On Patience 5

Nevertheless, to forge out a discussion of things necessary to faith is not idle, because it is not fruitless. Talkativeness in edification is never shameful, if it is ever shameful. So if the subject is some good, the case requires that its contrary also be reviewed. For you will throw more light on what is to be pursued if you set out likewise what is to be avoided. Let us consider, then, whether, just as patience was born and found in God, so its adversary, impatience, was born and found in our adversary, so that from this it may appear how fundamentally it is opposed to faith. For what was conceived by God's rival is certainly not friendly to the things of God. The discord of things is the same as that of their authors. Further, since God is supremely good and the devil, on the contrary, supremely evil, by their very difference they testify that neither acts for the other, so that it cannot seem to us that anything good is produced by evil any more than anything evil by good. I find, then, the birth of impatience in the devil himself, already at the time when he bore impatiently that the Lord God had subjected all the works he had made to his own image, that is, to man. For he would not have grieved if he had endured it, nor envied man if he had not grieved. So he deceived him because he had envied him; and he had envied because he had grieved; and he had grieved because, of course, he had not borne it patiently. Which that angel of perdition was first, evil or impatient, I do not care to ask, since it is plain that either impatience began from malice or malice from impatience, and that they then conspired together and grew up inseparable in the one bosom of their father. But that which he had felt first, through which he had entered upon sinning, instructed by his own experience in what helps toward sin, he called in against man, to drive him into crime. The woman, as soon as he met her, was (I would not say it rashly) breathed upon, through the very conversation, with a spirit infected by impatience. Indeed, she would never have sinned at all if she had kept patience toward the divine prohibition. What of the fact that she did not endure having been met alone, but, before Adam, not yet her husband, not yet owing her his ears, she is impatient even of keeping silent, and makes him the transmitter of what she had drawn from the evil one? So the other human being too perishes through the impatience of another, soon himself to perish through his own impatience, committed in both directions, both concerning God's forewarning and concerning the devil's deceit: not enduring to keep the one or to refute the other. Here the origin of judgment lies where that of sin lies; here God began to be angry where man was led to offend. Or what crime before this one of impatience is imputed to man? He was innocent, a close friend of God, and a tiller of paradise. But once he gave way to impatience, he ceased to savor God, ceased to be able to endure heavenly things. From then on man, given to the earth and cast out from the sight of God, began easily to be seized by impatience for everything that would offend God. For at once, conceived from the seed of the devil, with the fertility of malice, it produced a son, anger, and trained its offspring in its own arts. For what had plunged Adam and Eve into death it taught the son too, to begin with murder. In vain would I ascribe this to impatience, if Cain, that first murderer and first fratricide, bore the refusal of his offerings by the Lord calmly and not impatiently; if he was not angry with his brother; if, in short, he killed no one. But since he could neither kill unless angry, nor be angry unless impatient, it shows that what he did through anger must be referred to that from which anger was prompted. These were in a manner the cradle of impatience, then an infant. But how great its growth soon was! Nor is it surprising. For if it was the first to sin, it follows that, because it was the first, it is for that very reason the sole womb of every sin, pouring out from its spring the various veins of crimes. Of murder something has been said. But, born of anger from the beginning, whatever causes it later finds for itself it refers to impatience as to its origin. For whether one commits that crime out of enmity or for plunder, it comes first that he becomes impatient either of hatred or of avarice. Whatever drives him, without impatience the crime cannot be accomplished. Who has undertaken adultery without impatience of lust? And if among women it is compelled by a price, that sale of chastity is certainly arranged by impatience of despising gain. These I mention as the chief sins in the Lord's sight. For, to put it briefly, every sin is to be ascribed to impatience. Evil is impatience of good. No one is unchaste who is not impatient of chastity, dishonest of honesty, impious of piety, restless of quiet. In order that each may become evil, he will be unable to persevere in being good. Why then should such a hydra of sins not offend the Lord, the condemner of evils? Is it not plain that Israel too always sinned against God through impatience, from the time when, forgetting the heavenly arm by which it had been drawn out of the afflictions of Egypt, it demanded of Aaron gods as its leaders, when it poured its contributions of gold into an idol? For it had impatiently borne the so necessary delays of Moses conversing with the Lord. After the rain of manna for food, after the water-giving rock that followed them, they despair of the Lord, not enduring a thirst of three days. For this impatience too is reproached them by the Lord. And not to go over details: never ceasing to sin through impatience, they perished through impatience. And how did they lay hands on the prophets, except through impatience of hearing them? On the Lord himself, through impatience even of seeing him. But if they had entered on patience, they would have been set free.