Collected Works 22 part 1/2

I. I confess before the Lord God that I have rashly enough — if not indeed impudently — dared to compose a treatise on patience, being altogether unfit to display it, as a man of no good at all; whereas it behoves those who undertake the demonstration and commendation of any matter to be first found engaged in the practice of that very matter, and to guide the steadfastness of their admonishing by the authority of their own conduct, lest their words blush at the failure of their deeds. And would that this blushing might bring its own remedy, so that the shame of not exhibiting what we go about to suggest to others might become the schooling for exhibiting it! Except that the greatness of certain goods, as also of evils, is so intolerable that only the grace of divine inspiration works to grasp and to render them.

For that which is supremely good is supremely with God, and none but He who possesses it dispenses it, as He deems each one worthy. And so it will be, as it were, a solace to discourse upon that which it is not granted to enjoy, after the manner of the sick, who, though they are far from health, cannot keep silent about the blessings of health. Thus I, most wretched, ever sick with the fevers of impatience, must needs both sigh and invoke and plead for that health of patience which I do not possess, when I recall, and in the contemplation of my own weakness ponder, that the good soundness of faith and the health of the Lord's discipline does not readily come to any one unless patience sit beside it. So set is patience over the affairs of God, that no one, being a stranger to patience, can fulfil any precept or perform any work pleasing to the Lord.

Even those who live in blindness honour its good with the title of the highest virtue; the philosophers indeed, who are reckoned creatures of some wisdom, assign to it so much that, although they disagree among themselves through the diverse cravings of their sects and the rivalries of their opinions, yet, mindful of patience alone in common, to this one thing they have entrusted the peace of their pursuits: upon it they conspire, into it they enter league, toward it with affectation of virtue they unanimously strive; all display of wisdom they derive from patience. It is a great testimony to it, when it advances even the vain disciplines of the age to praise and glory! Or is it rather an injury, when a divine thing is tumbled about among secular arts?

But let them look to it, who will presently be ashamed of their wisdom, destroyed and disgraced along with the world! II.

To us the authority for practising patience is delegated not by a human affectation fashioned by the stupor of a dog-like equanimity, but by the divine ordinance of a living and heavenly discipline, which shows God Himself as the example of patience: first, He who scatters the flower of this light equally over the just and the unjust; who suffers the offices of the seasons, the services of the elements, and the tributes of all creation to befall the worthy and the unworthy alike; enduring most ungrateful nations that adore the mockeries of the arts and the works of His own hands, that persecute His name and His household, and that daily grow insolent in luxury, avarice, iniquity, and malice — so that by His very patience He does Himself a disservice: for many on that account do not believe in the Lord, because for so long they do not know Him to be angry with the world. III.

And this species of divine patience, indeed, being as it were remote, may perhaps be estimated as belonging to the heights: but what of that patience which among men, openly upon earth, has in a manner been grasped by hand? God suffers Himself to be born: in the mother's womb He waits, and being born endures to grow up, and being grown up is not eager to be recognized, but is moreover full of reproach to Himself, and is baptized by His own servant, and repels the tempter's assaults with words alone; when from Lord He becomes Master, teaching man to escape death, being schooled in the absolute pardon of an offence, He does not contend, He does not cry aloud, nor did any hear His voice in the streets;

the bruised reed He did not break, the smoking flax He did not quench (for the prophet had not lied, nay rather it was the very testimony of God, placing His own Spirit in the Son with all patience!); no one wishing to cleave to Him did He not receive, no man's table or roof did He despise, but Himself ministered to the washing of the disciples' feet; He spurned not sinners, not publicans; He was not even angry with that city which had refused to receive Him, though the disciples wished heavenly fires to be brought upon so insolent a town; He healed the ungrateful, He yielded to those who plotted against Him. And this were too little, if He had not also kept His very betrayer with Him, nor persistently denounced him.

But when He is betrayed, when He is led like a sheep to the sacrifice (for so He opens His mouth no more than a lamb under the power of him that shears him), He, to whom, had He willed it, legions of angels would at a single word have come from the heavens, did not approve the avenging sword of even one of His disciples. The patience of the Lord was wounded in Malchus: and so He both cursed the works of the sword for the time to come, and by the restoration of health gave satisfaction to him whom He Himself had not injured — through patience, the mother of mercy. I say nothing of His being nailed to the cross, for to this He had come: yet was it needful, in submitting to death, that He should also suffer reproaches? But, on the point of departing, He desired to be sated with the pleasure of patience: He is spat upon, scourged, mocked, clothed in foul garments, crowned with fouler. Wondrous faithfulness of equanimity:

He who had purposed to lie hidden in the figure of a man, imitated nothing of man's impatience! From this above all, O Pharisees, you ought to have recognized the Lord: patience of this kind no man could ever have accomplished! Such and so great proofs — whose greatness among the nations indeed is a disparagement of the faith, but among us is reason and edification — prove clearly enough, not only by words in precept, but also by the endurance of the Lord's sufferings, to those to whom it has been granted to believe, that the patience of God is His very nature, the effect and eminence of a certain inborn property. IV.

Therefore, if we see that all upright servants and those of good disposition conduct themselves according to their master's temper (since the art of winning favour is compliance, and the discipline of compliance is a submissive obedience), how much more does it behove us to be found conformed to our Lord, being namely servants of the living God, whose judgment upon His own turns not upon the fetter or the cap of freedom, but upon eternity, either of punishment or of salvation! To avoid which severity, or to invite which liberality, there is need of as great a diligence of compliance as are those very things which either the severity threatens or the liberality promises.

And yet we exact obedience not only from men bound by servitude, or by any other right made debtors of compliance, but even from cattle, even from beasts, understanding that they were provided and handed over to us by the Lord for our uses. Shall those things, then, be better than we in the discipline of compliance which God subjects to us? In short, the creatures that obey recognize their duty: shall we, subjected to Him alone, namely the Lord, hesitate to hearken? But how unjust it is, how ungrateful too, that what you obtain through another's indulgence at others' cost, you should not repay from yourself to that very one through whom you obtain it! Nor need I say more about the rendering of the compliance owed by us to the Lord God: for the mere acknowledgment of God sufficiently understands what is incumbent upon it.

Yet, lest we should seem to have inserted the topic of compliance as something foreign, this very compliance too is drawn from patience: never does an impatient man comply, nor does any patient man struggle against. Who, then, shall discourse at length upon the good which the Lord — the God who is both the demonstrator and the acceptor of all good things — carried about within Himself? For to whom can there be any doubt that every good, since it pertains to God, must be pursued with the whole mind by those who pertain to God? By these considerations, both the commendation and the exhortation concerning patience is established as it were in readiness and in a summary of prescription. V. Nevertheless, to proceed with a discussion of things necessary to the faith is not idle, since neither is it unfruitful: loquacity in edification is in no wise base — if base ever, then it is base.

And so, if there is discourse concerning some good, the matter demands that we review also the contrary of that good: for you will illumine the more what is to be pursued, if you have likewise set forth what is to be avoided. Let us therefore consider concerning impatience whether, just as patience is in God, so its adversary was born and found in our adversary, that from this it may appear how principally it is opposed to the faith. For that which was conceived by God's rival is surely not friendly to the things of God. The same discord exists among things as among their authors: nay, since God is best, and the devil on the contrary worst, by their very diversity they testify that neither does anything for the other, so that it can seem to us that no good is produced from evil any more than any evil from good.

Therefore I detect the origin of impatience in the devil himself, even then, when he impatiently bore that the Lord God had subjected all the works which He had made to His own image, that is, to man. For he would not have grieved, had he endured it; nor would he have envied man, had he not grieved: so completely did he deceive man because he had envied, and he had envied because he had grieved, and he had grieved because he had assuredly not borne it patiently. Which that angel of perdition was first, evil or impatient, I disdain to inquire, since it is plain that either impatience took its beginning from malice, or malice from impatience, and that thereafter they conspired between themselves and grew up together, undivided, in the one bosom of their father.

Yet that which he had first felt, through which he first entered upon transgression, being instructed by his own experience as to what might aid unto sinning, this same thing, by driving it into man's crime, he called forth. The woman, being straightway approached by him, was — I would not rashly say — breathed upon through his very converse by a spirit tainted with impatience: so entirely would she never at all have sinned, had she preserved patience by the divine prohibition! And what of this, that she did not endure to be the only one approached, but with Adam, not yet her husband, not yet owing ears to her, she is impatient even of keeping silence, and makes him the transmitter of that which she had drawn from the evil one?

So then another man too perishes through another's impatience; nay, he perishes even through his own impatience, committed on both sides — both concerning God's forewarning and concerning the devil's ensnaring — in that he did not endure to keep the one and to reject the other. Hence the beginning of judgment, whence the origin of sin; hence God began to be angry, whence man was led on to offend; hence in God the first patience, whence the first indignation, who then, content with a curse alone, refrained from the onset of chastisement upon the devil. Or what crime is imputed to man before this admission of impatience? He was innocent, and God's near friend, and the tiller of paradise: but as soon as he once succumbed to impatience, he ceased to savour of God, he ceased to be able to endure heavenly things.

Thenceforth man, given over to the earth and cast out from the eyes of God, began easily to be usurped by impatience unto everything that might offend God. For straightway that woman, having conceived from the seed of the devil, in the fecundity of malice brought forth a son of wrath; and having brought him forth, she trained him in her own arts: for that very thing which had plunged Adam and Eve into death, taught the son also to begin with fratricide. In vain should I ascribe this to impatience, if Cain, that first murderer and first fratricide, bore with equanimity and not impatiently his offerings' being refused by the Lord — if he was not angry with his brother — if, in short, he slew no one. Since therefore he could neither kill unless angry, nor be angry unless impatient, it is shown that what he did through anger must be referred to that whence the anger was suggested.

These, then, were as it were the cradle of impatience while yet an infant. But how great its increase soon after! Nor is it any wonder: if it first transgressed, it follows that, because it was first, therefore it is also the sole matrix of every transgression, pouring forth from its own fountain the varied veins of crimes. Of murder indeed we have spoken. But wrath, brought forth from the very beginning, refers to itself, as to its own origin, whatever causes it afterward finds for itself unto impatience: for whether one commits that crime for enmity's sake or for plunder's sake, first must he become impatient either of hatred or of avarice. Whatever compels him, it cannot be accomplished without impatience of oneself: who has undergone adultery without impatience of lust?

And even if in women it is procured for a price, that selling of chastity is surely ordered by an impatience of despising gain. These are, as it were, the principal offences in the sight of the Lord. But now, to say it in brief, every sin is to be ascribed to impatience. Impatience is the evil of good. No one is unchaste who is not impatient of chastity, and dishonest who is not impatient of honesty, and impious who is not impatient of piety, and unquiet who is not impatient of quiet, so that each becomes evil if he cannot persevere in being good! Since therefore impatience is such a viper-brood of transgressions, why should it not offend the Lord, who disapproves of evils? Or is it not manifest that Israel itself always sinned against God through impatience?

Thereafter, when — forgetful of the heavenly arm by which it had been drawn out from the Egyptian afflictions — it demanded of Aaron gods to be its leaders, when it poured out its gold into an idol: for so impatiently had it received the necessary delays of Moses conferring with the Lord! After the food-giving rain of manna, after the water-giving stream from the rock, they despair of the Lord, not enduring a three days' thirst; for this impatience too is reproached to them by the Lord. And, not to roam through details, they never perished except by transgressing through impatience. And how did they lay hands upon the prophets, save through impatience of hearing? and upon the Lord Himself, through impatience even of seeing! Whereas, had they entered upon patience, they would have been set free. VI.

It is patience itself, indeed, which both follows and goes before faith. In short, Abraham believed God, and was reckoned by Him unto righteousness. But it was patience that proved his faith, when he was bidden to sacrifice his son — not, I would say, for the tempting of his faith, but for a figurative testimony. As for the rest, God knew the man whom He had reckoned unto righteousness: so grievous a precept, which not even the Lord was pleased should be fulfilled, he both patiently heard, and, had God so willed, would have fulfilled. Deservedly, then, was he blessed, because also faithful; deservedly faithful, because also patient!

So faith, illumined by patience, when it was sown among the nations through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, and superinduced grace upon the law, set patience as the helper for the enlarging and fulfilling of the law, since this alone had heretofore been lacking to the teaching of righteousness. For of old they exacted eye for eye and tooth for tooth, and requited evil for evil with usury: for patience was not yet on earth, because, of course, neither was faith. Meanwhile impatience enjoyed the occasions of the law: it was easy, in the absence of the Lord and Master of patience. But after He supervened and composed the grace of faith with patience, now it is not permitted even to provoke with a word, nor even to say 'Fool,' without peril of judgment;

wrath is forbidden, the mind is restrained, the wantonness of the hand is checked, the poison of the tongue is taken away. The law has found more than it lost, Christ saying: Love your enemies, and bless those who curse you, and pray for your persecutors, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. You see what a Father patience acquires for us! VII. By this principal precept the whole discipline of patience is girt about, since it is not even conceded to do harm deservedly. Now indeed, as we run through the causes of impatience, the other precepts too will answer in their several places.

If the mind is stirred at the loss of family property, it is admonished in almost every place by the Lord's Scriptures concerning the contempt of the world; nor does any greater exhortation to the contempt of money lie beneath than that the Lord Himself is found in no riches. He always justifies the poor, He condemns beforehand the rich. Thus He administered beforehand a disdain of losses to patience by the promise of wealth, showing through the casting-off of riches that their injuries too must not be reckoned. What therefore we have no need at all to seek — since not even the Lord sought it — when it is cut off or even taken away, we ought not grievously to bear. Covetousness the Spirit of the Lord, through the apostle, pronounced the root of all evils:

let us not interpret it as consisting only in the coveting of what is another's. For even what seems ours is another's: for nothing is ours, since all things are God's, whose we ourselves also are. And so, if, being smitten with loss, we feel it impatiently, grieving over what has been lost as though from our own, we shall be caught as akin to covetousness: we seek what is another's, when we bear with grief the loss of what is another's. He who is stirred by impatience of loss, by preferring earthly things to heavenly, sins from the near side against God: for the Spirit which he received from the Lord he shakes for the sake of a worldly thing. Willingly, therefore, let us lose earthly things, let us guard the heavenly; let the whole world perish, so long as I make gain of patience!

Now the man who has resolved not to bear steadfastly some little thing taken from him, whether by theft or by force or even by his own negligence, I doubt whether he can easily or from the heart lay his own hand upon his property in the cause of almsgiving. For who, being altogether unable to endure being cut by another, himself draws the knife upon his own body? Patience amid losses is a training in bestowing and sharing: it does not irk to give the man who does not fear to lose. Otherwise, how shall he who has two tunics give one of them to the naked, unless he be the same man who can offer even his cloak to him who takes away his tunic? How shall we make ourselves friends of mammon, if we have loved it so much that we cannot bear its loss? We shall perish along with the perished thing. What do we find here, where we have something to lose?

It belongs to the heathen to apply impatience to all losses, being men who perhaps prefer a money-matter to the soul. For so indeed they do, when, out of cravings for gain, they ply the profitable perils of merchandise upon the sea; when, for money's sake, they hesitate not to undertake even in the forum things by no means to be dreaded for their condemnation; when, in short, they hire themselves out to the games and the camps; when along the highways, unmindful of wild beasts, they turn brigands. But we, according to the diversity by which we stand apart from them, ought to lay down not the soul for money, but money for the soul — whether willingly in bestowing, or patiently in losing! VIII. The very soul and the very body we bear in this world exposed to all men for injury, and we undergo the patience of that injury: and shall we be wounded by the nibbling away of lesser things?

Far from the servant of Christ be such defilement, that the patience prepared for greater temptations should fail in trifles! If anyone attempt to provoke you with the hand, the Lord's admonition is at hand: To him who strikes you, He says, on the face, turn the other cheek also. Let wickedness be wearied out by your patience: whatever that blow be, wrung with pain and reproach, it shall be more grievously beaten by the Lord; you flog that wicked man the more by enduring: for he shall be beaten by Him for whose grace you endure. If the bitterness of the tongue break forth in cursing or reviling, mark the saying: When they shall curse you, rejoice. The Lord Himself is cursed in the law, and yet He alone is blessed. Therefore, as servants, let us follow the Lord and be cursed patiently, that we may be able to be blessed!

If I hear with too little equanimity some insolent or wicked word spoken against me, I must needs either return in kind the requital of bitterness, or be tortured by a dumb impatience. When therefore, being cursed, I have struck back, how shall I be found to have followed the Lord's teaching, whereby it was handed down that a man is defiled not by the pollutions of vessels, but by those things which are uttered from the mouth; likewise that we remain liable for every vain and superfluous word? It follows, then, that from what the Lord restrains us, He admonishes us also to suffer patiently from another. Here now is the matter of patience's pleasure. For every injury, whether inflicted by tongue or by hand, when it has struck against patience, shall be discharged by the same issue as some dart hurled against a rock of most steadfast hardness and blunted:

for it shall there fall down, its labour void and unfruitful, and sometimes, rebounding upon him who sent it, shall rage back with a reciprocal onset. In truth, one injures you for this cause, that you may grieve, because the fruit of the injurer lies in the grief of the injured. Therefore, when you have overturned his fruit by not grieving, he himself must needs grieve at the loss of his fruit. Then you shall not only go away unharmed (which alone even suffices you), but shall moreover be delighted at your adversary's frustration and defended by his grief. This is both the profit and the pleasure of patience! IX. Not even that species of impatience is excused in the loss of our loved ones, where some assertion of grief pleads on its behalf. For the regard for the apostle's declaration must be set before it, who says:

Be not grieved at the sleep of anyone, as the nations which have no hope. And rightly: for believing the resurrection of Christ, we believe also in our own, on account of whom He both died and rose again. Therefore, since it is established concerning the resurrection of the dead, the grief of death is void, void too is the impatience of grief. For why should you grieve, if you do not believe that he has perished? Why should you impatiently bear one taken away for a while, whom you believe will return? What you think death is, is a departure. He who goes before is not to be mourned, but plainly to be longed for. That longing too must be tempered by patience: for why should you immoderately bear the departure of one whom you will presently follow?

Otherwise, impatience in matters of this kind both bodes ill for our hope and prevaricates the faith, and we injure Christ when we do not with equanimity receive those called away by Him as though they were to be pitied. I desire, says the apostle, to be received now and to be with the Lord. How much better a longing does he show! It is therefore the longing of Christians; and if we impatiently grieve over others who have attained it, we ourselves are unwilling to attain it! X. There is yet another supreme goad of impatience, the lust of vengeance, an affair caring for either glory or malice. But glory everywhere is vain, and malice is never anything but odious to the Lord — in this place indeed most of all, when, provoked by another's malice, it sets itself the superior in exacting vengeance, and by requiting doubles the wickedness which was done but once.

Vengeance, in the sight of error, seems a solace for grief; in the sight of certain truth, it is convicted of malignity. For what difference is there between the provoker and the provoked, save that the former is caught first in the misdeed, but the latter later? Yet each is guilty of injuring a man before the Lord, who both forbids and condemns every wickedness. There is no reckoning of order in a misdeed, nor does place separate what likeness joins together. Absolutely, then, it is enjoined that evil is not to be requited with evil: a like deed has a like desert. How shall we observe this, if in our loathing we shall not be loath of vengeance? And what honour shall we offer up to the Lord God, if we arrogate to ourselves the judgment of self-defence?

We, rotting things, vessels of clay, are gravely offended when our little servants take vengeance for themselves upon their fellow-servants; and those who have offered us their patience — as mindful of the lowliness of their servitude, as loving the right of their master's honour — we not only approve, but make for them a fuller satisfaction than they themselves would have presumed to claim: is this at hazard for us in the Lord, so just to appraise it, so powerful to accomplish it? What, then, do we believe Him to be a judge, if not also an avenger? This He promises us to be, saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay — that is: Patience to me, and I will requite patience. For when He says: Judge not, that you be not judged, does He not demand patience?

For who will pass judgment on another, unless he be one who is content not to defend himself? Who judges for the sake of pardoning? And even if he does pardon, he has nonetheless failed to guard against the impatience of one who judges, and he has usurped the honour of the one and only Judge, that is, of God! But how many mishaps of this kind impatience has been wont to run into: how often it has repented of defending itself, how often its own vehemence has proved worse than the very causes it pleaded, since nothing undertaken in impatience knows how to be carried through without violent onset, and nothing done with violent onset either fails to give offence, or collapses, or rushes headlong to ruin! Now if you defend yourself too lightly, you will grow mad; if too abundantly, you will be burdened. What have I to do with vengeance, whose measure I cannot govern because of the impatience of my grief? But if I rest upon patience, I shall feel no grief;

and if I feel no grief, I shall not desire to avenge myself. XI. Now that we have marshalled, as best we could, these principal occasions of impatience, why should we wander among the rest — those that arise at home, those abroad? Broad and far-spread is the working of the Evil One, hurling his manifold incitements, now the smallest, now the greatest. But the small ones you should despise for their very pettiness, and to the great ones you should yield because of their overwhelming force. Where the injury is lesser, there is no need of patience; but where the injury is greater, there patience, the remedy for injury, is the more necessary. Let us contend, therefore, to endure what is inflicted by the Evil One, that our emulous even-temperedness may baffle the enemy's zeal. But if we ourselves bring some things upon ourselves, whether through imprudence or even of our own will, let us undergo with equal patience the things we impute to ourselves.

But if we believe that some things are inflicted upon us by the Lord, to whom rather should we show patience than to the Lord? Nay, He even teaches us to give thanks and to rejoice at being counted worthy of divine chastisement: 'I,' He says, 'chastise those whom I love.' O blessed that servant upon whose amendment the Lord insists, with whom He deigns to be angry, whom by dissembling His admonition He does not deceive! On every side, then, are we bound by the duty of exercising patience, we who from some quarter or other are visited — whether by our own errors, or by the snares of the Evil One, or by the admonitions of the Lord. Great is the reward of that duty, namely, felicity. For whom did the Lord call happy but the patient, when He said: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'? Surely no one is poor in spirit unless he be humble:

for who is humble but the patient man, since no one can subject himself without first exercising the patience of that very subjection? 'Blessed,' He says, 'are they that weep and mourn.' Who bears such things without patience? Therefore to such is promised both comfort and laughter. 'Blessed are the meek.' By this title the impatient can by no means be reckoned. Likewise, when He marks out the peacemakers with the same style of felicity and calls them sons of God, are the impatient at all akin to peace? A fool would think so! But when He says, 'Rejoice and exult whenever men shall revile and persecute you, for your reward is very great in heaven,' surely He does not promise this exultation to impatience, for no one will exult in adversities unless he first despise them, and no one will despise them unless he has practised patience.