制度與會談錄 第 2 章 第 10/15 段

But, casting away all their substance together, they chose rather to be sustained by their own labor or by the contribution of the Gentiles. Concerning whose maintenance the holy apostle, writing to the Romans and proclaiming his own ministry to them in this matter, and subtly urging them to this contribution, says: 'But now I shall go to Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. For it hath pleased Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at Jerusalem. For it hath pleased them, and they are their debtors: for if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things.'

To the Corinthians also, bearing a like care for these poor, he admonishes them that before his coming they should more diligently prepare the contribution which they were arranging to send for their use: 'Now concerning the collections that are made for the saints, as I have ordained to the churches of Galatia, so do ye also. Let every one of you on the first day of the week lay up by himself in store, treasuring up what shall please him, that when I come the collections be not then to be made. And when I am come, whomsoever ye shall approve by letters, these I will send to carry your bounty to Jerusalem.' And to urge them to a more liberal contribution, he adds:

'And if it be meet that I also go, they shall go with me'—that is, if your offering be such as deserves to be conveyed with my escort also. To the Galatians too, when he divided the ministry of preaching with the apostles, he testifies that he agreed upon this very thing with James, Peter, and John, namely, that although he should undertake the preaching to the Gentiles, he should nevertheless in no way reject the care and solicitude for the poor who were at Jerusalem—those who, having for Christ's sake renounced all their goods, had of their own accord undergone want:

'And when they had seen,' he says, 'the grace of God that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should preach among the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision: only that we should be mindful of the poor.' And that he fulfilled this thing with all solicitude he testifies, saying: 'Which very thing also I was careful to do.' Who then are the more blessed?

Was it these who, newly gathered from the number of the Gentiles and not yet strong enough to ascend to evangelical perfection, still clung to their own substance—in whom a great fruit was reckoned by the apostle, if only, called back from the worship of idols and from fornication and from things strangled and from blood, they had received the faith of Christ together with their possessions—or those who, satisfying the evangelical precept and daily bearing the cross of the Lord, willed that nothing of their own goods should remain to them? And since the blessed apostle himself, bound with chains and prisons, or hindered by the hardship of travel, and on this account not able, as he was wont, to procure the accustomed substance of livelihood with his own hands, asserts that he received the supplement of his need from the brethren who had come from Macedonia (for 'what was lacking to me,' he says, 'the brethren who came from Macedonia supplied'), and referring to the same in his letter to the Philippians:

'For ye also know, Philippians, that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me in the matter of giving and receiving but ye only; for even to Thessalonica ye sent once and again for my need')—shall these men also, according to the opinion of those persons which they have conceived with a lukewarm mind, be more blessed than the apostle, because they are found to have imparted to him out of their substance? Which no one out of his senses will dare to say. Wherefore, if we wish to obey the evangelical precept and to be

imitators of the apostles and of that whole primitive Church, or of the fathers who in our times have succeeded to their virtues and perfection, let us not acquiesce in our own definitions, which promise us evangelical perfection out of this lukewarm and wretched state; but let us, following in their footsteps, in no way study to deceive ourselves, and let us so seek the discipline and institution of the monastery that we may in truth renounce this world, keeping nothing back through unbelief of the things we have despised drawing us back, and let us procure our daily food not by hidden money, but by our own labor.

There is reported a saying of holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea, uttered to a certain Syncletius who was benumbed with such lukewarmness as we have described. He, though he said that he had renounced this world, reserved to himself certain things of his own property, being unwilling to be sustained by the exercise of his own hands and to acquire true humility by nakedness, by the wearing-down of labor, and by subjection to the monastery. 'And thou hast,' said Basil, 'both lost the senator Syncletius, and hast not made a monk.' Therefore, if we desire lawfully to strive in the spiritual contest, let us thrust out this pernicious foe also from our hearts; to overcome whom is no matter of great virtue, but to be overcome by the same is shameful and full of disgrace.

For to be struck down by a powerful foe—though there be grief in the fall and groaning in the loss of victory—yet in some way consolation is born to the vanquished from the strength of the adversary; but if the enemy be feeble and the manner of the struggle weak, then, beyond the grief of the fall, a baser confusion and an ignominy heavier than the loss is inflicted. Concerning which this shall be the highest victory and the perpetual triumph, that, as it is said, the conscience of a monk should not be defiled even by a single small coin. For it is impossible that he who, once overcome, has taken root in his heart by even a slight coin of covetousness, should not straightway be set ablaze by the fire of a greater desire.

For the soldier of Christ will be victorious and secure, and a stranger to all the assault of covetousness, only so long as this most wicked spirit shall not have sown in his heart the beginnings of this concupiscence. Wherefore, though in all kinds of vices generally the head of the serpent ought to be watched, in this one especially it is fitting to be more diligently on guard. For if it be let in, growing strong upon its own material, it will stir up for itself more violent conflagrations. And therefore not only the possession of money is to be avoided, but the very will of it is to be utterly thrust out from the mind. For the effect of avarice is not so much to be shunned as the affection of it is to be cut off by the roots: for it will profit nothing to have no money, if the will to possess it be in us.

For it is possible that even one who does not possess it should by no means be free from the disease of covetousness, and that the benefit of nakedness should profit him nothing, because he was not able to cut away the vice of concupiscence, being delighted by the good of poverty not by the merit of virtue, and content with the burden of necessity not without languor of heart. As also the evangelical word pronounces those who are not defiled in body to have committed adultery in heart, so it is possible that those who are by no means burdened with the weight of money should be condemned along with the covetous in their affection and mind: for the occasion of having was wanting to them, not the will, which is always wont to be crowned with God rather than necessity. Therefore we must hasten, lest the gains of our labors perish in vain.

For it is a wretched thing to have endured the trial of poverty and nakedness, but to have lost their fruit through the fault of an empty will. Wilt thou know how perniciously, how hurtfully this tinder, unless it be diligently cut out, sprouts to the destruction of him who has conceived it, and buds forth with all manner of little branches of vices? Consider Judas, reckoned in the number of the apostles, who, because he would not crush the deadly head of this serpent, how it slew him with its own venom, and, ensnared by the nooses of concupiscence, into what crime of a sheer precipice it drove him, so that it persuaded him to sell the Redeemer of the world and the Author of human salvation for thirty pieces of silver.

He would by no means have slid down into so wicked a crime of betrayal, if he had not been infected with the disease of covetousness, nor would he, a sacrilegious man, have stood forth guilty of the denial of the Lord, unless he had first been accustomed to pilfer the moneybags entrusted to him. A monstrous and evident example of this tyranny, which once, as we have said, permits the enslaved soul to guard no rule of honesty, nor is it satisfied by any increase of gain—for the end of this madness is sought not in riches but in nakedness—since this very man, though for this purpose he had received into his own power the moneybags entrusted to him for the dispensation of the poor, so that at least, satisfied by the abundance of money, he might set a limit to his covetousness, was inflamed by that very plenty into an ever more abundant tinder;

he so burned with covetousness that now he chose no longer to pilfer the moneybags in secret, but to sell the very Lord. For the madness of this greed surpasses all the masses of riches. In short, the prince of the apostles, taught by these examples, knowing that one who has anything cannot govern the reins of covetousness, nor does its end rest in a small or a great sum, but only in the virtue of the naked man, punished with death Ananias and Sapphira, of whom we made mention above, because they had kept back for themselves something of their property; so that the destruction which the former had of his own accord brought upon himself for the guilt of betraying the Lord, these should receive for the lie of their covetousness. How great a likeness of crime and of punishment meets together here!

There covetousness, here falsehood followed; there the truth is betrayed, here the crime of a lie is committed. For although the effect of their deed may seem dissimilar, yet one same end meets together in both. For the former, shrinking from poverty, desired to take back what he had cast away; these, lest they should become poor, attempted to retain something of their substance, which they ought either faithfully to have offered to the apostles or wholly to have scattered among the brethren; and therefore in both cases the condemnation of death follows, because each crime sprouted from the roots of covetousness.

If therefore against those who did not covet other men's substance, but attempted to spare their own, and had no desire of acquiring, but only the will of reserving, so severe a sentence went forth, what is to be judged concerning those who long to gather moneys never yet possessed, and, while displaying nakedness before men, are proved by the affection of concupiscence to be rich before God? Who, after the likeness of Gehazi, are known to be lepers in spirit and mind—Gehazi, who, coveting the perishable moneys of this world, was sprinkled with the contagion of unclean leprosy. Through which he has left us an evident example, that every soul defiled with the stain of covetousness is sprinkled with the spiritual leprosy of vices and is reckoned unclean before God under an everlasting curse.

Therefore, if out of desire for perfection thou hast forsaken all and followed Christ, who says to thee, 'Go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me,' why, having put thy hand to the plough, dost thou look back, so that by the voice of the same Lord thou art pronounced not fit for the kingdom of heaven? Established upon the roof of the evangelical summit, why dost thou come down to take up something out of thy house—out of those things, that is, which thou hadst before despised? Set in the field and in the working of the virtues, why, running back, dost thou strive to be reclothed with the substance of the world, of which by renouncing it thou hadst stripped thyself? But if, forestalled by poverty, thou hadst nothing to forsake, much less oughtest thou to acquire what thou didst not even before possess.

For to this end thou hast been so prepared by the Lord's kindness, that, hindered by no snares of money, thou mightest run to Him the more unencumbered. Yet let no one be broken by being in this respect needy: for there is no one who has not something that he may forsake. He has renounced all the goods of the world, whosoever has cut away by the roots the affection of possessing them. This, then, is the perfect victory over covetousness: that we do not suffer even the tiniest spark of any small coin to reside in our heart, being sure that we shall have no further power of extinguishing it, if we cherish in ourselves any material, however small, for this spark.

Which virtue we shall not otherwise be able to keep unimpaired, unless, dwelling in the monastery, having, according to the apostle, food and raiment, we be therewith content. Remembering, therefore, the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira, let us shudder to reserve anything of those things which, in renouncing, we have vowed utterly to disclaim. Let us also dread the example of Gehazi, who for the fault of covetousness is punished with the eternal punishment of leprosy, and let us beware of acquiring anything of those things which we did not even before possess. Let us also, fearing both the desert and the end of Judas, avoid with all our strength taking back any money which we have once cast away from us.

Above all these things, considering the condition of our frail and uncertain nature, let us beware lest the day of the Lord, coming upon us like a thief in the night, find our conscience stained even with a single small coin—that day which, emptying out all the fruits of our renunciation, may cause that word which in the Gospel was spoken to the rich man to be directed by the Lord's voice to us also: 'Thou fool, this night they require thy soul of thee: and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?' And, thinking nothing of the morrow, let us never allow ourselves to be torn away from the discipline of the monastery.

Which without doubt we are by no means permitted to fulfill, nor even to remain under the rule of the institution, unless first the virtue of patience, which proceeds from no other source than from the fountain of humility, be founded in us with firm solidity. For the latter knows to bring troubles upon none, while the former knows to bear magnanimously those brought upon itself. OF THE SPIRIT OF ANGER. CHAPTERS. I. That the fourth combat is against the vice of anger, and how great evils this disturbance generates. II. Of those who say that anger is not harmful, if we are angry at wrongdoers, since God Himself is said to be angry. III. Of those things which are named in God after the custom of our nature. IV.

In what manner we ought to think concerning the human affections and members which we read are ascribed to the unchangeable and incorporeal God. V. Of what placidity it befits a monk to be. VI. Of the unjust or the just stirring of anger. VII. In what alone anger is necessary for us. VIII. By what examples of blessed David anger is wholesomely taken up. IX. Of the anger to be undertaken against our own selves. X. Of what sun it is said that it should not go down upon our anger. XI. Of those upon whose anger not even the setting of that sun sets a limit. XII. That this is the end of sadness or of anger, that each one should accomplish that which prevails. XIII. That not even a momentary anger is permitted to be retained. XIV. Of fraternal reconciliation. XV.

That the old Law also plucks up anger not only from the effect, but even from the thought. XVI. Of the superfluous withdrawal of those who do not depart from uncorrected morals. XVII. That the tranquillity of our heart ought to consist not in another's choice, but in our own control. XVIII. With what zeal we ought to seek the desert, and of what sort is the progress therein. XIX. By what comparison those are to be esteemed who are patient only then when they are provoked by no one. XX. Of the cutting away of anger according to the Gospel. XXI. In that which is written in the Gospel, 'whoso is angry with his brother,' whether that which is added, 'without cause,' is to be received. XXII. The remedies by which we may root out anger from our hearts.

In the fourth combat also the deadly venom of anger is to be utterly rooted out from the recesses of our soul. For while this sits in our hearts and blinds the eye of the mind with its noxious darkness, we shall be able neither to acquire the judgment of right discretion, nor the gaze of honorable contemplation, nor to possess maturity of counsel, nor to be partakers of life, nor tenacious of justice, nor even capable of the spiritual and true light; because 'mine eye,' he says, 'is troubled by reason of anger.'

Nor can we be made partakers of wisdom, even though we may seem to be pronounced wise in the opinion of all, because 'anger rests in the bosom of fools.' But neither shall we be able to attain the life of immortality, however prudent we may seem to be judged in the estimation of men, because 'anger destroys even the prudent.' Nor shall we be able, by the clear discretion of the heart, to obtain the guidance of justice, though we be esteemed perfect and holy in the opinions of all, because 'the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.' That very gravity of honorableness, too, which is wont to be familiar even to the men of this world, we shall in no way be able to possess, though we be thought noble and honorable by the prerogative of our birth, because 'an angry man is dishonorable.'

Nor shall we be at all able to obtain maturity of counsel, though we may seem grave and endowed with the highest knowledge, because 'the angry man acts without counsel'; nor to be at rest from noxious disturbances, nor able to be free from sins, even though no disquietudes be brought upon us by others, because 'a passionate man stirs up strifes, but an angry man digs up sins.' We have heard some attempting so to excuse this most pernicious disease of the soul that they long to extenuate it by a most detestable interpretation of the Scriptures, saying that it is not harmful if we are angry at erring brethren, since God Himself is said to rage and to be angry against those who either will not know Him or, knowing, despise Him, as in this place:

'And the Lord was angry with fury against His people'; or when the prophet prays, saying, 'Lord, rebuke me not in Thy fury, neither chasten me in Thine anger.' They do not understand that, while they wish to grant men an occasion for a pestilent vice, they mingle the injury of carnal passion with the immensity of the Divine and with the fountain of all purity. For if these things, when they are said of God, are to be understood carnally and grossly according to the letter, then He also sleeps, when it is said, 'Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord?'—concerning whom it is said, 'Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep'—and He stands and sits, when He says:

'Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool'—He 'who measures heaven with a span, and encloses the earth in His fist'—and He is befuddled with wine, when it is said, 'And the Lord rose up as one that had slept, as a mighty man befuddled with wine'—He 'who alone hath immortality, and dwelleth in light unapproachable'; not to pass over the ignorance and forgetfulness which we read frequently inserted concerning Him in the Holy Scriptures; and then the lineaments of members, which are described as though of a figurative and composite man, namely hairs and head and nostrils, eyes and face, hands and arm, fingers, belly, and feet.

All which things, if we should wish to admit according to the base sound of the letter, we must needs suppose God to be composed of the lineaments of members and of a bodily figure—which is even wicked to say, and be it far from us. Therefore, just as these things cannot, without abominable sacrilege, be understood according to the letter concerning Him who is defined by the authority of the Holy Scriptures to be invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, inestimable, simple, and uncompounded; so neither can the disturbance of fury and of anger be fitted to that unchangeable nature without enormous blasphemy.

For by a signification of members of this kind we ought to understand the divine efficacies of God and His immense operations, which cannot be intimated to us except through these accustomed terms of members. As, for instance, by the signification of the mouth we may recognize His discourse, which is wont mercifully to be poured into the secret senses of the soul, or that He spoke the same in our fathers and in the prophets. In the eyes, the immensity of that penetrating clearness by which He surveys and perceives all things, and that nothing of the things which are done or are to be done or are thought by us may lie hidden from Him, we may be able to know. By the naming of the hands let us perceive the providence and operation by which He Himself is the Creator and Founder of all things.

The arm too as the insignia of His power and governance, by which He sustains, moderates, and rules all things; and, to be silent concerning the rest, what else does the hoariness of the head signify but the longevity of the Godhead and the antiquity by which He is without any beginning and, before all ages, exceeds all creatures?

So therefore, also concerning the anger or fury of God, when we read of it, we ought to think not anthropopathōs—that is, according to the baseness of human disturbance—but in a manner worthy of God, who is a stranger to all disturbance; namely, so that through these things we may be able to perceive Him as the Judge and Avenger of all things that are iniquitously done in this world, and, dreading Him as the terrible Requiter of our deeds under these significations of words, we may fear to admit anything against His will. For human nature is wont to fear those whom it knows to be indignant, and dreads to offend them:

as in certain most equitable judges the avenging anger is wont to be feared by those who are stung by some guilt of their conscience—not, forsooth, that this disturbance exists in the minds of those who are about to judge justly, but that such an affection is felt by those who so fear, which proceeds for the execution of the laws and the examination of justice and the balancing of equity. Which, however, with whatever gentleness and mildness of mind it be brought forth, is judged to be grievous fury and most savage anger by those who are to be smitten with punishment for their desert. It would be a long matter, and not for the present work, if we should wish to explain all the things that are said of God figuratively in the Scriptures by a human signification.

Let it suffice to have said these things concerning the present need, insofar as they pertained against the vice of fury, so that no one should thereafter, through ignorance, draw upon himself the occasion of disease and of everlasting death from that very source whence the remedies of holiness and of immortality of life and of salvation are to be sought. Therefore let the monk who strives toward perfection and lawfully desires to contend in the spiritual combat stand a stranger to every vice of anger and fury, and let him hear what the chosen vessel enjoins upon him: 'Let all bitterness,' he says, 'and anger and indignation and clamor and blasphemy be taken away from you, with all malice' (when he says:

'Let all anger be taken away from you,' he made no exception whatsoever of any anger as if it were necessary and useful to us), and let him hasten so to cure the erring brother, if it be necessary, that while he seeks to bring a remedy to one laboring perhaps under some lighter fever, he does not himself, being angered, become entangled in the more loathsome disease of blindness (for it is fitting that he who desires to heal another's wound should himself remain free from every sickness of infirmity and be sound, lest that Gospel word be said to him: 'Physician, first heal thyself'), and, seeing the mote in his brother's eye, should not see the beam in his own eye. Or how shall he see to cast out the mote from his brother's eye, who carries the beam of fury in his own eye?

From whatever cause the boiling motion of wrath arises, it blinds the eyes of the heart and, thrusting the deadly beam of a more violent disease upon the keenness of the sight, does not allow it to gaze upon the Sun of righteousness. It makes no difference whether a plate of gold or of lead or of any metal be set before the sight of the eyes: the preciousness of the metals does not lessen the blindness.

We do indeed have a service of anger conveniently implanted in us, for which alone it is useful and salutary for us to receive it, namely when we chafe in indignation against the wanton motions of our own heart, and are indignant that things which we are ashamed to do or to utter before men have crept into the hiding-places of our breast—trembling with all dread, that is, at the presence of the angels and of God Himself, who penetrates every place and all things, and at His eye, from which the secrets of our conscience can in no way be hidden. Or certainly when we are moved against this very anger, because it has crept in against our brother, and being angry we thrust out its deadly promptings, and do not permit it to have its harmful hiding-places in the recesses of our breast.

That prophet too teaches us to be angry in this manner, who had so far banished this anger from his own feelings that he would not repay retaliation even upon his own enemies, indeed upon those delivered to him by God: 'Be angry,' he says, 'and sin not.' For when he had longed for water from the cistern of Bethlehem, and had received it brought to him by strong men through the very midst of the enemy's ranks, he at once poured it out upon the ground, and thus, being angry, extinguishing the voluptuous passion of desire, he offered it in libation to the Lord, and did not fulfill the longings of his craving, saying: 'The Lord be merciful to me, that I do not this: shall I drink the blood of these men who went forth, and the peril of their souls?'

Or when Shimei was hurling stones and curses in the hearing of King David, in the presence of all, and Abishai the son of Zeruiah, commander of the soldiers, wished to satisfy the vengeance for the royal insult by cutting off his head, the blessed David, moved by a holy indignation against Abishai's dire suggestion, preserved the measure of humility and the firmness of patience with unshaken gentleness, saying: 'What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? Let him alone that he may curse: for the Lord hath commanded him to curse David: and who is he that shall dare to say, why hath he done so? Behold, my son, who came forth from my womb, seeketh my life: how much more now this son of Jemini? Let him alone that he may curse according to the command of the Lord:'

'Perhaps the Lord may look upon my affliction, and render me good for this cursing of today.' We are therefore commanded to be angry salutarily, but against our own selves and against the evil promptings that rise up, and not to sin—that is, by not bringing them to their harmful effect. Finally the following verse explains this very meaning more clearly: 'The things which you say in your hearts, be sorry for them upon your beds'—that is, whatever things you contemplate in your hearts amid sudden and slippery assaults of temptation, do you, with the moderation of counsel, removing all the din and disturbance of fury, as though placed on the couch of quiet, amend and correct by a most salutary compunction.