De arte praedicatoria

Since the preacher wishes to invite his hearers to contempt for worldly fear, and to a desire for the fear that comes from above, let him use these authorities: Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.¹ In the book of Wisdom it is read: Fear God, and keep his commandments.² Likewise elsewhere: Blessed is he who is always fearful.³ And again: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.⁴ It will go well with those who fear God at the last, and they will be blessed on the day of his judgment.⁵ Those who fear the Lord keep his commandments, and will have patience until his visitation.⁶ And Jerome says: There is nothing that so keeps us free from sin as the fear of punishment, and the love of God. And Gregory says: To fear God is to pass over none of the good deeds that must be done. From these authorities one should proceed thus: O man, all worldly fear is especially to be avoided: the fear that flees troubles before they come, that heaps up pain in torments, that gives birth to adversity in prosperity, and to sadness and death in the midst of joy; that is the worst kind of augury in doubtful matters, false in true matters, abundant in false ones. No good thing helps the one who has it, unless the mind is prepared for its loss.

Therefore, arm yourself against everything that can happen, however powerful it may be. The satisfying of desires also serves as a remedy against fear, and, as Seneca says: "Fear follows hope." Foresight, the greatest good of the human condition, has been turned into an evil; wild beasts flee the dangers they see, when they can escape in safety; but we are tormented both by what is to come and by what is past. Many of our good things harm us. For memory brings back the torment of fear, foresight anticipates it; no one is wretched only in the present. O man, conquer fear, the conqueror of all things; if you conquer it, adversity will be favorable, tribulation sweet, pain will become delightful. O man, do you wish to flee fear, to set aside earthly things? do not cling to earthly things, do not indulge in what is fleeting; if you love earthly things, you fear to offend, you fear to lose; if you wish to conquer fear, fear God. Thus one art is undone by another art, thus one nail blunts another. Fear God so that you may not fear; serve God so that you may not be a slave; and keep his commandments in your mind, for this is every man, that is, every man was made for this, that he may read in himself the whole power of God. Set yourself, o man, between two millstones, the millstone of fear and of hope. Hope in such a way that your spirit is not slackened; fear in such a way that your thought is not allowed to spread too wide. O man, do not fear the approach of death, nor refuse the service of life! for the latter gives the just man greater merit, the former grants him his wages. Do not consider how long you live, but how. One should not take care to live long, but to live well enough; to live long belongs to chance, to live well enough belongs to the will. Life is long if it is full; but the mind is made full when it renders itself full of virtues, and does not fall back from its own proper power. What good does it do a man if he passes eighty years in the numbness of inactivity? that man did not live, but merely lingered in life, and did not die late, but died slowly, over a long time.

But he dies full of days who weighs his old age by the seriousness of his virtue, who extends the length of his life imposed on him by his merits; for although his age may be incomplete, yet his life is complete. I beg you, o man, to live in such a way that, just as you think that precious things hang on chance, so you should not doubt that the span of life hangs in the balance. Let us measure life by action, not by time. Let it recover in a good action what it lost in its passing. We are not cast suddenly into death, but proceed toward it little by little: we die daily, we take away something of life daily. Let us act so that as much as our temporal life decreases, so much may our eternal life increase. Let the loss of temporal life be for the increase of eternal life.

Let us arm ourselves with patience for the course of life, and for the assault of death: for we must be warned and strengthened for both, so that we neither love life too much, nor fear the onset of death too much, but weigh both in the balance of reason; for otherwise there is an ill-considered inclination of the mind toward dying, for some, weighed down by weariness, wish to end their disgust through death. It is not the harassment of worldly adversity that ought to drive one toward death, but rather the ardor of divine charity, so that a man does not set the end of his desire in the moment of death, but rather in the attaining of eternal blessedness.