On the Duties of the Clergy 1.29–1.35

How great justice is can be understood from this, that it is not excepted by places, persons, or times; it is kept even towards enemies, so that if a place or day has been agreed with the enemy for battle, it is thought against justice to forestall him in place or time. For it makes a difference whether someone is taken in a battle and heavy conflict, or by superior favour or some chance. Indeed, against fiercer and faithless enemies, and those who have done more harm, a fiercer vengeance is returned; as with the Midianites, who through their women had made many of the Jewish people sin, whence also the anger of God was poured out upon the people; and so it came about that Moses as victor allowed none to survive. But the Gibeonites, who had tried the people of the fathers by fraud rather than by war, Joshua did not destroy, but punished with the hardship of the condition imposed on them. And Elisha would not consent to the king of Israel’s wish to strike the Syrians, whom, while they were besieging him, he had led into the city struck with momentary blindness so that they could not see where they were going; he said: “You shall not strike those whom you have not taken captive with your spear and your sword; set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and let them be sent away and go to their master,” so that, provoked by kindness, they might return the favour. Indeed afterwards the raiders of Syria ceased to come into the land of Israel. If, then, justice holds even in war, how much more must it be kept in peace? And the prophet showed this favour to those who had come to seize him. For we read that the king of Syria had sent his army to besiege him, having learned that it was Elisha who was countering all his plans and contrivances. Seeing the army, Gehazi, the prophet’s servant, began to tremble for the danger to their lives. The prophet said to him: “Do not fear, for more are with us than with them.” And when the prophet prayed that his servant’s eyes might be opened, they were opened. And Gehazi saw the whole mountain filled with horses and chariots round about Elisha. As they came down, the prophet said: “Strike, O God, the army of Syria with blindness.” When this was granted, he said to the Syrians: “Come after me, and I will lead you to the man you seek.” And they saw Elisha, whom they were eager to seize, and seeing him they could not hold him. It is clear, then, that faith and justice must be kept even in war, and that nothing can be seemly if faith is violated. Indeed the ancients called even their adversaries by a mild name, calling them strangers; for by ancient custom enemies were called strangers. This too we can say was taken from ours; for the Hebrews called their adversaries Allophyli, that is, in a Latin word, foreigners. Indeed in the first book of Kingdoms we read thus: “And it came to pass in those days that the foreigners gathered to battle against Israel.” Faith, then, is the foundation of justice; for “the hearts of the just meditate faith”; and the just man who accuses himself places justice upon faith, for his justice appears when he confesses the truth. Indeed the Lord too says through Isaiah: “Behold, I lay a stone for a foundation in Zion,” that is, Christ as the foundation of the Church. For Christ is the faith of all; and the Church is a kind of form of justice. She is the common right of all: she prays in common, works in common, is tempted in common. Indeed he who denies himself to himself is himself just, himself worthy of Christ. Therefore Paul too laid Christ as the foundation, that we might place the works of justice upon him; for faith is the foundation, and in works, if evil, there is iniquity, if good, justice.

But now let us speak of beneficence, which itself is divided into benevolence and liberality. Beneficence, then, consists of these two, so as to be perfect. For it is not enough to wish well, but one must also do well; nor again is it enough to do well unless it proceeds from a good source, that is, from a good will: “For God loves a cheerful giver.” For if you do it unwillingly, what reward have you? Hence the Apostle says generally: “If I do this willingly, I have a reward; if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me.” In the Gospel too we have received many lessons of just liberality. It is fine, then, to wish well and to give with the purpose of benefiting, not of harming. For if you think you should give to a profligate for the outpouring of his profligacy, or to an adulterer for the price of adultery, that is not beneficence, where there is no benevolence. For that is to harm another, not to benefit him, if you give to one who conspires against his fatherland, who wants to gather desperate men at your expense to attack the Church. That is not approvable liberality, if you help one who wages a grievous lawsuit against a widow and orphans or tries to snatch their possessions by some force. Largess is not approved if one extorts from one person what is given to another; if one gains unjustly and thinks it should be dispensed justly; unless perhaps, like Zacchaeus, you first restore fourfold to the one you have defrauded and make up for the vices of paganism by zeal of faith and the work of a believer. Let your liberality, then, have a foundation. This is asked first: that you give in good faith and commit no fraud in your offerings; that you do not say you give more and give less. For what need is there to say it? A fraud in a promise is a fraud; it is in your power to give what you wish. Fraud dissolves the foundation, and the work collapses. Did Peter boil with such indignation that he wanted Ananias or his wife to be destroyed? No; but he did not want the rest to perish by their example. Nor is liberality perfect if you give for boasting rather than for mercy. Your disposition gives its name to your work: as it proceeds from you, so it is valued. You see what a moral judge you have. He consults you on how to receive your work; he first questions your mind. “Let not your left hand know,” he says, “what your right hand does.” He is not speaking of the body; but let not even one of one mind with you, your brother, know what you do, lest while you seek here the reward of boasting you lose there the fruit of recompense. But that liberality is perfect where one covers one’s work in silence and secretly helps the needs of each; whom the mouth of the poor praises, and not his own lips. Then perfect liberality is commended by faith, cause, place, and time; so that you work first for those of the household of faith. It is a great fault if, with your knowledge, a believer is in want; if you know that he is without means, that he bears hunger and suffers hardship, especially one who is ashamed to be in want; if he has fallen into trouble through the captivity of his kin or through false accusation, and you do not help; if he is in prison and, a just man, is tormented by penalties and punishments for some debt (for though mercy is owed to all, yet more to the just); if in the time of his affliction he obtains nothing from you; if in the time of danger, when he is being dragged to death, your money weighs more with you than the life of one about to die. Of this Job said beautifully: “Let the blessing of him who was about to perish come upon me.” God indeed is no respecter of persons, for he knows all things. We owe mercy to all; but because many seek it by fraud and feign hardship, therefore where the cause is manifest, the person is known, and the time presses, mercy ought to pour itself out more generously. For the Lord is not avaricious, to seek the most. Blessed indeed is he who leaves all and follows him; but blessed too is he who does what he can with what he has, from his heart. Indeed he preferred the two mites of that widow to the gifts of the rich, because she gave all she had, while they gave a small part of their abundance. It is the disposition, then, that makes your gift rich or poor and sets the price on things. But the Lord does not want wealth poured out all at once, but dispensed; unless perhaps, as Elisha killed his oxen and fed the poor with what he had, so as to be held by no household care and, leaving all, to give himself to the prophetic discipline. That liberality also must be approved, that you do not despise your next of kin if you know them to be in want. For it is better that you yourself help your own, who are ashamed to ask means from others or to seek help for their need from anyone; yet not so that they wish to become richer by what you can give to the needy; for the cause takes precedence, not favour. For you have not dedicated yourself to the Lord in order to make your own rich, but to gain for yourself eternal life by the fruit of good work and to redeem your sins by the price of mercy. Do they think they ask little? They seek your price; they strive to take away the fruit of your life, and they think they act justly. And one accuses you because you have not made him rich, when he wants to cheat you of the reward of eternal life. We have put forward advice; let us seek authority. First, no one ought to be ashamed if he becomes poor from rich while giving to the poor; for Christ became poor though he was rich, that he might enrich all by his poverty. He gave a rule for us to follow, so that there is a good account of an emptied patrimony if one has driven away the hunger of the poor and relieved their need. Hence the Apostle says: “And in this I give advice; for this is useful for you,” that you imitate Christ. Advice is given to the good; reproof restrains the erring. Indeed he speaks as to the good: “Since you began a year ago not only to do but also to will.” Both belong to the perfect, not a part. So he teaches that neither liberality without benevolence nor benevolence without liberality is perfect. Hence he urges them to perfection, saying: “Now therefore complete the doing also, so that as there is readiness in you to will it, so there may be also to complete it out of what you have. For if the will is ready, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. For it is not that others should have relief and you distress, but by equality at this time your abundance should supply their want, so that their abundance may also supply your want, that there may be equality; as it is written: He who had much did not have too much, and he who had little did not have too little.” We notice how he included benevolence, liberality, measure, fruit, and persons. He gave measure, because he was giving advice to the imperfect; for only the imperfect suffer distress. But if someone set in some priesthood or ministry, not wishing to burden the Church, does not give all he has, but does with honour as much as suffices for his office, he does not seem to me imperfect. And I think that here he spoke of distress not of mind but of household property. Of persons I think it is said: “that your abundance may supply their want, and their abundance your want”; that is, that the people’s abundance in good works may relieve the others’ want of sustenance, and their spiritual abundance may help the want of spiritual merit in the people and confer grace on it. Hence he set out a most excellent example: “He who had much did not have too much, and he who had little did not have too little.” This example rightly urges all men to the duty of mercy; for he who possesses very much gold does not have too much, because whatever is in this world is nothing; and he who has little does not have too little, because what he loses is nothing. That is a matter without loss which is wholly loss. There is also this good understanding: he who has very much, if he does not give, does not have abundance; for however much he acquires, he who covets more is always in want; and he who has little does not have too little, because it is not much that feeds a poor man. Likewise, then, that poor man too who gives spiritual things in return for money, even if he has very much grace, does not have too much; for grace does not burden the mind but lightens it. It can also be understood thus: you do not have too much, O man. For how much is it that you have received, even if it is much to you? John, than whom no one is greater among those born of women, was yet less than he who is least in the kingdom of heaven. Or thus: the grace of God does not abound bodily, because it is spiritual. Who can comprehend its greatness or breadth, which he does not see? Faith, if it is like a grain of mustard seed, can move mountains, and it is not given to you beyond a grain of mustard seed. If grace abounds in you, is it not to be feared that your mind may begin to be exalted by so great a gift? For there are many who have fallen more grievously from the height of their heart than if they had had no grace from the Lord at all. And he who has little does not have too little, because it is not bodily, so as to be divided; and what seems little to its possessor is very much to one who lacks nothing. In giving we must also consider age and weakness, sometimes also the bashfulness that betrays noble birth; so that you give more to the old, who can no longer earn their living by labour. Likewise bodily weakness too must be helped more readily. Then, if someone has fallen from riches into want, especially if he has lost what he had not by his own fault but by robbery, proscription, or false accusations. But perhaps someone will say: “A blind man sits in one place and is passed by, while a strong young man often receives.” True, because he creeps in by importunity. That is not judgment but weariness. For the Lord too says in the Gospel of one who had already shut his door, that if someone knocks at his door rather boldly, he rises and gives to him because of his importunity.

It is fine also to have a readier regard for one who has conferred some benefit or gift on you, if he himself has fallen into need. For what is so contrary to duty as not to return what you have received? Nor do I think it should be returned in equal measure but in a fuller one, and that the use of the benefit should be weighed, so that you help him as far as you can drive away his hardship. For not to be superior in returning a benefit to the one who conferred it is to be inferior; since he who gave first is superior in time and first in kindness. Hence in this too we must imitate the nature of the earth, which usually returns the seed it has received in greater number than it received. Therefore it is written for you: “A foolish man is like a farm, and a man lacking sense like a vineyard; if you leave him, he will be made desolate.” The wise man, then, is like a farm too, so that he restores the seeds received in greater measure, as though lent at interest. The earth, then, either brings forth fruits of its own accord or pours back and returns what was entrusted to it in a richer heap. You owe both, as by a kind of inherited use of a parent’s estate, so that you may not be left like an unfruitful field. Granted that someone could excuse himself for not giving, how can he excuse himself for not returning? Not to give to anyone is scarcely permitted; not to return is not permitted at all. Therefore Solomon says beautifully: “If you sit to dine at the table of a powerful man, understand wisely what is set before you, and put out your hand, knowing that you must prepare such things in return. But if you are insatiable, do not desire his food; for these things belong to a deceitful life.” We have written this desiring to imitate these sayings. To confer a favour is good; but he who does not know how to return one is most hard. The earth itself suggests an example of kindness. It supplies of its own accord fruits you did not sow; it returns multiplied what it has received. You may not deny money counted out to you; how may you not return a favour received? In Proverbs too you have that this returning of a favour is so greatly valued before God that even in the day of ruin it finds grace, when sins may outweigh. And why should I use other examples, when the Lord himself in the Gospel promises a richer reward to the merits of the saints and exhorts us to do good work, saying: “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, running over, will they give into your lap”? So that banquet of Solomon too is not about food but about good works. For with what do minds feast better than with good deeds? Or what else can so easily fill the minds of the just as the consciousness of good work? And what food is more pleasant than to do the will of God? The Lord said that this food alone was abundant for him, as it is written in the Gospel: “My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Let us delight in this food, of which the Prophet says: “Delight in the Lord.” In this food those delight who have grasped the higher delights with wonderful insight, who can know what that pure and intelligible delight is. Let us eat, then, the bread of wisdom and be filled with the word of God; for the life of man, made in the image of God, is not in bread alone but in every word of God. Of the cup, holy Job says expressly: “As the earth waits for rain, so did these for my words.”

It is fine, then, that we be moistened by the converse of the divine Scriptures, and that the words of God descend on us like dew. When, then, you sit at that table of the powerful one, understand who that powerful one is; and, placed in the paradise of delight and set at the banquet of wisdom, consider what is set before you. Divine Scripture is the banquet of wisdom; the individual books are individual dishes. First understand what fare the dishes hold, and then put out your hand, so that you carry out in works what you read or receive from the Lord your God and show forth in duties the grace conferred on you; like Peter and Paul, who by preaching the Gospel made a kind of return to the giver of the gift, so that each could say: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not needy; but I laboured more abundantly than all of them.” One, then, repays the fruit of a benefit received, as gold for gold, silver for silver; another repays labour; another, perhaps even more richly, returns only affection. For what if there is no means of returning? In returning a benefit the mind does more than the means, and benevolence weighs more than the ability to return the gift. For gratitude is returned in the very fact that it is felt. Great, then, is benevolence, which even if it gives nothing shows more; and though it has nothing in its patrimony, it gives to more people; and it does so without any loss to itself and with gain to all. And so benevolence stands above liberality itself. The one is richer in character than the other in gifts; for there are more who need a benefit than who abound. Benevolence is both joined to liberality, from which liberality itself proceeds, when the practice of giving follows the disposition to generosity; and it is also separate and distinct. For where liberality is lacking, benevolence remains, a kind of common parent of all, which binds and joins friendship: faithful in counsel, glad in prosperity, sad in sorrow; so that each trusts the counsel of a benevolent man more than that of a wise one; as David, though he was more prudent, yet acquiesced in the counsels of the younger Jonathan. Take benevolence away from human life, and it will be as though you took the sun from the world; for without it human life cannot exist: showing the way to a traveller, calling back one who has strayed, offering hospitality (no small virtue, of which Job boasted, saying: “The stranger did not lodge outside; my door was open to everyone who came”), giving water from flowing water, lighting a lamp from a lamp. Benevolence is in all these, like a fountain of water refreshing the thirsty, and like a light that shines also in others and does not fail those who have lit a light for others from their own. That too is the liberality of benevolence: if you hold a debtor’s bond, to tear it up and give it back without having received anything of the debt. Holy Job admonishes us by his own example that we ought to do this. For he who has does not borrow; he who has not does not free the bond. Why, then, even if you do not exact it yourself, do you keep for avaricious heirs what you can render now with the praise of benevolence and without loss of money? And to discuss it more fully: benevolence, starting first from the persons of the household, that is, from children, parents, and brothers, reaches by the degrees of relationship the circuit of cities, and, going out from paradise, has filled the world. Indeed, when God had placed a benevolent affection in man and woman, he said: “The two shall be in one flesh,” and in one spirit. Hence Eve trusted the serpent; for she who had received benevolence did not suppose that malevolence existed.

Benevolence is increased by the assembly of the Church, the fellowship of faith, the companionship of initiation, the bond of receiving grace, and the communion of the mysteries. For these too claim for themselves the names of kinship: the reverence of sons, the authority and devotion of fathers, the brotherhood of brothers. The bond of grace, then, contributes much to the increase of benevolence. Pursuits of equal virtues also help, since benevolence also produces likeness of character. Indeed Jonathan, the king’s son, imitated the gentleness of holy David, for which reason he loved him. Hence that saying too, “With the holy you will be holy,” seems to apply not only to conduct but also to benevolence. For the sons of Noah certainly lived together, and there was no harmony of character among them. Esau and Jacob too lived in their father’s house, but they disagreed. For there was no benevolence between them to make one prefer the other to himself, but rather contention to snatch the blessing first. For since the one was very hard and the other gentle, there could be no benevolence between unlike characters and conflicting pursuits. Add that holy Jacob could not put a degenerate son of his father’s house before virtue. Nothing is so sociable as justice joined with equity, which, as the equal partner and companion of benevolence, makes us love those whom we believe equal to us. Benevolence also has fortitude in itself; for since friendship proceeds from the fount of benevolence, it does not hesitate to undergo grave dangers to life for a friend: “And if evils befall me through him,” it says, “I bear them.”

Benevolence is also wont to wrest away the sword of anger. Benevolence makes the wounds of a friend more useful than the willing kisses of an enemy. Benevolence makes one out of many; for if there are many friends, they become one, in whom there is one spirit and one mind. At the same time we notice that rebukes too are welcome in friendship; they have stings but no pain. For we are pricked by censorious words, but delighted by the diligence of benevolence. In sum, the same duties are not always owed to all, nor are persons always preferred, but often causes and times are, so that one may sometimes help a neighbour more than a brother. For Solomon too says: “Better is a neighbour near than a brother living far away.” And so each often entrusts himself to the benevolence of a friend rather than to the bond of a brother. Benevolence is so strong that it often overcomes the ties of nature.

We have treated fully enough the nature and force of the honourable under the head of justice. Now let us treat of fortitude, which, as being loftier than the others, is divided into warlike and domestic matters. But the pursuit of warlike affairs seems by now foreign to our office, because we attend to the duty of the soul rather than of the body, and our practice no longer looks to arms but to the business of peace. But our forefathers, such as Joshua son of Nun, Jerubbaal, Samson, and David, won the highest glory in warlike affairs too. Fortitude, then, is indeed loftier than the others, but it is never an unaccompanied virtue; for it does not entrust itself to itself alone; otherwise fortitude without justice is the material of iniquity. For the stronger it is, the readier it is to oppress the weaker; and in warlike affairs themselves one must consider whether wars are just or unjust. David never made war unless provoked. So he had prudence as the companion of fortitude in battle. For when about to fight in single combat against Goliath, a man of huge bodily bulk, he rejected the armour with which he was to be loaded; for virtue relies on its own arms rather than on another’s coverings. Then from a distance, to strike more heavily, he killed the enemy with the blow of a stone. Afterwards he never began a war without consulting the Lord. So he was victor in all battles, ready of hand to extreme old age; and when war was undertaken against the Titans, he mixed as a warrior with the fierce ranks, eager for glory, careless of safety. But this is not the only splendid fortitude; we also count glorious the fortitude of those who through faith, by greatness of soul, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, and out of weakness were made strong; who, not girt with retinue and legions to share a common victory with many, but striving with naked virtue, won a singular triumph over the faithless. How unconquerable was Daniel, who did not fear the lions roaring at his sides! The beasts roared, and he feasted.