On the Duties of the Clergy 3.8–3.16

When could our forefathers have come out of slavery, if they had not believed that it was not only shameful but also useless to serve the king of the Egyptians? Joshua too and Caleb, sent to spy out the land, reported that the land was indeed fruitful, but inhabited by most ferocious nations. The people, broken by terror of war, refused possession of that land. The spies who had been sent, Joshua and Caleb, urged that the land was useful; they thought it unseemly to give way to the nations; they chose rather to be stoned, as the people threatened, than to depart from the honourable. Others dissuaded; the people cried out, saying that there would be war against dreadful and fierce nations, that they would have to fall in battle, that their wives and children would be plunder. The Lord’s indignation blazed so that he wished to destroy them all; but at Moses’ entreaty he tempered his sentence and put off vengeance, judging it punishment enough for the faithless that, even if he spared them for the time and did not strike the unbelievers, they should not reach the land they had refused, as the price of their unbelief; but the children and women who had not murmured, pardonable by sex or age, should receive the promised inheritance of that land. So all who were twenty years old and upward fell in the desert; but the punishment of the others was put off. Those who had gone up with Joshua and thought they should dissuade died at once by a great plague; but Joshua and Caleb entered the land of promise with those of innocent age or sex. The better part, then, preferred glory to safety, the worse safety to the honourable. But the divine sentence approved those who judged the honourable to be preferred to the useful, and condemned those with whom what seemed suited to safety weighed more than the honourable.

Nothing, then, is more unsightly than to have no love of the honourable, and, by a kind of habit of degenerate trading, to be troubled by base gain, to burn with an avaricious heart, to gape day and night after loss to another’s patrimony, not to raise the mind to the brightness of the honourable, not to consider the beauty of true praise. Hence arise inheritances sought by fowling, caught by a pretence of continence and gravity: which is far from the purpose of a Christian man; for whatever is drawn out by art and composed by fraud lacks the merit of simplicity. Even in those who have not received any office of the ecclesiastical order, the desire for an inheritance is judged unbecoming. Let those set at the last end of life have their own judgment, so that they may freely make the will they think right, since they will not be able to correct it afterwards; since it is not honourable to divert gains owed to others or prepared for them; since it belongs to a priest or minister to benefit all, if possible, and to harm no one. Indeed, if one cannot be helped without another being injured, it is better that neither be helped than that the other be burdened. And so it is not for a priest to intervene in money cases, in which it cannot help happening that the one who loses is often injured, since he thinks he has been beaten by the intercessor’s favour. It belongs, then, to a priest to harm no one, to wish to benefit all; but to be able to do so belongs to God alone. For in a capital case to harm one whom you ought to help in his danger is not without grave sin; but in a money case to seek hatreds is foolishness, when for the safety of a man heavy troubles are often undertaken, in which it is even glorious to be in danger. Let the rule set out, then, be kept in the priestly office, that he harm no one, not even when provoked and offended by some injury. For he is a good man who said: “If I have repaid those who repaid me evil.” For what glory is it if we do not harm one who has not harmed us? But that is virtue, if when injured you forgive. How honourable that, when he could have harmed the king his enemy, he preferred to spare him! How useful too, because this profited his successor, so that all learned to keep faith with their own king, and not to usurp rule but to revere it! So the honourable was preferred to the useful, and the useful followed the honourable. It is little that he spared him; he added that he grieved even when Saul was killed in war, and lamented him tearfully, saying: “Mountains of Gilboa, let neither dew nor rain fall upon you. Mountains of death, for there the protection of the mighty was taken away, the protection of Saul. He was not anointed with oil, and from the blood of the wounded and the fat of the warriors the arrow of Jonathan did not turn back, and the sword of Saul did not return empty. Saul and Jonathan, beautiful and most dear, inseparable in their life, and in death they were not separated. Lighter than eagles, stronger than lions. Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet with your ornaments, who put gold upon your garments. How have the mighty fallen in the midst of battle! Jonathan was wounded to death. I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan, very beautiful to me. Your love for me fell upon me as the love of women. How have the mighty fallen, and the desirable weapons perished!” What mother would so weep for an only son as he wept for his enemy? Who would follow the author of a favour with such praises as those with which he followed the plotter against his life? How dutifully he grieved, with what affection he groaned! The mountains dried up by the prophetic curse, and divine power fulfilled the sentence of the one who cursed. So the elements paid the penalty for having witnessed the king’s death. And what was the cause of death for holy Naboth but regard for the honourable? For when the king asked him for his vineyard, promising to give money, he refused the unseemly price for his father’s inheritance, and preferred by death to avoid such a disgrace. “The Lord forbid me,” he said, “that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers”; that is, may so great a reproach not be done to me, may God not allow so great a crime to be extorted. He certainly does not speak of vines—for God has no care for cheap things—nor of a plot of earth, but he speaks of the right of his fathers. He could certainly have taken another vineyard from the king’s vineyards and been a friend, in which no small advantage of this world is usually reckoned; but he judged that what was shameful should not be thought useful, and preferred to undergo danger with honour rather than advantage with reproach—I speak of common advantage, not that in which there is also the grace of the honourable. Indeed the king himself could have extorted it, but he thought it shameless, and he grieved when Naboth was killed. The Lord too announced that the cruelty of the woman, who, unmindful of the honourable, preferred shameful gain, was to be punished with fitting punishment. Every fraud, then, is shameful. Indeed, even in cheap things a deceitful balance and a fraudulent measure are accursed. If in the market of things for sale, in the practice of trade, fraud is punished, can it seem blameless among the duties of the virtues? Solomon cried out: “A great and a small weight, and double measures, are unclean before the Lord.” And above he says: “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is acceptable to him.”

In all things, then, good faith is seemly, justice pleasing, and the measure of equity delightful. What shall I say of other contracts, and especially of the purchase of estates, or of transactions and agreements? Are there not formulas that fraud be absent, and that whoever is caught in fraud be liable to a double penalty? Everywhere, then, regard for the honourable prevails, which excludes fraud and casts out deceit. Hence rightly the prophet David put forth a general sentence, saying: “Nor did he do evil to his neighbour.” So not only in contracts (in which the defects of what is sold are ordered to be disclosed, and unless the seller has made them known, even though he has transferred it into the buyer’s ownership, the sale is made void by an action for fraud), but in general, in all things, fraud must be absent: simplicity must be opened up, truth made known. But that old formula about fraud was clearly expressed by divine Scripture, not as a formula of lawyers but as a judgment of the patriarchs, in the book of the Old Testament which is entitled Joshua son of Nun. For when the report had gone out among the peoples that the sea had been dried up when the Hebrews passed over, that water had flowed from the rock, that daily food was supplied from heaven, abundant for so many thousands of people; that the walls of Jericho had fallen at the holy sound of the trumpets, battered by the blow and shout of the people; that the king of Ai too had been conquered and hanged on a tree until evening: the Gibeonites, fearing the strong hand, came with cunning, pretending that they were from a far country and that during their long travel their shoes had burst and their clothing worn out, whose signs of age they showed; and that the cause of so great a labour was the desire to earn peace and to enter into friendship with the Hebrews; and they began to ask Joshua son of Nun to make a league with them. And because he was still unacquainted with the places and did not know the inhabitants, he did not recognize their fraud, nor did he ask God, but believed quickly. So holy was good faith in those times that it was not believed that anyone could deceive. Who would blame this in the saints, who judge others by their own disposition, and because truth is dear to them, think that no one lies, and do not know what it is to deceive? They readily believe others to be what they themselves are, and cannot suspect what they themselves are not. Hence Solomon says: “The innocent man believes every word.” His readiness is not to be blamed, but his goodness praised. This is to be innocent: not to know what harms; and even if he is cheated by someone, he judges well of all, since he thinks there is good faith in all. Inclined, then, by this devotion of his mind to believe, he made a covenant, gave peace, confirmed the league. But when they came to their lands and the fraud was detected, that though they were neighbours they had pretended to be strangers, the people of the fathers began to be indignant that they had been cheated. Yet Joshua did not think the peace he had given should be revoked, because it had been confirmed by the sanctity of an oath; lest while he convicted another’s faithlessness he should break his own faith. Yet he punished them with the service of a meaner ministry. The sentence was milder, but longer lasting; for the punishment of their old cunning remains in their duties, assigned as a hereditary service to this day.

I shall not note, in entering upon inheritances, the snapping of fingers and the dancing of the naked heir; for these are notorious even among the common people; nor the arranged abundance of a feigned fishing, to entice the buyer’s desire. For why was he found so eager for luxury and delights that he suffered such a fraud? What need have I to treat of that pleasant and secluded retreat at Syracuse and the cunning of the Sicilian, who, having found a foreigner and learned that he was eager for gardens for sale, invited him to dinner in the gardens; the guest promised and came the next day; he found there a great crowd of fishermen, a banquet adorned with choice supplies, fishermen arranged in front of the gardens in view of the diners, where they had never before cast nets; each eagerly offered to the diners what he had caught; fish were heaped on the table and, leaping, struck the eyes of those reclining. The guest wondered at such an abundance of fish and so great a number of boats. When he asked, he was answered that there was a watering place there, and that countless fish gathered there for the sake of fresh water. In short, he enticed the guest so as to wring the gardens from him; the owner, who wanted to sell, lets himself be pressed and accepts the price with a show of reluctance. The next day the buyer came to the gardens with friends and found no boat. When he asked whether the fishermen had some holiday that day, he was told none, and that they had never been accustomed to fish there except on the day before. With what authority could he convict the fraud, who had hunted so shamefully for delights? For he who accuses another of sin ought himself to be free from sin. I shall not, then, call such trifles into this authority of the Church’s judgment, which condemns in general all appetite for shameful gain and excludes levity and cunning in a brief summary of speech. For what shall I say of him who, from a will which, though made by others, he knows to be false, claims an inheritance or legacy for himself and seeks gain from another’s crime, when even the public laws bind him who knowingly uses a forgery as guilty of the crime? The rule of justice is plain, that it does not become a good man to turn aside from the truth, nor to inflict unjust loss on anyone, nor to attach any deceit or put together any fraud. What is more evident than that Ananias, who cheated over the price of his field, which he himself had sold, and laid a part of the price at the apostles’ feet as though it were the whole sum, perished as guilty of fraud? He was certainly free to offer nothing, and would have done so without fraud. But because he mixed in fraud, he did not win the favour of liberality but paid the penalty of deceit. And the Lord in the Gospel rejected those who came to him with guile, saying: “Foxes have holes”; since he commands us to live in simplicity of heart and innocence. David too says: “Like a sharp razor you have worked deceit,” convicting the traitor of wickedness, because such an instrument is used for a man’s adornment and often wounds. If anyone, then, makes a show of favour and weaves deceit after the traitor’s example, so as to betray to death one whom he ought to protect, he is judged by comparison with that instrument, which by the fault of a drunken mind and an unsteady hand usually wounds. As that man, drunk with the wine of malice, brought death on Ahimelech the priest by the information of a deadly betrayal, because he had received the prophet as a guest, whom the king, kindled by the goads of envy, was pursuing.

The disposition, then, must be pure and sincere, so that each one speaks simply, possesses his vessel in holiness, does not lead a brother astray by deceitful words, and promises nothing dishonourable; and if he has promised, it is more tolerable not to do what was promised than to do what is shameful. Often many bind themselves by the sacrament of an oath, and though they themselves know they ought not to have promised, yet out of regard for the oath they do what they pledged; as we wrote above of Herod, who shamefully promised a reward to a dancer and cruelly paid it. It is shameful that a kingdom is promised for a dance; cruel that the death of a prophet is given for the sake of an oath. How much more tolerable would perjury have been with such an oath! If indeed it could be called perjury, what a drunk man had sworn among the wine, what an unmanned man had promised among the bands of dancers. The prophet’s head is brought in on a dish, and what was madness was thought to be good faith. Nor shall I ever be brought to believe that the leader Jephthah did not promise rashly to sacrifice to God whatever met him at the threshold of his house on his return, since he himself regretted his vow after his daughter met him. Indeed he tore his clothes and said: “Alas, my daughter, you have entangled me; you have become a goad of pain to me.” Though from pious fear and awe he fulfilled the bitterness of a hard payment, yet he established and left an annual mourning to be lamented even by posterity. A hard promise, a bitterer payment, which even he who made it had to mourn. Indeed a precept and decree was made in Israel from days to days: “The daughters of the people of Israel,” it says, “went lamenting the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.” I cannot accuse the man who had to fulfil what he had vowed; but miserable is the necessity which is paid by the slaying of one’s own kin. It is better not to vow than to vow what he to whom it is promised does not wish paid. Indeed in Isaac we have an example, in whose place the Lord appointed a ram to be sacrificed to him. Not all promises, then, are always to be kept. Indeed the Lord himself often changes his sentence, as Scripture indicates. For in the book entitled Numbers he had proposed to strike the people with death and destroy them; but afterwards, entreated by Moses, he was reconciled to his people. And again he says to Moses and Aaron: “Separate yourselves from the midst of this congregation, and I will consume them together.” And when they had withdrawn from the assembly, the earth, loosened in a sudden chasm, swallowed up the ungodly Dathan and Abiram. This example of Jephthah’s daughter is more excellent and older than that which is held memorable among the philosophers, of the two Pythagoreans, one of whom, condemned to death by the tyrant Dionysius, with the day of his death fixed, asked to be given leave to go home to commend his family; and so that faith in his return might not waver, he offered a surety for his death, on condition that if he himself was absent on the appointed day, his surety would know he must die for him. He who was offered did not refuse the nature of the pledge, and awaited the day of death with a steady mind. So the one did not withdraw, the other returned on the day. This was so wonderful that the tyrant took into his friendship those whose danger he was pressing. What, then, is full of wonder in tried and learned men is found much more magnificent and illustrious in a virgin, who said to her groaning father: “Do to me as it went out of your mouth.” But she asked a space of two months, to hold a gathering with her companions on the mountains, who would with loving affection mourn her virginity destined for death. The weeping of her companions did not move the girl, nor grief bend her, nor groaning delay her; she did not let the day pass nor fail the hour. She returned to her father as if returning to a vow, and by her own will urged him on as he hesitated, and by her spontaneous choice brought it about that what was the accident of impiety became a sacrifice of piety.

Behold, Judith offers herself to you, wonderful, who went to Holofernes, a man feared by the peoples, surrounded by the triumphant host of the Assyrians. Him she first struck by the grace of her form and the beauty of her face, then ensnared by the elegance of her speech. Her first triumph was that she brought back her modesty unharmed from the enemy’s tent; the second, that as a woman she won the victory over a man and put peoples to flight by her counsel. The Persians shuddered at her daring. Certainly—what they admire in those two Pythagoreans—she did not fear the danger of death, nor even that of her modesty, which is graver for good women: she did not tremble at the blow of a single executioner, nor even at the weapons of a whole army. A woman, she stood among the wedges of warriors, among victorious arms, secure about death. As far as the weight of danger goes, she went forth to die; as far as faith goes, to fight. Judith, then, followed the honourable, and while she followed it she found the useful. For it belonged to the honourable to prevent the people of God from surrendering to the profane, from betraying their ancestral rites and sacraments, from subjecting holy virgins, grave widows, and chaste matrons to barbarian impurity, from ending the siege by surrender; it belonged to the honourable that she preferred to be in danger for all, so as to rescue all from danger. How great the authority of the honourable, that a woman claimed for herself counsel on the highest matters and did not entrust it to the leaders of the people! How great the authority of the honourable, that she counted on God as her helper; how great the grace, that she found him!

And what did Elisha follow but the honourable, when he led captive into Samaria the army of Syria, which had come to besiege him, whose eyes he had covered with blindness, and said: “Lord, open their eyes that they may see,” and they saw? So when the king of Israel wished to strike those who had come in and asked the prophet to give him leave, he answered that they were not to be struck, since he had not achieved their captivity with his hand and weapons of war, but should rather be helped with a supply of food. And so, refreshed with abundant feasting, the raiders of Syria never afterwards thought of returning to the land of Israel. How much more sublime this is than that story of the Greeks: when two peoples were contending with each other for glory and empire, and one of them had the opportunity of secretly burning the other people’s ships, it thought this shameful, and preferred to have less power honourably than more shamefully. And these indeed could not have done this without crime, deceiving by such a fraud those who had come into alliance to finish the Persian war; which, though they could deny it, they could not but blush for. But Elisha preferred to save rather than destroy men who, though not deceived by fraud, had been struck by the power of the Lord; because it would be seemly to spare an enemy and to give life to an adversary, which he could have taken away had he not spared it. It is clear, then, that what is seemly is always useful. For holy Judith too by a seemly contempt for her own safety ended the danger of the siege and gained public advantage by her own honour; and Elisha won more glory by pardoning than by striking, and more usefully kept alive the enemies he had captured. And what did John consider but the honourable, so that he could not bear a dishonourable marriage even in a king, saying: “It is not lawful for you to have her as wife”? He could have kept silent, had he not judged it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth from fear of death, to bend the prophetic authority to the king, to slip in flattery. He knew certainly that he would die because he opposed the king; but he preferred the honourable to safety. And yet what was more useful than what brought the holy man the glory of martyrdom? Holy Susanna too, when the terror of false witness was announced, seeing herself pressed on one side by danger, on the other by disgrace, preferred to avoid disgrace by an honourable death rather than, from desire for safety, to take up and endure a shameful life. So while she aimed at the honourable, she also kept her life; whereas if she had preferred what seemed to her useful for life, she would not have won so great a glory; indeed, choosing what was not only useless but even dangerous, she might perhaps not have escaped the penalty of the crime. We notice, then, that what is shameful cannot be useful, nor again what is honourable useless; because usefulness is always the companion of the honourable, and the honourable of usefulness.

The rhetoricians tell as memorable that a general of the Romans, when the physician of the enemy king came to him promising to give the king poison, sent him back bound to the enemy. And truly it was splendid that one who had undertaken a contest of valour refused to conquer by fraud. For he did not place the honourable in victory, but declared victory itself shameful unless gained honourably. Let us return to our Moses and go back to earlier things, so that we bring forward examples as much older as they are more excellent. The king of Egypt would not let the people of the fathers go. Moses told Aaron the priest to stretch out his rod over all the waters of Egypt. Aaron stretched it out, and the water of the river was turned into blood, and no one could drink the water, and all the Egyptians were perishing of thirst; but the fathers had pure streams in abundance. They threw ashes into the sky, and there came sores and burning blisters on men and beasts. They brought down hail with flaming fire; all things on the earth were crushed. Moses prayed, and everything returned to its own favour: the hail was calmed, the sores healed, the rivers gave their usual drink. Again the earth was covered with thick darkness for three days, from the time Moses raised his hand and poured out darkness. Every firstborn of Egypt was dying, while all the offspring of the Hebrews were unharmed. Asked to put an end to these destructions too, Moses prayed and obtained it. In the one man it is to be praised that he held back from partnership in fraud; in the other it is wonderful that by his own virtue he turned away even from an enemy the punishments threatened by God, being truly, as it is written, very meek and gentle. He knew that the king would not keep faith with his promises; yet he thought it honourable to pray when asked, to bless when injured, to forgive when attacked. He threw down his rod, and it became a serpent, which devoured the serpents of the Egyptians: signifying that the Word would become flesh, which would make void the poisons of the dread serpent by the remission and pardon of sins. For the rod is the Word, upright, royal, full of power, the emblem of rule. The rod became a serpent, since he who was the Son of God, born of God the Father, became Son of Man, born of a virgin; who, lifted up on the cross like a serpent, poured medicine into human wounds. Hence the Lord himself says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Indeed another sign too which Moses did belongs to the Lord Jesus: he put his hand into his bosom and brought it out, and his hand became like snow. Again he put it in and brought it out, and it had the appearance of human flesh; signifying first the brightness of the Lord Jesus’ Godhead, and afterwards his taking of flesh, in which all nations and peoples must believe by faith. Rightly he put in his hand, for Christ is the right hand of God; and if anyone does not believe in his Godhead and incarnation, he is scourged as reprobate, like that king who, because he did not believe evident signs, afterwards, when scourged, begged to obtain pardon. How great, then, the love of the honourable ought to be is proved from these things, and above all from his offering himself for the people, saying that God should forgive the people or else blot him out of the book of the living.

Tobit too expressed the form of the honourable very plainly, when he left a banquet to bury the dead, and invited the needy to the food of a poor man’s table. Raguel above all, who, out of regard for the honourable, when asked to give his daughter in marriage, did not keep silent even about his daughter’s misfortunes, lest he seem to deceive the suitor by silence. So when Tobias son of Tobit asked that the girl be given to him, he answered that by law she was indeed owed to him as a kinsman, but that he had already given her to six husbands, and all of them had died. So the just man feared more for others, and preferred that his daughter remain unmarried for him than that strangers be in danger because of her marriage. How briefly he resolved all the questions of the philosophers! They discuss the defects of houses, whether they should be concealed or disclosed by the seller; this man of ours did not think that even his daughter’s defects should be hidden. And certainly he did not seek to give her away, but was asked. How much more honourable he is than they we cannot doubt, if we compare how much more important the cause of a daughter is than the money for a thing for sale.