Chapter IV — Pastors and Directors of Christians ought, first of all, to be exactly versed in the spirit of the Christian profession, and in its chief rules and most lucid principles

I. The spirit of the Christian profession transforms the earthly man into a heavenly one, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly. The Christian puts off the image of the earthly man in the very profession of Baptism, by which he renounces Satan, his pomps, and his works. This renunciation precedes the profession of faith, says Salvian in Book 6 of The Government of God: For what is the first confession of Christians in saving Baptism? What, indeed, but that they protest that they renounce the Devil, and his pomps, and his spectacles, and his works? ... And what more? I believe, sayest thou, in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son. First, therefore, the Devil is renounced, that God may be believed. For he who does not renounce the Devil does not believe God. The genuine and precise sense of this profession I shall explain when we come to speak of Baptism; and I shall make plain that Pastors frequently sin because they neglect to lay open to baptized youths the burdens of this profession which they have made.

II. Question I. What rules ought Pastors of souls to observe in healing the sick? Answer: These spiritual physicians must first of all have thoroughly examined the gravity of the infirmity, as has been said; then they must know what the rules of health are. If the physicians of bodies did not know when the pulse of the arteries is ordered and regular, how could they distinguish the sick man from the healthy? What a healthy Christian is, therefore, must be well known to the directors of souls. Now those Christians are held to be healthy who are conformed to Christ Jesus, as St. Paul testifies in Romans 8: For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. The physicians of souls, therefore, must set before their eyes the image of the life which Christ Jesus led on earth, that they may be able to cure souls and restore them to firm health.

III. These, moreover, are the lineaments of that divine image, says St. Peter in his first Epistle, chapter 2: But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people. This image pours forth rays of sanctity in every direction, as the Apostle Paul adds in 1 Thessalonians 4: This is the will of God, your sanctification; and in 2 Corinthians 7 [recte 13]: Salute all the Saints; and elsewhere: For you are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body. Nay more, that our bodies are members of Christ he testifies again in 1 Corinthians 6: Your bodies are the members of Christ. And finally, Ephesians 4: Let us grow up in him in all things, who is the head, Christ. But how can it come to pass that a Christian man should become like to God? I shall show in few words.

IV. Question II. In what does the spirit of Christian perfection chiefly consist? Answer: In charity and humility. Of the first now; of the latter, below. The fire of divine love, when the pitch of worldly and carnal affections has been consumed, kindles a heavenly flame, and makes us like to God and observers of his whole law, as Christ himself teaches in Matthew 22: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, etc. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. Him whom you love, you do not injure, you do not visit with wrongs; you do not steal what is his; you do not blaspheme his name; you do not circumvent him with deceits or frauds; you carry out what pleases him; you do not rashly bring lawsuits against him; you abstain from the things that displease him. Behold how true is the saying of the Apostle: love is the fulfilling of the law.

V. This is the man of God adorned with the eight beatitudes, says the Evangelist Matthew in chapter 5, who imitates God and fulfills his following commandments: Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you... Go first to be reconciled to thy brother. He commands these things to be done, not that we may please men, but that we may please God. He warns that it cannot come to pass that we should serve God and the World; for we must needs hold one or the other in hatred. That we must refrain from the greedy heaping up of riches and from solicitude about things, the Gospels frequently inculcate: Take heed that you do not your justice before men... Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth... No man can serve two masters... Be not solicitous... For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. We must read what the same Matthew prescribes in chapter 7, where he cries out that our foot must be restrained from the broad way, and that we must enter by the strait and narrow way: Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! By this narrow gate and strait way Christ our exemplar entered into the kingdom of heaven, and the same way have walked all his true disciples, whom we know with certainty to have entered the kingdom of God. He wishes us to be prompt and prepared for the renunciation of all things that we possess in this world: He that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple.

VI. St. Paul the Apostle, taught by Christ Jesus, paints in vivid colors the character which Christians must sustain upon the theater of this world. And first, we are compared, in 1 Corinthians 9, to those who run in the race to obtain the prize: And every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown. Meditate this truth more deeply. Those who run in the race restrain their senses, and aim all their powers and endeavors at this one thing alone, to obtain the prize. Do those runners, while they run, turn aside their eyes to look at games, comedies, dances, spectacles, and the other illusions of the raving World? Far from it. They have absolutely nothing else in mind and soul but the attainment of the crown — and that a corruptible one. We all run in the race to obtain an incorruptible, infinite, and eternal crown. And do we labor under such fatuity that, this eternal crown being spurned, like boys devoid of reason we bend our soul to catching the breeze of the world, to vain spectacles, to fables, to fooleries? With our mouth we boast that we wish to obtain this crown; but meanwhile in very deed we spend our time and our whole life in games, in colloquies with women, in banquets, in consolations, which war as enemies against the attainment of the crown. If you consult the volumes of certain Casuists, they report this battle to you as light, not deadly; and many affirm, with various little distinctions added, that you can both attain the crown and enjoy the aforesaid blandishments and delights of the World. Against them cries the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 7: This therefore I say, brethren; the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. Behold the state of this mortal life depicted for you. But there remain more shining lineaments still. What are they? To battle with the senses, to torment the flesh, to restrain the appetites, and daily to carry the cross of Christ, our exemplary master: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. And they that are Christ's, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences.

VII. To this is added that all who would sustain the image and character of Christ in this valley of tears must bear patiently and with a constant soul the hatred of the world, its mockeries, contempts, and persecutions. The Disciples lamented that the world held them in hatred. Christ the Lord replied, John 15: If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. And again he thunders by the mouth of Paul: If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ; and again: All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution.

VIII. These are the ornaments, the definitions, the pronouncements, the axioms, and the principles of the Christian profession, which the Pastors of souls ought always to have both engraved in their soul and sounding on their lips. It is necessary that they ponder these things with themselves in serious and humble meditation, that they may be able to hold them out with profit to their flock, as food excellently disposed and prepared.

IX. Question III. Is humility the chief virtue of Christian perfection? Answer: One of the chief effects of original sin, with which men are born stained and wounded, is pride, whose antidote is called humility. The sages of the Heathen were ignorant both of original sin and of true humility. Most admirably, after the Fathers, St. Thomas, in the II-II, q. 161, art. 5, ad 2, declares that the sublime and lofty edifice which the Son of God raised up consists chiefly of two things: namely, of humility, which occupies the place of the foundation, and of charity, which is the form of the whole edifice, and which, bestowing value, beauty, and firmness, couples and consolidates all the parts of the fabric in a wondrous bond. These are the words of the Angelic Doctor: As the ordered assemblage of the virtues is by a certain similitude compared to an edifice, so also that which is first in the acquisition of the virtues is compared to the foundation, which is first laid in a building. But the virtues are truly infused by God. Whence what is first in the acquisition of the virtues can be taken in two ways: in one way, by way of removing an obstacle; and thus humility holds the first place, inasmuch as it expels pride, which God resisteth, and renders man submissive and open to receive the influx of divine grace, inasmuch as it empties out the inflation of pride. Whence it is said in James 4 that God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble: and in this respect humility is called the foundation of the spiritual edifice. Wherefore, as no fabric can stand without a foundation, so no virtue can shine forth without humility.

X. The more necessary is this antidote of humility for expelling pride, the more difficult is its execution and practice. Unless the Son of God had taught this virtue both by word and by example, it would scarcely shine forth among men, swollen, puffed up, and supercilious with the poison of pride. The divine Word emptied himself, putting on the form of a servant and of a sinner, that he might induce men to the study and exercise of so great a virtue. Wisely does St. Augustine expound, in the book On Holy Virginity, chapter 45 [recte 35], these words — Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart — which he interprets thus: He to whom the Father hath delivered all things, and whom no one knoweth but the Father, and who alone knoweth the Father, and he to whom he willeth to reveal him, saith not: Learn of me to frame the world, or to raise the dead; but: because I am meek, and humble of heart. O wholesome doctrine! O Master and Lord of mortals, to whom death was ministered and poured out in the cup of pride! He would not teach what he himself was not; he would not command what he himself did not. But, passing over the very many things which he here writes in commendation of humility, I shall recall before your eyes a few of those which he has in Epistle 56 [recte 118], to Dioscorus: To this, he says, my Dioscorus, I would have you submit with entire piety, and construct for yourself no other way for grasping and holding the truth than that which has been constructed by him who, as God, sees the infirmity of our steps. And that way is, first, humility; second, humility; third, humility; and as often as you should ask, so often would I say this — not that there are not other precepts to be spoken of, but unless humility precede, accompany, and follow whatever good we do, unless it be set before us to look upon, and beside us to lean upon, and over us to restrain us, while we are rejoicing over some good deed, pride wrests the whole from our hand. The other vices, indeed, are to be feared in sins; but pride is to be feared even in deeds rightly done, lest those things which have been laudably done be lost through the very desire of praise. Therefore, as that most renowned Rhetorician, when he was asked what seemed to him the first thing to be observed in the precepts of eloquence, is said to have answered, Delivery; when it was asked what second, the same Delivery; what third, to have said nothing else but Delivery: so if you should ask, and as often as you should ask, concerning the precepts of the Christian Religion, I would answer nothing else but humility, even though necessity should perhaps compel me to speak of other things, etc.

I. Two things I have thus far touched upon: the infirmity and the deadly wounds of human nature, which is the first; the other, the remedies suited for healing that nature. I now desire you as judges, O Pastors of souls: is not an assured knowledge, both of human infirmity and of the remedies by which it must be cured, supremely necessary — and that in advance? Let us now converse together, prejudices laid aside. For how few are there who approach the curing of souls imbued with this instruction! Who first of all expounds original sin, pride, and the evils that proceed thence? Who inculcates the force and necessity of the most grave precept of humility, which is the antidote of pride? Scarcely do very many of those whose books are worn by handling for the government of souls make any mention of this virtue, which is the basis and foundation of the whole evangelical edifice. Who among them brings forward the axioms and rules of Christian sanctity — namely, the daily carrying of the cross, the battling with the flesh, the soul prepared to sustain the hatred of the world, persecutions, derisions, contumelies, calumnies — and cries out that these are as it were the preludes of the Christian life, and that charity is that form which animates and vivifies the spirit of the evangelical profession? If a Physician should approach to cure a sick man without having thoroughly examined the rules of health, and without taking care to explore the nature of the sick man and the gravity of his disease, would he not be convicted of manifest folly? And yet how many are the physicians of souls who have ascertained the force of the baptismal profession, and the rules which Christ himself prescribed for the ordering of the Christian life and which we have indicated, and who impose the observance of them upon sinners?

II. When worldly men behold Christians, Priests, and religious Men fallen into lust, avarice, gluttony, and similar disgraces, they murmur, they are amazed, they wonder; on the contrary, those who are free from these vices they extol. That very many are damned on account of lust and avarice, holy Scripture teaches. But few are they who bend their soul toward pride, the root of these and of the other crimes. And yet it is certain that men for the greater part perish eternally on account of the most hidden crime of pride. By pride Lucifer fell with the third part of the Angels; by pride fell Adam, the head of the human race. The disease infecting the whole human race is pride: this is the prevailing and dominant fever, the most malignant of all diseases, which penetrates all the hiding-places and recesses of the human heart; this is the pestilential plague which, from ambush and as it were by underground passages, brings forth the slaughter of souls. From the carnal vices, which strike the senses of men and beget infamy, we abstain, if not from love of virtue, at least from dread of undergoing ignominy. Frequently we cover vice with vice; and in order to catch the favor, applause, esteem, and deference of the world, we detest the sordid and vile sins. But dazzling is the crime of pride, which bewitched the mind of the supreme Angel and of the first man. It often either steals away or gnaws at the very merit of good works, or lays snares for it. On every side it besieges and surrounds us, so that we glory even in sanctity itself. At that very time when we are extolling the virtue of humility and magnifying its necessity, pride, clothed in a splendid garment, transforms itself into an Angel of light, and works its machinations within us, and stirs up a breeze of sweet and insensible complacency. Pride, says Augustine, lies in wait even for good works. More of this I shall make manifest when we come to speak of pride and humility.

III. From these things which I have touched upon in passing, gather, O Pastors of souls, how much it is to be feared and dreaded at that very time when we flatter ourselves about chastity, about poverty, about equity. Most cunning self-love creeps within us, gnaws, excites elation without our noticing, and makes our souls swell. Against these most hidden rocks we dash souls — we ourselves, Theologians, ministers of God, Confessors — who, in order to be eminent and to shine above others, in order to conciliate to ourselves the worldly Powers, often speak pleasing things, and most pugnaciously defend opinions smeared with the paint of a new benignity, which indulge flesh and blood, and which procure for us the patronage of the Rich and of Magnates.

IV. All those books, therefore, which neglect the aforesaid evangelical doctrine and the rules which Christ our Savior himself established for the curing of our diseases, which do not inculcate them, which swarm with definitions, petty distinctions, petty questions, and disputations devised by the wit of men, are unfit for instructing Pastors in the government of souls. You, therefore, Ministers of Christ, if the salvation of others and your own is dear to your heart, first of all bend your soul, your powers, and your studies upon the Gospels of Jesus Christ and the Pauline Epistles. Unless the doctrine of Christ is thoroughly known to you, how can you detect the falsity of human opinions? The evangelical doctrine is simple: it teaches not to cavil, nor to wrangle, nor to dispute, but to execute the divine law with a humble and docile soul; it inflames the heart and kindles the fire of divine love; it begets contempt of the world and of earthly things.

V. "What has been said thus far serves Preachers and mystical Men, not the cultivators of moral Theology." So chatter those who, prepossessed by the art of caviling, have introduced new and unheard-of rules of morals. But, to reduce them to straits, I ask: are the things we have thus far gathered from the Gospels true, or false? If they blurt out that they are false, they themselves are not Christians. If true: then these things above all are to be expounded, inculcated, and urged. Then those books which are empty of the aforesaid precepts, which set up the mere petty opinions of men as rules of morals, are unfit for curing the infirmities of Christians. The most holy Fathers of all ages observed this method which we have described. Consult your own self, excellent Reader. Do you not, while you read and meditate the evangelical sayings recited, find yourself moved? Do you not feel the futility of many human opinions, with which not a few casuistical volumes swarm? Sit as judge yourself. When, from the reading of certain Casuists, have you experienced yourself inflamed toward God? When animated and impelled to cultivate humility; to trample upon riches, the applause of men, and worldly glory; to bear the cross daily; to crucify the flesh and the appetites with their concupiscences by the severity of fasts and vigils? When have you read in books of that kind that the observance of this evangelical oracle is forcefully inculcated: Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect? Of the precept of humility, which is, as we have said and as must continually be repeated, the first foundation of the Christian edifice, and of the other most grave commandment of yearning after evangelical perfection seated in charity, either no discourse at all, or a dry one, is found in not a few casuistical books. If, then, the first and chief rules of the Christian profession and of the reformation of morals are neglected, what wonder if Christians for the greater part profane the Sacraments of Christ, and lead a life corrupted with perpetual vices? But of this more in its place. You meanwhile, Pastor of souls, have always before your eyes that Christians who are to be saved must be conformed to the divine exemplar, Christ Jesus. This single most certain rule will teach you more than the volumes of many of certain authors.