論神的治理 第 4 章 第 1/7 段

BOOK I. 1. Timothy, least of the servants of God, to the Catholic Church spread throughout the whole world: grace to you and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Among the other grave and deadly diseases of that destructive pestilence which that most ancient and most foul serpent breathes into you with the most grievous malice of his lethal envy and with that most loathsome breath of his venomous mouth, I do not know whether any consumes you with a bitterer plague upon faithful souls, and a fouler blight upon your children, than this: that very many of your own reckon it too little if in this life they lie idle upon the goods handed to them by God for holy use, without the fruit of mercy and kindness, unless they also extend their avarice — that is, the servitude of idolatry — even into the times to come after death. You look about, perhaps, and look closely, wondering who these of yours are whom I name. You have no need of a long inquiry to find them.

All, I say, all — well-nigh all — are what I speak of. For long ago departed that excellent and preeminent blessedness of your primitive people, whereby all who acknowledged Christ transferred the fleeting resources of worldly things into the eternal riches of heavenly possessions, forfeiting the enjoyment of things present for the glorious hope of things to come, purchasing immortal riches at the present cost of poverty. What then? That now, in place of all these, avarice, greed, rapine, and those things allied to them and joined as it were in kindred unity — envies, enmities, cruelties, luxuries, shamelessness, ruinations — have succeeded, because those former things served for the uses of these.

And thus, somehow, with your very felicity fighting against yourself, as much as your peoples have increased, so much almost has vice increased; as much as abundance has come to you, so much has discipline receded; and prosperity of gains has come with great interest of losses. For as the peoples of the faith have been multiplied, faith itself has been diminished; and as her sons grow, the mother sickens; and you have become, O Church, weaker by the very increase of your fruitfulness, and, by growth, sliding backward, and, as it were, less strong in your very strength.

For you have poured out through all the world members bearing the name of religion, yet not having the power of religion; and thus you have begun to be rich in crowds, poor in faith; the richer in multitude, so much the more needy in devotion; broader in body, narrower in mind; and the same, so to speak, both greater in you and lesser in you, growing at once and shrinking by a new and well-nigh unheard-of manner of advance and recession. For where now is that surpassing beauty of yours and the loveliness of your whole body? Where is that testimony of the divine pages, speaking of your living virtues, and saying: 'Of the multitude of them that believed the heart and soul was one, and no one said that anything he possessed was his own'? Of which multitude now — O grief and lamentation! —

you have the reading only, you have not the power; and to that virtue you are present only in knowledge, from it you are absent in conscience. For the greatest portion of your sons is now a trafficker in deadly things, and, like earthly — nay, hellish — hucksters and tavern-keepers, is eager for markets that perish and destroy at once. For buying loss of life at the profit of money, in order to acquire what is not their own, they squander what is their own, committing to the earth mournful treasures that will bring brief joy to their heirs and long sorrow to their authors, defrauding of the use of present things others as well as themselves, storing up in deep pits their infernal wealth, and burying at once both their money and their hope — according, namely, to that saying of our Lord who says:

'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' And so they begrudge their own salvation and their own souls, and press down to earth with earthly weights the souls that are called to heaven. For the mind of the hoarder follows its treasure, and is, as it were, changed into the nature of an earthly substance — and this not only now, but also in the future and forever. For since, as it is written, before man are set life and death alike, and he may stretch forth his hand to whichever he wills, it is necessary that each man possess in eternity those things which here he has, as it were, seized with his own hand; and, given over to his own will and choice, he cleaves in the future by fixed lot to those things to which here he cleaved by affection.

II. But of course certain men think themselves immune from this guilt, who perhaps do not have their gold and their possessions in the earth, and yet have them hidden away somewhere. Let no one deceive himself with ridiculous opinions. Whoever, in earthly greed, are slaves to the increasing of their wealth, always bury their gold in the earth. For this is that which the Savior teaches in the Gospel, saying: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.' And again: 'But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.' These things cannot be understood according to a carnal hearing. For do all the wicked place their bodily treasures in the earth, or all the good in heaven? Not at all. And therefore the force of the sacred utterance expressed the effects and virtues of spiritual things.

Namely, because to greed and avarice things earthly and hellish are due, but to mercy and generosity things heavenly and eternal, therefore the distinction between an earthly and a heavenly treasure was set forth: that those who hoarded for greed and avarice might know they were placing their wealth in hell, but those who rejoiced to prepare heavenly treasures for mercy and kindness. And so He named the places of the treasures from the merits of the hoarders; for treasures are said to be already there, where the hoarders are destined to be. III. But perhaps the sentence may seem harsh, calling all equally to perfection and constraining all by one law, whereas surely the condition of all is not one and the same.

Indeed it might most rightly be said to these things, that since all wish to live forever, all ought so to act that they may be able to partake of life; for it is most inconsiderate and most foolish that certain men should act so that what they wish by affection and desire, that very thing they seem in fact and deed to be unwilling of. But nevertheless let us consider especially that part of the Christians — that is, of your sons — which is called back from perfection by certain impediments of circumstance and by the bonds of necessity that are, as it thinks, insurmountable. And first in this class, I suppose, are those who allege that they are compelled to seek money and to enlarge their wealth most widely by care for their pledges and by a well-nigh violent love of their children.

As though, forsooth, whoever are fathers can in no wise, or ought in no wise, exist at all unless they are rich, and are unable to love their sons without the multiplication of wealth; or as though virtue and the very marrow of the affections were avarice and greed — because, namely, as those men suppose, just as the body cannot exist without marrow, so love cannot exist without greed. But if this be so, then without doubt natural affection is the cause of every evil, and in it there are not the feelings of good affections but the incentives of vices. And where is that sacred oracle of divine authority: 'Piety is profitable unto all things'? For in this way it is not only not profitable unto all things, but well-nigh unwholesome in all.

For if it is the begetter of greed, it contains far more evil in itself than good, according to that saying of Holy Scripture: 'The root of all evils is greed.' And so, if greed is the root of all evils, and this is begotten from the womb of piety and nourished as it were by its venomous milk, then it is not so much greed that is to be blamed, which is born from piety its parent, as piety itself, from which such a daughter is procreated. Whence it comes that, if piety is so pestilent and so harmful, it profits neither to love nor to be loved, because neither ought parents to seek for themselves a love harmful to them, nor children to desire one that will injure their parents.

Although it brings disease not only to parents but also to children, because it is grievous both to those who bring forth pernicious inheritances, and to those who, amid most dishonorable gain, are reared up as dishonorable heirs. And hence it is that well-nigh all sons succeed to their parents no more in their patrimony than in their vices, and take up their fathers' fortunes no more than their depravities; and thus, ever passing over into the character of their fathers, they begin to possess wickedness before substance. For the goods of their parents they possess only when these are dead, but their character while they are yet living and in vigor:

and thus, before they begin to have their fathers' estates in their own dominion, they have their fathers themselves in their souls; and before they have those things which are falsely called good, they have those things which are truly proved to be evil. IV. What then? Since these things are so, do I perhaps seem to forbid parents their affection for their children? By no means. For what is so savage, so inhuman, so at war with the law, as if we should say that children are not to be loved, when we confess that enemies are to be loved? Or if we should forbid the affection which nature bestows — we who expend even that which nature forbids? Or if we should wrench from the mind that charity which it has — we who strive to implant in it even that which it has not? It is not so:

for we say not only that children are to be loved, but especially and above all things to be loved, and that nothing whatever is to be preferred to them except God alone. For this too is especially to love — to prefer to one's children Him whom it is by no means expedient to put after them. What then, or in what manner, do we say that children are to be loved? By what manner, without doubt, save that in which God Himself has appointed? For there is no better love of children than that which He has taught, who Himself gave the children. Nor can pledges be better loved than if they be loved in Him from whom they were given. In what manner, then, has God bidden that children be loved? I do not say it: let the divine discourse itself say it, which speaks thus to all fathers generally:

that they hand on God's commandments to their sons, that they set their hope in God, and forget not the works of God, and seek out His commandments. And elsewhere also: 'And you fathers,' He says, 'provoke not your sons to wrath, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.'

You see what riches God bids be prepared by parents for their children: not monetary treasures, nor sacks heavy with golden metal, having indeed much weight but yet more iniquity; not proud houses towering above lofty cities, nor rooftops raised beyond human sight, nor gables set among the clouds with their airy inhabitant; nor, finally, boundless estates exceeding the very knowledge of their own possessor, who deems it unworthy to endure partners and counts a neighbor's nearness an injury. Not these things, then, does God enjoin, nor does He extend the care of paternal love to the servile duties of earthly administration.

Few are the things He commands, but wholesome; brief, but holy; sparing in precept, but great in fruit; short in writing, but everlasting in blessedness. 'Parents,' He says, 'provoke not your sons to indignation, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord': that they may set, namely, as the prophet said, that they may set their hope in God, and forget not the works of God, and seek out His commandments. Behold what riches God loves, behold what wealth He requires to be stored up for our pledges, behold what resources He commands to be prepared: faith, namely, and the fear of God, modesty, sanctity, discipline — not things earthly, not vile, not perishing, not fleeting: things surely most glorious.

For since God is the God of the living, not of the dead, He rightly bade those things be prepared for children by which they might live forever, not those by which they might die in eternity. For no one doubts that to well-nigh all evil and faithless men worldly riches are a cause of death rather than of life, according to that which God says: 'How hardly shall they that have money enter into the kingdom of heaven.' And again He says: 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' Whence also is that which He specially commands, saying: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.'

By the sayings both before and after, two kinds of treasures are shown: one, namely, wherewith parents may lay up treasure for their children, the other wherewith they may lay up for themselves. For their children, in what manner? That they may educate them in duty and in the fear of God. For themselves, in what manner? That they may lay up for themselves treasures in heaven. Marvelously, namely: that, because money is fleeting but discipline immortal, and well-nigh all parents love their children more than themselves, they should confer on themselves the fleeting goods, on their children the everlasting; and thus provide both for their affection and for their salvation, since with a twofold and immortal good they both make their children eternal through those things which are eternal, and, for the acquiring of blessedness for themselves, convert into things eternal, by good works, those things which are by nature fleeting.

Why then do you burn, paternal love? Why are you stretched out toward acquiring things earthly and perishing? You can bestow on your children nothing greater than if through you they may have this good which they may never wholly lose. It is not necessary, then, that you store up earthly treasures for your son: by nothing will you make him richer than if you make your very son a treasure of God. V. Yet although these things are so, and are true and most wholesome, nevertheless I will not so speak as though I would utterly exclude children from their parents' goods and fortunes. But of this we shall dispute hereafter.

Meanwhile, because certain men do not think they will be guilty if they confer their substance not to the honor of the Gospel, not to their own salvation, not to any duty toward God, but out of lust and faithlessness make it over indiscriminately to whatever heirs, be they irreligious or wealthy, with an impious and pagan vanity: let us briefly consider both by whom those very fortunes were given, and for what purpose they were given; so that, when we have shown both the author and the cause of the thing given, we may more easily be able to prove both to whom it is to be referred and to what use it is to be applied. That all worldly substance is given to all by divine bounty, no man, I think, doubts who can even be reckoned in the number of men.

Unless perhaps someone be of such great wisdom that, though the world itself was given to the human race by God, he should judge that the things which are in the world were not given to men by God. Therefore, if God has bestowed all things on all, it is doubtful to no one that those things which we have received by God's gift we ought to refer to the worship of God, and to expend in His work what we have taken from His bounty. For this is to acknowledge the gift of God and to use the divine benefits well: that with His gifts you should honor Him from whom you received the gifts themselves — which indeed even the examples of human affairs teach.

For if the use of certain goods be granted to some man through the kindness and generosity of another man, and he, unmindful of the one from whom he obtained the enjoyment of those goods, should try to wrest away from that very benefactor the ownership of the thing bestowed and to alienate it, would he not be judged the most ungrateful and faithless of all men, seeing that, forgetting his kind and most liberal benefactor, he wished to despoil him of the rights of his own dominion, the very man who had enriched him with the possession of that use? And so we too have received only the use of those things we hold; for we make use of the resources lent to us by God, and we are, as it were, possessors on sufferance. In the end, going forth from this world, willing or unwilling, we leave all things behind here.

Why then, since we are possessors who hold only the usufruct, do we attempt to wrest from the Lord's ownership, and to alienate, that which we cannot carry away with us? Why do we not use in good faith the little goods given us by God? We held them as long as it was allowed, we held them as long as He who bestowed them permitted. What is more right, what more honorable, than that, when the thing departs from him who had the use of it, the possession should return to Him who granted its use? Indeed even the very voices of God, through the tongues of the sacred Scriptures, command this, saying to each one of us: 'Honor the Lord with thy substance.' And elsewhere He says, 'Pay thy debt.' How devout and indulgent is the Lord our God, inviting us to disburse the abundance of our earthly substance!

'Honor,' He says, 'the Lord with thy substance.' Although all that we have received from Him is His own, He calls it ours so that we may give it—naming it, of course, the property of our own possession, that the reward of the worker may be greater; for the Giver must needs have the more fruit where the largess appears to come from what is one's own. VI. Yet lest by this very thing the human mind should grow insolent—because the Lord had said this substance was ours—He added: 'Pay thy debt.' That is, that whom devotion did not entice to giving, necessity might compel to discharge the debt; and whom his own faith did not draw to the holy work, at least necessity might constrain. First He says, 'Honor the Lord with thy substance,' then, 'Pay thy debt.' This is as much as to say:

If thou art devout, give as though it were thine own; if thou art undevout, pay as though it were not thine own. Thus fittingly did He set forth both the will to give and the necessity to pay. This is indeed to say to every man: To the holy work thou art both urged by exhortation and bound by exaction—give, if thou wilt; pay, if thou wilt not. The Apostle too, admonishing this very thing, charges the rich not to be high-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, 'who,' he says, 'giveth us all things to enjoy, unto the willing performance of good works.' In one saying he taught both things: namely, both who it is that gives the riches, and why He gives them.

For by saying that we must hope in God, who supplies all things, he shows that the rich become rich from God; and by adding 'unto the willing performance of good works,' he teaches that this very thing which he said is bestowed by God is granted only for the sake of good works: 'for He supplies,' he says, 'all things unto the willing performance of good works.' That is, He makes men wealthy in substance for this end, that they may be rich in good working—that is, that they may exchange the riches they have received, and, by investing those very resources in good works, may, through using them well, make everlasting the goods of God which they hold as temporary in this age; and thus, acknowledging the gifts of God, they may rejoice in a twofold good, when those who are rich in this age may deserve also to be rich in heaven. VII.

Thus, then, are riches to be gained, thus sought, thus held, thus increased; otherwise it is an incalculable evil not to use well the good things given by God. 'For nothing,' says the sacred Scripture, 'is more wicked than the covetous man'; and riches kept for the destruction of their master are the worst and most deadly kind of disease. It is true. For what is worse, or what more wretched, than if a man should turn present goods into future evils, and that which was given by God for this end—that from it eternal blessedness of life might be procured—should through these very things seek death and everlasting damnation? Herein also this must be considered: that if hoarded riches are kept for a man's harm, how much more surely are they heaped up unto a greater harm.

For how few now among the rich are of such continence that, content to guard their wealth, they are no longer willing to amass it? O the misery of the times and of the Church's people, to what a state has it been reduced! For whereas it is written that to hoard wealth is a kind of great crime, now not to increase it is thought to be a kind of virtue. Therefore, as we said above, in the same way certain men think themselves in no wise guilty if they have not even at death provided for themselves through the disposal of their substance—when in fact they are guilty on this very score, that they kept all their goods right up to death.

Or how shall those not be guilty who with most faithless vanity have transferred their resources to whatever men they please, when even those are to be guilty who have not, in this life, for the honor of God deprived themselves of some part of their goods? This the Lord Himself shows through the Apostle, saying: 'Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you: your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.'

Apart from that severity of the divine words which, hidden in mystery, is far greater and more terrible, I think that those things which are plainly stated suffice to strike fear and trembling into all men; for he speaks especially to the rich. He bids them lament, announces evils to come, threatens everlasting fire. And this—that the very threats may be the more to be feared—not on account of murders, not on account of fornications, not for sacrilegious impieties or, in fine, for other vices that with deadly sword and everlasting slaughter cut the throat of souls, but solely and only on account of wealth, on account of insane covetousness, on account of hunger for gold and silver: to show, of course, that these things suffice to bring a man to eternal damnation, even if there had been no other guilt.

What could be said more plainly, what more clearly? He does not say to the rich man: Thou must be tormented because thou art a murderer, thou must be tormented because thou art a fornicator, but: thou must be tormented solely because thou art rich—that is, because thou usest thy riches ill, because thou dost not understand that riches were given thee for the holy work. For riches are not in themselves harmful, but the minds of those who use them ill are criminal; nor are wealth itself the cause of punishment to a man, but the rich make punishments for themselves out of their wealth, since, while they will not use their riches well, they turn those very riches into torments for themselves. 'Ye have heaped treasure together,' he says, 'in the last days.'

Rightly, when he had said 'Ye have heaped treasure together,' he added 'in the last days'—that is, that the guilt of the hoarders might be the greater, since the very end of the age also heaped up the odiousness of their treasures. 'Ye have heaped treasure together,' he says, 'in the last days.' By the treasures covetousness is accused, by the last days unbelief. And through this the guilt is twofold, both of covetousness and of unbelief; for the treasures, which—according to that which God says, 'Thou shalt not covet'—it was assuredly a crime to covet even at another time, it is without doubt a greater crime, through unbelief itself, to heap up even at the end of the world. VIII. Perhaps someone has hitherto judged my discourse harsh. And truly it is harsh—if it has admonished anything not from the authority of the sacred testimonies.

Let it be deemed harsh, if it has held anything of the kind that the Apostle here has proclaimed—not to add that saying of our Lord, whereby He declared all utterly unworthy of Himself who had not renounced everything they possessed. Since these things are so, is it not, I pray, fitting that what we have said should be reckoned most indulgent and most gentle—we, namely, who for men to whom we cannot grant perfect soundness, at least seek the help of a salvation despaired of, and whose life we cannot heal, whose death we try to lighten? For what is perfect health? What but to act well in this life? What is the final cure? What but at least in one's last extremity to procure a good viaticum? What is perfect health?

What but to use well the things delivered by God? What the last remedy? What but at least afterward to do that whereof thou mayest repent that thou didst not do it before? Someone thinks the things I say are harsh: harsh, let them indeed be deemed harsh, unless they are such that, in comparison with the apostolic severity, they seem soft and lenient. For the Apostle summons the rich to lamentation, we to a remedy; the Apostle names riches a fire, we desire to make out of riches waters that quench the fire, according to that saying: 'As water quencheth fire, so alms quencheth sin.' The Apostle testifies that in ill-kept riches there is damnation; I, out of these things whereof he speaks eternal death, desire that all should procure everlasting life:

not indeed that I think it suffices for eternal life for anyone entangled in carnal vices, if—having grown old in his crimes right up to death—he should at his end dispose all his goods well, unless he has first both renounced his sins and cast off that filthy and muddy tunic of his crimes, and received from the hand of the preaching Apostle the fresh garment of conversion and holiness. Otherwise he does not cease to sin, whom, set in his last extremity, mere impossibility, not the will, makes withdraw from his crimes. For he who departs from evil deeds only by death does not forsake his wickedness,

but is forsaken by his wickedness; and through this, being shut out from vice by necessity, he still, I think, sins even then when the means have ceased, because, as regards his mind, he who would yet sin if he could has not yet ceased. Therefore he does not rely on good hopes who sins in life only to this end, that in death he may redeem the mass of his sins, and who thinks thereby that he will escape, not because he is good, but because he is rich—as though indeed God sought not the life of men but their money, and were willing, from all who do evil in hope of redeeming their evils, to accept for their crimes only coins, and, after the manner of corrupt judges, to exact silver, that He might sell off sins. It is not so.

For it is certain that largess profits very greatly—yet not those who live ill in the ultimate hope of a future largess, who commit crimes in the confidence of redeeming their immunity, but those who, deceived either by the slipperiness of their age, or by the cloud of error, or by the fault of ignorance, or finally by the fall of human frailty, at length begin to come to their senses, as though after the death of a most grievous sickness, or as though after the grief of a troubled mind; and just as insane men return to their right mind after frenzy, so these return after error—differing from those in one thing only, that the former rejoice after they have escaped their illness, while these lament after they have received their health. And not without reason.

For the former rejoice the more, the more they perceive that they have regained their soundness; the latter are the more confounded, the more clearly they recognize the disease of their error. Whence it must needs come to pass that the former exult and the latter mourn, because the former impute their sickness to their bodily condition, but the latter their error to themselves; and thus the former are glad at their remedy, and the latter anxious over their guilt. IX.

Wherefore I admonish all, but especially those whom the terror of grave offenses harasses, and in whom a wretched conscience sighs at the recollection of their punishable sins: first, that although they have fallen, they should not linger in their fall, nor wallow in their own mire after the manner of filthy beasts—which, when they have plunged their burning bellies into the mud, in no wise satisfy their foul pleasures unless they roll their whole bodies utterly in the mire.