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III. ON THE CHRISTIAN STRUGGLE. The crown of victory is not promised except to those who contend. And in the divine Scriptures we continually find that a crown is promised to us if we shall conquer. But, lest it be tedious to recall many passages, in the apostle Paul it is read most plainly: I have finished the work, I have completed the course, I have kept the faith; now there remains for me a crown of righteousness. We ought therefore to recognize who this adversary is, whom if we conquer we shall be crowned. For he is the very one whom our Lord conquered first, so that we too, remaining in him, might conquer. And indeed the Power of God and Wisdom and Word, through whom all things were made, who is the only Son of God, remains forever unchangeable above every creature.
And since even the creature that has not sinned is beneath him, how much more is every sinful creature beneath him! Therefore, since all the holy angels are beneath him, much more are all the transgressing angels beneath him, of whom the devil is chief. But because he had deceived our nature, the only-begotten Son of God deigned to take upon himself that very nature of ours, so that through it the devil might be conquered, and that the one whom the devil always holds beneath himself might be made to be beneath us as well. He signifies this when he says:
the prince of this world has been cast out—not because he was cast outside the world, as certain heretics suppose, but cast out from the souls of those who cleave to the word of God and do not love the world, of which he is prince, because he holds dominion over those who love temporal goods contained in this visible world; not because he himself is lord of this world, but the prince of those cupidities by which everything that passes away is coveted, so that those who neglect the eternal God and love unstable and changeable things are subjected to him. For the root of all evils is cupidity: which certain men, in their craving, have wandered from the faith and entangled themselves in many sorrows. Through this cupidity the devil reigns in a man and holds his heart.
Such are all who love this world. But the devil is cast out when this world is renounced with the whole heart. For thus the devil, who is the prince of this world, is renounced, when his corruptions and pomps and angels are renounced. And therefore the Lord himself, now bearing the triumphant nature of man, says: Know that I have overcome the world. But many say: How can we conquer the devil, whom we do not see? Yet we have a Master who has deigned to show us how invisible enemies are conquered. For of him the apostle said: stripping himself of the flesh, he made a spectacle of the principalities and powers, triumphing over them confidently in himself.
There, then, the invisible powers hostile to us are conquered, where the invisible cupidities are conquered. And so, because in our very selves we conquer the cupidity of temporal things, it is necessary that in our very selves we also conquer him who reigns in man through those cupidities. For when it was said to the devil, You shall eat earth, it was said to the sinner, Earth you are, and into earth you shall go. Therefore the sinner was given as food to the devil. Let us not be earth, if we do not wish to be eaten by the serpent.
For just as what we eat we convert into our own body, so that the food itself becomes, according to this body, what we are, so by evil ways—through wickedness and pride and impiety—each one is made to be what the devil is, that is, like him, and is subjected to him, just as our body is subjected to us. And this is what is meant by 'being eaten by the serpent.' Whoever, therefore, fears that fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels, let him give effort to triumph over him within himself. For those who attack us from without we conquer within, by conquering the concupiscences through which they hold dominion over us. And those whom they find to be like themselves, they drag with themselves to punishments.
So too the apostle says that he fights within himself against the outward powers. For he says: our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the princes and powers of this world, the rulers of these shadows, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. For even this air, where winds and clouds and storms and whirlwinds occur, is called 'heaven,' as Scripture also says in many places: and the Lord thundered from heaven, and: the birds of heaven, and: the winged creatures of heaven, though it is plain that birds fly in the air. And we too in common speech call this air 'sky'; for when we ask about fair or cloudy weather, sometimes we say: What is the air like? and sometimes: What is the sky like?
I have said this lest anyone suppose that evil demons dwell there where God set the sun and moon and stars. These evil demons the apostle therefore calls 'spiritual,' because even the evil angels are called 'spirits' in the Scriptures. And he calls them 'rulers of these shadows' because he calls sinful men 'shadows,' over whom these hold dominion. Therefore in another place also he says: for you were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord, because from being sinners they had been justified. Let us not, then, imagine that the devil dwells in the highest heaven with his angels, from which we believe he fell. For thus the Manichaeans have erred, who say that before the founding of the world there was a race of darkness that rebelled against God:
in which war those wretched men believe that the almighty God could not otherwise succor himself except by sending a part of himself against that race. The princes of that race, as they say, devoured a part of God and were tempered, so that from them the world could be fashioned. Thus they say that God attained victory with great calamities and torments and miseries of his own members: which members they say were mingled with the shadowy entrails of those princes, in order to temper them and restrain them from fury. And they do not understand how sacrilegious their sect is, in that they believe the almighty God warred with the darkness not through a creature that he had made, but through his very own nature—which it is impious to believe.
And not only this, but also that those who were conquered were made better, because their fury was suppressed; while the nature of God, which conquered, was made most wretched. For they say that through that very mingling it lost its understanding and its blessedness, and was entangled in great errors and disasters. And if they said that it is at some time entirely purified, they would still be asserting a great impiety against the almighty God, whose part they would believe was tossed about for so long a time in errors and punishments without any crime of sin. But now, in their wretchedness, they dare to say further that not even the whole can be purified;
and that the very part which could not be purified serves as a bond, so that by it the tomb of malice is wrapped up and bound; and so that same wretched part of God, which sinned in nothing, is forever there and is fixed eternally to the prison of darkness. This they say in order to deceive simple souls. But who is so simple as not to perceive that these things are sacrilegious, by which they affirm that the almighty God was pressed by necessity to give over his own good and innocent part to be overwhelmed by such disasters and stained by such impurity, and could not free the whole, and would bind with eternal chains what he could not free? Who, then, would not detest these things? Who would not understand that they are impious and abominable?
But when they ensnare men, they do not say these things first—which, if they said them, they would be laughed at or fled from by all—but they select chapters from the Scriptures which simple men do not understand, and through them they deceive unlearned souls by asking whence evil comes. Just as they do with this passage which was written by the apostle: rulers of these shadows, and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. For those deceivers question and interrogate a man who does not understand the divine Scriptures, as to whence come the rulers of darkness in heaven, so that, when he cannot answer, he may be led astray by them through curiosity, since every untaught soul is curious.
But whoever has well learned the Catholic faith and is fortified with good morals and true piety, even if he does not know their heresy, nevertheless answers them. For he cannot be deceived who already knows what pertains to the Christian faith, which is called 'Catholic,' spread throughout the whole world, and secure against all the impious and sinners—and secure over even its own negligent members, by the governance of the Lord. Since, then, we were saying that the apostle Paul said that we have a wrestling against the rulers of darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, and we have proved that this air near the earth is also called 'heaven,' we must believe that we fight against the devil and his angels, who rejoice in our disturbances.
For the apostle himself in another place calls the devil the prince of the power of this air. Although that passage, where he says the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, can also be understood otherwise—so that he did not say the transgressing angels are in the heavenly places, but rather ourselves, of whom he says in another place: our conversation is in the heavens—so that we, established in the heavenly places, that is, walking in the spiritual precepts of God, may fight against the spiritual forces of wickedness which try to draw us away from there. Rather, then, this must be asked: how we can fight and conquer those whom we do not see, lest the foolish think we ought to contend against the air. And so the apostle himself teaches, saying:
I do not so fight as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate; likewise he says: be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Hence it is to be understood that the apostle himself also triumphed within himself over the powers of this world, just as he had said of the Lord, whose imitator he professes himself to be.
Let us also, then, imitate him, as he exhorts, and chastise our body and bring it into subjection, if we wish to conquer the world; for through its unlawful delights and pomps and pernicious curiosity this world can hold dominion over us—that is, those things which in this world bind the lovers of temporal things with pernicious delight and compel them to serve the devil and his angels. If we have renounced all these, let us bring our body into subjection. But lest anyone perhaps ask this very thing—how it comes about that we subject our body to servitude—it can easily be understood and accomplished, if first we subject ourselves to God with a good will and sincere charity.
For every creature, willing or unwilling, is subject to the one God and its Lord. But we are admonished to serve the Lord our God with our whole will, since the just man serves freely, while the unjust serves in bondage. Yet all serve the divine providence; but some obey as sons and do with it what is good; others, however, are bound as slaves, and what is just is done concerning them. Thus the almighty God, Lord of the whole creation, who made all things, as it is written, very good, so ordered them that he does good both by means of the good and by means of the evil. For what is done justly is done well; and it is just that the good are blessed, and just that the evil suffer punishments.
Therefore God does good both by means of the good and by means of the evil, since he does all things justly. Now the good are those who serve God with their whole will; the evil, however, serve by necessity, for no one escapes the laws of the Almighty. But it is one thing to do what the law commands, another to suffer what the law commands. Wherefore the good act according to the laws, the evil suffer according to the laws. Nor let it disturb us that in this life, according to the flesh which they bear, the just endure many grievous and harsh things. For they suffer no evil who can already say what that spiritual man, the apostle, exults and proclaims, saying: we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope;
and hope does not confound, because the charity of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. If, then, in this life, where there are so many torments, good and just men, when they suffer such things, can not only bear them with an even mind, but even glory in the charity of God, what must be thought of that life which is promised to us, where we shall feel no trouble from the body? For the body of the just does not rise again to that to which the body of the impious rises, as it is written: we shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed. And lest anyone think that this change is promised not to the just but rather to the unjust, and suppose it to be penal, he goes on and says:
and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Whoever, then, are evil, are so ordered that both each one harms himself and all harm one another in turn. For they crave that which is loved to their ruin and which can easily be taken from them; and this they take from one another in turn, when they persecute one another. And therefore they are tormented from whom temporal things are taken, because they love them; but those who take them away rejoice. Yet such gladness is blindness and utter misery; for it the more entangles the soul and leads it to greater torments. For even the fish rejoices when, not seeing the hook, it devours the bait; but when the fisherman begins to draw it in, its entrails are first wrenched;
then from all its gladness, through the very bait over which it rejoiced, it is dragged to its consuming. So are all who count themselves blessed on account of temporal goods; for they have taken the hook, and with it they wander about; the time will come when they will feel how great the torments are that they devoured with their greed. And therefore they do no harm to the good, because they take from them what the good do not love; for what the good love, and whence they are blessed, no one can take from them. But the torment of the body wretchedly afflicts evil souls, while it strongly purges good ones. So it comes about that both the evil man and the evil angel serve as soldiers of the divine providence; but they do not know what good God works out of them. And so they are given their wages not according to the merits of service, but according to the merits of malice.
But just as these souls, which have a will to harm and a reason for thinking, are ordered under divine laws, so that no one may suffer anything unjust, so all things, both animate and corporeal, are administered in their own kind and in their own order, subjected to the laws of divine providence. Therefore the Lord says: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them falls to the ground without the will of your Father. For he said this, wishing to show that whatever men count most worthless is governed by the omnipotence of God. For thus the Truth speaks: that the birds of heaven are fed by him and the lilies of the field are clothed by him—the Truth who says that even the hairs of our head are numbered.
But since God himself directly cares for the pure rational souls—whether in the best and great angels or in men serving him with their whole will—while he governs the rest through those very souls, it could most truly be said also by the apostle: for God has no care for oxen. For in the holy Scriptures God teaches men how they should act with men and how they themselves should serve God; but how they should act with their cattle, they themselves know—that is, how they should govern the well-being of their cattle by usage and skill and natural reason, all of which indeed they have received from the great resources of their Creator.
Whoever, then, is able to understand how God, the Founder of the whole creation, governs it through the holy souls that are his ministers in heaven and on earth—since these holy souls too were made by him and hold the primacy in his creation—whoever, then, is able to understand, let him understand and enter into the joy of his Lord. But if we cannot do this, so long as we are in this body and are pilgrims away from the Lord, let us at least taste how sweet the Lord is, because he has given us as a pledge the Spirit, in whom we may feel his sweetness; and let us long for the very fountain of life. There let us be flooded and watered with a sober inebriation, like a tree that is planted beside the streams of waters and gives fruit in its season, and whose leaf shall not fall.
For the Holy Spirit says: but the sons of men shall hope under the covering of your wings. They shall be inebriated with the abundance of your house, and you shall give them to drink of the torrent of your delight, for with you is the fountain of life. Such inebriation does not overturn the mind, but rather snatches it upward and grants forgetfulness of all earthly things; but only if we can now say with all our affection: as the deer longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.
But if perhaps, on account of the sicknesses of the soul which it has conceived from love of the world, we are not yet fit even to taste how sweet the Lord is, let us at least believe the divine authority which he willed to be in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, as the apostle says; for all things were made through him, as it is written in the Gospel, and without him nothing was made. He had mercy on our weakness—which weakness we merited not by his work, but by our own will; for God made man imperishable and gave him free choice of will. For he would not be the best if he served God's precepts by necessity, not by will.
It is altogether easy, in my judgment, to grasp that which those are unwilling to understand who have deserted the Catholic faith and yet wish to be called Christians. For if they confess with us that our nature is not healed except by acting rightly, let them confess that it is not weakened except by sinning. And therefore it must not be believed that our soul is that which God is; because, if it were this, it would be changed for the worse neither by its own will nor by any necessity, since God is understood to be in every way unchangeable—but let it be sought not by those who love to speak what they do not know, in contention and rivalry and desire of vainglory, but by those who, with Christian humility, think of the Lord in goodness and in simplicity of heart, and seek him.
This weakness of ours, then, the Son of God deigned to take upon himself, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us: not because that eternity was changed, but because he showed to the changeable eyes of men a changeable creature, which he took up with unchangeable majesty. But there are foolish men who say: Why could not the Wisdom of God have freed men in some other way, without taking on a man and being born of a woman and suffering all those things from sinners? To whom we say: He could indeed have done so; but if he had done it otherwise, it would likewise have displeased your folly. For if he had not appeared to the eyes of sinners, his eternal light, which is seen through the inner eyes, they could by no means have seen with their defiled minds.
But now, because he deigned to admonish us visibly, so as to prepare us for invisible things, he displeases the avaricious, because he did not have a golden body; he displeases the unchaste, because he was born of a woman—for the unchaste greatly hate the fact that women conceive and bear; he displeases the proud, because he most patiently endured insults; he displeases the delicate, because he was tortured; he displeases the timid, because he died. And that they may not seem to be defending their own vices, they say that this displeases them not in a man, but in the Son of God.
For they do not understand what the eternity of God is, which assumed a man, and what that human creature itself is, which through its own changes was being recalled to its former firmness, so that we might learn, by the Lord himself teaching, that the infirmities which we gathered by sinning can be healed by acting rightly. For it was shown to us to what fragility a man has come by his own fault, and out of what fragility he is freed by divine aid. And so the Son of God assumed a man, and in him suffered human things. This medicine of men is as great as cannot be conceived. For what pride can be healed, if it is not healed by the humility of the Son of God? What avarice can be healed, if it is not healed by the poverty of the Son of God?
What wrath can be healed, if it is not healed by the patience of the Son of God? What impiety can be healed, which is not healed by the charity of the Son of God? Finally, what timidity can be healed, if it is not healed by the resurrection of the body of the Son of God? Let the human race lift up its hope and recognize its own nature; let it see how great a place it holds in the works of God. Do not despise yourselves, O men; the Son of God took up a man. Do not despise yourselves, O women; the Son of God was born of a woman. Yet do not love carnal things, because in the Son of God we are neither male nor female. Do not love temporal things, because, if they were rightly loved, the man whom the Son of God took up would love them.
Do not fear insults and crosses and death; for if they could harm a man, that man whom the Son of God took upon himself would not have suffered them. All this exhortation, which is now preached everywhere and everywhere venerated, and which heals every obedient soul, would not exist among human affairs if all those things had not been done which are displeasing to the most foolish. Whom does vicious boasting deign to imitate, so that it may be led to attain virtue, if it blushes to imitate him of whom it was said, before he was born, that he would be called the Son of the Most High, and who now among all nations — which no one can deny — is called the Son of the Most High? If we think much of ourselves, let us deign to imitate him who is called the Son of the Most High;
but if we think little of ourselves, let us dare to imitate the fishermen and tax-collectors who imitated him. O medicine that provides for all, that presses down all that swells, that restores all that wastes away, that cuts off all that is superfluous, that guards all that is necessary, that repairs all that is lost, that corrects all that is depraved! Who now would exalt himself against the Son of God? Who would despair of himself, for whom the Son of God willed to be so humble? Who would suppose the blessed life to lie in those things which the Son of God taught were to be despised? To what adversities would he yield, who believes that the nature of man was preserved amid such great persecutions in the Son of God?
Who would think the kingdom of heaven closed to himself, when he knows that tax-collectors and harlots imitated the Son of God? From what perversity would he not be free, who beholds and loves and follows after the deeds and words of that man in whom the Son of God offered himself to us as an example of life? And so now both men and women, and every age, and every rank of this world, have been stirred to the hope of eternal life. Some, neglecting temporal goods, fly to divine things; others yield to the virtues of those who do these things, and praise what they do not dare to imitate;
but a few still murmur and are tormented by empty envy — whether those who seek their own things in the Church, though they seem to be Catholics, or heretics seeking glory from the very name of Christ, or Jews desiring to defend the sin of their impiety, or pagans fearing to lose the curiosity of their vain licence. But the Catholic Church, spread far and wide throughout the whole world, breaking their assaults in former times, has grown stronger and stronger not by resisting but by enduring. Now indeed it laughs at their insidious questions with faith, examines them with diligence, and dissolves them with understanding; it takes no heed of those who accuse it of its own chaff, because it carefully and diligently distinguishes the time of harvest, the time of the threshing-floors, and the time of the barns;
but those who slander its wheat it either corrects if they are erring, or reckons among the thorns and tares if they are envious. Let us therefore subject the soul to God, if we wish to subject our body to servitude and to triumph over the devil. Faith is first, which subjects the soul to God; then the precepts of living, in the keeping of which our hope is made firm and charity is nourished and begins to shine, which before was only believed. For since knowledge and action make a man blessed, as error is to be guarded against in knowledge, so wickedness is to be guarded against in action. But he errs, whoever supposes that he can know the truth while he still lives wickedly.
Now wickedness is to love this world and to reckon as great the things that are born and pass away, and to covet them and to labour to acquire them; and to rejoice when they abound, and to fear lest they perish, and to grieve when they perish. Such a life cannot see that pure and sincere and unchangeable truth, nor cleave to it, nor be moved no more for ever. And therefore, before our mind is purified, we ought to believe what we are not yet able to understand, since it was most truly said through the prophet: unless you believe, you shall not understand.
The faith is very briefly handed down in the Church, in which are commended things eternal — which cannot yet be understood by carnal men — and things temporal, past and future, which the eternity of divine providence has wrought and will work for the salvation of men. Let us therefore believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; these are eternal and unchangeable, that is, one God, an eternal Trinity of one substance, God, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Nor let us listen to those who say that there is only the Father, and that he has no Son, nor is the Holy Spirit with him, but that the Father himself is sometimes called the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit.
For they do not know the beginning, from which are all things, and his image, through which all things are formed, and his holiness, in which all things are ordered. Nor let us listen to those who are indignant and angry because we do not say that three gods are to be worshipped. For they do not know what one and the same substance is, and they are deluded by their own phantasms, because they are accustomed to see three animals or any three bodies corporeally set apart, each in its own place. Thus they think God's substance is to be understood, and they greatly err, because they are proud, and they cannot learn, because they will not believe.