De Consideratione

14. There is something else—if it be something else, for it might perhaps be said to be part of the same subject—and let your consideration give good heed to it. He does not appear to be far from the truth who thought that what I am about to speak of should be classed as a variety of avarice. For myself, I would not deny either that it is a kind of avarice, or that it looks like avarice. At all events if you aim at perfection you should shun not only things bad in themselves, but things that have the appearance of evil. In the one case you have regard to your conscience, in the other to your reputation. A particular line of conduct under different circumstances may be lawful; nevertheless, if it does not look well, deem it unlawful. In a word, ask your ancestors, and they will answer, ‘Abstain from every appearance of evil.’¹ Let the Lord’s servant by all means imitate his Lord, for He Himself says, ‘If any man serve me, let him follow me.’² And concerning Him you know it is said, ‘The Lord hath reigned, he hath put on beautious apparel, he hath clothed himself with strength.’³ Be you also strong in faith, beautious in glory, and you have shown yourself an imitator of God. Your strength is the confidence of a faithful conscience, your beauty is the splendour of a good character. So then, I beseech you, be clothed with strength, for your strength is the joy of the Lord. Moreover, He delights in your fair beauty no less, as it were, than in His own likeness. Put on your glorious vestments; be clothed with the two robes wherewith the virtuous⁴ woman was wont to clothe her household. Let there not be in your conscience a trace of a weak and feeble faith: let there not be in your reputation the blemish of a bad appearance. You will then wear the two robes, and the Bridegroom will rejoice over your soul which He has betrothed to Himself; your God will joy over you. Are you wondering what my drift is, and do you not yet perceive my meaning? I will not keep you in suspense any longer. I refer to the murmuring and complaining of the Churches. They cry aloud that they are being mutilated and dismembered. There are none, or very few, which are not either already smarting under the scourge, or dreading its approach. Do you ask how that is? Abbots are exempted from their bishops, bishops from archbishops, archbishops from patriarchs or primates. Does this look well? I should be surprised if any justification could be found for such doings. The constant practice shows that you have authority, but possibly not so keen a sense of justice. You do this because you have the power, but whether you have the right is open to question. You are where you are that you may uphold the gradations of honour and dignity, secure to every one his proper rank, and not grudge any one his due; as one of your predecessors says, ‘Honour to whom honour.’⁵

15. The spiritual man of whom we read, who judges all things that he may be judged by no man,⁶ will preface all his work with a sort of threefold consideration. First, he will ask whether the thing is lawful; then, is it becoming; lastly, whether it is also expedient. For although Christian philosophy undoubtedly inculcates that nothing is becoming unless it be lawful, and nothing expedient unless it be both becoming and lawful, it will not of necessity follow that everything lawful is either becoming or expedient. Well then, let us, if we can, apply these three tests to the business before us. Must it not be unbecoming in you to make your will the law? And, because there is no appeal against you, to resort to force while you ignore reason? Are you greater than your Lord, who says, ‘I came not to do mine own will’?⁷ Whatever may be argued to the contrary, I maintain that it is a mark of baseness, no less than of pride, for a man, as though he had not the gift of reason, to make his pleasure, and not reason, the rule of action; to be swayed not by judgement but by appetite. Is anything more characteristic of the beasts? And if it is unworthy of a reasonable being to live the life of cattle, who can endure that you, the supreme ruler, should so outrage nature and insult your rank? If you do so degenerate, which God forbid! you will share in the general reproach, ‘Man being in honour did not understand; he is compared to the foolish beasts of burden, and is made like unto them.’⁸ How very unworthy it is of you, when you possess all, not to be content with all, but you must needs make a strange to-do over the minute and inappreciable trifles of the universal dominion entrusted to you, as if they were not yours already! And here I should like you to remember Nathan’s parable of the man who, having a hundred sheep, coveted the one belonging to the poor man.⁹ Let us also recall the deed, or rather the crime, of Ahab, who was master of all, and yet was eager to get a single vineyard.¹⁰ God grant you may never have it said to you as it was to him, ‘Thou hast slain and taken possession.’¹¹

16. And please do not make the profit from these exemptions a pretext for them. There is no profit, unless it be that the bishops are thereby more insolent, the monks even more dissolute. How is it that they are also poorer? If you examine the balance sheet of these freedmen with anything like care, and look into their lives, no matter where, you will find the monks shamefully poor, and the bishops disgracefully worldly. These are the twin offspring of a baneful freedom. What is there to prevent the loose and disorderly rabble from boldly sinning, when there is no one to rebuke it? What can we expect but the impudent plundering and pillaging of defenceless religion, when there is no one to defend it? For where can men find a refuge? Shall they go to the bishops complaining of injustice? The bishops must have a merry twinkle in their eyes whether they look at the wrongs done, or the wrongs suffered. What profit is there in that blood? The only gain, I fear, is that which God threatened in the prophet, ‘He shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at your hand.’¹² For¹³ if a man is not only exempted but puffed up, and he from whose jurisdiction he is exempted is inflamed with anger, how can the exemptor be innocent? I have said too little; we are smothering the fire; let me speak more plainly. If he who complains is spiritually dead, how can he be alive who is the cause of his complaining? Must he not, therefore, be guilty of the death of both these persons, and give sentence of death against his own soul as well, for it was he who supplied the sword which caused the death of both? This is what I meant when I said, ‘Thou hast slain and taken possession.’¹⁴ And further, people who hear of these things are scandalized; they are indignant, disparage, and blaspheme, that is to say, they are wounded even unto death. The tree is not good that bears such fruit as acts of arrogance, the breaking up of houses, rivalries, the squandering of resources, so many scandals, so much hatred; and, what is more lamentable, bitter enmities and perpetual discord between the churches. You see how true are the words, ‘All things are lawful to me, but all things are not expedient.’¹⁵ But suppose the thing is not even lawful. Pardon me; I shall not readily allow that the source of so much lawlessness can be lawful.

17. Would you, in fact, deem it lawful to cut off the limbs of churches, turn order into confusion, and remove the landmarks which your fathers placed? Well then, it is the work of justice to secure to everybody what belongs to him; how can it be consistent with justice to rob any man of what belongs to him? You err if you reckon that your apostolic power is not only supreme, but the only power ordained of God. If this is your opinion, you differ from the apostle. He says, 'There is no power except from God.'¹⁶ So then, if that which follows, 'He that resists the power withstandeth the ordinance of God,'¹⁷ even if this mainly makes for you, it does not apply to you exclusively. In short, the same writer says, 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.'¹⁸ He does not say 'to the higher power', as if all power belonged to one man, but 'to the higher powers', since it resides in many. Your power, therefore, is not the only power from the Lord; there are middle and lower powers. And as those whom God hath conjoined are not to be put asunder,¹⁹ so those whom God hath subjoined are not to be put on a footing of equality. If you cut off a finger, attach it to your head, and let it hang side by side with your arm, as a hand for the upper parts of the body, you create a monstrosity. Something like this happens if you place the members in the body of Christ otherwise than He Himself arranged them. Unless you suppose it was not He, but another, who 'set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly evangelists, then teachers and pastors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ'.²⁰ And yet it is this body which Paul sets before you with his own true apostolic eloquence, most admirably uniting it to the Head, and representing it as 'from Him fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, making the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love'.²¹ And do not despise the mould on which you are to fashion yourself because it is the Church on earth; the pattern is derived from heaven. For not even the Son can do anything except what He hath seen the Father do,²² as is obvious from what was said to Him under the name of Moses, 'See thou make everything after the pattern which was showed thee on the mount.'²³

18. He understood this who said, 'I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem descending from heaven, prepared by God.'²⁴ I suppose a parallel was intended, viz. that as in heaven above Seraphim and Cherubim, and all other celestial beings, even to angels and archangels, are of varying rank under one Head, viz. God; so in the Church on earth, also, primates or patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, presbyters, or abbots, and all others, are similarly ranked under one supreme pontiff. That which has God for its author, and originates in heaven, must not be lightly esteemed. But if a bishop say 'I do not desire to be under an archbishop', or an abbot 'I do not care to obey a bishop', this is not from heaven. Unless, perhaps, you have heard one of the angels crying 'I do not desire to be under the archangels', or one of the lower angelic orders declare that he could not bear to be subject to any one but God. What! you say, do you forbid me to exercise my stewardship? What I wish to prevent is the squandering of the estate. I am not so ignorant as not to know that you have been made stewards; but if so, it is for building up, not for casting down.²⁵ In a word, it is required among stewards that a man be found faithful.²⁶ When necessity requires you may be excused for exercising your dispensing power; if there is some manifest advantage, such exercise may deserve commendation. ‘Advantage’, I say, of the community, not your own. For when no good is done either to the community or to yourself, we certainly have not a faithful stewardship, but a cruel waste. Still, as everybody knows, there are some monasteries in different dioceses, which from their very foundation have been more closely associated with the apostolic see in accordance with the will of the founders. But the free gift of devotion is one thing; the efforts of ambition intolerant of subjection are quite another. So much for this.