Tractates 1.6.1–1.8.3

Although the blessed life, for whose desire humanity sighs and burns at every moment, is sought through various virtues, yet all, by one and the same consent, are carried as it were into the harbour of patience, without which nothing can be heard, conceived, learned or taught. For surely it alone is the one to which everything looks; since there is no doubt that hope, faith, justice, humility, chastity, uprightness, concord, love, all arts and all virtues, and even the elements themselves, cannot stand without its teaching or its bridle. For it is always mature, humble, cautious, prudent, provident, content in every need, calm in any storm of disturbances. It does not know how to cloud its serenity. It knows no regret; it does not know what quarrelling is; it either avoids or bears all injuries. It is uncertain whether it should be judged impassible, since when it has suffered something it is found as if it had suffered nothing. Finally, brothers, it is impossible to estimate the virtue of that for which to be conquered is victory. No force twists it from its place, not toil, not hunger, not nakedness, not persecution, not fear, not danger, not death, not torments heavier than death itself, not power, not ambition, not good fortune. It always remains immovable, firmly balanced by a certain lofty and divine temperance, restraining all the agitations of minds with calm moderation; and, not to labour at conquering all things, it first conquers itself.

Virtues could not be virtues, the states of the elements could not be perennial, the seasons could not pass in related connection into their solemn returns, unless patience, like an anxious mother, guarded the discipline and turning of things. The sun, for instance, although it lights the alternating limits of the world with wonderful speed, yet never outruns the beloved and modest dawn; and, what is greater, it could not divide itself equally into twelve, I will not say spaces, but moments of hours, if impatience pressed on its courses. The moon too, which seems to some to wander in its monthly course, never brings forward importunately the solemn fires of its age, nor holds them back; what else is given to be understood than the most skilful discipline of a distinguished patience, serving the moderation of its maker? The sea too, when it rages, provoked by the winds, although in reciprocal alternation, now beating against heaven, now seeking the earth, armed on every side with glassy mountains, raves with its whole body in violent heaps of savage waves; yet as its furthest rolls come back pale, as if acknowledging the right of the land and avoiding violating it, it breaks upon itself with wonderful patience, and is reined in by the same waves by which it is driven. Patience gives both happiness and grace to budding meadows, yellow harvests, curving vines and half-pale olives, since impatience does not let the offspring of each season rush in a raw birth into the time of another. What of the seemly and orderly comings and goings of the various birds? What of the cranes of the air in their high flights? What of the countless wedges of different fishes, graded by age, with their own leaders? When they obey the invitation of the seasons, and with the handsome course of their solemn oarage furrow the waters or mark out the air, do they not both come patiently and go patiently?

Man alone is headlong, man alone impatient; he delights daily in perverse changeableness; he is eager for variety; he thinks himself wretched if he stays himself, and does not understand that it is like madness for the mind not to remain in its state. For what is impatience, but a slippery mind always storming itself with frequent and rapid agitations; an unfaithful soul; an action improvident even to itself, unstable, blind, incautious, inconstant, driving all things into ruin; a thing without substance, a business without a person: it tries everything quickly, upsets everything in a moment, mother of crimes, teacher of curiosity, sharp point of rashness, author and teacher alike of detestable evils: for it was from impatience that death burst forth, to slay, and still to slay, man's salvation from the cradle of the world. In short, Adam, while he was still set in the citadel of paradise and, most blessed, enjoyed rule over a blessed world, lived happy and indestructible as long as he kept the commands of the royal edict. But when by a sinister consent he borrowed impatience from the slipperiness of the envious serpent and tasted the evilly sweet fruit of the sacred tree, he found tears, procured for himself pains and groans, thorns and thistles, and, troubled by his last sweat, left to his descendants the inheritance of a disordered death, which soon gave birth to murder. Indeed there was no delay. Cain, impatiently envious of his brother's offering, pants for his brother's destruction; and with God looking on, he commits the murder: nor is he checked even by God's restraining voice, but presses on more and more, until the sin conceived is doubled by the shedding of blood. The empty world marvels that it is too narrow for two. The elements marvel that man, made in the image and likeness of God, can be slain, and by a brother. The raw earth blushes, defiled with pious blood. Cain alone, unhappy, exults, and because the deed lacks a witness he thinks he has escaped the crime: he whom God saw, whom conscience convicted, whom his brother's blood accuses. What of the impatient men of Sodom? Where men were unlawfully overpowered by men, divine fire burned the fiery fire of monstrous lust; and the compact of their domestic crime, by which, more unhappy than those they subdued, they ravaged the backs of guests, pursuing them with infamous spear, a rain poured from heaven by the Lord, armed with flames and sulphur, wiped out with a penal storm. The Jews swell with assemblies; while they revere the divine altars they overturn them; they crush the prophets with various kinds of slaughter; they try to stone Moses out of excessive love; always ungrateful towards the Lord, they fight him with various schemes, and they long to serve many gods and kings, who through impatience could by no means serve one God.

But let the examples of impatience brought forward so far suffice; for what you want to restrain should not, I think, be dwelt on zealously; especially since its nature is such that it never stays among its own, but is spread wholly in public, thrives on rumours, and, seething this way and that, bursts out blindly in various ways; but it is conquered if concealment darkens its fame. Now let us return to the virtue of patience, which by its illustrious power brought our ancestors everlasting glory and salvation. Abel was a martyr because just; just because patient; from him the martyrs learned to suffer, gladly suffering what they did not deserve. When God announced the flood, by which all flesh would be utterly destroyed, Noah both believed and feared that it threatened at any moment; and the ark, by which he with his family would be saved, which he was ordered to make, he did not knock together in headlong haste; nor did he seize so great a gift like a presumptuous or mad man, but built it patiently, fitted it out patiently, filled it patiently with various living creatures. When he would be ordered to go in, when to shut the door, he waited patiently; worthy to escape, he who in such a terror of the world did not hurry to escape.

Now I must recall Abraham's wonderful trial, which would have made him either sacrilegious, if he despised God, or cruel, if he killed his son, had he not, by a certain singular and truly divine patience, balanced the matter between religion and family devotion, not denying to God in hope what he had received from God against hope. So he despises Isaac, his sweetest son, a sweeter victim for God, in order to keep him; he determines to slay him so as not to slay him, sure that he could not displease by that deed which was done with God as its author. O new spectacle, and truly worthy of God! In which it is hard to decide whether the priest or the victim is more patient. Neither the colour of the striker nor of the one to be struck falters; limbs do not tremble; eyes are neither downcast nor fierce. No one pleads, no one trembles, no one excuses himself, no one is troubled, lest it should truly be a murder of kin. The one carries before him the wood by which he is to be burned; the other builds the altar. The one draws the sword, the other the neck, with one vow, one devotion; lest anything be profane, what is celebrated by the other is done diligently and patiently. Under so great a fear, I will not say of humanity, but rather of nature itself, they are glad. Affection yields to devotion alone, devotion to religion; religion favours both. The sword stops in mid-air, held back by no obstacle, having brought glory, not crime, by a terrible sacrifice. What is this? See, savagery passes into faith, and crime into sacrament; the slayer of his son returns bloodless, and he who was sacrificed lives. Both are a glory to each other, both an example of renown, both an admirable testimony to the ages of the worship of God. The world would have been happy, brothers, if all became slayers of their sons in this way.

Jacob through patience gained both the blessing and his brother: he securely gives way to anger, so that he may return home; he entrusts himself to his father and departs gradually and gently, to prove that he both deserved and did not canvass for what he deserved. And lest anyone obscure this patience with the name of timidity, in taking wives too his condition was the same. He willingly accepts; he observes long periods; he willingly bears all his father-in-law's commands; if he had been impatient, deceived by cunning, he would never afterwards have served for Rachel for a time that could not be recovered. Likewise Joseph is found patient when he is seized from the pasture by his brothers, patient when he is let down into the pit, patient when he is sold under the hard spear, patient in prison, more patient in the kingdom, most patient when he recognised the brothers he had longed for: and where boasting cannot restrain itself, he restrained himself, set in honour. Truly heavenly is this patience, which neither hardship, nor happiness, nor affection could move from its state.

Against Job, one may judge what the devil, who is not said to be gentle, could contrive when roused; especially since he had received permission from God to strive, with whatever weapons and whatever strength he could, in testing the just man with his inveterate cruelty. So a new and almost incredible battle is joined. The devil fights beyond his custom, but Job fights more by not showing it. First he destroys his great and very rich estate in a single moment; and with a most atrocious blow, the roofs and walls confounded in ruin, in his excessive cruelty he hurriedly buries the most flourishing company of his sweet children before he kills them. Finally he clothes the man himself, whom he had stripped of great riches, with great ulcers, into which he also sends worms that eat them out, so that, in the torments of a dying man, the newly come wound might be finished along with the man by the indwelling wound. But Job, having routed all the forces of the opposing side by calm waiting, very strong within himself, having recovered for the better everything the war had destroyed, did not lose, but changed, the state of his former happiness by not showing his suffering. Here I dare not mention the patience of the Lord, lest God, counted among men, suffer some injury: for praise is not fitting when comparison takes away his pre-eminence. And since all those mentioned, and all the happy, are such by his gift, it is an insult to praise the Lord, whose servant you cannot worthily praise.

But O how I would wish, if I could, patience, queen of all things, to celebrate you more by conduct! I know that you rest more gladly in your own ways, your own foundations and your own counsels than in other people's bare words, and that you place your praise not so much in multiplying virtues as in bringing them to completion. You grant virginity that its flower may not wither by any disease at any time. You are the most faithful harbour of widowhood, always set amid the frequent whirlwinds of various storms. You, like a skilled charioteer, with gentle reins, arrange those who go under the most holy yoke of marriage with untried necks into an equal effort of labour or of love. You taught friendship to will the same and to refuse the same. You, the one and strongest consolation of slavery, often give birth to freedom. You grant poverty that it has everything, content with itself, when it bears everything. You called forth the prophets; you glued the apostles to Christ. You are the mother and crown of the martyrs' daily witness. You are the wall of faith, the fruit of hope, the friend of love. You gather the whole people and the divine virtues, like flowing hair into the knot on one head, into honour and beauty. Happy, and eternally happy, is he who will always have you in himself.

The men of Greece who are wise, as they wish to seem, curious beyond the rest, have by a hateful business lifted their heart beyond what is lawful with insolent arguments. When they ascend to heaven in words, when they persuade that God is what they wish, when they pretend to know the secrets of the nature of things; when they impose names on the stars and labours on the sun; when they ascribe their errors to the circle of the moon; when they desire above all that the song of their own wit be worshipped; thus they have destroyed themselves and others: for, the name and the worship changed, as if it had been advanced by dreams, they passed on those scholastic slanders against God even into the church, so that in it too, if anyone chooses to be mad, God is for him not to be worshipped but to be searched out. This is what the unfaithful now do, about whom let us hear what the divine Scripture pronounces, whose words are these: 'They have diminished the truth from the sons of men. They have spoken vain things each to his neighbour; with deceitful lips they have spoken evil in their heart. May God destroy all deceitful lips and the boastful tongue. Who have said: We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is our Lord?'

Avoiding this pride of a swollen heart, the prophet says thus to the Lord: 'Lord, my heart is not lifted up,' since he knows it is written: 'Man sees in the face, God in the heart.' Will it not be thought insulting or superfluous to tell God what he knows? Far from it: he tells it, but to us, whom he wishes to imitate what he does and proclaims. So he says, 'My heart is not lifted up,' teaching that the best sacrifice to God is a contrite heart. Therefore, brothers, we must not be lifted up in prosperity, but held in by the fear of God within the bounds of gentleness with the bridle of modesty, so that we may deservedly earn what Scripture says: 'God is near to the contrite of heart, and he will save the humble in spirit.' But hear too what the Lord himself urges us with his loving promise. 'Come,' he says, 'you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls.' Our God, brothers, is humble of heart, and that ineffable power of his wisdom and might lies within the man he assumed all the more wonderful, because he is so great and such. And does curious man lift up his heart and try to grasp the height of him whose humility he does not follow?

He goes on and says: 'Nor are my eyes lifted up.' The case of the eyes is worse, because lifting up of the heart belongs to few, lifting up of the eyes to all; about which what John preaches to his disciples is in everyone's use: 'Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age.' For by these as authors is conceived, by these as leaders is carried on, by these as servants is fulfilled whatever burns daily in the world with lust, ambition and avarice. Therefore both are vain: because the lifting up of the heart finds no fruit, and the lifting up of the eyes, raised from one thing to another, at once loses with fleeting changeableness whatever it has seen.

Then follows: 'Nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonderful things above me.' The words of God are great; he himself is wonderful on high. Since the prophet would be in danger if he did not walk in these, how does he besides assign himself a good work by withdrawing from those in which he ought to have walked? The later words, brothers, answer the earlier: for he is speaking of worldly things. He says he has not walked in great and wonderful things, not those of God, but in those that men think great in this world. And when he added 'above me', he showed that he had never been lifted up when he could have been: for none are more easily lifted up than those whom the height of an unexpected honour raises. For David, humble, cast down, of no account, lay in his father's house, always feeding the sheep, almost a stranger, counted innocent among the innocent. He pleased God, was anointed king, inspired as prophet; he does not grow insolent in the kingdom; he overshadows no one with a prophet's terror; he does not avenge his injuries with a power that might be feared; he loves those who hate him; he spares enemies; he forgives sons who tried to kill their father; his persecutor, and, what is more, a king handed over into his hands by God more than once, he always prefers to fear rather than kill; grateful in a reversed duty, he means to please God by keeping God's gift. A gentle king, a loving father, a modest prophet, he can do everything and holds back from everything; he is not changed by the great and wonderful things of the world; he keeps everywhere the gentle and humble shepherd.

Afterwards he added: 'If I did not think humbly, but exalted my soul.' Let us see whether the prophet perhaps contradicts himself by exalting his soul, he who boasts that he has not exalted his heart. He does not contradict himself, but shows that the loftiness of the soul is to have overcome higher things, because he who exalts himself is humbled, and he who humbles himself is exalted: for a lifted-up heart is the soul's lowering; a restrained heart is the soul's advancement. Of this we have as witnesses two men who explain the prophetic song by their deeds, the Pharisee and the publican standing in God's temple. The Pharisee foolishly stretches to heaven hands which are often servants of slaughter, often of robbery. He shamelessly lifts up his eyes, by whose enticement the world is unhappy. He thunders with a tongue that is never without the serpent's venom; and, what is greater than all madness, he praises himself to God. But the publican prays to God not with his members but wholly, because he is wholly humble in fear, confessing his sins; according to the Lord's saying, the heart from which all kinds of sins proceed, he frequently strikes his breast, in a way modestly chastising his heart with his hand, and asks only pardon for his offences, by silence, not by voice. Hear what each obtained. He who had promised himself everything went down from the temple empty; he who presumed nothing went down justified.

The word 'fear', dearest brothers, is one, but when reason is applied fear is distinguished from fear; for they become two: one of God, the other of nature. That of nature is born in man; that of God is both learned and taught, because it consists not in trembling but in the reasoning of doctrine, as it is written: 'Come, children, hear me: I will teach you the fear of God.' The natural fear, then, is not learned, but meets us by the impulse of our weakness: for it is no art to fear what you dread; and you dread what you do not want to happen to you. It arises in various ways: when the conscience seethes with some guilt; or when a hostile hand, threatening, presses on one's safety with the sword; or when a swollen snake, rearing to bite, blazing with fiery scales, sets itself against the traveller in his path; or when the rage of a wild beast, eager for slaughter, has tried to load the back of one fleeing with its roaring close by; or when, the rudder lost, among the warring waves and winds a groaning ship is in labour with shipwreck. Among all these the fear of conscience is the worse, because the things we have mentioned, and others like them, pass away with their own passing; the fear of conscience is not wiped out.

Now let us see how we are to understand what the prophet says: 'Blessed are all who fear the Lord.' If all who fear the Lord are blessed, then no one is not blessed: because there is no nation, there are no flocks, in short no nature of living creatures, that does not fear God. When we are oppressed by bursting noises, the hinges of the world shaken on every side; when heaven, thundering beyond custom with a terrifying crash, resounds; when amid blind darkness drawn together by thick clouds, frequent flashes glittering with curving fires at once imitate the light of the intercepted day; when many things burn with thunderbolts; when the earth either trembles or takes itself back into itself with a chasm; there is no place here for blessedness, where what is feared is feared from necessity, not devotion. So let us hear what Scripture says, whose admonitions are these: 'And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but that you fear the Lord your God and walk in all his ways, and love him, and keep his commandments with all your heart and with all your soul, that it may be well with you?' Do you see that this fear is necessary for us, which consists in the love of God; which gives birth to itself by its own will; which builds beauty by knowledge of the divine law; which directs itself fearlessly to all kinds of virtues; which faithfully obeys all the commandments; which, once begun, lives innocently, cultivates justice, and strives without end to fear, so as to fear nothing except God, whom it loves?

Indeed, with its support Daniel, unarmed, kills the dragon terrible to the peoples; thrown to the lions, he dines in danger, he who was accustomed to fast outside danger. And Jonah, fearing the Lord, does not fear to go of his own accord to shipwreck: as the whale gapes, he is buried more pitiably than he is thrown down, and yet he finds the shore he was heading for before he sees it, happier in a tomb than in a ship. At his prayer the mountain trembles: the trembling is the mountain's, not the apostles'. Peter is carried on the sea's surge not as one shipwrecked but as a traveller; he fears that the deep may swallow him who did not fear; and yet he does not wholly conceal it, lest he not believe he had walked on the sea with his feet. Against Thecla the fiercest accuser draws the sword of his tongue; the public laws rage with their servants; savagery is sharpened by goads into ferocity, and yet it is found gentler than men. Lest anything seem lacking to so dire a scene of humanity, sea monsters too are sent in; the girl is stripped of all her garments and clothed with fire. Among so many instruments of death, while the spectator is afraid, she tramples securely on all kinds of terrors; unharmed, as if the world were subdued, she goes out of that deadly cage no longer pitiable, but with a pitiable funeral procession, bringing back the triumph over a conquered world, she whom all had believed would perish by so many punishments. O necessary fear! It does nothing else but make men blessed; it fears by art, not by chance; by will, not by necessity; from religion, not from guilt; it fears God, not nature. Do you want to know its property? All fears, whomever they have invaded, wear them down by their growth; this alone grows so as to make immortal the one it has possessed.