17. Now we see who you are; but do not forget what you are. I, at all events, have not forgotten my promise to return to that point on a fitting occasion. And is it not most fitting to combine the consideration of who you are with the consideration of what you previously were? Why do I say were? You are still what you were. Why cease to regard what you have not ceased to be? What you have been, and what you are, is one and the same consideration; your new official character is a different matter. In the scrutiny of yourself the one should not exclude the other. For you are, as I have said, still what you were, and no less what you were than what you have since become, perhaps even more. In fact you were that by nature; this you have borrowed; you have been changed into it. The former is not thrown away, the latter is thrown in. Let us treat them both together; for, as I remember saying before, when they are compared one with the other they will both become more useful. When, farther back, you were considering what you are, I told you to consider your nature as a man: for you were born a man. Moreover, if a person inquire who you personally are, the answer will be the name of the character you sustain, viz. a bishop, and this you have become: that you were not by birth. Now which of these seems to you to be absolutely your own, and above all else to belong to you? That which you have become, or that which you were born? Must we not say that which you were born? I therefore counsel you to mainly consider what you mainly are, that is to say, a man; such you were by birth.
18. Nor should you only observe what you were born, viz., a man, but also what manner of man, if you do not wish to be defrauded of the fruit and profit of your consideration. Away then with these hereditary girdles which have been accursed from the beginning. Tear to pieces the covering of leaves that conceal the shame but do not cure the wound. Strip off the disguise of this fleeting honour, and the tinsel of this sham glory, so that you may consider yourself in your bare nakedness, for naked you came out of your mother's womb.1 Did you then wear the sacred fillet? Had you then the glittering gems about your person? Were you robed in flowery silks? Did the plumes then wave upon your head? Were you decked with gold and silver? If you scatter all this like morning clouds quickly passing by and soon to altogether pass away, if you blow them from before the face of your consideration, you will behold a man naked, poor, wretched, pitiable; a man grieving that he is a man, blushing at his nakedness, weeping that he is born, complaining that he is a man born to toil, not to honour,2 born of a woman and thereby a guilty creature,3 living but a little while and therefore in constant fear, full of misery and therefore ever bathed in tears. And, truly, miseries abound, for they are those of body and soul together. How can he escape calamity who is born in sin, with a frail body and a barren mind? Of a truth he must be full of misery, who through transmitted corruption, the sentence of death, bears the double load of weakness of body and foolishness of heart. It will do you good to unite these two considerations. While you think of yourself as supreme pontiff, bear in mind as well that you not only were, but are, worthless ashes. In your thinking, imitate nature; and, which is worthier of you, imitate the Author of nature, by associating the highest and the lowest things. Has not nature in the person of man bound together poor clay and the breath of life? Has not the Author of nature in His own Person tempered together the Word and clay? Take then for your pattern both our original constitution and the mystery of our redemption, in order that, though you sit on high, you may not be high-minded, but may think lowly of yourself, and condescend to men of low degree.