Works (CSEL) 11 part 5/6

But just as not all herbs are fit for the use of food, so likewise not every living creeping thing is suited to the use of feasting, since we ought to abstain from all venomous things—although luxury has advanced even to this point, that it consults its own delight rather than its peril, and in most cases, the part that is said to be naturally venomous having been cut away, it claims the remaining part for food, which, though not full of peril, is yet near to peril, and some taint must of necessity have spread itself into the juice of the whole flesh. Many too transfix stags and such swift animals with venomous arrows, and afterward, a certain part of the limbs having been cut away, they use the rest of the body for food.

But as for what pertains to the deeper sense—that is, the chief reason it was said—it is that the irrational passions ought to be so subject to the mind of the wise man as herbs to the countryman, and that he should so use them as creeping thoughts, as the farmer uses herbs which cannot do harm, yet have not the grace of stronger food. For a precept general and common to all does not enjoin the higher kinds of virtues, which belong to a few. But even if a man cannot furnish himself with the stronger banquets of virtue, let him nevertheless have passions of this sort, which do not harm but delight.

Therefore in the beginning holy Moses informed and instructed us concerning the inbreathing of the soul, lest we slip into the diverse opinions of the philosophers, who cannot agree even with themselves. For very many have held varied views, as Critias and his disciples, saying that the soul is blood—that soul, indeed, by which we live, which is sensible, not that soul which is reckoned to be the rational and intelligible soul of the inner man. Hippocrates, although he did not disapprove of Critias' talent nor refute his argument, yet did not assent to the opinion. Aristotle called it entelechy; others have wished it to be fire.

Let us therefore hold this distinction: that we separate out what is rational in the soul, whose substance is the divine spirit—as Scripture says, 'because he breathed into his face the breath of life'—and that there is in it a certain vital nourishment, by which this body is animated, and that there is also a part that takes delight. Of these soul-parts, then, the vital and the delightful, the substance is called blood by some, although Scripture too has said: 'the soul of all flesh is its blood.' Properly, then, it called the blood the soul of the flesh; for in the flesh there is delight and passion, not mind and reasoning. Yet if you attend carefully, this passage explains that one.

For when in this place it called blood the soul, it surely signified that the soul is one thing, blood another—so that the substance of the soul is the vital spirit, but that vital spirit by itself, without blood, does not afford the use of living, but is mingled with blood, since there are those things which are called arteries, as it were receptacles of spirit, which embrace not only pure air but also blood—yet by far a smaller portion of blood. For since the vessels are twofold—one the veins, which is called phleps in Greek, the other the arteries—the vein has more blood than spirit, that is, the phleps; the artery has less blood, far more spirit. Now the temperament varies according to the diversity of the nature of individual men.

But the deeper sense ought to delight you, which signifies that blood is therefore called the soul because blood is hot and fiery—as virtue is. Whoever, then, has been kindled with zeal for virtue and has taken up the vapor of praise, shuts out all the delights of the belly. Those thoughts, then, which are carnal and earthly, set as you are in the ardor of virtue, you will cast off as unfit for spiritual food. For he did not eat flesh—that is, he thought nothing earthly—who said: 'My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven,' breathing into men zeal for virtue and pouring in desire for the knowledge of God.

Therefore earthly and feeble thoughts are reckoned as it were unmanned and without the use of blood, just as that man is called unmanned who has lost most of his blood; for by the effusion of blood he grows cold. Whoever, then, is diligent for virtue puts away and casts off bodily foods, except insofar as he knows is enough for nature; but whoever is more negligent, having followed the slippery and watery course of this life, as if his footsteps were lost, falls down into the womb and the belly. And so, a stranger to the heavenly food, he desires those things which are earthly, being one who cannot say: 'But our conversation is in heaven.' And therefore, to summon us to hidden foods, the same one says:

Do not touch, do not handle, do not taste those things which by their very use tend to corruption, according to the precepts and doctrines of men—things which indeed have a show of wisdom in the observance of religion and in humility of heart, not in indulgence of the body, not in any honor unto the satisfying and pampering of the flesh. In short, the words that follow prove this to be the sense; for it says thus: 'For your blood and the blood of your souls I will require from all the beasts and from the hand of man.' He compared the wickedness of man to that of the beasts—nay, he even heaped up the iniquity of man beyond the savagery of beasts by saying: 'from the hand of a man's brother.' For beasts have nothing of nature in common with us; they are bound by no, as it were, fraternal right.

If they harm men, they harm them as strangers; they do not violate the rights of nature, they do not forget the affection of kinship. Therefore man sins more grievously who lies in wait against his brother, and therefore the Lord promised that he would avenge it more severely, saying: 'The blood of a man I will require from the hand of his brother.' Or is he not a brother whom a certain womb of rational nature has brought forth, and whom the generation of the same mother has joined to us? For one and the same nature is the mother of all men, and therefore we are all brothers, begotten of one and the same mother and bound by the same right of kinship.

And therefore the Lord called him a brother, even him from whom the blood of a brother is required; whereby he signifies that danger is rather to be feared from those who are joined to us by fraternal right. For from this source come the ambushes, from this source the more frequent perils are prepared for men; and, to take a particular instance, hatreds frequently grow up among particular brothers in the division of an inheritance. Then, if more has been conferred on one brother by the parents, the other brothers are the more indignant and try to take away by parricide the favor conferred by the parents. These are the wars more to be suspected—wars not of cities, but of single households. Those, therefore, the Lord includes in the judgment of vengeance, whom he knew would the more lie in wait against himself.

The third point is that he called him a brother in this respect—not that the parricide is worthy of the name of piety, but that he may be the more burdened by the appellation of piety, and that thence may arise an increase of the crime, whereby the heavenly vengeance may be more just. Therefore the Lord our God promises vengeance, that at least in this way he who has forgotten piety may be broken by fear, and may know that even if the murderer escapes men, he yet cannot escape the judgment of God, but is reserved for a greater and eternal punishment. But in a deeper sense we understand this: that we must beware not only of the ambushes of strangers, but also of our own—that is, of the thoughts that dwell within us; and then that we must guard ourselves not only against the malice of the mind, but also against our very words. And therefore it says:

'In much speaking you shall not escape sin.' Therefore this seems to be signified: that an account must be rendered to the Lord not only of our deed, but also of our speech, which is the more domestic. And therefore it must be considered the more diligently, lest by either word or deed we contract offense; for as with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, so with the mouth a fall is made unto death. 'Whoever sheds the blood of a man,' it says, 'for the blood of that man shall his own be shed.'

The expression did not err, but an emphasis of words was made, in that he who has shed the blood of a man shall himself be shed as it were like blood—which is to snatch from him the hope of posterity, because just as blood poured upon the earth is scattered here and there, so the soul of the impious is dissolved after the manner of bodily frailty; for it has been said also of the soul that its death is corruption, in that it is defrauded of the gift of heavenly grace, and, as it were dashed upon the rocks of malice, diminishes the body of its own soundness. It also troubles many that he said: 'To the image of God I made man,' and did not say: 'To my own image,' since he himself is God. But understand that there is both a Father and a Son.

And although all things were made through the Son, yet we read that the Father made all things, and made them through the Son, as it is written: 'You have made all things in wisdom.' Whether, then, the Father speaks, he made man to the image of the Word; or whether the Son speaks, he made man to the image of God the Father. And therefore he shows that the nature of man—that is, of rational man—is a certain familiar and household nature to God, according to which we were created to the image of God; and for this reason that it is not unavenged with God when he sees that against a creature so akin to himself something has been committed cruelly and impiously.

The reason, then, added for the vengeance brings it about that we first exclude the opinions of certain philosophers, who deny that God has care over men; and next, knowing that the prerogative of our vengeance remains with God, that we neither commit against others what must be avenged by divine judgment, nor ourselves dread death too vehemently, since we know that with God there is no contempt for an innocent man who is slain. 'There shall not be,' it says, 'a flood to corrupt the whole earth.' It seems doubtful whether 'there shall not be a flood' is to be understood as 'that a flood corrupt the earth'—for this floods are wont to do—or rather 'there shall not be such a flood as may corrupt the whole earth,' which the following words make clear, when it says that the whole earth shall not be corrupted;

for it shows that there will indeed be floods, but not such as that by them the whole earth could be corrupted. But the deeper sense holds this: that already the providence of the Lord will be at work for the future, lest there be so great a flood of bodily passions that the whole soul should perish. And indeed I do not dare to say that the Lord seems to determine that no one's soul can wholly perish. For what shall we say of the parricide? What too of the murderer, what of the adulterer, what of the transgressor? What parts of the soul do we reserve for them unto pardon?

Whence I rather judge this to be what the Lord our God provokes us to: that even if anyone has other, lighter passions, he should not utterly despair of the divine grace, nor distrust altogether that he will conquer; but even if he is given to luxury and cannot avoid the pursuit of luxury, let him nevertheless strive to refrain from adultery—let there be delight in feasting, not in debauchery. And even if there is, I know not who, some covetous man who has plundered the goods of others, cast out orphans, driven out widows, let him yet afterward, returning to repentance, restore what he took away. In short, Zacchaeus therefore merited pardon, because he promised not only that he would restore, but fourfold, to those from whom he had taken anything, and would give half of his patrimony also to the poor.

Let us also consider more diligently what is meant by what it says: 'I will set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the eternal covenant between me and the earth. And it shall be, when I cover the earth with a cloud, my bow shall appear in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant.' For it does not, as most suppose, speak of that bow which men say there is, by which certain signs of rains are declared, in which diverse colors are figured as it were of the sun's rays, now glowing red, now shining with brighter light, whence the coming rain is signified, in that a certain inconstancy of fair weather is shown by that many-colored appearance. This bow some call the iris; but far be it that we should call this the bow of God.

For this bow, which is called the rainbow, is wont to be seen by day, but does not appear by night. Even during the day itself, if the air is overcast with foul clouds, not even thus is it seen, unless perhaps when the heavier clouds have begun to slacken. Therefore let us see whether—because the bow with which arrows are shot is now drawn taut, now loosened—Scripture may not seem to signify a certain stretching and slackening, through which neither are all things utterly broken by excessive stretching, but there is a certain measure and a certain examination of the divine power.

There is, therefore, an invisible power of God, which, under the figure of this bow that is stretched and slackened, governs by divine will, mercy, and power, so that it allows neither all things to be confounded by excessive loosening, nor to be torn apart by excessive bursting. He says it is set in the clouds for this reason, because then above all there is need of the help of divine providence, when the masses of clouds are driven together into storms and tempests. And therefore he says: 'I will set my bow in the cloud,' not 'I will set an arrow.' For the bow is the instrument for hurling the arrow; and so it is not the bow itself that wounds, but the arrow. And therefore the Lord sets in the clouds the bow rather than the arrow—that is, not that which wounds, but that which has the token of terror, while it is not wont to have the effect of a wound.

But on what ground, when above he had counted three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, Japheth—does he in this place include the generation of only the middle son—that is, what it says: 'And Ham was the father of Canaan; these were the three sons of Noah'—and especially since those two were righteous, but this middle one unrighteous? The generation of the unrighteous one, then, is included before that of the righteous. For we cannot deny what is written, but his generation was added to heap up his own offense, because, although he had a son and was himself a father, he alone did not acknowledge his own father, who ought the more to have acknowledged him. And therefore he deserved to have a wicked son, because he had been wicked toward his father.

At the same time it signifies that from that Canaan came the Canaanites, who after many generations, being overcome by the righteous people, gave way into their possession. That Canaan, then, was the author of the Canaanites is manifest—he who was the son of this Ham, who showed himself impious toward his father. But the deeper sense is marked by the interpretation of the names. For Ham means 'heat,' Canaan 'their disturbance.' For whoever grows hot is straightway moved and perturbed; and therefore it is most evidently declared that he was not so much a human father of human beings, but an evil passion, the begetter of a wicked passion, which was alien to the father's character—that is, alien to the practice of virtue. 'And Noah, a man, began to be a husbandman of the earth.'

At first sight, indeed, Noah the righteous man seems to be compared to that Adam who was made from the earth, because of that one too it is written that, being cast out of paradise, he began to till the earth, and of this one likewise, that, having gone out from the ark, he became a husbandman. And in both there had, as it were, gone before a certain figure of the flood, because both Noah was after the flood, and Adam after the constitution of the world according to the molding of the body. For that the world might come to be, the water was gathered into one gathering, that the earth might appear, which before could not appear because of the confusion of the waters. Therefore, just as that first-born master is seen to have worked the earth, so too Noah, having gone out from the ark, was made the author of sowing and cultivation. These are thought to be similar:

But if you consider the words, which now express the force of a deeper sense, it is one thing to be a worker of the earth, another to be a husbandman; for the one performs the office as it were of a hireling, the other as it were of a head of a household. In short, Cain, who killed his brother, was a worker of the earth. And that you may know that to work the earth is more servile than free, his working is comprised under the curse of the parricide. For in short it is written: 'Because you shall work the earth, and it shall not increase its strength to give to you; groaning and trembling shall you be upon the earth.'

But the earth is our flesh, which the wicked man works but the good man cultivates: the one as though seeking a wage from the earth, the other as though receiving the fruits and the grace of discipline, so that he may make his field the more fruitful, and one able to answer to the cultivations of its lord and to show the indulgence of its tiller. But what else does the mere worker seek than only the food of his own body, being intent rather on the use of the belly and content to accomplish that one thing only which can profit him toward sustenance? But that other man is fed by the usefulness of the fruits. What fruits the righteous man has, you recognize: 'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness.'

The good husbandman, therefore, has continence, chastity, so that if any trees are quickly bent toward the earth and germinate too profusely, he may, as it were with the pruning-hook of his temperance, cut them back, so that they may cast off what is weak and germinate what is seemly. What is the reason that the righteous man first plants a vine, and not either wheat or barley? And whence comes a vine after the flood and the corruption of the earth? But of this we have spoken above also, that in the time of spring the roots even of corrupted vines could sprout. Whence I think that other point is to be resolved with greater care: that the righteous man seeks first the things that are of pleasure rather than those that are necessary.

For the necessary fruits are those of wheat and barley, without which we cannot live; but wine is a thing of pleasure, given for the sake of delight. And because he is righteous, he therefore claimed for himself the more that which was secondary rather than that which was primary. For he offered to God the necessary nourishments of living, which was... but wine is superfluous to men and not necessary. But perhaps you may say that without drink men can no more live than even without food. Is drink, then, necessary like food? I do not deny it. Was it surely appointed by the Lord as necessary for thirst? I do not contest it.

And therefore for necessary drink it was fitting to divert springs and rivers, which were certainly not made by the hand of man, but flowed by the command and operation of the Lord our God. And lest, because we have spoken of the operation of the Lord, you twist it back to that point—that the operation of Cain seems to have had curses—consider that it is not the operation that receives the name of the curse, but the fact that it is written 'to work the earth.' For he who works the earth is a hireling; but that one is not a hireling, but a lord, who says: 'My Father works until now, and I work.' Hear what such a worker works: 'My food is to do the will of my Father, who is in heaven.' 'And he drank,' it says, 'of the wine and was made drunk.' It did not say:

'He drank wine,' nor 'the righteous man drank up the wine,' but 'of the wine'—that is, he took a taste of a portion of it. It is the mark of a drunkard to swallow up all the wine, and of an intemperate man to empty out what he has taken; but the temperate man must use it by a lawful measure. And so there is a twofold kind of drunkenness: one which brings staggering to the body and trips up its footsteps and disturbs the senses; the other which warms the mind with the grace of virtue, and seems to turn away every weakness. Whence the apostle says: 'Use a little wine because of your frequent infirmities.'

For just as by this moderation in drinking wine is not unto weakness but unto health, and relieves every infirmity of the body, so too that excellent drunkenness shuts out every infirmity of the flesh—of which it is written: 'And your cup that makes drunk, how excellent it is.' What is this drunkenness? 'Be drunk,' it says, 'not with wine, in which is luxury, but be filled with the Spirit,' as the apostle said. According to the letter, then, it is a warning, and according to the deeper sense of the wise man, it is a praise. He is on his guard who, even if he is uncovered, is yet uncovered in his own house, where coverings are not lacking and certain veilings of drunkenness, so that he may know how to hide his own faults.

Bodily coverings, then, clothe the naked body, as do walls and roofs; but let us consider what the coverings of the soul may be. We shall discover these coverings, however, only if we examine its nakedness. Now the nakedness of the wise man is twofold. Our mind, therefore, is clothed in a twofold garment: either when it has unknowingly admitted a sin — for this is the nakedness, as it were, of a drunken mind, that it does not know what it is doing wrong, as one who, led into vice by a certain inebriation of ignorance, slips and falls — or, again, when, buried in the sleep of negligence and ignorance, it is unaware of its own error.

And when we have fallen into these — nay rather, when we have fallen into many sins even knowingly (for there is a certain natural inebriation of our own weakness, whereby we are carried into vice by the impulse of pleasure, as very many are kindled by youthful heat, or inflamed by luxury and delight, or seized by the greed of avarice) — assuredly let a remedy be sought for all these, that one should cover such weakness of his, first by a certain shame and modesty, so that, even though he be still placed on the slippery ground of wrongdoing, he may yet give a sign of amendment. For it makes a very great difference whether a man wishes to boast of his sins or to conceal them: in the one there is shameful impudence, in the other a tolerable modesty shows hope of future correction.

But there is another stripping bare of the soul, by which it casts off and puts away the burden, as it were, of the body, fleeing as from a certain tomb of the flesh. For the throat of such men is an open sepulchre, in which sepulchre the soul is, as it were, entombed, laden with delights and with the diverse passions of its lusts. It strips itself, therefore, from the earthly heaping-up, and escapes and pours out from the nets, as it were, that are spread about it — that soul which has stripped itself of every snare of the passions and turned away every foul appearance of earthly defilement, that it may behold the light of eternal beauty. I now ask why Scripture did not simply say, 'Ham saw the nakedness of his father,' but said, 'Ham, the father of Canaan, saw.' For surely Canaan had not yet been born.

Why then did it add the name of the son, except that the inheritance might be disfigured by the vice of its author, and the author be burdened by the wickedness of his son? And so both the father in the son and the son in the father are convicted, having a common partnership in folly, wickedness, and impiety as well. Nor could it come to pass that he should beget a good son who had himself stood forth as a worthless son to a good father, degenerate both in nature and in upbringing. This much according to the letter. But as for what pertains to the higher sense: all the basest of characters take delight in the errors of others — and not only in errors, but even in those things which seem to them to be evil, although they are not. For Noah did not perceive himself to be naked, since he was clothed in the garment of wisdom.

Finally, neither did Adam, placed in paradise, think himself naked, except after he had committed the error of transgression. And being covered over with the garment of wisdom and righteousness and of the heavenly commandments, when stripped bare by transgression he saw himself naked and thought he must be covered with leaves. Ham, then, laughs when he sees his father stripped bare. For every wicked man, since he is himself astray from discipline, takes the lapses of others not only as a solace for his own error — namely, that he has found partners in fault — but even rejoices with a wicked affection, as though he himself had thereby corrected his own offenses.

An evil mind, therefore, rejoices that something has befallen the wise man contrary to his purpose, although surely a lapse of the body ought not to be reckoned a vice, even if it be thought a lapse, unless the mind also inclines toward fault. In short, let errors of this kind be judged pardonable, not to be pursued with hatred, not to be held up to mockery; but an evil mind, as I have said, when it thinks the wise man has erred, judges that he must be insulted, the one whose character it deems contrary to its own, because its own sin is reproved by a certain silent testimony, as it were, of the wise man; and it rejoices in this — that to the righteous man neither his own learning has profited, nor his righteousness availed, nor have the things which pertain to the body had prosperous courses.

For these things are esteemed by the wicked as the highest goods, when they consist in riches or honour, which nevertheless confer no fruit toward the praise of virtue. Therefore the defenders of folly seem to grieve that the lover of virtue has been cheated of the gift of prosperity — they who think that every good is to be measured by temporal rather than by eternal things. What is the meaning of this, that Shem and Japheth laid a garment upon their shoulders and went backward and covered their naked father and did not see his nakedness? The letter has expressed a manifest affection of piety, in that the good sons took care not to see their father stripped of his garment, lest the reverence due to a father should be lessened even by the mere sight, since indeed piety is often offended even by a silent countenance.

Whence it is said that there was even an ancient custom at Rome, that sons should not enter the bath with their parents, and especially when they had reached manhood. But the higher sense is this: that the foolish man sees only present things, those that are before his eyes; he does not look to the future, he does not consider the past; but the wise man both recalls the past and considers the future. Every wise mind, therefore, walks backward — that is, it looks upon the past and is not hindered by any habitual usage of nature: it suffers nothing of its own deeds to be empty, nothing to be naked. It covers whatever has been done otherwise with a certain garment and grace, whether of present or of future work, so that it may pass over nothing unseemly and leave nothing unadorned.

Whence also the Apostle forgot the things that were behind and reached forth to the things that were before; but he forgot, that he might hide the wanderings of his persecution, that he might cover his former offenses and overshadow them with good works. For blessed indeed are they too whose sins are covered — that is, if they be covered with good deeds and concealed by the disciplines of virtue that follow. 'And Noah,' it says, 'became sober from the wine.' It is plain that men become sober from drunkenness with the intervention of sleep; but the mind is sober when it knows both the past and the future. Sober, therefore, was the mind of the righteous man even when he was thought to be drunk; for there is a glorious cup that makes the righteous drunk. But he was truly drunk who laughed at his father.