On Fleeing the World 1–24

We often speak of fleeing this world, and would that the disposition were as careful and anxious as the speaking is easy! But what is worse, the enticement of earthly desires often creeps in, and an outpouring of vanities takes hold of the mind, so that what you are eager to avoid is what you think about and turn over in your mind. This is hard for a man to guard against, and impossible to put off altogether. Indeed the prophet testifies that it is a matter of prayer rather than of accomplishment, when he says: “Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to avarice.” For our heart and our thoughts are not in our power; poured over us unexpectedly, they confuse the mind and spirit and draw them elsewhere than you intended; they call us back to worldly things, insert things of this world, thrust pleasures upon us, weave in enticements; and at the very time when we are preparing to lift up our mind, we are usually cast down to earthly things by the empty thoughts that have been inserted.

But who is so blessed as always to ascend in his heart? And how can this be done without divine help? In no way at all. Indeed the same Scripture says above: “Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; ascent is in his heart.” Blessed indeed is the one whom delight does not call back, whom pleasure does not bend down, who does not look back to lower things, which not even Lot’s wife could escape. Warned by this example, the apostle, forgetting what lay behind and reaching for what lay ahead, hastened to the prize, and he was found worthy to arrive, because he saw Christ before him, by whom he was called to the crown of righteousness. But he arrived because he denied himself to himself in order to gain Christ. Indeed it was not he who lived, but Christ lived in him.

For who, amid so many passions of this body, amid so many enticements of this world, can keep his footstep safe and undefiled? The eye looked back and turned aside the mind’s perception; the ear heard and bent away its attention; a scent breathed upon it and hindered thought; the mouth tasted and brought back a crime; touch made contact and kindled a fire. “Death has come in through the window,” said the prophet. Your window is your eye. If you look at a woman to desire her, death has come in; if you hear the words of harlots, death has come in; if luxury captures your senses, death has entered. And so one who wishes to ascend should follow not the joys of the world, not its pleasant and delightful things, but things full of sorrow and weeping; for “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of joy.” Indeed, Adam would not have come down from paradise had he not been deceived by delight.

Beautifully, then, does David, who had experienced how dangerous even a man’s glances are, call that man blessed whose whole hope is in the name of God. For thus he does not look back on vanities and follies, if he always looks toward Christ and always beholds Christ with the inner eyes. Hence again, turning to him, he says: “Turn away my eyes, lest they see vanity.” The circus is vanity, because it profits nothing; the swiftness of horses is vain, because it is false for safety; the theatre is vanity, every game is vanity. “All things are vanity,” said Ecclesiastes, that are in this world. So one who wishes to be saved should ascend above the world, seek the Word with God, flee this world, leave the earth; for he cannot grasp that which is and always is unless he has first fled from here. Hence the Lord too, wishing to draw near to God the Father, said to the apostles: “Rise, let us go from here.”

The law too teaches you that the world must be fled and God followed. For what else does it teach when it says: “You shall appoint for yourselves cities for refuge, and they shall be refuges for you, to which the slayer may flee, anyone who has struck a life unwillingly,” and further on, and further on: “You shall have six cities for refuges. Three cities you shall give beyond the Jordan, and three cities you shall give in the land of Canaan”? Openly, indeed, refuges are set out for those who flee for the crime of homicide; but let us consider it more deeply. There are four things which warn us that the secrets of this reading must be looked at more profoundly. First, why, out of those cities which fell to the Levites by lot as their portion, six cities were given as refuge to those troubled by the crime of homicide, and why the cities of other tribes were not also assigned to this service. Second, why the number six; for this number, neither more cities nor fewer, does not seem to have been prescribed idly. Third, why three cities beyond the Jordan and three in the region of Canaan were appointed to be a refuge for sinners. Fourth, why a reckoning and fixing of time was included, within which the slayer should live in the city of refuge, until the high priest dies, and after the death of the high priest the slayer should return to the city of his dwelling. We must speak of each, then, and settle the questions in the order in which we have set them out.

First, then, it must be explained why the cities of the Levites were fittingly given for refuge. It is clear that this was suitably provided, because the Levites are fugitives from this world, so that they may please God; they leave country, parents, children, all their kin, to cleave to God alone. Indeed it was said to Abraham too: “Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father’s house.” But perhaps you say: he was not a Levite. But he had Levi in his loins, as we read written in Hebrews. And the Lord speaks to Levites when he speaks to his disciples, that is, the apostles: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”; although it has now been said to all: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for adoption.” The fullness has come; the remnants have ceased. For Christ has called all; the setting-out is open to all, so that all may follow; the kingdom and eternal life are set before all.

So one whose portion is God ought to care for nothing but God, lest he be hindered by the service of some other necessity. For what is given to other duties is taken away from the worship of religion and from this office of ours. For this is the true flight of the priest: the renouncing of his household and a kind of estrangement from those dearest to him, so that one who longs to serve God denies himself to his own. Rightly, then, the decree of the eternal law entrusted fugitives to fugitives, so that those who have forgotten this world might receive those who, condemning their sins, seek even forgetfulness of their former life and desire to blot out the worldly deeds they have done. So the minister of the sacred altar is a fugitive from his own. Hence the Lord, as prince of priests, giving the Levites a pattern in his Gospel, said: “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?” That is: I do not acknowledge a mother, I do not recognize brothers, I do not know kinsmen. “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” So the minister knows only the word of God, since he knows those in whom the word of God works. And therefore he is an exile from the world: a fugitive from the body, a fugitive from the passions, he renounces everything so as to remain alone, as Elijah said: “And I alone am left.” But he was not alone, since Christ was with him. And the Lord himself was left alone, but “I am not alone,” he says, “because the Father is with me.” There is also this reason, that the Levites are ministers of God.

And therefore their cities are assigned by law to fleeing slayers, because it is their right to carry out the divine commands regarding those who have committed a deadly crime. The church does not know how to publish its own laws; it knows that the priest obeys the Lord’s command. Hear a Levite saying: “I have handed such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, struck by the Levitical sword, let the mind of the flesh die in us, so that our soul may live. For unless the mind of the flesh is killed, there can be no fruit of eternal life.

The refuges of the six cities are these: the first city is the knowledge of the Word and a form of life according to his image. For whoever has entered that knowledge is safe from punishment, according to what the Lord too says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” And elsewhere: “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This city is like a metropolis, next to which lie the other five cities of the Levites. The second city is the consideration of the divine working by which the world was created. The third city is the contemplation of royal power and eternal majesty. The fourth city is the beholding of divine propitiation. The fifth city is the contemplation of the divine law, which commands what is to be done. The sixth city too is the part of the law which prescribes what is not to be done. How great the abundance of divine mercy, how great the riches of his love! Considering the efforts of each and the frailties of the human condition, by which we are led into fault even unwilling and resisting, and often, overcome by enticements, commit involuntary offences, he set out various refuges for us, six cities, so that by the same number by which the world was formed, a remedy might be provided against the vices of the world and the shipwrecks of this age!

The first remedy, then: if a fault has crept upon a man of good intention, let him hasten without any delay, if he wishes to have perfect security, to the very citadel of all things, where the Word of God is in that fatherly bosom, that is, in the secret and inmost place of God, where the fountain of wisdom is, so that from it, instead of death, he may draw the immortal drink of eternal life. The second remedy: one who cannot have a foretaste of the knowledge of that good, and is slower either in mind or in grasp of faith (since one strives to the heights of knowledge by swift vigor of mind and keenness of wit), should at least consider the works of the Lord and from the things that have been made contemplate the author of so great a work; for from these good things which are in the constitution of this creation (for they are “very good,” as the Lord said) that supreme and eternal good is grasped. What order of things, what discipline, what grace! Is not even a slow mind provoked by these to love its author? For if we love our parents because they begot us, how much more ought we to love the creator of our parents and our own author! So God’s working power, though it is not seen, is still estimated from his works, and his works reveal the worker, so that he who is not comprehended is understood. Hence the Lord too says: “If you do not believe me, believe at least the works.” Good, then, is this city of refuge too, which testifies to the grace of its builder and stirs our affection to desire him the more who is seen to have bestowed on us such beauty of this fabric. The third order is the contemplation of royal power, so that we submit to the King if we do not defer to him as a Father. For through fear of the ruler, one who is ungrateful for salvation often becomes obedient to authority, so that he who would not and could not recognize the grace of love may recognize the necessity of sober conduct. Necessity therefore corrects one whom love ought to have called forth.

These are the three cities beyond the Jordan given for refuge to more perfect wisdom: first, that we flee fault by shaping our mind in conformity to the image of God. For so we were created, God saying: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” This then is the law of that first city. Next, if through the frailty of the flesh and the enticements of the world we cannot so shape our mind, let us lighten our fault by reverence for our Father’s begetting and by the diligence of a child; for “love covers a multitude of sins.” So one who could not be in the image of God, let him be in the fullness of love. That city shuts out fault; this one dissolves it. This then is the law of the second city: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But if again there are those of narrow and small mind who cannot receive the abundance and grace of love, you have the third city, that fear of the divine power may make you sober and dread may bend you. And this is the third law: “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” These, then, are the chief virtues, and therefore of the few, not of the many, set beyond the Jordan: that you may express the archetype as an image, love the Father as a son, worship the King as a subject.

But those who have crossed the Jordan (and Jordan means “their descent”), those then who have come down from those higher virtues to these lower ones, that is, in whom integrity, love, and humility have wavered, have refuges nearer to man to seek: so that those who are liable to offences and bent by involuntary vices may hope that the Lord can be reconciled to them if they ask pardon, may hope that they can be corrected if they follow the precepts of the heavenly Testaments, by which we are either formed to innocence or called back from fault. These, then, are the following cities on this side of the Jordan: that we make God propitious to us, follow what he commands, avoid what he forbids. Let there be, then, the earnest seeking of the Godhead’s favor, obedience in following the precept, caution against forbidden transgression, by which we may revere God’s propitiatory mercy and his lawgiving providence, either by obedience to what is instituted or by turning aside from what is forbidden.

There remains the fourth question, what it says about the death of the high priest: that “until that time the slayer shall be in the city of refuge, until the high priest dies.” Here, according to the letter, the interpretation sticks. First, the flight itself is determined by chance rather than by the fairness of any examination; then, in equal cases the outcome is unequal; for it could happen that the high priest died the day after the slayer took refuge. What kind of sentence rests on uncertainty? So, because the letter sticks, let us seek spiritual things. Who is this high priest but the Son of God, the Word of God, whom we have as our advocate with the Father, who is free from all voluntary and accidental offences, in whom all things that are on earth and in heaven hold together? For all things are bound together by the bond of the Word and are held by his power and consist in him, since in him they were created and in him all the fullness dwells. And therefore all things abide, because he does not allow to be dissolved what he himself has bound together, since they consist in his will; for he restrains and rules all things by his command as long as he wills, and binds them in natural harmony. So the Word of God lives, and lives especially in the souls of the devout, and the fullness of the Godhead never dies. For the everlasting Godhead and the eternal power of God never die. Yet he dies for us if he is separated from our soul: not that he is corrupted by death, but that our mind is loosed and stripped of its union with him; for the true death is the separation of the Word from the soul. Indeed the soul at once begins to lie open to voluntary sins.

We have these kinds of virtues, not in shadow but expressed, in the apostle, who says: “So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in it,” that is, in the one who has believed. Indeed he added: “from faith to faith, as it is written: but the just lives by faith.” In whom then is the righteousness of God revealed but in one who is conformed to the image of the Son of God? You have the first precept, in the image of God. The second, that “the invisible things of God are understood through the things that have been made,” that is, “his everlasting power and divinity” are known from his works. This is the working power. The third concerns imperial power, because the Word of God is royal and judicial and full of priestly righteousness, reserving the reward of good deeds and the retribution of evil for those who will come to his judgment; of these the apostle says: “We know that the judgment of God is according to truth upon those who do such things.” And so one who has known the truth and righteousness of God ought not to do the things that are worthy of death. Next follows the goodness of God, propitiatory indeed, of which he says: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” That is: it ought to lead you. Because God is good, he calls you to hope for pardon of your sins; for he who is ready to forgive does not wish to punish. He added also the legislation, that is, the nomothetic, so that if anyone is relaxed by the contemplation of divine goodness and provoked to negligence rather than to repentance, he may follow the law; since “all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.”

Now the law is twofold, natural and written: natural in the heart, written on tablets. So all are under law, but natural law; yet it does not belong to all to be each a law to himself. He is a law to himself who does of his own accord the things of the law and shows the work of the law written in his heart. You have the good things of the law, which we ought not only to know or hear superficially but also to do; for “it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.” You have also learned what things are evil. First, nature itself is the teacher of good conduct. You know that one must not steal, and if your slave has stolen from you, you beat him; and if anyone has made advances to your wife, you think he must be prosecuted. What you blame in others, then, you yourself commit: “you who preach that one must not steal, steal; you who say that one must not commit adultery, commit adultery.” There followed also the law that was given through Moses; but “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” You have received also what you should avoid, and you do the things you know to be forbidden. What does the law accomplish but that “the whole world may be made subject to God,” since it was given not only to the Hebrew but also called the stranger, for it did not exclude the proselyte. But because the law could stop the mouths of all but could not convert the mind, therefore the last remedy of that final city was owed, in which there would be a saving refuge, so that the death of the chief of priests might free us from all dread of death and strip away our fear.

Who is he but the one of whom we read: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world”? “Whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness.” And understand that he himself is the great chief of priests. The Father swore concerning him, saying: “You are a priest for ever.” Rightly “for ever,” because all the others were temporary, all under sin, but he has a priesthood that cannot be transgressed. All are under death, but he lives always; for how could he who can save others perish himself? “For such a one,” he says, “was fitting for us.” The expression is correct, since among those who had a feeling for words and expressions such usage is found, someone saying: “a higher place than was fitting for the victors.” I did not pass this over, so that we may know that the apostle uses natural rather than vulgar or artificial words. “Such a one,” he says, “was fitting for us, a prince, a priest, just, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” This then is the Word, who dwelling above the heavens illuminates all things. Hence too he is read to have been anointed by God the Father by nature, because the Word is the light “which enlightened every man coming into this world.” This is the Word of God, in whom is the great priesthood, whose spiritual vestments Moses describes in that garment of the chief of priests; for he clothed the world with his power and, as though wrapped in it, shines in all things. He clothed himself also with kinship with the human race by taking up this body, saying to the Lord … and pouring himself into all with unspeakable love by the Spirit and the fullness of his divinity, of whose fullness we have all received, so that we may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled to all the fullness of God. For Christ is the head of all, from whom the whole body is brought forth and joined together by mutual connection, receiving its growth for the building up of itself in love. This then is the Word, who is preeminent, who says to Moses in the building of the ark of the testimony: “And you shall put into the ark the testimonies which I shall give you, and you shall make the covering of the mercy seat”; and further on: “You shall place the mercy seat on the ark above, and you shall put in the testimonies which I shall give, and I will make myself known to you from there and speak to you from above”; that is: from there, where he is above the heavens, where he is with the Father, from there I will speak to you.

Let us approach, then, relying on the support of faith and lifted by its oars, to that throne of grace, fleeing this world and its contagion. And this is to flee: to abstain from sins, to take on the form of the virtues after the likeness and image of God, to stretch our strength to the imitation of God according to the measure of our ability. For the perfect man is the image and glory of God. Hence the Lord too says: “Be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” This then is to be like God: to have righteousness, to have wisdom, and to be perfect in virtue. For God is without sin, and so one who flees sin is in the image of God. There is no doubt, then, that one who abstains from sin flees. Hence the apostle cries: “Flee sexual immorality.” For the enticements of sins pursue us, lust pursues us; but flee it as a raging mistress, who, if she catches you, lets you rest neither by day nor by night, but harasses, burns, inflames. Flee avarice, lest it seize you within. Flee faithlessness, lest it entangle you in its nets. Hence the Lord too says: “When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. Amen I say to you, you will not finish the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” For although he seems to counsel flight because of the weakness of the flesh, yet he flees better who flees worldly enticement, so as not to be held by care for his riches, by the contemplation of treasure, by desire for this life, but hastens with mind set straight to the glory of the heavenly kingdom, hurries to the crown, and is not called back from the suffering of his body by regard for earthly things.

Flight, then, is death, whether carried out or foreshadowed. And perhaps the cities of lawful refuge figure those heights of virtue to which we are to flee, which he elsewhere distributes as rewards to the good lender, saying: “Because you have been faithful in a little, you shall have authority over ten cities.” The law knows six cities; but because he fulfilled the law who could say, “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” he grants a more perfect number of reward.

Let us not, then, be ashamed to flee; for this flight is glorious, to flee from the face of sin. So Jacob fled at his mother’s urging; for Rebekah said: “Rise and flee to Mesopotamia.” So Moses too fled from the face of King Pharaoh, lest the royal court defile him, lest power ensnare him. Indeed he valued the reproach of Christ as more precious than the riches of Egypt. So David too fled from the face of King Saul, from the face of Absalom. Indeed in fleeing he added increases of devotion: he both spared the one who laid snares for him and asked for the safety of the parricide. So the people of the Hebrews fled, so that their faith and life opened a way for them amid the waves. That flight was a path of innocence, a way of virtue, a taking up of devotion. I dare to say that Jonah too fled thus to Tarshish, not by flight of the body but by ascent of the mind, for he ascended even to the likeness of Christ, so as to become a type of Christ. For “as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so,” he says, “will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” For had he not fled thus, he would never have been heard from the belly of the whale.

But if you doubt, let Rebekah teach you how blessed was the flight that Jacob undertook. Rebekah urged: “Flee,” she said, “to Mesopotamia.” And Isaac says: “Rise, go to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel.” In hymns or oracles, as has been written before us, Bethuel is called wisdom by many, and in Latin interpretation it means “daughter of God.” So Jacob is sent into the house of wisdom and is admonished to take a wife from the daughters of Laban, who lived in Haran, which means “caves,” in which is the image of the senses, which are as it were in the caves of the body: sight in the eyes, hearing in the ears, smell in the nostrils, taste in the mouth. For one who delights in this world and dances in the pleasures of the body is liable to the passions of the senses and lives and lodges in them. Hence Rebekah says he should live with him a few days, not a long time, lest he be colored by bodily pleasures and captured by the enticements of the world.

She persuades him to live there, however, so that as a student of discipline he may learn the powers of the senses and, as it were, certain situations and regions of the flesh, so that he may know himself and recognize the vehemence of the flesh: what was created and for what reason, and how each sense operates. “He who has looked at a woman,” it says, “to desire her.” The eye sees wrongly in that way. Let the eye see, then, and perform its function, but let it not be directed into a fall by the command of a slippery mind, so as to bring back vice instead of duty. A short time, then, is given for knowing, or rather experiencing, the senses, perhaps the first beginnings of tender youth; and at once he is called back, lest he totter longer on slippery ground and the inner footsteps of the soul be submerged in a kind of divided flood of this body and world. But when he has either had experience or has stood on unstable, uncertain, and wet ground, he is called back by his mother, patience or perseverance, who says: “I will send and fetch you from there,” so that even there on slippery ground you may find the safe harbor of wisdom, which will not let you be tossed as in a shipwreck; and having returned, you may know how to persevere in the worship of God and be in the assembly of the nations, signifying by his faith that the church of the nations was to be gathered.

Instructed, then, by these teachings of patience and perseverance, Jacob set out and acquired a wife from wisdom, a partner in his purpose, with a rich dowry of prudence, with whom he might pass the times of life without any stumbling. With the treasure of wisdom added, he formed for himself a flock of varied sheep, but a rational one, shining with the diversity of many virtues. Hence too he cut back the boasting of his flesh, which the numbness of his thigh signifies, without prejudice to the interpretation of the sacred mystery. By these virtues as by steps his mind ascended into heaven and came to know the secrets of God, and he was strengthened and filled, so that Laban, searching his house, found nothing empty in it, nothing void, no idols, no likeness of vanity. For there was in him not an image but truth, not a likeness of sloth but the solid form of righteousness and the spiritual expression of living virtue. And so Laban searched his spiritual house and found no likenesses; for it was full not of figures but of realities.

He could, however, have found the foundations and summits of the virtues had he not brought with him blindness of heart and the darkness of a faithless mind. Indeed the men of Sodom, their minds suffused with the blindness of wickedness, could by no means find the door of holy Lot. For how could an impious mind see either the going out or the coming in of a holy man? The Lord himself also says in the Gospel: “For the prince of this world comes, and in me he finds nothing.” How could he find nothing in him in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt, and dwelt bodily, from whom power went out and healed all? How could he find nothing in the solidity of virtue, the abundance of wisdom, understanding, righteousness? You yourself said, Lord: “I am full”; you yourself said: “Put your hand into my side, and do not be unbelieving but believing.” He who did not believe put in his hand and found you to be Lord and God. So it is not that you were empty, but that blind, empty prince of this world, who knows how to see only his own things, knows how to find only his own, does not know how to recognize the things that are Christ’s.

Or if the reading is as many have it, “he does not find in me nothing,” that is: he will not find malice in me, because malice is nothing; he will not find a dead man, because he is not dead. For how will he find a dead man in him who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were? He will not find sin in me, he says, who have taken away the sin of the world. For how does he have nothing who has all things, and what is more, has all that the Father has, as he himself says: “All that the Father has is mine”?