
[1798] 1 Chron. xi. 5, 6.
[1799] Cf. Luke xii. 3.
[1800] Horace, Sat. I. ix. 59, 60.
[1801] Virgil, Georg. iii. 67, 68.
[1802] Afterwards noted as an assailant of Jerome's ascetic doctrines. See the introduction to Letter LXI.
[1803] The allusion seems to be to the behaviour of Vigilantius during an earthquake which occurred when he was at Bethlehem. His fright on the occasion exposed him to the ridicule of the community there. (Against Vig., i. 11.)
[1804] As before, Therasia, the wife of Paulinus is meant.