For things too greatly hoarded, which will soon not become yours, if you do not keep them for yourself, will thus be as though they were yours. The gifts a dying man gives, these are no gifts: for he gives what ceases already to be his own. He who, sound and fearing nothing, with quiet mind, while he yet lives shall have taken from himself, he has given. And what he has taken from himself shall be better restored to him: he shall soon receive things whole who gives things that will perish. For what is laid up in heaven, no thief, no enemy will carry off, nor moth or rains or devouring flame will consume: but in heaven you will lay up whatever, for the name of Christ, looking to Christ, you bestow upon the poor. Who, after the mysteries of the flesh He assumed, says:
'I am clothed in the naked, I am relieved in the wretched, I am visited in the imprisoned, I am cared for and comforted in the sick, I am helped in the little ones, I am protected in the widows; and whatever you do, or do not do, to the wretched, believe it done to me, or not done to me.' And lest, being poor, you should be able to plead poverty, that a colour may be given to unjust avarice, if you have not the means which the needy man seeks, no food, nor warm water by which he may be cherished—when the thirsting man asks, a cold cup offered in the name of Christ will be able to bear its reward. With this, by whatever you can, console the wretched man who asks; and if gifts be wanting, you will give your good will. For the will itself before God shall not perish, if it cannot do good, which yet shall wish to do good.
Hence it was that the Lord, with blessed admonitions, willed all men to be joined together in the love of peace, and the things He had before praised through the holy prophets, He handed down to His disciples with His own mouth, so that, the love of peace being kept in a chaste breast, nothing unjust, nothing harsh, nothing violent, nothing light, nothing greedy, nothing grievous, nothing inconstant, could be done in deeds or said in words. Hence the concord of peace restrains the whole world, which is given even to brute things along with reason. And though cold things war with fiery, soft with hard, moist with dry, slow with swift, the whole work of peace, by a silent governance through unknown causes, He unites in one covenant.
Thus—if you would now compare great things with small—the love of peace curbs the bodily people, so that, joined under an earthly prince, it may learn at the same time to discharge its vows to the King of heaven. Therefore, a sinner like me, lower than I—indeed I outdo all in my crimes—appeased, love peace; injured too, love peace: let peace be in your inward parts, let peace be in your mouth. Drive out hatred, scorn threats, lay aside swelling pride; let no time hold your offence, so that the sun, as you keep the bonds of gentle peace, may leave you as it departs and find you as it returns. THE SECOND BOOK. If you walk by my admonitions, most faithful reader, you tread secure on the dark-blue neck of the serpent. And when Christ the Judge shall come, you will soon go to meet Him, borne through the tender air on caressing wings.
Only let no portion let your care pass over these commands at any time. But if the glory of windy speech should move you, such as Tully persuades with empty eloquence—if these are to be fled, jest, banquets, talk, pleasure, so that you must be severed even from your contemporaries—with what zeal will you keep the words of our little book, you who must be joined to God by the merits of life? The chief labour is to scorn alluring praise, which drags ambitious men headlong, and ever, with silent motion, hastens to the inmost parts, and the bitter plague settles in the very vitals.
While we wish all that we do, whatever it be, to be approved, and since there is no one who does not favour his own vices, the miser, with the title softened, calls himself thrifty; sharp savagery is veiled under a name, and we strive with all our zeal and all our art that whatever we say or do may please. But you, if you wish to be approved by Christ alone, let no glory be sought by you from man. For when cast down, you will soon be exalted, and you will be small for the Lord, great in the Lord's sight. Whatever injury vexes you, repay no one a like evil if you have ill endured it. Behold, Christ prays for those tearing Him on His own behalf, Stephen too supplicates, and Jacob supplicates, while, having suffered the worst with gentle and great soul, they wish to be the cause of punishments to no one.
Let no cruel sentence make any man guilty; do not hasten to strike anyone with a harsh judgment. You discern the slender mote in a brother's eye, yet know not the beam to be in your own eyes. Unjustly will he desire to describe another's life, who cannot be the defender of his own life. But we, condemned, persist in our vices, and what we ourselves prosecute we soon also do. Believe deceiving to be a sin! The sentence stands that says: the mouth that lies destroys the soul by death. And remember always to have spoken what is true, and let your speech not echo what is not. Besides, put a bridle on your sweet-loving palate, lest the savour rage with its old enticements. Ambitious gluttony made mortal those who had won the gifts and kingdoms of the heavens.
While we rush the more upon the forbidden and desire the denied, and—what is difficult—this we rather wish. Above all, refuse to flood your veins with abundant wine, lest the wines suddenly become poisons. As whenever the parched earth thirsts with excessive heats, which the skilful farmer prepares for fruits, if dense clouds, before the sun slays the herbs torn up, water the moistened days, straightway both brambles and grasses harmful to the harvest, the seeds being overcome, will bear, alas, a wicked luxuriance: so the bodies that have been given over much to wine perish in their counsels and run riot in vices. And what will ever be filthier, what more deformed, than if drunkenness should withdraw you from your very self?
When the head sways this way and that, and the step staggers, and the mind denies you sense, the tongue denies you to hold the sound, when the eyes, sinking, are shut with heavy sleep, you would not know what you do, even while you do it. What shall I say of the heat brought up to the steaming face, and the words loosed in ill-arranged measures, the cups slipping from the hands, and the foods often returning, mixed with wine, over the very tables; and you, through countless motions, when the wounded mind so wills, either rejoicing too much or now weeping too much, and now whirling your sinking limbs in dancing, now giving your tossing arms to wanton choruses? One is fain to cry out that you, buried in wine and feasts, perhaps even forgetful of your own name, of His who lavishly gives you such things—when then does the pious care of praying to God come upon you?
How many needy could this one day feed, with so great an expense, and how many glad days could it give? But now, while you are sated, the poor man wanders fasting and hungry: you vomit up your wine, while another scarcely has water. And if perchance a needy voice asks for food, you will deny to those who have nothing this which to you is left over. I perceive, reader, that you have for some time silently been saying: true indeed, but the things you decree are arduous. We are taught arduous things; to climb from earth to heaven is not a thing you should think to stand by little labour. For great is the labour; but great is the reward for the labour. He who hopes for prizes, let him flee sloth. No one will carry the palm but he who has first contended. The pleasing crown is not given but to the victor. Or if the fragile honours of the world are sought by you, by what gift do you hope to have earned a man?
Whatever it is that vexes bodies with cruel and varied torments, while we run our life in the swift stadium: contempt, rains, cold, fastings, brawls, you will be able to bear with a contented mind, running about to traverse the whole city all day long, scarce wearily returning home at midnight, and straightway again rising at first light, that you may be first to approach the closed doors. And when a thin sleep upon the hard benches has driven you, weary, to lay down your head, perhaps that man who came later will go before you, while your foolish complaint will batter your acquaintances. Or if a clearer voice should reach the lictor, pray that you may go well thrust aside, and not ill beaten. But grant what is rare, that the doorkeeper, conquered by gold and by entreaties, at last says, 'You may enter.'
You enter, smooth of tongue and modest of countenance, submissive in body: yet these things help you nothing. Every honour is a matter of price: you will go according to the weight of coin, whether you seek it by paper, or leaves, or tablets. For if the rich hand has ceased, the matter is in vain; and if you give words, you too will bear away words. Lo, honour has smiled, which it is ever the custom to take up late indeed in due order, but to lay down quickly. For what you had given, another and another will soon confer: what many desire, no one has long held. Yet suppose that honour, long enduring, puffs you up and drives you on—will it then never be about to have an end? Come, imagine that lasting honours mark your name, and that the year goes happy under your title: what does power profit at last, when it ceases to be? In which is felt that it was, and is gone?
And that which the succeeding age, little by little, will not know, and that which, if it should know, what profit will there be to you? But you who pay so much only to earthly honour, who now court men with such great ambition, that you may please the Lord, to whom all things belong, Christ, and besides may earn the kingdom of God, you will prefer the true to the false, the great to the small, the cheap to the magnificent, the lost to the everlasting. What injury will at last conquer the devoted breast? What will be lofty? What is difficult for you? For nothing is hard, when hope draws near, and every labour, vanquished by honour, comes to its fruit—and a fruit that endures through all time, which no spendthrift, impatient seeker after honour may carry off.
You hear the Lord pledging new rewards to the just, who will ever give better than His promises—things not beheld by eyes, not insinuated to the ears, not premeditated by sense itself before. Now the myrrhs distil for you from their precious bark, the earth swells with the fragrant turf of incense. Add thyme, violets, cassia, melilot, and saffron; join white lilies to crimson roses. Since on these lands you, a sinner, receive so many gifts, what good things will you, a saint, receive in the heavens? Come, imagine whatever is bright, whatever is fair, whatever is precious, and whatever in the whole world you reckon great—that this is to be given to the blessed for their merits: golden roofs, jewelled doorposts, and floor of purple, and lands ever fragrant with vernal bloom, and rivers full of milk and honey together to be drawn.
Since these things rise up into our minds and are seen with the spirit, believe that what is to come will be lower than those good things. Yet do not fear that, vanquished by the length of time, you will be found unequal to God's commandments. This life of ours, brief, has nothing long about it, though it is driven on by a long revolving cycle in the time we now enjoy. All things, grown weary, look toward their aging end, and already on the very last day the hour rolls round. Consider how swiftly death has pressed upon the whole world, how mighty the violence of war has struck down its peoples. Neither the depth of a dense forest, nor the ruggedness of a lofty mountain, nor rivers strong with rushing torrents, nor strongholds set in their places, nor cities safe behind their walls, nor places untrodden across the sea, nor the grim wilderness, nor hollows, nor even caves beneath the dark cliffs, have had power to mock the barbarian hands.
For many, broken faith; for many, perjuries; for many the cause of death was treason against their city. Treachery accomplished much, public violence much. Those who were not overcome by strength were overcome by famine. The unhappy mother fell together with her offspring and her husband; the master with his slaves underwent slavery. These lay as food for dogs; the blazing houses that snatched away men's lives gave many a funeral pyre. Through villages and farmsteads, through fields and crossroads and all the hamlets, on this road and that, through every way: death, grief, destruction, fires, mourning. All Gaul smoked upon a single pyre. Yet why should I count up the deaths of a falling world, which are ever carried on along their accustomed course? Why should I recount how many die throughout the whole earth, when you yourself may see your own day hastening on?
I pass over how much is granted to the sword, how much to ruins, to fire, to hailstorms, to floods; how many wars, famines, and raging diseases destroy, and how death alone rushes upon men by various ways; and how many, even in a time of mid-peace, the deserved penalty torments as guilty, so that peace may exist at all. Every hour little by little draws us near to death: even in this very moment in which we speak, we are already dying. And through deceiving courses, by a silent contriving, the last day of life presses on toward its end. While food and sleep, while words and cups soothe us, whether you sit at home or seek foreign lands, and while you do whatever you do, or do not do it, death of its own accord moves its alternating foot, in nothing delayed.
As a candle, set up in the season of dark night to make up for the day by the service of its light, while we do not notice, is consumed by a slow fire, and the devouring flame ever hastens to its end: so it is with the affairs of men. Whatever is done perishes; what life draws to itself both gains and dies away. But suppose these spans of a long-lasting old age were so prolonged that you might look upon the world's funerals exempt yourself: though it come late, that end must nonetheless come, which cannot be wholly absent. For the things that are born grow, and afterward grow old, and for those wearied by old age nothing remains but death. He who has lived thirty years dies just as truly, and he has lived who has just reached his thousandth year; once the final end shall hold both, surely at the last moment of death it is all the same.
What good is it to have prolonged life, if you cease to live? Or what reward is there in good things, if you are held fast by evils, since there is no touching the fruit of enjoying except while you enjoy it, and this life lives only in the duty of living? For what once was is now nothing, if it ceases to be; and what you do not perceive does not profit you, whether or not it existed. What, in the end, does it profit you, if fastings vex you, to have heavily loaded your limbs with yesterday's food, and when today thirst grips your parched throat, to have soaked yourself beforehand with too much drink, when the day that has run its swift course through the midst, never to return, snatches away all sense of it?
But we, when the flower of early youth has run its course, now uncertain in step, eye, voice, and hand, while it is grief to remember whatever we once were, and the things nearest to us rob the past of all credibility, bent over and querulous, our bodies spent: never does even this life, burdensome as it is, content us enough. Hence it is that, set apart as though removed from the whole world, we behold whatever perishes in the whole world. This warns us wretches, abiding as if beneath another sun, that another's death foretells our own death. Before our eyes, and from afar at once, we are robbed of friends and of our eyesight; from that side and from this comes grief to the ear. Our dear parents pass away as the age declines, and a wife is snatched from our very embrace, and death takes a brother from a brother's arms, though he perhaps was the younger in birth.
Nor in any orderly succession of life is the elder withdrawn first, since a father may behold the cruel funeral of his son. Yet no one, however cautious, believes what he sees, and what he does not wish, he sees that he too can suffer. Yet this comes from this: that because of our ever-iniquitous deeds we reckon death to be a perpetual evil, and the punishments which the holy law threatens for crimes we believe it gain to receive later. Happy is he who thinks the lawful end of his labors near, who, fearing beforehand, has guarded against it, so that afterward he need not fear. Happy is he who, with steadfast spirit and serene face, can hope to await the great judgment—to be set in motion with great inquiry, renowned among cities and peoples—secure in the uprightness of his life, whom a mind well conscious of its sure causes makes able to hold his head undaunted beneath so great a weight.
There those once mighty in command and kingdom, there those conspicuous with the rods of office and the robes of state, whose custom was to load their gold with choice banquets, their crystal with Falernian wine, and their couches spread with purple: those famous for strength, praised for the gift of beauty, and wrongly trusting in the riches of the body; whose belly was their lord, lewdness their prayer, their hope in the present, their glory in riches; who in their wretchedness neglected, even at the very point of death, to seek the Lord with eyes about to be closed—these shall await their punishment, shut in. Do not ask to be taught what punishment: a penalty fitting their deeds awaits them. These shall perpetual darkness keep beneath a blind night; to these the harsh flame shall then give light. Those, blazing with sulphurous fire, shall be compelled to climb the furnaces with their mangled bodies.
Those others a frost, poured upon them with violent harshness by wintry blasts, shall bind with its hard ice. And though the nature of Gehenna so discordantly wars within itself, yet the force of that one name is manifold. Nor could you so easily distinguish the punishment—whether the torment lies in fire or, more grievously, in cold. Not as with us here, who, slain by an earthly death, have many crimes follow but one death—since however cruel the judge, in proportion to the weight of the matter, he can do nothing other than to have snatched away the soul; and by a certain profit of crimes, if very many remain, his first vengeance denies punishment to the rest—but there each shall pay off all his offenses in order, with a fitting punishment following his deeds. And one body shall lie open through its several members: by however many vices it could sin, by just so many torments shall it suffer.
One law shall punish the cruel, another law the greedy: they shall pay differently for deeds done and differently for things meditated. There is a punishment proper to the perjured, a punishment proper to the proud, and the cause of bloodshed shall have yet another. The envious, the impatient, the soft, the forger, the adulterer, the man wholly given to wine and wholly to seduction, his right hand guilty of slaughter, his tongue quick to insults, the usurper, the boaster, the impious, the man untaught—he shall pay the penalty before the day, so that no delay of judgment may grant even a little respite from punishment. Serpents shall coil round some with their winding bends, while a chain glowing with fire shall grind others. All things there are full of tears, of terror, of grief, and no voice but what a groan gives. Why should I run any further through each crime—the torments that shall vex the wretched with dread crosses?
Since even now, if you speak anything with a careless mouth, the reckoning of your speech must be sifted by you. Among these, whoever shall have denied the Lord of all things, bowing his head to stones and stocks of wood, that man is wretched indeed, yet shall be an object of pity to none. He alone shall receive whatever does harm anywhere. Countless worms shall live in his body that is doomed to die, nor shall there be an end to the smoke which the fire shall give. But on the other side, the words of the gracious and godly—if, though afflicted, they did not return evil; if they gave help to the wretched, food to the one who begged it, affection to acquaintances, service to fathers—their eyes shall shine like a blazing sun, their splendid limbs veiled in snow-white robes.
And chiefly those whom the nights find prepared in the law of Christ and the days find ready; whoever made it his vow never to defile with a woman's bed the snow-white garment received in baptism, chaste not in body alone but in their whole heart as well—and such as I, your author, would wish you to be—or now happy in having conquered (which is the foremost glory) the enticements of light and of the faithless body, who, seeking the true life, did not fear to pour out their devoted souls for the name of Christ. And this throng of holy ones shall hold the priests, and the monks withdrawn from the whirlwinds of men, who now, spurning the allurements of flattering fame, hope for the rewards of the judgment to come; who, leading a gentle leisure free of cares, now live well according to their merit, and afterward shall live better.
For they themselves shall throng around the King in a dense array, when the Lord the Judge shall take his stand upon the earth, and all shall go wherever the Lamb shall turn himself, suffused with the true light, the light of God. And so quickened shall they be by the beauty of those they behold that the faces of the beholders shall not be visible to the eyes. Therefore when the hollow trumpet shall give its terrible blast, at last bearing witness to the coming of God, soon the earth, riven with long fissures, shall lie open, and on every side flames, lightning, and hail shall rush down, the world shaken thoroughly from its lowest foundations, while all the roads on this side and that grow hot. From here, sad groans; from there, the holy joys of life: there shall be one voice amid the diverse hosts. And every father shall go swiftly with hastened steps, leading down his offspring and his lineage.
And the whole line shall be drawn out in a continuous train, when the forefather shall be in the midst of those begotten. Nor shall I speak to you of famous cities and far-off peoples and kingdoms which now are or which once have been, nor of peoples not sluggish in the cold nor scorched by the sun, and all whom the rising and the setting day has held: but whatever was begotten from the time of the world's beginning right up to the day which shall now be the world's end, one first command shall set in a single place the souls of all the earth, both the just and the guilty. Nor yet shall any one among so many thousands go forth from there who has not been numbered by his Lord. Soon, ascending the gleaming tribunal with that same flesh which, glorifying man, he had borne into heaven, he shall judge all the things that shall fall in order through the remaining ages—those that are then, and those thereafter, while the law abides.
May it be so—holy of countenance, lofty on his throne, awesome to behold, conspicuous, yet scarcely to be looked upon, he shall act. And amid the rolling of flame and the sounding of trumpets, the angelic choirs and the sacred soldiery, and amid the pallor, weeping, joys, vows, and fears of infants, mothers, young men, and old, the final sentence shall be given to the waiting multitude, to resound from the mouth of the most holy Judge: 'Go, O company, into the rest and praise of the just, never to be parted from my kingdom—gifts which the Father, knowing your merit and your future life, now grants you, but which he had long since prepared. But you, ever opposed to our commands, you impious throng, be shut up in the places of Tartarus. There your teeth shall give gnashing and your eyes weeping, to be racked by measureless fires.'
And nevertheless, that whatever is commanded may truly abide, this shall be the formula of the eternal judgment: glory shall hold the just man, with death removed, and the guilty shall be subject to punishment without dying. These things I ought to have handed on to you by deeds, reader, so that a life proved good might give weight to my words. But because we wretches neglect whatever we are warned of, and it is easier to learn than to do, you—if you commend to your soul all the things sent down through the ear, all that have been recounted in my writings—I shall say steadfastly: received into a station of heaven, you shall shatter the hard chains of cruel death. And though you were before a son of Gehenna, you shall begin to be a son of the most high God. To this remains that one thing, without which all things profit nothing: that you believe Christ to be of the Father and together with the Father;
and that the Holy Spirit, joined without any division, three names complete one God. And you, whoever you are who read our little book, be mindful of us, whether it be bad or good. And as often as, having read through the poem, you shall pray to the Lord Christ, may we ever be in your mouth. And lest you think I lay this charge upon you with the tips of my lips alone, or that you may safely make light of it: so may no day ever prick you with bitter cares, so may all that you do be pleasing wholly to Christ, so may you receive the holy crown from the Lord's own hand—provided the care for my name does not depart from you, so that I, Orientius, conquering all sinners, may earn pardon by the prayers of the saints.