Chapter V — Consequences, which urge the exercises and offices of the theological virtues

I. Hither Pastors and Confessors ought to direct their endeavors: that they imprint more deeply upon the souls of the Faithful the images of the theological virtues, and exercise them in their practice. And that they may perform this the more easily, I have resolved, at the end of the treatise on these three virtues, to touch briefly on a few things to this end — desiring to approach, if not wholly, at least in part, the method of the holy Fathers of the Church. For all the Fathers nowhere teach that the doctrine of morals is merely to be disputed about, but apply themselves above all to persuading its observance.

II. Awake, then, O men of God, Pastors of souls, and Confessors, and, according to the zeal with which you burn, instruct your flock in the perpetual exercise of faith. The true and perfect faith of Christ is light in the mind, love in the heart. That the light of faith may shine in the mind, the oil by which that light is fostered and nourished must burn in the lamp of the heart. The sun is darkened by the vapors of the earth; and the light of faith grows dim when impure exhalations burst forth from a corrupted heart. The vices do not assail faith directly, but they prepare the way to impiety. Teach the Faithful, therefore, to purge their hearts and souls from vices, if they desire their minds to be illumined with the splendor of a living faith. If by the apparatus of words, by the force of eloquence, by the efficacy of disputations, they cannot subdue the minds of Heretics into the obedience of the faith, let them study to soften their obstinacy by innocence of life and by sanctity of virtues and of works, and to conquer their haughtiness by their own humility.

III. But this must be inculcated in them more deeply: that they keep before their eyes the Son of God made man, and subjected to the reproaches, the mockeries, and the maledictions of men; that, standing, walking, laboring, they frequently meditate the Cross, and the Son of God hanging upon it — who willed to die for this end, that he might redeem our souls from the servitude of the demon, and lead them through to eternal felicity. This Cross is the torch, this the lantern, which they must hold in the hand of the mind, that in this valley of darkness they may be able to direct their journey to the heavenly Jerusalem.

IV. Let them study to represent vividly the incredible excellence of faith, and the infinite mercy of God, which has imparted so great a benefit to us; and let them address them in this or a similar fashion. Shake off your slumber for a little while, O Christians, and consider that your faith is a most precious ring, with which the espousals of your souls with God are to be sealed. Your faith reserves for you the more secret mysteries of God, communicated now under a cloud, but in their own time — the cloud driven away and the darkness dispersed — to be seen in themselves; which is the last argument of intimate friendship. This faith, purchased by the death of Christ, grown up by the blood of the Martyrs, confirmed by the testimonies of miracles, defended by the wisdom of the Doctors, God imparts to you, moved by his clemency alone. Run through in your mind so many regions of the world, so many kingdoms, provinces, empires, and nations covered over with the gloom of the darkness of Infidelity and of Heresy. Consider that out of so many thousands of thousands you have been chosen into a holy nation, into a royal priesthood, into the sons and spouses of the deifying Trinity. But remember at the same time that those kingdoms, empires, and nations which now pay the tremendous penalties of Infidelity and Heresy were once, no otherwise than you now, bathed in the light of faith. Look about you on every side at the formidable wreckage of faith and religion taken away. They who once were your brethren, sons of God, and heirs of Paradise — their successors have now become your enemies, slaves of the divine vengeance, heralds of the demons, betrayers of Religion. Temples have been leveled to the ground, altars torn down, sacrifices abolished; and crimes, schisms, heresies, impiety unfurl their banner where once the faith of Christ shone the holier and held dominion. What is it, that before thousands of thousands God has sealed your souls with the ring of his faith? that, saved from the universal shipwreck, he has placed them in the ark of his religion? that he has embraced them with so great a predilection? This vicissitude and revolution of Religion — by which God exercises the fury of his wrath upon the very vessels of mercy, and his goodness upon the victims of vengeance — while the Apostle Paul was considering it, terrified and trembling he exclaimed: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! Fix your mind, then, upon so great a mystery, that thence you may gather the immense riches of the divine mercy poured out upon you.

V. After explaining the loftiness and majesty of so great a gift, instruct them to repeat acts of faith frequently, every day — above all in the morning, at midday, and in the evening. Let the image of the Crucified never depart from their mind, considering that after his example their morals and life must be conformed: Whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son. Here let the sacred Pastors drive the nail home; let them expound the meanings of the profession made in baptism; let them teach them that for this reason their foreheads are sealed with the sign of the Cross, and anointed with the sacred chrism: that before the whole World, even with the loss of life, if need were, they may intrepidly confess the Religion of Christ. Let Pastors be solicitous and diligent, and let them aim their desires chiefly at this: to urge upon their Faithful this imitation of Christ and of the Saints. Let them press and commend this doctrine of morals the more deeply.

VI. For thou, O Lord, singularly hast settled me in hope, said the holy Prophet David, Psalm 4. Hope tends toward arduous, difficult, and sublime things. Consider seriously what obstacles the confidence of enlarging empires and of triumphing over enemies assails. It counts as nothing to drain treasuries and squander patrimonies; it makes nothing of the tears of wives, of the lot of children; with glad mind it endures dire tempests, the changes of the seasons, and the blows of adverse fortune, that it may attain the glory won by war. What inconveniences and troubles does the confidence of acquiring fleeting merchandise not undertake? What seas, what distant regions does it not traverse; what floods and what tempests does it not endure? If this earthly hope digests things so hard, so rough, so grim, that it may procure things vain and empty, with what fortitude of soul ought theological hope to assail the obstacles which delay the entrance into the heavenly Fatherland? With what fortitude of breast is it constrained to repel the struggle of the flesh, the enticements of the senses, the illusions and witcheries of the siren women, the frauds of the world, the wiles of enemies, the ambushes of the demon? All these things men would strenuously overcome, if they were certain that after the victory they would attain some principality, kingdom, or empire. Now the faith which they profess reveals to them an eternal kingdom, an infinite empire, to be possessed after the very brief course of this life. Christian hope pledges itself a certain possession, provided those things be fulfilled which Religion prescribes to be believed and to be done.

VII. Raise up your soul, O Christian men; put forth your strength and your endeavors, that you may attain God. Christian hope rests upon fortitude, by which it routs enemies, repels impediments, and overcomes all difficulties. Perverse is the hope which pledges impunity in sins, without removing from sins. The root of perverse hope is the want of fear. Christian hope walks between fortitude and fear. Fear removes from dangers, represses audacity, and represents the severity of the divine justice. In the fear of the Lord is confidence of strength, says Solomon. Fear turns the soul aside, lest it freely run into dangers. Fortitude raises up the soul, that it may fearlessly repel the dangers which it cannot avoid.

VIII. But to whom can it come to mind that reasons are needed to persuade Christians of fear, the companion of hope? Dangers surround us on every side. Dangers on land, says the Apostle, dangers on the sea, dangers in masters and directors, dangers among false brethren, dangers in ourselves — in our hearts, in our senses, in our thoughts; and shall we, senseless, pass our days in delights and pleasures? Whence, I ask, so great a madness? Weigh well, O Christians, that you are placed in the prison of this world. Consider the offenses of youth and of manhood. All of us, placed in this exile, await the sentence either of eternal death or of eternal life. On the one side the crown of glory, on the other the sword of eternal punishment, hangs over our head. Let us lift up the eyes of faith, that we may meditate the crown hung up for good works, and the punishment destined for depraved works. The seasons run their course; the days flow by; the hours and moments slip away: the moment is at hand and imminent, either of attaining the eternal crown, or of laying our neck beneath the eternal and tremendous punishment. And are we not shaken, do we not tremble, are we not aghast?

IX. Let the evangelical Pastor, that he may exercise the souls entrusted to him in hope, make plainly known the immensity of the reward and prize to be attained, and the omnipotence and infinite mercy prepared to confer the aids and the grace by which the prize may be obtained. Let him teach them to repeat frequently, daily, the acts of this confidence — just as exiles and pilgrims continually pant after their fatherland — so that they may easily be able to frequent those same acts when the floods of adverse fortune and of calamities rush in.

X. Theological faith represents the goodness of God, his clemency, his mercy, and the infinite benefits of creation and redemption already conferred upon us, and the eternal rewards to be conferred, which hope desires to attain. Unless the human heart be of iron and of stone, it can scarcely contain itself from pursuing with love a God so good, so clement, so beneficent, and so most liberal a giver. There are two loves, says Augustine, book 11 On Genesis according to the letter, chapter 15, of which the one is holy, the other unclean. The love of charity makes citizens of Jerusalem; the love of iniquity constitutes slaves of Babylon. These loves fight with one another, and the one drives out the other.

XI. That God must be loved I acknowledge, you say; but how he is to be loved, I know not. You would have said more truly that you know not how to express in words the manner in which you love God. Love is a movement by which the will is borne toward a known good — either by desiring it, or by rejoicing over it, or by taking complacency in it, and by desiring good things for it. If you love God because he created you, redeemed you, preserves, protects, nourishes you — in one word, because he is beneficent toward you — the love is called a love of chaste concupiscence. If you burn with love of him because he is good, because he is worthy that all should burn with his love, that they should will good to him, that they should sing his praises and worship him, the love is one of charity and of friendship. The love of chaste concupiscence is the more imperfect, and the more intimate to our nature; therefore the beginning is taken from it, and thereafter the ascent is made higher. What is it that kindles you to the love of a man? The benefits, you reply, which he has conferred upon me, and his love toward me poured out first; and finally his endowments of justice, equity, goodness, sincerity, and many other prerogatives. Stir up in your mind the light of the Christian faith, which vividly sets before your eyes both the infinite benefits conferred upon you by God, and his goodness, equity, majesty, clemency, mercy, wisdom, benignity, and innumerable other endowments. Faith precedes charity. The more splendid the light of faith, the more ardent the flame of love. When the mind has been bathed in the light of faith, and the will raised up by the strength of hope, straightway it is kindled with the flame of love, which the soul, adorned and stirred by the two aforesaid virtues, can scarcely repress.

XII. There have been those who, in order to kindle the purest flame of this love, taught that God is to be loved with the exclusion of every hope of possessing him. They contended that the confidence of possessing God makes the love mercenary. Wherefore, to render this love pure, they wished it empty of all desire of attaining the reward. But this doctrine Innocent XII condemned. Our God is our reward, our beatitude. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Men without God are nothing. Men would be desiring their own destruction, as often as they would wish to separate themselves from God. That love is impure and mercenary which loves other things besides God without relation to God. But that love is pure and perfect which loves God because he is good. We will God for ourselves, because he himself has constituted himself our crown and our reward. He has chosen us as his sons, his heirs. If sons, heirs also; if heirs, possessors also. We love God as our supreme good. The two respects are distinct; but the one does not exclude the other — rather the one is subjected to the other. The soul kindled with the fire of charity loves God now under the one, now under the other relation; and at last refers itself and all its things unto God, and there rests, as in the center of its eternal felicity.

XIII. Let Pastors of souls, and all the ministers of God, if they wish to purge the evangelical flock from vices and to keep it in the safe path, exercise it in these theological virtues. After hearing sacramental confession, among the satisfactory works which they must impose upon penitents, let them prescribe the task of these three virtues to be offered to God. They do not know, you will say, how to exercise the offices of these virtues. They do not know? Then they are not Christians. Then they are not capable of absolution, since the exercise of these virtues must precede and accompany the sacrament. Who, then, is so rude that he cannot meditate, on bended knees, the Son of God made man and crucified? Instruct them to fix their mind upon this cross, upon this passion of Christ, considering that Christ the Lord underwent this death for the love of men, for their redemption, and that he might lead them through to eternal felicity. Instruct them to recite the creed, considering and meditating each article for a little while. Admonish them to recite the Lord's prayer, imploring from God this living faith, this invincible hope, and this ardent love. The exercise of these virtues is the foundation and soul of the Christian Religion. The other devotions are ornaments, and, as it were, added flowers; but if the bases and foundations of the Christian edifice be wanting, all things end in smoke. But above all let them inculcate that those believe in God, hope in him, and love him, who conform their morals and life to the exemplar of Jesus Christ.