Miscellanies 4.4.13–4.6.41

Fittingly, then, the one who knows, when called, obeys readily and gives up his poor body to the one who demands it, having stripped off its passions beforehand; not insulting the tempter, but, I think, instructing and convicting him, from “what honor and what height of bliss,” as Empedocles says, he has come here to live among mortals. This man truly bears witness to himself that he is faithful and genuine toward God; to the tempter, that he envied in vain the one faithful through love; and to the Lord, of the inspired persuasion toward his teaching, from which he will not depart for fear of death. Indeed, he also confirms by his deed the truth of the preaching, showing that the God to whom he hastens is powerful. You would marvel at his love, which he clearly shows, joyfully united to what is akin, and shaming unbelievers with his precious blood.

He, then, will not avoid denying Christ out of fear, because of the commandment, so as to become a martyr out of fear; nor will he sell his faith in the hope of prepared gifts; but out of love for the Lord he will most gladly be released from this life, perhaps even feeling grateful to the one who provided the occasion of his departure and to the one who devised the plot, having received a reasonable occasion, which he did not provide himself, to show what he is: to the one by patience, to the Lord by love, by which he was shown to the Lord, who knew even before his birth the choice of the one who would bear witness. Taking courage, then, he goes to the Lord as to a friend, for whom he willingly gave up his body, and also his soul, as the judges supposed, hearing from our Savior, in the poet's words, “Dear brother,” because of the likeness of his life. So we call martyrdom perfection, not because the man has received the end of his life like the rest, but because he has shown the perfect work of love. And the ancients among the Greeks praise the end of those who die in war, not advising dying violently, but because the one who dies in war departs without fear of death, cut off from the body, and not having grown weary in soul beforehand nor softened, as people suffer in diseases; for these depart effeminate and longing to live.

For this reason they do not release the soul pure, but carrying its desires with it like lead weights, unless some of them have become distinguished in virtue. And there are some who die in war with their desires, differing in nothing from those who wasted away with disease. If, then, confession to God is martyrdom, every soul that has lived purely with the knowledge of God, that has obeyed the commandments, is a martyr both by life and by word, however it is released from the body, pouring out its faith like blood throughout its whole life and at its departure too. For example, the Lord says in the Gospel: “Whoever leaves father or mother or brothers,” and so on, “for the sake of the gospel and my name,” blessed is he; indicating not simple martyrdom, but that of the one who knows, as having lived according to the rule of the gospel through love for the Lord. For knowledge of the name and understanding of the gospel signify knowledge, not the bare name: to leave one's worldly family, and to leave property and all possessions, by living free from passion. Mother is allegorized as country and nurse; fathers as the laws of the city. These the magnanimous righteous man must scorn with thanksgiving, for the sake of becoming a friend of God and obtaining the right-hand places of the sanctuary, as the apostles did.

Then Heraclitus says, “Gods and men honor those slain by Ares”; and Plato writes in the fifth book of the Republic: “Of those who die on campaign, whoever dies having distinguished himself, shall we not say first that he is of the golden race? Most certainly.” And the golden race is among the gods who are in heaven and the fixed sphere, who have most of all the governance of providence over men. But some of the heretics, having misunderstood the Lord, cling to life impiously and cowardly, saying that true martyrdom is the knowledge of the truly existing God, which we too confess, but that the one who confesses by death is his own murderer and slayer; and they bring forward other such sophisms of cowardice. To them we will speak when the occasion requires; for they differ from us on first principles.

We too blame those who have leapt upon death; for there are some, not ours but sharing only the name, who hasten to give themselves up out of hatred for the Creator, the wretches, longing for death. These, we say, depart from life without martyrdom, even if they are publicly punished. For they do not preserve the character of faithful martyrdom, not having known the true God, but give themselves up to an empty death, like the gymnosophists of the Indians to a vain fire. And since these falsely named ones slander the body, let them learn that the harmony of the body too contributes to the mind's good disposition.

That is why Plato, whom they most call on as witness when they condemn birth, said in the third book of the Republic that one must care for the body for the sake of the soul's harmony, through which one can live and live rightly, proclaiming the preaching of the truth. For by the way of life and health we learn knowledge. And for one who cannot reach the height at all without being in necessary things and doing through them everything that contributes to knowledge, how is living well not to be chosen? In living, at any rate, living well is achieved; and the one who has practiced the good life through the body is sent on to a state of eternity.

It is worth wondering at the Stoics too, who say that the soul is in no way affected by the body, neither toward vice by disease nor toward virtue by health, but they say both are indifferent. Yet Job, by excess of self-control and preeminence of faith, having become poor from rich, dishonored from glorious, ugly from beautiful, and sick from healthy, has been recorded as a good example for us, shaming the tempter, blessing the one who formed him, bearing the latter things as the former, teaching very well that the one who knows can use all circumstances well. And that the ancient righteous deeds are set out as images for our corrections the apostle shows when he says: “so that my bonds became manifest in Christ in the whole praetorium and to all the rest; and most of the brothers, trusting in the Lord because of my bonds, dare more boldly to speak the word of God without fear”; since martyrdoms too are gloriously sanctified examples of conversion. “For whatever was written,” he says, “was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” of encouragement.

When pain is present, the soul seems somehow to turn away from it and to count release from the present suffering precious. At that time, indeed, it neglects studies too, when the other virtues are also neglected. We do not, of course, say that virtue itself suffers (for virtue is not sick); but the one who shares in both, virtue and sickness, is distressed by what presses on him; and unless he is magnanimous, the one who has not yet acquired the state of self-control is beside himself, and not enduring is found to be equal to fleeing.

The same account holds for poverty too, since it too forces the soul away from necessary things, I mean contemplation and pure sinlessness, compelling one who has not wholly devoted himself to God through love to spend his time on providing means; just as, conversely, health and abundance of necessities keep free and unhindered the soul that knows how to use well what is present. “For such people,” says the apostle, “will have affliction in the flesh, and I would spare you. For I want you to be free from anxiety, for what is seemly and devoted to the Lord without distraction.”

These things, then, must be held to not for their own sake but for the body's; and the care of the body comes about for the sake of the soul, to which it refers. For in it the one who lives in the way of knowledge must learn what is fitting; since that pleasure is not the good is agreed from the fact that some pleasures are bad. On this account the good would appear bad and the bad good. Then, if we choose some pleasures and flee others, not every pleasure is good. Likewise the same account holds for pains, some of which we endure and others we flee; and choice and avoidance come about by knowledge; so that knowledge is the good, not pleasure, for the sake of which we will sometimes choose a certain kind of pleasure.

For example, the martyr chooses, through present pain, the pleasure that comes through hope. And if pain is understood in thirst and pleasure in drinking, the pain that existed before becomes productive of the pleasure; but evil could not be productive of good; so neither is evil. Simonides, then, as also Aristotle, writes: “Health is best for a man, second to be born beautiful in form, third to be rich without guile.” And Theognis of Megara: “To flee poverty, Cyrnus, one should throw oneself into the deep sea and down from lofty rocks.” Conversely Antiphanes the comic poet says that wealth, … taking those who see more than others, makes them blind.

For example, wealth is proclaimed by the poets as blind from birth: “And she bore him a son who never saw the light,” says Euphorion of Chalcis. “Wealth was a bad training in manliness for men, and excessive luxury,” Euripides has written in the Alexander. It has been said: “Poverty has obtained wisdom because of kinship.” “Love of money would take not only Sparta but every city.” So not only is “white silver or gold currency, but virtue too for mortals,” as Sophocles says.

Our holy Savior applied poverty, wealth, and the like both to spiritual and to sensible things. For in saying, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,” he clearly teaches us to seek the martyr in every circumstance. The one who is poor for righteousness' sake bears witness that righteousness, which he loved, is good; and if he hungers and thirsts for righteousness' sake, he bears witness that righteousness is the best.

Likewise the one who weeps and mourns for righteousness' sake bears witness to the best law, that it is good. As, then, he calls blessed those who are persecuted, so also those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, he who accepts the genuine longing that not even hunger could break off. And even if they hunger for righteousness itself, they are blessed. Blessed too are the poor, whether in spirit or in substance, clearly for righteousness' sake. Does he not, then, bless not simply the poor, but those who have wished to become poor for righteousness' sake, who have looked down on the honors here in order to gain the good? Likewise too those who have become beautiful in character and body through purity, and the well-born and glorious, who through righteousness have come to adoption and so have received “authority to become children of God” and “to walk on snakes and scorpions,” and to master demons and the army of the adversary.

And in general the Lord's discipline draws the soul away from the body with thanksgiving, if indeed it separates itself by transference. For “the one who finds his soul will lose it, and the one who loses it will find it,” if only we join what is perishable in us to the incorruption of God. And the will of God is the knowledge of God, which is fellowship with incorruption. The one, then, who recognizes his soul as sinful, according to the account of repentance, will lose it from the sin from which it has been torn away; and having lost it, he will find it, according to obedience, having come to life again by faith and died to sin. This, then, is to find one's soul: to know oneself.

The Stoics say that the turning to divine things comes from a change, the soul changing into wisdom; and Plato, from the soul receiving a turning around toward better things and a conversion from a kind of nighttime day. Indeed, the philosophers too allow the good man a reasonable departure from life, if anything should so deprive him of acting that no hope of action is left to him. But the judge who tries to force someone to deny the One he loves seems to me to show who is a friend of God and who is not. Here no comparison even remains of what one would rather choose, a human threat or the love of God. And somehow abstaining from evil deeds is found to be a lessening and extinguishing of vices, their activity being destroyed through inaction. And this is: “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me”; that is, follow what the Lord says.

Some say that by “possessions” he meant the things foreign in the soul, and they cannot say how these are distributed to the poor. But God distributes all things to all according to worth, since his arrangement is just. “Despising, then,” he says, “the possessions that God distributes, by your greatness of soul, follow what I say,” hastening to the ascent of the Spirit, justified not only by abstaining from evils but also perfected by the Lord's beneficence. For example, he convicted the one who boasted of having perfectly fulfilled the commandments of the law of not having loved his neighbor; and love, which is lord of the Sabbath by a knowing ascent, promises beneficence. And I think one should come to the saving Word neither through fear of punishment nor through some promise of a gift, but for the sake of the good itself.

Such people stand on the right of the sanctuary; but those who think to exchange the things of incorruption by giving perishable things are called hired servants in the parable of the two brothers. And does not “according to likeness and image” emerge here, so that some live as citizens according to likeness to the Savior, while those standing on the left live according to their image? … There are, then, three things from the truth, one root underlying both, but the choice not equal, or rather the difference in choice not equal. It differs, I think, to choose by imitation from one who chooses by knowledge, as what has been heated differs from fire and what has been lit from light. Israel, then, is the light of the likeness according to Scripture, while the other is the image. And what does the Lord mean by the parable of Lazarus, showing the image of a rich man and a poor man? And what by “No one can serve two masters, God and mammon,” the Lord so naming love of money?

For example, the lovers of property who were invited to the supper do not come, not because they possess, but because they possess with passion. “The foxes, then, have holes.” He called the malicious men who busy themselves with the wealth that is mined and dug from the earth earthborn foxes. Likewise too of Herod: “Go, tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am perfected.’” For he called “birds of the sky” those distinguished from the other birds by heaven, truly pure, able to fly to the knowledge of the heavenly Word. For not only wealth, glory, and marriage, but poverty too brings countless cares to one who does not bear it well; and perhaps he hinted at these cares in the parable of the fourfold sowing, saying that the seed of the Word that fell among thorns and hedges was choked by them and could not bear fruit.

We must learn, then, how to use each thing that befalls us, so as to be trained, through a good life of knowledge, into the state of eternal life. “For I saw the ungodly exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon,” says Scripture, “and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found. Keep innocence and look on uprightness, for there is a remnant for the peaceful man.” This would be the one who believes without hypocrisy with his whole heart and is calm in his whole soul. For the other people “honors with their lips, but their heart is far from the Lord.” “With their mouth they bless, but with their heart they curse.” “They loved him with their mouth, and with their tongue they lied to him; but their heart was not upright with him, nor were they faithful in his covenant.”

That is why “let the deceitful lips become mute, which speak lawlessness against the righteous.” And again: “May the Lord destroy all deceitful lips and the boastful tongue, those who said, ‘We will magnify our tongue, our lips are our own; who is lord over us?’ Because of the misery of the poor and the groaning of the needy, now I will arise, says the Lord; I will set him in safety; I will speak boldly in it.” For Christ belongs to the humble, not to those who exalt themselves over his flock. “Do not, then, store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal,” the Lord says, perhaps reproaching the lovers of possessions, perhaps also those who are simply full of cares and anxieties, and also the lovers of the body; for loves, diseases, and evil thoughts break through the reasoning and the whole man; but our true treasure is where the mind's kinship is. Further, he teaches the sharing nature of righteousness, showing that we must give back to the habit of our old way of life what it acquired for us, and run back to God asking for mercy. This is truly “a purse that does not grow old,” provision for eternal life, “an unfailing treasure in heaven.” “For I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,” says the Lord.

He says these things also to those who wish to become poor for righteousness' sake. For they have heard through the commandment that “the broad and spacious way leads to destruction, and many are those who go through it”; he speaks of nothing else but profligacy, love of women, love of glory, love of power, and similar passions. “Fool,” for so he said, “this night they demand your soul from you; and the things you have prepared for it, whose will they be?” And the words of the commandment run thus: “Guard yourselves, then, from all greed, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” “For what does a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” “Therefore I say: do not be anxious for your soul, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on; for the soul is more than food and the body than clothing.” And again: “For your Father knows that you need all these things; but seek first the kingdom of heaven and righteousness,” for these are great, while the small things that concern life, “these will be added to you.”

Does he not plainly exhort us to pursue the life of knowledge and urge us to seek the truth in deed and word? So Christ, who trains the soul, reckons a man rich not by his gift but by his choice. Zacchaeus, then, or, as some say, Matthias, chief tax collector, having heard that the Lord thought fit to come to him, said: “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I give as alms; and if I have wrongfully taken anything from anyone, I repay it fourfold.” Of whom the Savior too said: “The Son of Man, having come today, has found what was lost.” Again, seeing the rich man putting into the treasury in proportion to his property, and the widow two copper coins, he said that the widow had put in more than all; for he gave from his abundance, but she from her want.

And that he referred everything to the training of the soul, he says: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The meek are those who have ended the implacable war in the soul, of anger, desire, and the forms subordinate to them. And he praises those meek by choice, not by necessity. For with the Lord there are rewards and many dwelling places, in proportion to lives. “For whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet,” he says, “will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward; and whoever receives one of these little disciples will not lose his reward.” And again he has indicated the differences according to worth, the noble rewards of virtue, through the hours of unequal number, and also, through the equal wage given to each of the workers (that is, salvation, which the denarius hints at), the equal justice to those who worked for unequal hours.

They will work, then, according to the dwelling places proportionate to the honors of which they have been thought worthy, fellow workers in the unspeakable arrangement and service. “Those who are judged to have been outstanding in living holily,” says Plato, “are those who are freed and released from these places in the earth as from prisons, and arrive above at the pure dwelling.” And he says the same thing more clearly thus: “Of these, those sufficiently purified by philosophy live without bodies altogether for all time,” though he gives some of them airy forms and others fiery ones. He adds further: “And they come to dwellings still more beautiful than these, which it is not easy to describe, nor is there enough time at present.” Fittingly, then, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” For those who have repented of their former evil lives will come to the calling; for this is being comforted (paraklēthēnai). And there are two ways of the one who repents: the more common is fear over what has been done; the more particular is the soul's shame toward itself from conscience, whether here or elsewhere, since no place is idle of God's beneficence.

Again he says: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Mercy is not, as some philosophers have supposed, grief at others' misfortunes, but rather something fine, as the prophets say: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” And by the merciful he means not only those who do mercy, but also those who wish to show mercy even if they cannot, to whom action is present in their choice. For sometimes we wish to do mercy by giving money or by bodily effort, such as helping someone in need, serving someone sick, or standing by someone in distress; and we are not able, whether because of poverty, disease, or old age (for this too is a natural disease), to carry out the choice toward which we are moved, being unable to bring what we have willed to completion. Those who have willed, then, will share the same honor with those who were able, since their choice is equal, even if others surpass them in abundance.

Since two ways are found of those leading to the perfection of salvation, works and knowledge, he called blessed “the pure in heart, for they will see God.” And if we truly consider the truth, knowledge, as the purification of the ruling part of the soul, is also a good activity. Of good things, some are good in themselves, others by sharing in good things, as we say of good actions. But without the intermediate things, which hold the place of matter, neither good nor bad actions come about, such as, I mean, life and health and the other necessities or circumstances. He wishes, then, those who come to the knowledge of God to be pure as regards bodily desires and holy in their thoughts, so that the ruling part may have nothing spurious obstructing its power.

When, then, the one who shares in the holy quality in the way of knowledge spends his time in contemplation, conversing purely with the divine, he comes more nearly into a state of passionless identity, so that he no longer has knowledge and possesses understanding, but is knowledge and understanding. “Blessed, then, are the peacemakers.” Those who have tamed and subdued the law that wars against the mind's intention, the threats of anger and the baits of desire and the other passions that make war on reason, who have lived with knowledge of good works and of true reason, will be restored to the most beloved adoption. Perfect peacemaking would be that which, in everything that happens, keeps the peaceful disposition unchanging, calling the government of the world holy and good, established in the knowledge of divine and human things, by which it reckons the oppositions in the world the most beautiful harmony of creation. And they also make peace for those here at war with the stratagems of sin, teaching them to go over to faith and peace.

The sum of all virtue, I think, the Lord teaches us: that we must, in the way of knowledge, despise death through love for God. “Blessed,” he says, “are those persecuted for righteousness' sake, for they will be called sons of God”; or, as some of those who paraphrase the Gospels have it, “Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness, for they will be perfect.” And “Blessed are those persecuted for my sake, for they will have a place where they will not be persecuted.” And “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you, when they cast out your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man”; that is, if we do not abhor our persecutors and we endure their punishments, not hating them, thinking that we have been tried later than we expected, but knowing this too, that any temptation whatever is an occasion for martyrdom.