The Institutes 8.1–8.22

In the fourth contest too the deadly poison of anger must be dug out completely from the recesses of our soul. For while it sits in our hearts and blinds the eye of the mind with harmful darkness, we shall not be able to acquire the judgment of right discernment, nor possess the gaze of honourable contemplation or maturity of counsel; nor can we be sharers in life or holders of justice, nor even capable of the spiritual and true light, because "my eye," it says, "is troubled by anger." Nor can we become sharers in wisdom, even if we seem to be pronounced wise by everyone's opinion, because "anger rests in the bosom of fools"; nor shall we even be able to attain the life of immortality, though we seem to be judged prudent by the definition of men, because "anger destroys even the prudent." Nor shall we be able to keep the governance of justice by the keen discernment of the heart, even if we are considered perfect and holy by everyone's opinion, because "the anger of man does not work the justice of God." We shall by no means be able to possess even that dignity of honour which is usually familiar even to men of this world, though we are thought noble and honourable by the privilege of birth, because "an angry man is dishonourable." We shall by no means be able to obtain maturity of counsel either, however serious and endowed with the highest knowledge we may seem, because "the angry man acts without counsel"; nor shall we be able to be at rest from harmful disturbances or free from sins, even if no disturbances are brought on us by others, because "a passionate man begets quarrels, and an angry man digs up sins."

We have heard some trying to excuse this most deadly disease of the soul in such a way as to be eager to lessen it by a more detestable interpretation of the Scriptures, saying that it is not harmful if we are angry with brothers who do wrong, since God himself is said to rage and be angry against those who either will not know him or, knowing him, despise him, as in the passage, "And the Lord was angry with fury against his people," or when the prophet prays, saying, "Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chasten me in your anger." They do not understand that, while they wish to grant men an occasion for a pestilent vice, they are mixing the injury of a fleshly passion with the divine infinity and the fountain of all purity.

For if these things, when said of God, are to be taken in a fleshly and gross sense according to the letter, then he also sleeps, since it is said, "Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord?" — he of whom it is said, "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep"; and he stands and sits, since he says, "Heaven is my seat, and the earth the footstool of my feet" — he who "measures the heaven with his span and holds the earth in his fist"; and he is drunk with wine, since it is said, "And the Lord awoke as one asleep, like a mighty man drunk with wine" — he "who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible." To pass over the ignorance and forgetfulness which we read are frequently ascribed to him in the holy Scriptures, and then the features of limbs, which are described as of a man with a form and a composite body: hair, namely, and head and nostrils, eyes and face, hands and arm, fingers, womb, and feet. If we choose to accept all these according to the mean sound of the letter, we must think that God is composed of bodily limbs and a bodily form — which is wicked even to say, and far be it from us.

So, just as these things cannot be understood according to the letter without abominable sacrilege of him who is defined by the authority of the holy Scriptures as invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, inestimable, simple, and uncompounded, so neither can the disturbance of fury and anger be fitted to that unchangeable nature without enormous blasphemy. For by such a meaning of limbs we ought to understand the divine workings of God and his immense operations, which cannot be made known to us except through these familiar names of limbs. For example, by the meaning of "mouth" let us recognize his speech, which is usually poured graciously into the secret senses of the soul, or that he himself spoke among our fathers and prophets. In the "eyes" we may know the immensity of his sight, by which he surveys and sees all things, and that nothing of what is done or is to be done or thought by us is hidden from him. By the naming of "hands" let us understand the providence and working by which he is the creator and maker of all things. The "arm" too is the sign of his power and government, by which he sustains, governs, and rules all things; and, to say nothing of the rest, what else does the white hair of his head signify than the eternity and antiquity of the Godhead, by which he is without any beginning and surpasses all creatures before all times? So also when we read of the anger or fury of God, we ought to understand it not anthrōpopathōs, that is, according to the lowliness of human disturbance, but in a manner worthy of God, who is a stranger to all disturbance: namely, that through these things we may perceive him as the judge and avenger of all that is done unjustly in this world, and, fearing him as the terrible rewarder of our deeds through these meanings of the words, may fear to commit anything against his will. For human nature is accustomed to fear those whom it knows to be indignant, and is afraid to offend them; as with some most just judges, the avenging anger is usually feared by those who are gnawed by some guilt of conscience — not, of course, because this disturbance exists in the minds of those who are going to judge justly, but because to those who fear, that disposition is felt as anger which proceeds from the execution of the laws, the examination of justice, and the weighing of equity. However much gentleness and mildness of mind it is delivered with, it is judged heavy fury and most savage anger by those who must be punished according to their deserts. It would be long, and not part of the present work, to explain everything said figuratively of God in the Scriptures with human meaning. Let it suffice to have said this for the present need, which concerned the vice of anger, so that no one may through ignorance draw from the source where holiness, immortality, and the remedies of life and salvation are sought an occasion of disease and eternal death.

So let the monk who is striving for perfection and wishes to contend lawfully in the spiritual contest be a stranger to every vice of anger and fury, and let him hear what the vessel of election commands him: "Let all anger and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be taken away from you, with all malice." When he says, "Let all anger be taken away from you," he makes no exception of any as necessary and useful to us. And if necessary let him hasten to cure an erring brother in such a way that, while trying to bring a remedy to one suffering perhaps from a lighter fever, he does not in his anger involve himself in the fouler disease of blindness. For one who wishes to heal another's wound ought to be free of every sickness and sound, lest that saying of the gospel be addressed to him, "Physician, first heal yourself," and, seeing the speck in his brother's eye, he does not see the beam in his own. Or how will he see to cast the speck out of his brother's eye, who carries the beam of fury in his own?

From whatever cause the movement of anger boils up, it blinds the eyes of the heart, and, thrusting the deadly beam of a stronger disease on the keenness of their sight, it does not allow them to look on the sun of justice. It makes no difference whether a plate of gold or of lead or of any other metal is placed over the eyes; the costliness of the metals makes no difference to the blindness.

We do indeed have a use for anger quite fittingly implanted in us, and for this alone it is useful and wholesome for us to admit it: when we rage indignantly against the wanton movements of our heart, and are indignant that the things we are ashamed to do or say before men have risen up in the hidden places of our breast, trembling with all fear at the presence of the angels and of God himself, who penetrates everywhere and all things, and at his eye, from which the secrets of our conscience can by no means be hidden.

Or at least when we are moved against this very anger, because it has crept in on us against a brother, and in anger we drive out its deadly promptings and do not allow it to have harmful hiding places in the inner sanctuary of our breast. The prophet too teaches us to be angry in this way, who had so driven it from his feelings that he would not take revenge even on his own enemies, and those delivered into his hands by God: "Be angry," he says, "and do not sin." For when he had longed for water from the cistern of Bethlehem, and it had been brought to him by three mighty men through the midst of the hosts of the enemy, he at once poured it out on the ground; and so, angrily extinguishing the pleasurable passion of desire, he offered it to the Lord and did not satisfy the longings of his desire, saying: "The Lord be merciful to me, that I should not do this. Shall I drink the blood of these men who went, and the peril of their lives?" Or when Shimei threw stones and curses at King David in his hearing before everyone, and Abishai son of Zeruiah, the commander of the soldiers, wished to avenge the insult to the king by cutting off his head, blessed David, moved with pious indignation against his cruel suggestion, kept the measure of humility and the firmness of patience with unshaken gentleness, saying: "What have I to do with you, sons of Zeruiah? Let him alone, that he may curse; for the Lord has commanded him to curse David; and who is there who dares to say, Why has he done so? Behold, my son, who came out of my womb, seeks my life; how much more now a son of Jemini? Let him alone, that he may curse according to the Lord's command, if perhaps the Lord may look on my affliction and repay me good for this day's cursing."

So we are commanded to be angry in a wholesome way, but with ourselves and with the evil suggestions that rise up, and not to sin by carrying them through to a harmful effect. Finally, the following little verse explains this same sense more clearly: "What you say in your hearts, be sorry for on your beds"; that is, whatever you think in your hearts under sudden and slippery promptings, amend and correct with most wholesome compunction, by the moderation of counsel, removing all the noise and disturbance of fury, as if placed on a bed of rest. Finally, the blessed apostle, using the testimony of this verse, when he had said, "Be angry and do not sin," added, "Let not the sun go down on your anger, and do not give place to the devil." If it is harmful for the sun of justice to go down on our anger, and if when angry we at once give place to the devil in our heart, how did he command above that we should be angry, saying, "Be angry and do not sin"? Is he not clearly saying this: Be angry with your vices and your fury, lest, if you connive at them, the sun of justice, Christ, should begin to set on your minds darkened by anger, and when he departs you give place to the devil in your hearts?

Of this sun God clearly speaks through the prophet, saying: "But to those who fear my name the sun of justice will rise, and healing in his wings." And again he is said to set at midday for sinners, false prophets, and those who are angry, as the prophet says: "The sun will set for them at noon." Or at least, according to the figurative sense, the mind, that is, the nous or reason — which is rightly called the sun because it surveys all the thoughts and discernments of the heart — is extinguished by the vice of anger; lest, when it sets, the darkness of disturbances, with the devil as their author, should occupy the whole sense of our heart, and, possessed by the darkness of anger as in a blind night, we should not know what we ought to do. We have set out, though at some length, this passage of the apostle in the sense handed down to us by the institutions of the elders, because it was necessary to show what they thought about anger. They do not allow it to enter our heart even for a moment, observing in every way that saying of the gospel: "Whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment." Otherwise, if it were permitted to be angry until sunset, the fill of fury and the movements of avenging anger could accomplish their harmful disturbance before this sun turned to its setting.

But what is to be said of those — which indeed I cannot say without my own shame — whose implacability not even the setting of this sun puts an end to, but who prolong it for many days, keep rancour of mind against those with whom they have been annoyed, and, while denying in words that they are angry, are proved in fact and deed to be most seriously indignant? For they neither address them with fitting words nor speak with them in a friendly way; and they think they do no wrong in this, because they do not seek revenge for their annoyance. Yet since they either do not dare or are not able to bring it out openly and exercise it, turning the poison of anger back to their own destruction, they digest it silently in their heart and consume it quietly within themselves, not driving out the bitterness of resentment at once by strength of mind, but digesting it with the passing of days and softening it somehow with time.

As if the end of each revenge were not this, and a man had not abundantly satisfied his own fury or resentment if he has done what he could at anger's instigation — which those too are known to do who restrain their movements, not from a desire for calm, but from lack of means of revenge; for they can do nothing more to those with whom they are angry than not speak with them in their usual friendly way — or as if anger were to be moderated only in the effect of the deed, and not rather torn out from the hidden places of our breast, lest, darkened by its shadows, we should be able to admit neither the light of wholesome counsel nor of knowledge, nor be the temple of the Holy Spirit while an evil spirit dwells in us. For fury restrained in the heart does not indeed offend the men standing by, but it shuts out the most splendid radiance of the Holy Spirit just as much as if it had been uttered.

Or how does the Lord wish it to be kept even for a moment, who does not allow even the spiritual sacrifices of our prayers to be offered if we know that another has some rancour against us, saying: "If, then, you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift"? How, then, are we permitted to keep resentment against a brother, I will not say for many days, but even until the setting of this sun, when we are not allowed to offer our prayers to God even when he has something against us? To us the apostle commands: "Pray without ceasing," and, "In every place lifting up pure hands without anger and disputing." It remains, then, either that we never pray, keeping such poison in our hearts, and are guilty against this apostolic or evangelical precept by which we are commanded to pray unceasingly and everywhere; or, if, deceiving ourselves, we presume to pour out prayer against his prohibition, we should know that we are offering to the Lord not prayer but contumacy in a spirit of rebellion.

And because we often despise brothers whom we have hurt and grieved, or at least disregard them, saying that they have not been offended by our fault, the physician of souls and knower of secrets, wishing to tear the occasions of anger out of our hearts by the roots, commands us not only to forgive and be reconciled to our brothers if we have been hurt, and to keep no memory of injury or hurt against them, but likewise, if we know that they have something against us, whether justly or unjustly, he has commanded that we should leave our gift — that is, check our prayers — and hasten first to make satisfaction to them, and so, having first cured our brother, bring the gifts of our prayers unimpaired. For the common Lord of all does not take such pleasure in our services that he would lose in one what he gains in another, while resentment rules. For in the loss of any one he suffers a single harm, since he desires and awaits in the same way the salvation of all his servants. And therefore our prayer will be ineffective just as much when a brother has something against us as if we ourselves kept the bitterness of indignation against him with a swelling spirit.

But why do we dwell longer on the precepts of the gospel and the apostle, when even the old law, which seems to allow some indulgence, guards against these same things, saying: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart," and again, "You shall not remember the injury of your fellow citizens," and again, "The ways of those who keep the memory of wrong lead to death"? You see that there too wickedness is cut off not only in deed but also in secret thoughts, since not only the repayment of hatred and injury, but even the memory of it, is ordered to be torn out of the heart by the roots.

Sometimes, overcome by pride or impatience, when we do not wish to correct our rough and disordered habits, we complain that we desire solitude, as though we would find the virtue of patience there at once because no one would provoke us; excusing our negligence and saying that the causes of our agitation arise, not from our impatience, but from the fault of the brothers. And while we turn the causes of our error on others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and perfection.

So the sum of our amendment and tranquillity must not be placed in another's choice, which is by no means subject to our power, but should rather lie within our own control. So our not being angry ought to come, not from another's perfection, but from our own virtue, which is gained not by another's patience but by our own long-suffering.

Moreover, it is the perfect, those purged of every vice, who ought to seek the desert; and they should enter it, when their vices have been refined to purity in the community of the brothers, not as a refuge of faint-heartedness but for the sake of divine contemplation and in the desire of a higher vision, which can be attained only in solitude and only by the perfect. For whatever vices we carry uncured into the desert, we shall feel them covered up in us, not abolished. For just as solitude knows how to open the purest contemplation to those whose characters have been amended, and to reveal the knowledge of spiritual mysteries to their most sincere gaze, so it usually not only preserves but even increases the vices of those who are less amended. A man seems to himself patient and humble only so long as he mixes with the company of no one; he soon returns to his former nature when the occasion of any disturbance arises. For the vices that were hidden at once burst out of him, and, like unbridled horses fed by longer idleness, they rush out of their stalls, vying with one another, more fiercely and more wildly to the destruction of their own driver. For when the exercise and practice of human company ceases, the vices grow wilder in us unless they have been purged beforehand, and through the sloth of security we lose even that shadow of patience which, mixed among the brothers, we seemed to possess in appearance, at least out of respect for them and for fear of public reproach.

As if all the poisonous kinds of serpents or wild beasts did not remain harmless while they stay in solitude and in their lairs! Yet they cannot on that account be declared harmless because they harm no one; for it is not a disposition of goodness but the necessity of solitude that gives them this. When they have found an opportunity of harming, they at once pour out and show the poison stored in themselves and the savagery of their soul. And therefore it is not enough for those seeking perfection not to be angry with a man. For we remember that when we were living in solitude a movement of indignation crept in on us against a pen, when its thickness or thinness displeased us; or against a knife, when it cut sluggishly with a blunt edge what had to be cut; or against a flint, if perhaps, when we were hurrying to our reading, a spark of fire flashed from it too slowly — so much so that we could not work off and dispel the disturbance of our mind except by uttering a curse either against the insensible objects or at least against the devil. Therefore, for the purpose of perfection at least, it will not help enough to be away from men against whom anger may be moved; for if patience has not first been acquired, the feeling of anger can likewise be exercised even towards dumb things, and, remaining in our heart, it will not allow us to possess a lasting state of tranquillity or to be free of the remaining vices. Unless perhaps we think that some gain or remedy is obtained for our agitations because inanimate and dumb things do not answer our curses or our anger, and do not provoke the intemperance of our heart to blaze into a greater madness of fury.

Therefore, if we wish to attain that highest divine reward of which it is said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," anger must not only be cut off from our actions but also rooted out of the inner parts of the soul. For it will not help much that the fury of anger is restrained in word and not brought out into deed, if God, from whom the secrets of hearts are not hidden, sees it present in the hidden places of our breast. For the word of the gospel has commanded that the roots of the vices be cut off rather than their fruits; for when the tinder has been torn out, they will certainly never sprout again; and so the mind will be able to persevere continually in all patience and holiness, when these have been torn out, not from the surface of work and action, but from the inner recesses of thoughts. And therefore, so that murder may not be committed, anger and hatred are cut down, without which the crime of murder can by no means be committed. "For whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment," and, "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer": that is, because he desires in his heart the death of one whose blood he is known not to have shed before men by his own hand or weapon, he is declared a murderer by the Lord through the feeling of anger. For the Lord will give each one reward or punishment not only for the effect of his work, but also for the desire of his will and wish, according to what he himself says through the prophet: "But I know their works and their thoughts; I come to gather them with all nations and tongues"; and again: "their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men."

It should be known, however, regarding what is found in some copies, "Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to judgment," that "without cause" is superfluous and was added by those who did not think anger should be cut off when there are just causes; although certainly no one, however unreasonably he is moved, will say that he is angry without cause. Therefore it appears to have been added by those who did not understand the purpose of Scripture, which wishes to cut off the tinder of anger altogether and to keep no occasion for indignation at all, lest, while we are ordered to be angry with cause, an occasion for being angry without cause should also be let in on us. For the goal of patience consists not in being angry justly but in not being angry at all. I know that some interpret this very phrase "without cause" as meaning that he is angry without cause who, when angry, is not permitted to seek revenge. Yet it is better to hold it as many new copies and all the old ones are found to be written.

Therefore the athlete of Christ who contends lawfully must tear out the movements of anger by the roots. The perfect medicine for this disease will be this: first, that we believe that we are by no means permitted to be angry, whether for unjust or for just causes, knowing that we shall at once lose the light of discernment and the firmness of right counsel, and even honour and the governance of justice, if the ruling part of our heart has been darkened by its shadows; next, that the purity of our mind will soon be disturbed, and that it cannot become a temple of the Holy Spirit at all while the spirit of anger dwells in us; lastly, that we reflect that we are by no means permitted to pray, or to pour out prayers to God, while angry. And above all, keeping before our eyes the uncertain state of the human condition, let us believe every day that we are about to depart from the body, and that the continence of chastity, the renunciation of all possessions, the contempt of riches, and the labours of fasts and vigils will profit us nothing, when, on account of anger and hatred alone, eternal punishments are promised by the judge of the universe.