1. 1. You have asked me, brother Deogratias, to write you something on the catechizing of the uninstructed that would be of use to you. For you told me that often, at Carthage, where you are a deacon, those who are to be given their first instruction in the Christian faith are brought to you, because you are thought to have an ample gift for catechizing, both in the doctrine of the faith and in pleasantness of speech; but that you are almost always in difficulty over how the very thing whereby we are Christians, namely belief, may be conveniently imparted, where the narrative is to begin and how far it is to be carried, whether after the narrative is finished we ought to add some exhortation, or only the precepts in whose observance the one to whom we speak may know that the Christian life and profession are upheld. You also confessed and complained that it had often happened to you that, in a long and tepid discourse, you became cheap and tiresome in your own eyes, let alone to the one you were instructing by your speech and to the others who were present as listeners; and that you were driven by this necessity to compel me, by that love I owe you, not to find it burdensome amid my occupations to write you something on this matter.

1. 2. For my part, I am compelled, by the love and service I owe not only to you in particular but also to mother Church universally, in no way to refuse, but rather to undertake with a ready and devoted will, whatever the Lord himself bids me do to help those whom he has made my brothers, by the labor I am able to render through the bounty of our Lord. For the more I desire the Lord's money to be paid out more widely, the more I am bound, if I learn that any of my fellow stewards feels some difficulty in paying it out, to do what I can so that they may do easily and readily what they wish to do diligently and zealously.

2. 3. But as for what bears properly on your own concern, I would not have you troubled because you have often seemed to yourself to give a debased and tiresome discourse. For it may be that it did not seem so to the one you were instructing, but that, because you yourself desired to hear something better, what you were saying seemed to you unworthy of the ears of others. For my own discourse too almost always displeases me. I am eager for a better one, which I often enjoy inwardly before I begin to unfold it in sounding words; and when I come off worse than I am moved within, I am saddened that my tongue could not match my heart. For I want the one who hears me to understand all that I understand; and I feel that I am not speaking in such a way as to achieve this, chiefly because that act of understanding floods the mind as though with a swift flash, whereas speech is slow and long and far different, and while it is being unrolled, the understanding has already hidden itself away in its secret places. Yet because it has somehow impressed certain traces on the memory, these endure together with the brief pauses of the syllables; and from these same traces we form audible signs that are called a language, whether Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew, or any other, whether these signs are merely thought or are also uttered by the voice; whereas those traces are neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew, nor proper to any other nation, but are produced in the mind as the expression is in the body. For anger is said one way in Latin, another in Greek, and yet otherwise in the diversity of other languages; but the face of an angry man is not Latin or Greek. And so not all nations understand when someone says, "I am angry," but only Latins; whereas if the feeling of the inflamed mind goes out into the face and shapes the countenance, all who behold the angry man perceive it. But it is not possible to draw out and, as it were, spread before the senses of hearers, through the sound of the voice, those traces that the understanding impresses on the memory, in the way the face is open and manifest; for those traces are within, in the mind, while the face is without, in the body. We must therefore reckon how far the sound of our mouth falls short of that stroke of understanding, since it is not even like the impression made on the memory. Now we, often ardently burning for the listener's benefit, want to speak just as we understand at the moment, when by reason of that very intention we cannot speak; and because we do not succeed, we are distressed and, as though we were spending our labor in vain, we grow listless with weariness; and from this very weariness the discourse becomes more languid and duller than it was when it began to lead us into weariness.

2. 4. But often the eagerness of those who desire to hear me shows me that my speech is not so cold as it seems to me; and I learn from their delight that they are deriving something useful from it, and I diligently take care not to fail in rendering this ministry, in which I see them receive well what is rendered. So you too, by the very fact that those who are to be instructed in the faith are brought to you more often, ought to understand that your discourse does not displease others as it displeases you; nor ought you to think yourself unfruitful because you do not unfold the things you discern just as you wish—since perhaps you cannot even discern them as you wish. For who in this life sees except in an enigma and through a mirror? Nor is even our love so great that, the cloud of the flesh being torn asunder, it penetrates into the eternal serene, from which even these passing things shine in whatever measure. But because the good advance from day to day toward seeing the day that has no rolling of the heavens and no incursion of night, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, there is no greater reason why our discourse should grow cheap to us in instructing the uninstructed, except that it pleases us to discern in unaccustomed ways and wearies us to speak out in accustomed ones. And in very truth we are heard far more gladly when we ourselves are delighted in the same work; for the thread of our speech is affected by our own joy, and comes out more easily and more acceptably. And so it is no hard business to lay down precepts about the things that are imparted as objects of belief—where the narrative is to begin and how far it is to extend; nor how the narrative is to be varied, so that it be now shorter, now longer, yet always full and complete; and when the shorter and when the longer is to be used. But by what means it may be brought about that one catechizes with joy—for the more one can do this, the more agreeable he will be—that is the greatest concern. And the precept for this matter is indeed at hand: for if God loves a cheerful giver in bodily money, how much more in spiritual? But that this cheerfulness be present at the hour belongs to the mercy of him who gave these precepts. And so first we will discuss the manner of the narrative, which I have learned you wish to know about, then the giving of precepts and the exhorting, and afterward the obtaining of this cheerfulness, as God shall suggest.

3. 5. The narrative is full when one is first catechized from what is written, In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gen 1:1), down to the present times of the Church. We need not, however, on that account either recite from memory the whole Pentateuch and the whole books of Judges and of Kings and of Ezra and the whole Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, if we have learned them word for word, or unroll and explain in our own words, by narrating, all that is contained in these volumes; for time does not allow it, nor does any necessity demand it. Rather, we should embrace all things summarily and in general, in such a way that some of the more wonderful events are chosen, which are heard with more pleasure and which are set at the very turning points; and these we should not show as it were wrapped up and at once snatch from sight, but, dwelling on them a little, as it were unfold and spread them open, and offer them to the minds of the hearers to be examined and admired. But the rest we should weave in with a swift run-through. In this way the things we most want to commend stand out the more by the subordination of the others; and the one whom we wish to rouse by our narrative does not arrive at them already wearied, nor is the memory of the one whom by our teaching we ought to instruct thrown into confusion.

3. 6. In all things, indeed, we ought to keep in view not only the end of the precept, which is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned (1 Tim 1:5), to which we should refer all that we say, but also that the gaze of the one whom we instruct by our speech is to be moved toward it and directed thither. For all that we read in the holy Scriptures was written, before the coming of the Lord, for no other reason than to commend his coming and to prefigure the Church that was to be, that is, the people of God throughout all nations, which is his body, with all the saints joined and reckoned in who lived in this world even before his coming, believing that he would come just as we believe that he has come. For just as Jacob, while he was being born, first put forth from the womb the hand with which he also held the foot of the brother being born before him, after which the head of course followed, and then at last, of necessity, the rest of the members—yet the head, in dignity and power, goes before not only those members that followed but also the very hand that came first in the birth, and though not in time of appearing, is yet by the order of nature prior—so too the Lord Jesus Christ, although, before he appeared in the flesh and proceeded, as it were from the womb of his secret place, to the eyes of men as the mediator of God and men, the man who is over all things, God blessed forever, sent ahead, in the holy patriarchs and prophets, a certain part of his body, by which, as by a hand, foretelling that he would be born, he also tripped up, as with five fingers, the people who proudly went before, by the bonds of the Law (because he did not cease to be foretold and prophesied as coming through five periods of time; and in harmony with this, the one through whom the Law was given wrote five books; and the proud who think carnally and wish to establish their own righteousness were not filled with the blessing of Christ's open hand, but were held back by it closed and shut up; and so their feet were bound and they fell, but we rose up and were set upright)—although therefore, as I have said, the Lord Christ sent ahead a certain part of his body in the saints who went before him in the time of his birth, yet he himself is the head of the body, the Church (Col 1:18), and all those clung to that same body of which he is the head by believing in him whom they foretold. For they were not torn away by running ahead, but rather joined on by their obedience. For even though a hand can be sent ahead by the head, its connection is nevertheless under the head. Therefore all that was written before, was written that we might be taught, and were figures of us; and these things happened to them as a figure; and they were written for us, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11).

4. 7. But what greater cause is there of the Lord's coming than that God might show his love for us, commending it strongly, in that, while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us? And this is so because the end of the precept and the fullness of the Law is love, that we may both love one another and, just as he laid down his life for us, so we too may lay down our lives for the brethren; and that, since God himself first loved us and did not spare his own only Son but handed him over for us all, even if it was irksome to love, at least now it should not be irksome to love in return. For there is no greater invitation to love than to anticipate it by loving; and that mind is too hard which, if it was unwilling to bestow love, is also unwilling to repay it. And if even in shameful and sordid loves we see that those who wish to be loved in return do nothing else than open and show, by what proofs they can, how much they love, and affect to put forward this image of fairness, so as in a way to demand that a return be made to them by the souls they are striving to entice—and themselves burn the more ardently when they perceive that those minds they pursue are now moved by the same fire—if therefore a mind that was torpid is roused when it feels itself loved, and one that was already fervent is the more kindled when it has learned that it is loved in return, it is manifest that there is no greater cause by which love is either begun or increased than when the one who does not yet love recognizes himself loved, or when the one who loves first either hopes that he can be loved in return or already proves it. And if this is so even in base loves, how much more purely in friendship? For what else do we guard against in an offense to friendship except that a friend think we either do not love him, or love him less than he loves us? And if he believes this, he will be cooler in that love by which men enjoy one another in mutual intimacy; and if he is not so weak that this offense makes him grow cold toward all love, he holds to that love by which he loves not in order to enjoy but in order to look out for the other. But it is worth noting how, although superiors too wish to be loved by their inferiors and are delighted by their zealous deference toward them, and the more they perceive it the more they love them, yet with how much love an inferior catches fire when he feels himself loved by a superior. For there love is more welcome, where it does not seethe with the dryness of want, but flows from the abundance of beneficence. For the one love is from misery, the other from mercy. And further, if the inferior had even despaired of being able to be loved by a superior, he will be moved to love beyond words if the other should of his own accord have deigned to show how much he loves the one who would by no means dare to promise himself so great a good. But what is more above all when God judges, and what more in despair than man when he sins?—who had bound himself over to be guarded and subjugated by the proud powers that cannot make blessed, all the more for having despaired that care of him could be taken by that power which does not wish to be exalted by malice, but is exalted by goodness.

4. 8. If, then, Christ came chiefly for this, that man might know how much God loves him, and might know it in order that he might catch fire with love for the one by whom he was first loved, and might love his neighbor at the bidding and showing of him who, by loving not a neighbor but one journeying far away, became a neighbor; and if all divine Scripture that was written beforehand was written to foretell the coming of the Lord, and whatever was afterward committed to writing and confirmed by divine authority tells of Christ and counsels love—then it is manifest that not only do the whole Law and the Prophets hang on those two precepts of the love of God and of neighbor (which alone was as yet holy Scripture when the Lord said this), but so also do whatever volumes of the divine writings were later set apart for our salvation and committed to memory. Therefore in the Old Testament there is a concealing of the New, in the New Testament a manifesting of the Old. According to that concealing, carnal men understanding carnally, both then and now, were subjected to penal fear. According to this manifesting, however, spiritual men—both then, to whom, as they piously knocked, even the hidden things lay open, and now, who do not seek proudly, lest even the open things be closed—understanding spiritually, were set free by the gift of love. Since, then, nothing is more opposed to love than envy, and the mother of envy is pride, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, is both a token of the divine love toward us and an example of human humility among us, so that our great swelling might be healed by the greater contrary remedy. For a proud man is a great misery, but a humble God is a greater mercy. With this love, then, set before you as your goal, to which you may refer all that you say, whatever you narrate, narrate in such a way that the one to whom you speak, by hearing may believe, by believing may hope, by hoping may love.

5. 9. Love is to be built up even out of the very severity of God, by which the hearts of mortals are shaken with a most salutary terror, so that, rejoicing to be loved by him whom he fears, one may dare to love him in return and may fear to displease his love for him, even if he could do so with impunity. For it happens very rarely—indeed, never—that anyone comes wishing to become a Christian who has not been struck by some fear of God. For if someone wishes to become a Christian out of regard for some advantage from men whom he does not think he can please otherwise, or to avoid some disadvantage from men whose offense or enmity he dreads, he wishes not so much to become one as to pretend to be one. For faith is not a matter of the body that pays its respects, but of the believing mind. But plainly the mercy of God is often present through the ministry of the one catechizing, so that, moved by the discourse, he now wishes to become what he had resolved to feign; and when he has begun to will this, let us reckon that he has then come. And it is indeed hidden from us when he comes in mind whom we now see present in body; yet we ought so to deal with him that this will may come to be in him, even if it is not there; for nothing is lost, since, if it is there, it is at any rate strengthened by such action of ours, although we do not know at what time or hour it began. It is certainly useful that we be forewarned beforehand, if it can be done, by those who know him, in what state of mind he is, or for what reasons he has been moved to come to take up the religion. But if there is no one else from whom we may learn this, he himself must also be questioned, so that from what he answers we may take the beginning of our discourse. But if he has approached with a feigning heart, desiring human advantages or fleeing disadvantages, he will of course lie; yet even from the very fact that he lies our starting point is to be taken—not so as to refute his lie, as though it were certain to you, but so that, if he says he has come with this purpose (which is truly to be approved, whether he says what is true or false), yet, approving and praising such a purpose as he answered he came with, we may make him take delight in being such as he wishes to seem. But if he says something other than ought to be in the mind of one who is to be instructed in the Christian faith, then, reproving him more blandly and gently as one untrained and ignorant, and pointing out and praising briefly and weightily the truest end of Christian doctrine, in such a way that you neither take up the time of the coming narrative nor venture to lay it upon him before his mind has been settled, you may make him will what, through error or through pretense, he did not yet will.

6. 10. But if perhaps he answers that he was divinely admonished or terrified into becoming a Christian, he affords us a most joyful approach for beginning, of how great is God's care for us. Certainly his attention is to be transferred from miracles or dreams of this kind to the more solid way of the Scriptures and the surer oracles, so that he may know that the admonition was mercifully granted to him before he clung to the holy Scriptures. And it must certainly be shown him that the Lord himself would not admonish or compel him to become a Christian and be incorporated into the Church, or instruct him by such signs and revelations, unless he had willed him to make his way more securely and safely, the road being already prepared in the holy Scriptures, where he should not seek visible miracles, but grow accustomed to hope for invisible things, and be admonished not while sleeping but while awake. From there, then, the narrative is to be begun, from the point where God made all things very good (Gen 1:31), and carried, as we said, down to the present times of the Church, in such a way that the causes and reasons of the several things and deeds we narrate are given, by which we may refer them to that end of love, from which the eye of neither the doer nor the speaker is to be turned away. For if even those who are held and called good grammarians try to refer to some usefulness the feigned fables of the poets, devised for the pleasure of minds whose food is trifles—though that usefulness be itself vain and greedy for worldly fattening—how much more does it befit us to be careful that the things we narrate as true be not believed without the rendering of their causes, either with an empty sweetness or even with a destructive cupidity. Yet we should not so assert these causes that, leaving the course of the narrative, our heart and tongue run out into the knots of a more difficult disputation; but the truth itself, with reason applied, should be, as it were, the gold binding the order of the gems, yet not disturbing by any excess the sequence of the ornament.

7. 11. When the narrative is finished, the hope of the resurrection is to be imparted, and—according to the capacity and strength of the hearer, and according to the measure of the time itself—the resurrection of the body is to be treated against the empty mockeries of unbelievers; and we are to preach the goodness of the coming final judgment toward the good, its severity toward the wicked, its truth toward all; and, the punishments of the impious having been recalled with detestation and horror, the kingdom of the just and faithful and that heavenly city and its joy are to be proclaimed with longing. Then indeed the weakness of man is to be instructed and given courage against the temptations and scandals, whether without or within the Church itself: without, against gentiles or Jews or heretics; within, against the chaff of the Lord's threshing floor. Not that we should dispute against each kind of perverse persons and refute all their depraved opinions by setting forth questions; but it is to be shown briefly, as time allows, that it was thus foretold, and what is the usefulness of temptations for the instruction of the faithful, and what medicine there is in the example of the patience of God, who has determined to permit these things until the end. And when he is instructed against those whose perverse crowds bodily fill the churches, let the precepts of the Christian and honorable manner of life be at the same time briefly and becomingly recalled, lest he be so easily seduced by the drunken, the avaricious, cheats, gamblers, adulterers, fornicators, lovers of spectacles, binders-on of sacrilegious remedies, enchanters, astrologers, or diviners of any vain and evil arts, and others of this kind, and think it will go unpunished for him, because he sees many who are called Christians loving and doing and defending and counseling and urging these things. For what end is laid up for those who persevere in such a life, and how they are to be tolerated within the Church itself, from which at the end they are to be separated, must be taught from the testimonies of the divine books. It must also be foretold that he will find in the Church many good Christians, truest citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, if he himself has begun to be one. Finally, he must be diligently admonished not to place his hope in man; for it cannot easily be judged by man which man is just, and even if it could easily be done, examples of the just are not set before us in order that we may be justified by them, but that, by imitating them, we may know that we too are justified by their Justifier. For from this will come what is most to be commended: that when the one who hears us—or rather hears God through us—has begun to advance in conduct and knowledge and to enter eagerly upon the way of Christ, he should dare to ascribe this neither to us nor to himself, but should love both himself and us and whatever other friends he loves in him and for the sake of him who loved him as an enemy, that by justifying him he might make him a friend. Here I do not think you need me as your teacher, to act briefly when the times—your own or those of your hearers—are taken up, but to speak more amply when they are more abundant; for this, with none to admonish, necessity itself enjoins.

8. 12. But this plainly must not be passed over: that if someone comes to you to be catechized who is cultivated in the liberal disciplines, who has already resolved to be a Christian and has come for that very purpose, it is altogether very difficult that he should not have come to know much of our Scriptures and writings, by which, already instructed, he has come merely for participation in the sacraments. For such people are accustomed, not in the very hour in which they become Christians, but beforehand, to inquire diligently into everything, and to share and discuss the movements of their mind with those with whom they can. With these, then, one must deal briefly, not odiously hammering in what they know, but modestly touching upon it, in such a way that we say we believe they already know this and that; and in this way run cursorily through all the things that are to be impressed upon the uninstructed and untaught, so that, even if this learned man knows something, he may not hear it as though from a teacher, and if he is still ignorant of something, he may learn it while we recall the things we believe he already knows. He himself, indeed, is not uselessly asked by what things he was moved to wish to be a Christian: so that if you see he was persuaded by books, whether canonical or those of useful writers, you may say something at the beginning about these, praising them according to the diversity of their merits—the canonical for their authority, the expositors for their most skillful diligence—and especially commending in the canonical Scriptures the most salutary humility of their admirable depth, but in the others, according to each one's own ability, a style of more resounding and, as it were, more polished eloquence, suited to prouder and therefore weaker minds. Indeed it is also to be drawn out of him that he indicate whom he has read most, and to which books he has clung more familiarly, from which he was persuaded to wish to be joined to the Church. And when he has said this, then, if those books are known to us, or we have at least learned by ecclesiastical report that they were written by some catholic man of note, let us approve them gladly. But if he has fallen upon the volumes of some heretic and, not knowing perhaps what the true faith disapproves, has held it in mind and supposes it to be catholic, he must be diligently taught, with the authority of the universal Church set before him, together with that of other most learned men flourishing in its truth by their disputations and writings. And yet even those who departed this life as catholics and left some Christian writings to posterity, in certain places of their little works, either not understood, or, as is human weakness, less able with the edge of their mind to penetrate the more hidden things, and straying from the truth by a likeness to the truth, have been an occasion for the presumptuous and bold to contrive and engender some heresy. And this is not to be wondered at, since even concerning the canonical writings themselves, where all things are most soundly stated, many have, not indeed by taking some things otherwise than either the writer meant or the truth itself holds (for if this alone were the case, who would not gladly pardon human weakness, ready to be corrected?), but by defending with most bitter animosity and obstinate arrogance what they have perversely and wrongly opined, given birth to many pernicious dogmas, with the unity of communion cut apart. All these things are to be treated, with modest conference, with the man who comes to the fellowship of the Christian people not as an ignoramus, as they say, but refined and cultivated by the books of the learned; only so much authority of precept being assumed (that he may beware the errors of presumption) as the humility which brought him is now felt to admit. But all the rest, according to the rules of saving doctrine—whatever is to be narrated or discussed, whether concerning faith or conduct or temptations—running through them in the manner I have said, all are to be referred to that more excellent way.

9. 13. There are likewise certain people coming from the most familiar schools of the grammarians and orators, whom you would not dare to number either among the ignorant or among those most learned men whose mind has been exercised in questions of great matters. To these, then, who seem to excel other men in the art of speaking, when they come to become Christians, we ought to impart this more than to those unlettered ones: that they be diligently admonished to put on Christian humility and to learn not to despise those whom they have come to know to avoid faults of conduct more than faults of words, and not to dare even to compare with a chaste heart a practiced tongue, which they had been accustomed even to prefer. But these especially must be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, lest solid eloquence seem mean to them because it is not inflated, and lest they think that the sayings or deeds of men wrapped and covered in carnal coverings, which are read in those books, are not to be unrolled and opened up so as to be understood, but to be taken just as the letter sounds. And concerning the very usefulness of the secret—whence they are even called mysteries—what the hidden recesses of enigmas avail toward sharpening the love of truth and shaking off the torpor of weariness, must be proved to such people by experience itself, when something that, set in the open, did not so move them, is drawn out by the unraveling of some allegory. For it is most useful to these to know that thoughts are to be preferred to words just as the mind is preferred to the body. From which it follows that they ought to prefer to hear discourses that are truer rather than more eloquent, just as they ought to prefer to have friends who are more prudent rather than more handsome. Let them know too that there is no voice to the ears of God except the affection of the mind; for thus they will not mock if they happen to notice some prelates and ministers of the Church invoking God with barbarisms and solecisms, or not understanding and faultily distinguishing the very words they pronounce. Not that these things are by no means to be corrected (so that the people may say amen to what they plainly understand), but they are nevertheless to be piously tolerated by those who have learned that, as one is blessed in the forum by sound, so one is blessed in the Church by intention. And so that forensic phrasing may perhaps sometimes be a good diction, but it can never be called a benediction. But concerning the sacrament they are to receive, it suffices for the more prudent to hear what that thing signifies; with the slower, however, one must deal with somewhat more words and comparisons, lest they despise what they see.

10. 14. Here perhaps you desire some example of a discourse, that I may show you by the very work how the things I have advised are to be done. This indeed I will do, as far as I can with the Lord's help; but first I ought to say what I promised about the obtaining of that cheerfulness. For now, concerning the precepts themselves for unfolding the discourse in catechizing one who comes in order to become a Christian, I have, as far as seemed enough, discharged what I had promised. It is indeed a debt that I myself should do, in this volume, what I prescribe as needing to be done. If, then, I do it, it will go toward the heaping-up; but how can the heaping-up be poured over by me before I have fulfilled the measure of the debt? For I have not heard you complain chiefly of anything except that your discourse seemed to you cheap and debased when you were instructing someone in the Christian name. But this, I know, comes about not so much from a lack of the things that must be said—for which I know you well enough to be prepared and equipped—nor from a lack of speech itself, but from weariness of mind: either for that cause which I mentioned, because what we discern with the mind in silence delights and holds us more, and we do not want to be called away from it to the far different clatter of words; or because, even when the discourse is pleasant, it pleases us more to hear or read things better said and produced without our own care and anxiety, than to fit sudden words to another's sense with uncertain outcome, whether they will occur to us as we mean them, or whether they will be received with profit; or because the things imparted to the uninstructed, since they are most familiar to us and no longer necessary to our advancement, it irks us to return to ever so often, nor does a mind now grown a little older walk through them—so customary and, as it were, infantile—with any pleasure. For an unmoved hearer makes a speaker weary; not that it befits us to be greedy for human praise, but because the things we minister are God's; and the more we love those to whom we speak, the more we desire for them that the things offered for their salvation may please them—and if this does not succeed, we are saddened, and in the very course are weakened and broken, as though we were wearing out our labor in vain. Sometimes too, when we are turned away from some matter we desire to do—the doing of which either delighted us or seemed to us more necessary—and are compelled, either by the command of one whom we do not wish to offend, or by the unavoidable insistence of certain people, to catechize someone, we approach, already disturbed, a business that needs great tranquillity, grieving that it is granted us neither to keep the order of actions we want, nor to suffice for all; and so the discourse, proceeding from that very sadness, is less welcome, because out of the dryness of grief it is less abundant. Sometimes likewise grief from some scandal has besieged the breast, and then it is said to us: Come, speak to this man, he wishes to become a Christian. For it is said by those who do not know what burns shut up within us; and if it does not behoove us to open our feeling to them, we take up against the grain what they want; and assuredly that discourse will be languid and unpleasant, passed through a vein of the heart that is seething and smoking. From so many causes, then, any of which may becloud the serenity of our mind, remedies are to be sought according to God, by which that contraction may be relaxed, and we may exult in fervor of spirit and rejoice in the tranquillity of a good work. For God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7).

10. 15. For if that cause saddens us—that the hearer does not grasp our understanding, from whose summit, descending in a way, we are compelled to linger in the slowness of syllables far below, and we take care how what is drunk in by the swiftest draught of the mind may proceed from the mouth of the flesh by long and winding turns, and because it comes out very unlike, it irks us to speak and pleases us to be silent—let us consider what has been granted us beforehand by him who showed us an example, that we should follow his footsteps. For however much our articulate voice differs from the liveliness of our understanding, far more different is the mortality of the flesh from the equality of God. And yet, when he was in the same form, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . even to the death of the cross (Phil 2:6–8). For what cause, except that he became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak? Hear his imitator saying elsewhere too: For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or if we are sober, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, judging this, that one died for all (2 Cor 5:13–14). For how would he be ready to be spent for their souls, if it irked him to bend down to their ears? Hence, then, he became a little one in our midst, like a nurse cherishing her children. For does it delight anyone, unless love invites, to murmur clipped and maimed words? And yet men desire to have infants to whom they may show this; and it is sweeter for a mother to spit chewed morsels into her little child than to chew and devour larger things herself. Let there not depart from the breast, then, even the thought of that hen which covers her tender brood with her drooping feathers and, with a broken voice, calls her chirping chicks; whose coaxing wings the proud, fleeing, become prey to the birds of the air. For if understanding delights in the purest inner recesses, let this too delight us to understand: how love, the more dutifully it descends to the lowest things, the more robustly it runs back to the inmost, through a good conscience that seeks nothing from those to whom it descends except their everlasting salvation.

11. 16. But if we rather crave to read or hear things that are already prepared and better said, and therefore are loath to fit, with uncertain outcome, on the spot, the things we say—provided only the mind does not stray from the truth of things, it is easy that, if anything in the words has offended the hearer, he may from that very occasion learn how, when the matter is understood, it is to be despised, if what sounded did so in order that the matter might be understood, even if it could sound less correctly or less properly. But if the intention of human weakness has strayed even from the very truth of things (although, in catechizing the uninstructed, where the most well-worn way is to be kept, this can hardly happen), yet, lest it perhaps happen that the hearer be offended even from this, it ought to seem to us to have happened for no other reason than that God willed to test us, whether we are corrected with placidity of mind, lest in defense of our error we be hurled into a greater error. But if no one tells us, and it is entirely hidden from us and from those who heard, there is no grief, provided it does not happen again. For the most part, however, we ourselves, recollecting what we have said, blame something, and do not know how it was received when it was said; and we grieve the more, when love is fervent in us, if what was false was gladly received. And therefore, when opportunity is found, just as we blame ourselves in silence, so care must be taken that those too be gradually corrected who have lapsed into some falsity, not by God's words but plainly by ours. But if some, blind with insane spite, rejoice that we have erred—whisperers, detractors, hateful to God—let them furnish us matter for exercising patience together with mercy, since the patience of God also leads them to repentance. For what is more detestable, and what more treasures up wrath against the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, than to rejoice over another's evil with an evil likeness to and imitation of the devil? Sometimes too, when all things are rightly and truly said, either something not understood, or, contrary to the opinion and habit of the old error, by its very novelty harsh, offends and disturbs the hearer. And if he shows himself curable, he is to be healed without any delay by an abundance of authorities and reasons. But if the offense is hidden by silence, God's medicine can help. But if he recoils and refuses to be cured, let that example of the Lord console us, who, when men were offended by his word and fled from it as harsh, said even to those who had remained: Will you also go away? (John 6:67) For it ought to be held fixed and immovable in the heart that Jerusalem, captive, is to be freed from the Babylon of this world when the times are run out, and that none of her will perish; for whoever perishes was not of her. For God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: the Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity (2 Tim 2:19). Thinking these things and calling upon the Lord into our heart, we will fear less the uncertain outcomes of our discourse on account of the uncertain movements of our hearers; and even the very enduring of troubles for the sake of a merciful work will delight us, if we do not seek our own glory in it. For then is a work truly good, when the doer's intention is shot forth from love and, as though returning to its own place, rests again in love. But the reading that delights us, or some hearing of better eloquence, will receive us more eager—when, wishing to set it before our discourse by producing it, we speak with sluggishness or weariness—and a more pleasant thing will be furnished after the labor; and with greater confidence we will pray that God may speak to us as we wish, if we cheerfully accept that he speak through us as we can. So it comes about that for those who love God all things work together unto good (Rom 8:28).

12. 17. But now, if we are loath to repeat often the customary things suited to little ones, let us suit ourselves to them through brotherly, fatherly, and motherly love; and, joined to their heart, even to us these things will seem new. For so great is the power of a sympathizing mind's affection that, when they are affected as we speak and we as they learn, we dwell in one another; and so both they, in a way, speak in us the things they hear, and we in some way learn in them the things we teach. Does not this commonly happen, when we show certain broad and beautiful places, whether of cities or of fields, which by now, often seeing them, we used to pass by without any pleasure, to those who have never seen them before, so that our delight is renewed in the delight of their novelty? And so much the more, the dearer they are to us; for through the bond of love, insofar as we are in them, so far do the things that were old become new even to us. But if we make some advance in contemplating things, we now want those whom we love to rejoice and be astonished when they behold the works of men's hands; yet we want to lift them up to the very art or design of the maker, and from there to rise to admiration and praise of God who creates all things, where is the most fruitful end of love. How much more, then, ought we to be delighted, when men now approach to learn God himself, for whose sake whatever is to be learned must be learned; and to be renewed in their newness, so that if our preaching is colder than usual, it may grow warm by the unaccustomed hearing of them. To this is added, toward the obtaining of joy, that we think and consider out of what death of error a man passes into the life of faith. And if we cross the most familiar streets with kindly cheerfulness when we show the way to someone who happened to have been toiling in wandering, how much more eagerly and with greater joy ought we to walk through, in saving doctrine, even those things which on our own account there is no need to traverse again, when we lead a soul to be pitied and wearied by the errors of the world along the ways of peace, at the bidding of him who granted her to us?

13. 18. But in very truth it is a great thing to persevere in speaking, up to the appointed end, when we do not see the hearer moved—whether he does not dare, constrained by fear of religion, to signify his approval by voice or by some movement of the body, or is held back by human bashfulness; whether he does not understand what is said, or despises it. Since, then, his mind is uncertain to us who do not discern it, all things are to be tried by discourse that can avail to rouse him and, as it were, to draw him out of his hiding places. For excessive fear, which hinders the declaration of his judgment, is to be driven off by gentle exhortation, and his bashfulness is to be tempered by imparting our brotherly fellowship, and we must seek by questioning whether he understands, and give him confidence to bring forth freely whatever seems to him to need objecting. We must also ask of him whether he has ever already heard these things, and perhaps they do not move him as things known and widely current; and we must act according to his answer, so that we either speak more plainly and more clearly, or refute the contrary opinion, or do not unfold more widely the things known to him, but fold them up briefly, and choose some of those things that have been said mystically in the holy books—and especially in the narrative itself—which by being opened and revealed may make our discourse sweet. But if he is too slow and dull, and turned away from all such sweetness, he is to be mercifully borne with; and, the rest being briefly run through, the things that are most necessary—concerning the unity of the catholic Church, concerning temptations, concerning the Christian manner of life on account of the coming judgment—are to be terribly hammered in, and more is to be said to God on his behalf than to him about God.

13. 19. Often too it happens that one who at first listened gladly, wearied either by listening or by standing, no longer praising but yawning, parts his lips and shows, even against his will, that he wishes to leave. When we perceive this, we ought either to renew his mind by saying something seasoned with honorable cheerfulness and suited to the matter in hand, or something very wonderful and astonishing, or even something to be grieved over and lamented—and rather about himself, so that, stung by concern for himself, he may wake up—yet in such a way as not to offend his bashfulness by any harshness, but rather to win him by friendliness; or to relieve him by offering a seat. Although it would without doubt be better, where it can decently be done, that he should listen seated from the beginning; and far more advisedly, in certain churches across the sea, not only do the prelates speak to the people seated, but seats also are placed beneath the people themselves, so that no one of the weaker, wearied by standing, may be turned away from a most salutary attention, or even compelled to depart. And yet it makes a great difference whether someone withdraws from a great crowd to recover his strength who is already bound by the fellowship of the sacraments, and whether he departs—which is often unavoidably forced, lest, overcome by inner failing, he even fall—who is to be instructed in the first sacraments: for out of shame he does not say why he goes, and out of feebleness he is not allowed to stand. I speak these things from experience: for a certain man did this, a rustic, while I was catechizing him, whence I learned that great precaution must be taken. For who would bear our arrogance, when we do not have men, our brothers, or even—what is to be cared for with greater solicitude, that they may be our brothers—sit in our presence, while a seated woman was listening to our very Lord, to whom angels stand in attendance? Certainly, if either the discourse is going to be brief, or the place is not suited to a sitting assembly, let them listen standing—but when many are listening, and not those who are then to be initiated. For when one, or two, or a few who have come for this purpose, that they may become Christians, are concerned, we speak to people standing at our peril. Yet if we have already begun thus, at least, when the hearer's weariness has been noticed, a seat must be offered—or rather he must be downright urged to sit—and something must be said by which he may be renewed, by which too any care which had perhaps come rushing in to call him away may flee from his mind. For since the causes are uncertain why he now silently refuses to listen, let something be said to him, now seated, against the incidental thoughts of worldly business, either in a cheerful or, as I said, a sad manner: so that if these are the things that had occupied his mind, they may yield as though accused by name; but if these are not the things, and he is wearied by listening, then, since we do not know, let us speak something unexpected and extraordinary, in the manner I said, as though these were the cause, and his attention may be renewed from weariness. But let it be brief, especially because it is inserted out of order, lest the very medicine increase the disease of weariness which we wish to relieve; and the rest must be hastened, and a nearer end promised and provided.

14. 20. But if it has broken your mind that you had to omit another action upon which, as more necessary, you were already intent, and you therefore catechize sadly and unpleasantly, you ought to consider (apart from this, that we know we must deal mercifully in whatever we do with men, and out of the duty of the most sincere love—this, then, apart) that it is uncertain what we do more usefully, and what we may more opportunely either interrupt or omit altogether. For since we do not know what the merits of the men for whom we act are before God, we conjecture rather than comprehend, by a guess that is either none at all or most slight and most uncertain, what is for the time expedient for them. Wherefore we ought indeed to order the things to be done according to our grasp; and if we have been able to carry them through in the manner we determined, let us not rejoice because it pleased us, but because it pleased God that they be done so; but if some necessity has arisen by which that order of ours is disturbed, let us be easily bent, lest we be broken, so that the one whom God set over us may be ours. For it is more equitable that we follow his will than that he follow ours. For the order of things to be done which we wish to keep by our own judgment is itself to be approved where the weightier things go first. Why, then, do we grieve that men are preceded by the Lord God, who is so much weightier, so that by the very fact that we love our own order we desire to be disordered? For no one orders better what he should do than he who is readier not to do what is forbidden by divine power than eager to do what he meditates by human thought. For there are many thoughts in the heart of man, but the counsel of the Lord stands forever (Prov 19:21).

14. 21. But if a mind disturbed by some scandal is unable to bring forth a serene and pleasant discourse, our love toward those for whom Christ died, willing to redeem them by the price of his blood from the death of worldly errors, ought to be so great that this very thing which is announced to us in our sadness—that someone is at hand who desires to become a Christian—ought to avail for that man's consolation and for the loosening of our sadness, just as the joys of gains are wont to soothe the grief of losses. For a scandal does not sadden us about anyone except one whom we believe or see either to perish, or to be the weak person through whom another perishes. That man, therefore, who comes to be initiated, while there is hope that he can advance, may wipe away the grief over the one who is failing. For even if that fear is suggested, lest he become a proselyte, a son of Gehenna, while many such are turning before our eyes, from whom arise the scandals by which we are burned, this ought not to pertain to slowing us down, but rather to rousing and sharpening us; so that we admonish the one we are instructing to beware imitating those who are Christians not in truth itself but in name alone; and not, moved by their crowd, either wish to follow them, or be unwilling to follow Christ on their account; and either be unwilling to be in the Church of God where they are, or wish to be there such as they are. And in some way, in services of this kind, the discourse is more ardent, to which present grief supplies tinder: so that not only are we not more sluggish, but we say the more kindled and vehement things by that very thing which, more secure, we would say more coldly and slowly; and let us rejoice that an occasion is given us where the movement of our mind does not pass without bearing fruit.

14. 22. But if sadness lays hold of us over some error or sin of our own, let us remember not only that a sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit (Ps 51:17 (50:19)), but also that as water quenches fire, so almsgiving quenches sin (Sir 3:30). And: I desire mercy, he says, rather than sacrifice (Hos 6:6). As, therefore, if we were endangered by a fire, we would surely run to water by which it could be quenched, and would be grateful if anyone offered it from nearby, so, if some flame of sin has risen from our own hay, and we are therefore troubled, when an occasion of a most merciful work is given, let us rejoice as though over an offered spring, that thereby what had blazed up may be pressed down. Unless perhaps we are so foolish as to think that one must run more eagerly with bread to fill the belly of one who hungers than with the word of God to instruct the mind of one who feeds on it. To this is added that, if it were only profitable to do this, while not to do it would do no harm, we would, unhappily, in the peril of salvation—now not our neighbor's but our own—spurn the offered remedy. But since it sounds so threateningly from the mouth of the Lord: Wicked and slothful servant, you should have given my money to the bankers (Matt 25:26–27), what madness, after all, is it, because our sin troubles us, therefore to wish to sin again by not giving the Lord's money to one who wishes and asks for it? By these and like thoughts and considerations, the cloud of weariness being driven off, the intention is fitted for catechizing, so that what bursts forth diligently and cheerfully from the abundance of love may be sweetly drunk in. For it is not so much I that say these things to you as that very love says them to all of us, which is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

15. 23. But now you also demand—what before I had promised it I did not owe, but now perhaps it is owed—that I not be loath to unfold some example of a discourse, as if I were catechizing someone, and to set it before you to look at. Before I do this, I want you to consider that the intention of one dictating is one thing, when a future reader is thought of, and that of one speaking another, when a present hearer is attended to; and within this latter, the intention of one admonishing in private is one thing, when no one else is at hand to judge of us, and that of one teaching something openly another, when the hearing of those who think differently surrounds him; and within this kind, one when a single person is taught, while the rest listen as though judging or attesting the things known to them, another when all together await what we may bring forth to them; and again within this very thing, one when, as it were privately, we sit together to weave a conversation, another when a silent people, in suspense, look upon one who is to speak from a higher place; and it makes a great difference, even when we speak thus, whether few are present or many, whether learned or unlearned or a mixture of both kinds, city folk or country folk or these and those together, or whether the people is tempered out of every kind of men. For it cannot but be that they affect the one who is to speak and discourse in one way and another, and that the discourse which is brought forth bears, as it were, a certain countenance of the affection of the mind from which it is brought forth, and according to that same diversity affects the hearers diversely, since they too affect one another diversely by their presence. But since we are now dealing with the instructing of the uninstructed, I bear witness to you from my own self, that I am moved in one way and another when I see before me, to be catechized, a learned man, a dull man, a citizen, a foreigner, a rich man, a poor man, a private person, a man of honor, one set in some power, a man of this or that nation, of this or that age or sex, coming from this or that sect, from this or that common error; and according to the diversity of my own movement, the discourse itself both proceeds and advances and ends. And because, although the same love is owed to all, the same medicine is not to be applied to all, that same love is likewise in travail with some, is made weak for others; it cares to build up some, it trembles to offend others; to some it inclines itself, for others it draws itself up; bland to some, severe to others, an enemy to none, a mother to all. And he who has not experienced by the same love what I say, when he sees us, because some faculty granted us delights to become known praiseworthily in the mouth of the multitude, thinks us blessed on that account; but may God, into whose sight enters the groaning of the fettered, behold our humility and our labor, and forgive all our sins. Wherefore, if anything in us has pleased you, so that you sought to hear from us some observation of your discourse, you would learn it better by seeing and hearing us when we do these things, than by reading when we dictate them.

16. 24. But nevertheless let us suppose that someone has come to us who wishes to be a Christian, and indeed of the class of the ignorant, yet not of the rustics but of the townsfolk, such as you must necessarily find many at Carthage; and that, being asked also whether he desires to be a Christian on account of some advantage of the present life or on account of the rest hoped for after this life, he has answered: on account of the rest to come. Such a man might perhaps be instructed by us with some such address as this. Thanks be to God, brother; I greatly congratulate you and rejoice over you, that amid such great and dangerous storms of this world you have thought of some true and certain security. For even in this life men seek rest and security with great labors, but by their depraved cupidities they do not find them. For they wish to rest in restless and impermanent things; and because these are withdrawn and pass away in time, they agitate them with fears and griefs, and do not allow them to be at rest. For whether a man wishes to rest in riches, he is made proud rather than secure. Do we not see how many have suddenly lost them, how many too have perished on account of them, either while they desire to have them, or while these are taken from them, oppressed by others more greedy? And even if these were to remain with a man throughout his whole life and did not desert their lover, he himself would desert them by his death. For how great is the life of man, even if he grows old? Or when men wish old age for themselves, what else do they wish but a long infirmity? So too the honors of this world, what are they but vain conceit and emptiness and the peril of ruin? For thus holy Scripture says: All flesh is grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls: but the word of the Lord abides forever (Isa 40:6–8). Therefore he who desires true rest and true happiness ought to withdraw his hope from mortal and passing things, and to place it in the word of the Lord, so that, clinging to that which abides forever, he too may abide forever with it.

16. 25. There are also men who neither seek to be rich nor ambitiously strive to attain the empty pomps of honors, but wish to rejoice and rest in eating-houses and in fornications and in theaters and the spectacles of frivolity, which in great cities they have free of charge. But thus even these either consume their poverty through luxury, or afterward from want they leap forth into thefts and burglaries and sometimes even into robberies, and are suddenly filled with many and great fears; and those who a little before were singing in the tavern now dream of the lamentation of prison. By their zeal for spectacles, moreover, they become like demons, inciting men by their shouts to slay one another, and to maintain among themselves contentious struggles—men who have not injured one another—while they desire to please an insane people. And if they notice that these are in accord, then they hate and persecute them and shout that they be beaten with cudgels like men in collusion, and compel even the judge, the avenger of iniquities, to do this iniquity; but if they have come to know that the men carry on dreadful enmities against one another (whether they be those who are called gladiators, or actors and stage-players, or charioteers, or hunters—wretches whom they set to contend and fight, not only men with men, but even men with beasts), the greater the discord they perceive raging between them, the more they love and are delighted, and they favor the inflamed and inflame those they favor, the spectators themselves raging more madly against one another, the one for this man and the other for that, than those whose madness, themselves mad, they provoke, and by raging desire to watch. How, then, can a mind hold the soundness of peace which is fed on discords and struggles? For such health follows as the food that is taken. Finally, however insane joys are not joys, yet whatever kind they may be, and however much the boasting of riches delights, and the swelling of honors, and the gulf of eating-houses, and the wars of theaters, and the uncleanness of fornications, and the itch of the baths—one little fever takes all these away, and, while men are still living, withdraws the whole false happiness: there remains an empty and wounded conscience, about to feel God as judge whom it was unwilling to have as guardian, and to find a harsh Lord whom it disdained to seek and love as a sweet father. But you, since you seek the true rest which is promised to Christians after this life, will here too, amid the most bitter troubles of this life, taste it sweet and pleasant, if you love the precepts of him who promised it. For you will quickly feel that the fruits of righteousness are sweeter than those of iniquity, and that a man more truly and more pleasantly rejoices over a good conscience amid troubles than over a bad one amid delights; for you have not come to be joined to the Church of God in order to seek from her any temporal advantage.

17. 26. For there are those who wish to be Christians for this reason: either to gain the favor of men from whom they expect temporal advantages, or because they do not wish to offend those whom they fear. But these are reprobate; and even if the Church bears with them for a time, as the threshing floor bears with the chaff until the time of winnowing, if they do not correct themselves and begin to be Christians on account of the rest to come and everlasting, in the end they will be separated. Let them not flatter themselves that they can be on the threshing floor together with the wheat of God; for they will not be in the barn with it, but are destined for the fire due to them. There are also others, of better hope indeed, yet of no less peril, who already fear God and do not mock the Christian name, nor enter the Church of God with a feigned heart, but await happiness in this life, to be more fortunate in earthly things than those who do not worship God; and therefore, when they see certain wicked and impious men abounding and excelling in this worldly prosperity, while they themselves either have less of these things or lose them, they are disturbed, as though they worshiped God for nothing, and easily fall away from the faith.

17. 27. But he who, on account of the everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest which is promised to the saints as their future after this life, wishes to become a Christian, so that he may not go into the eternal fire with the devil, but may enter into the eternal kingdom with Christ, is truly himself a Christian: cautious in every temptation, lest he be corrupted by prosperity, and lest he be broken by adversity; modest and temperate in the abundance of earthly goods, and strong and patient in tribulations. Such a one too, by advancing, may come to such a mind that he loves God more than he fears Gehenna: so that, even if God should say to him, Enjoy carnal delights everlastingly, and sin as much as you can, and you shall not die nor be sent into Gehenna, but you shall only not be with me—he would shudder and not sin at all, not now that he might not fall into what he feared, but that he might not offend him whom he so loves; in whom alone is the rest which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him.

17. 28. Concerning this matter Scripture signifies, and does not pass over in silence, that from the beginning of the world, from the time when God made heaven and earth and all things that are in them, he worked for six days and on the seventh day rested. For the Almighty could have made all things in a single moment of time. He had not labored, however, that he should rest, since he spoke, and they were made: he commanded, and they were created (Ps 33:9 (32:9)); but he did this to signify that, after the six ages of this world, in the seventh age, as on a seventh day, he is to rest in his saints; for they will rest in him after all the good works in which they served him, which he himself works in them, he who calls and commands and forgives past offenses and justifies him who was before impious. But just as, when they work well by his gift, he himself is rightly said to work, so, when they rest in him, he himself is rightly said to rest. For as it pertains to himself, he does not seek a pausing, because he feels no labor. He made all things, moreover, through his Word; and his Word is Christ himself, in whom the angels and all the heavenly purest spirits rest in holy silence. But man, fallen by sin, lost the rest which he had in his divinity, and received it back in his humanity; and therefore, at the opportune time which he himself knew it behooved to be, he was made man and born of a woman. For he could not be contaminated by flesh, being himself rather about to cleanse the flesh. The ancient saints, by the revelation of the Spirit, knew that he was to come, and prophesied it; and so they were made safe by believing that he would come, just as we are made safe by believing that he has come: that we might love God, who so loved us that he sent his only Son, who, clothed with the lowliness of our mortality, would die both at the hands of sinners and for sinners. For now, long ago, from the beginning of the ages, the depth of this mystery does not cease to be prefigured and foretold.

18. 29. Since God almighty, and good and just and merciful, who made all good things, whether great or small, whether highest or lowest, whether things that are seen—as are heaven and earth and sea, and in heaven the sun and moon and the rest of the stars, and on earth and sea trees and shrubs and animals each of its own nature, and all bodies whether celestial or earthly—or things that are not seen—as are the spirits by which bodies are quickened and given life—made man also to his own image: so that, just as he himself by his omnipotence is set over all creation, so man, through the understanding by which he also knows and worships his Creator, might be set over all earthly animals. He made for him also a helper, woman: not for carnal desire, since indeed they did not then have corruptible bodies, before mortality, the penalty of sin, invaded them, but so that the man too might have glory from the woman, when he went before her toward God and offered himself to her to be imitated in holiness and piety; just as he himself would be the glory of God, when he followed his wisdom.

18. 30. And so he set them in a certain place of perpetual blessedness, which Scripture calls paradise; and he gave them a precept, which if they did not transgress, they would always remain in that blessedness of immortality, but if they transgressed, they would pay the penalties of mortality. Now God foreknew that they would transgress; yet nevertheless, because he is the founder and maker of every good, he rather made them, when he also made the beasts, that he might fill the earth with earthly goods. And surely man, even as a sinner, is better than a beast. And he rather gave the precept which they were not going to keep, that they might be inexcusable when he had begun to take vengeance upon them. For whatever man does, he finds God praiseworthy in his deeds: if he acts rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of rewards; if he sins, he finds him praiseworthy through the justice of punishments; if, having confessed his sins, he returns to living rightly, he finds him praiseworthy through the mercy of pardons. Why, then, should God not make man, although he foreknew he would sin, since he both crowns him standing, and orders him falling, and helps him rising, himself always and everywhere glorious in goodness, justice, and clemency? Especially since he also foreknew this: that from the propagation of his mortality there would be saints who would seek glory not for themselves but for their Creator, and, by worshiping him, being freed from all corruption, would merit to live always with the holy angels and to live blessedly. For he who gave men free choice, that they might worship God not by servile necessity but by a free will, gave it also to the angels; and therefore not even the angel who, by being proud together with the other spirits, his satellites, deserted obedience to God and became the devil, harmed God in any way, but only himself. For God knows how to order the souls that desert him, and out of their just misery to adorn the lower parts of his creation with the most fitting and most harmonious laws of his admirable governance. And so neither did the devil harm God in anything—whether he himself fell, or seduced man to death; nor did man himself diminish in any way the truth or power or blessedness of his Creator, because to his wife, seduced by the devil, he consented by his own will to that which God had forbidden. For by the most just laws of God all were condemned, God being glorious through the equity of the punishment, they themselves ignominious through the shamefulness of the penalty: so that both man, turned away from his Creator, being conquered, might be made subject to the devil, and the devil might be set before man, turned back to his Creator, to be conquered; so that whoever consented to the devil to the end might go with him into eternal punishments, but whoever humbled themselves to God and through his grace conquered the devil might merit eternal rewards.

19. 31. Nor ought this to move us, that many consent to the devil and few follow God: for the wheat too, in comparison with the chaff, has a far smaller number. But just as the farmer knows what to do with the huge heap of chaff, so to God the multitude of sinners is nothing, for he knows what to do with them, so that the administration of his kingdom may in no part be disturbed and disgraced. Nor is the devil therefore to be thought to have conquered, because he has drawn to himself the more, by whom he is conquered by the few. There are therefore two cities, one of the wicked, the other of the saints, carried on from the beginning of the human race to the end of the age, now mingled in body, but separated in will, and on the day of judgment to be separated even in body. For all men loving pride and temporal domination, with vain conceit and the pomp of arrogance, and all spirits who love such things and seek their own glory in the subjection of men, are bound together in one fellowship; and even if they often fight against one another for these things, yet by an equal weight of cupidity they are hurled into the same depth, and are joined to one another by a likeness of conduct and of merits. And again, all men and all spirits humbly seeking the glory of God, not their own, and following him with piety, belong to one fellowship. And yet God, most merciful, is patient even toward impious men, and affords them a place for repentance and correction.

19. 32. For even in that he destroyed all by the flood, except one just man with his household, whom he willed to be preserved in the ark, he knew indeed that they would not correct themselves; nevertheless, while for a hundred years the ark was being built, the coming wrath of God over them was assuredly being proclaimed to them; and if they had turned to God, he would have spared them, as he afterward spared the city of Nineveh, doing penance, when he had foretold its coming destruction to it through the prophet. And God does this even toward those whom he knows will persevere in malice, giving a space for repenting, that he may exercise our patience and instruct it by his own example, so that we may know how tolerantly we ought to bear with the wicked, since we do not know what they will afterward be, when he, from whom nothing of the future is hidden, spares them and allows them to live. Yet also by the sacrament of the flood, in which the just were freed through the wood, there was foretold the future Church, which her King and God, Christ, by the mystery of his cross, holds up above the submersion of this world. For God was not ignorant that even from those who had been preserved in the ark, evil men would be born, who would again fill the face of the earth with iniquities; but nevertheless he both gave an example of the future judgment, and foretold the liberation of the saints by the mystery of the wood. For even after these things, malice did not cease to sprout up again through pride and lusts and unlawful impieties, when men, having deserted their Creator, lapsed not only to the creation which God made, so as to worship in God's place what God had made, but even bent their souls to the works of men's hands and the craftsmanship of artificers, where the devil and the demons would more shamefully triumph over them; and these rejoice to be adored and venerated in such images, while they feed their own errors with human errors.

19. 33. Nor indeed were there then lacking just men who piously sought God and conquered the pride of the devil, citizens of that holy city, whom the coming humility of their King, Christ, revealed through the Spirit, healed. From among these, Abraham, a pious and faithful servant of God, was chosen, to whom the sacrament of the Son of God might be shown, so that, on account of the imitation of his faith, all the faithful of all nations might be called his future children. From him was born a people by whom the one true God, who made heaven and earth, would be worshiped, while the other nations served images and demons. In that people plainly the future Church was much more evidently prefigured. For there was there a carnal multitude, which worshiped God for the sake of visible benefits. But there were there also a few who thought of the rest to come and sought the heavenly fatherland, to whom, by prophesying, the coming humility of God, our King and Lord Jesus Christ, was revealed, so that by that faith they might be healed of all pride and swelling. Of these saints who preceded in time the nativity of the Lord, not only the speech but also the life and marriages and children and deeds were a prophecy of this time, in which through faith in the Passion of Christ the Church is gathered from the nations. Through those holy patriarchs and prophets, to the carnal people of Israel, who were afterward also called Jews, both visible benefits were ministered, which they carnally desired from the Lord, and restraints of bodily punishments, by which for the time they might be terrified, as befitted their hardness. And yet in all these things spiritual mysteries were signified, which pertained to Christ and the Church; of which Church even those saints were members, although they were in this life before Christ the Lord was born according to the flesh. For the only-begotten Son of God himself, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, through whom all things were made, was made man for our sake, that he might be the head of the whole Church as of the whole body. But just as the whole man, while he is being born, even if he puts forth a hand first in birth, is yet joined and fitted to the whole body under the head—as indeed some among the patriarchs themselves, for a sign of this very thing, were born with a hand put forth first—so all the saints who were on earth before the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, although they were born before, yet clung to the whole body, of which he is the head, under the head.

20. 34. That people, then, having been carried down into Egypt, served a most harsh king, and, schooled by the heaviest labors, sought God as their deliverer. And there was sent to them one of that same people, the holy servant of God, Moses, who, in the power of God, terrifying by great miracles the then impious nation of the Egyptians, led the people of God out from there through the Red Sea; where the water, parting, afforded a way to those crossing over, but the Egyptians, when they pursued them, were drowned and destroyed as the waves returned upon them. Thus, just as by the flood the earth was purged with waters from the wickedness of the sinners who were then destroyed in that inundation, while the just escaped through the wood, so the people of God, going out from Egypt, found a way through the waters by which their own enemies were consumed. Nor was the sacrament of the wood lacking there. For Moses struck with his rod, that this miracle might come to pass. Each is a sign of holy baptism, through which the faithful pass into a new life, while their sins, like enemies, are destroyed and die. But more openly was the Passion of Christ prefigured in that people, when they were commanded to slay a lamb and eat it, and to mark their doorposts with its blood, and to celebrate this every year, and to call it the Pasch of the Lord. For most manifestly the prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus Christ says that like a sheep he was led to the slaughter (Isa 53:7). With the sign of his Passion and cross you too are today to be marked on the forehead, as on a doorpost, and all Christians are marked.

20. 35. From there that people was led through the desert for forty years; it received also the Law written by the finger of God, by which name the Holy Spirit is signified, as is most manifestly declared in the Gospel. For God is not bounded by a bodily form, nor are members and fingers to be thought of in him as we see in ourselves; but because through the Holy Spirit the gifts of God are distributed to the saints, so that, though they can do diverse things, they nevertheless do not depart from the concord of love—and in fingers especially a certain division appears, yet no cutting-off from unity—whether for that reason, or for any other cause whatever, the Holy Spirit is called the finger of God; yet, when we hear this, the form of a human body is not to be thought of. That people, then, received the Law written by the finger of God on tablets of stone indeed, to signify the hardness of their heart, in that they were not going to fulfill the Law. For, desiring bodily gifts from the Lord, they were held more by carnal fear than by spiritual love; but the Law no one fulfills except love. Therefore they were burdened with many visible sacraments, by which they were pressed under a servile yoke, in observances of foods and in sacrifices of animals and in countless other things; which nevertheless were signs of spiritual things pertaining to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church—things which were then by a few saints both understood unto the fruit of salvation and observed for conformity to the time, but by the multitude of the carnal were only observed, not understood.

20. 36. Through many and various signs, therefore, of things to come—which it would be long to recall all, and which we now see fulfilled in the Church—that people was led to the land of promise, where for a time and carnally it would reign according to the measure of its desire; which earthly kingdom nevertheless bore the image of the spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, the most famous city of God, serving as a sign of the free city which is called the heavenly Jerusalem—a Hebrew word, which is interpreted "vision of peace." Of this city the citizens are all sanctified men who have been, and who are, and who are to be; and all sanctified spirits, even all those who in the high parts of the heavens obey God with pious devotion, and do not imitate the impious pride of the devil and his angels. The King of this city is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God by whom the highest angels are governed, and the Word assuming man, that by him men too might be governed, who all together with him will reign in eternal peace. For the prefiguring of this King, in that earthly kingdom of the people of Israel, King David especially stood out, of whose seed according to the flesh would come our truest King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:5). Many things in that land of promise were done as a figure of the coming Christ and the Church, which you will be able to learn little by little in the holy books.

21. 37. After some generations, however, it showed another type pertaining especially to the matter. For that city was taken captive, and a great part of it led away into Babylon. But as Jerusalem signifies the city and fellowship of the saints, so Babylon signifies the city and fellowship of the wicked, since it is interpreted "confusion." Of these two cities, running on intermingled, from the beginning of the human race to the end of the age, through the variety of times, and to be separated at the last judgment, we have already spoken a little before. That captivity, then, of the city of Jerusalem, and that people led into Babylon to servitude, were bidden by the Lord, through Jeremiah, the prophet of that time, to go. And there arose kings of Babylon, under whom they served, who, moved by occasion of them through certain miracles, came to know and worship the one true God, who founded all creation, and commanded that he be worshiped. They were bidden also to pray for those by whom they were held captive, and to hope for peace in their peace, so as to beget children and build houses and plant gardens and vineyards. But after seventy years, liberation from that captivity is promised them. Now all this signifies figuratively that the Church of Christ, in all his saints who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, would serve under the kings of this world. For the apostolic teaching also says: that every soul be subject to the higher powers (Rom 13:1); and that there be rendered to all all things, to whom tribute is due tribute, to whom toll toll (Rom 13:7); and the rest that, with the worship of our God safe, we render to the princes of human establishment—since even the Lord himself, that he might give us an example of this sound teaching, did not disdain to pay tribute on behalf of the human head with which he was clothed. Christian servants too, and good faithful men, are bidden to serve their temporal masters equably and faithfully: masters whom they will judge, if they have found them wicked to the end, or with whom they will reign equally, if they too have been converted to the true God. Yet all are commanded to serve human and earthly powers, until, after the appointed time which the seventy years signify, the Church, like Jerusalem, may be freed from the confusion of this world as from the captivity of Babylon. By occasion of which captivity, the earthly kings themselves, having deserted the idols for which they persecuted Christians, have come to know and worship the one true God and Christ the Lord—on whose behalf the apostle Paul bids us pray, even when they were persecuting the Church. For thus he says: I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for kings, for all men, and for all who are in high station, that we may lead a secure and tranquil life in all piety and love (1 Tim 2:1–2). And so through them peace has been given to the Church, though temporal, a temporal tranquillity for building houses spiritually and planting gardens and vineyards. For lo, even now, through this discourse, we are building you up and planting you. And this is done throughout the whole world with the peace of Christian kings, as the same Apostle says: You are God's tillage, God's building (1 Cor 3:9).

21. 38. And after seventy years indeed, which Jeremiah had mystically prophesied, that he might prefigure the end of the times—yet that the figure itself might be made complete—there was made in Jerusalem the restoration of the building of the temple of God; but because the whole was being done figuratively, there was not given back to the Jews a firm peace and liberty. And so afterward they were conquered by the Romans and made tributary. From that time indeed, from when they received the land of promise and began to have kings, lest they should think it fulfilled in any of their kings that Christ the deliverer was promised them, Christ was more openly prophesied through many prophecies, not only by David himself in the book of Psalms, but also by the other great and holy prophets, down to the time of the captivity in Babylon; and in that very captivity there were prophets who prophesied that the Lord Jesus Christ would come as the deliverer of all. And after the temple was restored, the seventy years being passed, the Jews suffered such great pressures and calamities from the kings of the nations, that they might understand that the deliverer had not yet come, whom they understood would deliver not spiritually, but whom they desired for a carnal liberation.

22. 39. The five ages of the world, then, being completed—of which the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was made the first man, down to Noah, who made the ark in the flood; from there the second is down to Abraham, who was chosen as the father of all the nations indeed that would imitate his faith, but nevertheless, from the propagation of his flesh, of the future people of the Jews, who, before the Christian faith of the nations, alone among all the peoples of all lands worshiped the one true God, from which people Christ the Savior would come according to the flesh—these turning points of two ages stand out in the old books; but of the remaining three, they are declared also in the Gospel, when the carnal origin of the Lord Jesus Christ is recalled. For the third is from Abraham down to David the king; the fourth from David down to that captivity by which the people of God migrated into Babylon; the fifth from that migration down to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; from whose coming the sixth age is being carried on, so that now the spiritual grace, which was then known to a few patriarchs and prophets, might be made manifest to all nations; that no one might worship God except freely, desiring from him not the visible rewards of his service and the happiness of the present life, but eternal life alone, in which he might enjoy God himself; so that in this sixth age the human mind might be renewed to the image of God, just as on the sixth day man was made to the image of God. For then the Law is fulfilled, when whatever he commanded is done, not by cupidity of temporal things, but by love of him who commanded. And who would not strive to love in return the most just and most merciful God, who first so loved the most unjust and most proud men that for their sake he sent his only Son, through whom he made all things, who, made man not by a change of himself but by an assumption of man, could not only live with them but even be slain for them and by them?

22. 40. And so, manifesting the new testament of the eternal inheritance, in which man, renewed by the grace of God, would lead a new life, that is, a spiritual life—so as first to show the old, in which the carnal people, leading the old life, living carnally, except for a few understanding patriarchs and prophets and certain hidden saints, desired carnal rewards from the Lord God, and received them as a figure of spiritual goods—the Lord Christ, made man, therefore despised all earthly goods, that he might show them to be despised; and bore all earthly evils, which he was commanding to be borne: so that neither in the former should happiness be sought, nor in the latter should unhappiness be feared. For, born of a mother who, although she conceived untouched by man and ever remained untouched—a virgin conceiving, a virgin bearing, a virgin dying—was nevertheless betrothed to a carpenter, he extinguished all the conceit of carnal nobility. Born too in the city of Bethlehem, which among all the cities of Judea was so insignificant that even today it is called a village, he willed that no one should glory in the loftiness of any earthly city. He was made poor, too, whose are all things and through whom all things were created: lest anyone, when he believed in him, should dare to be lifted up over earthly riches. He was unwilling to be made king by men, because he was showing the way of humility to the wretched, whom pride had separated from him: although all creation bears witness to his eternal kingdom. He hungered who feeds all; he thirsted through whom every drink is created, and who spiritually is the bread of the hungry and the fountain of the thirsty; he was wearied from his earthly journey who made himself for us the way to heaven; he was, as it were, made dumb and deaf before those who reviled him, through whom the dumb spoke and the deaf heard; he was bound who looses from the bonds of infirmities; he was scourged who drove out the scourges of all griefs from the bodies of men; he was crucified who ended our torments; he died who raised the dead. But he also rose again, never again to die, lest anyone learn from him so to despise death as though he would never be.

23. 41. Then, having confirmed his disciples, and having dwelt with them forty days, he ascended into heaven while they themselves watched; and, fifty days from the resurrection being completed, he sent them the Holy Spirit (for he had promised it), through whom, love being poured out in their hearts, they could fulfill the Law not only without burden but even with delight. This Law was given to the Jews in ten precepts, which they call the Decalogue. And these again are reduced to two: that we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind; and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. For on these two precepts the whole Law and the Prophets hang, as the Lord himself both said in the Gospel and manifested by his own example. For the people of Israel too, from the day on which they first celebrated the Pasch in figure, slaying and eating the lamb with whose blood their doorposts were marked for the safeguard of salvation—from that day, then, the fiftieth day was completed, and they received the Law written by the finger of God, by which name we have already said the Holy Spirit is signified: just as, after the Passion and resurrection of the Lord, which is the true Pasch, on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit himself was sent to the disciples; no longer signifying hard hearts by tablets of stone, but, when they were gathered together in one place in Jerusalem itself, suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as though a violent blast were borne along, and there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and they began to speak in tongues, so that all who had come to them recognized each his own language (for to that city Jews used to gather from every land wherever they were dispersed, and had learned the diverse languages of diverse nations); then, preaching Christ with all confidence, they did many signs in his name, so that, as Peter passed by, his shadow touched a certain dead man, and he rose again.

23. 42. But when the Jews saw such great signs done in the name of him whom, partly through envy, partly through error, they had crucified, some were provoked to persecute his preachers, the apostles, but others, marveling all the more at this very thing, that in the name of him whom they had laughed at as though crushed and conquered by them, such great miracles were done, by repenting were converted, and there believed in him thousands of Jews. They were no longer those desiring from God temporal benefits and an earthly kingdom, nor awaiting carnally the promised King Christ; but, understanding and loving immortally him who for their sake suffered such things mortally at their hands, and forgave them their sins even to the shedding of his own blood, and by the example of his resurrection showed that immortality was to be hoped for and desired from him. And so, now mortifying the earthly desires of the old man, and burning with the newness of the spiritual life, as the Lord had commanded in the Gospel, they sold all they had and laid the prices of their goods before the feet of the apostles, that these might distribute to each as each had need; and, living together harmoniously in Christian love, they did not call anything their own, but all things were common to them, and they were one soul and one heart toward God. Then they too, suffering persecution from the carnal Jews, citizens of their own flesh, were scattered, so that Christ might more widely be preached by their dispersion, and that they themselves too might imitate the patience of their Lord: because he who had suffered them gently bade them, made gentle, to suffer for his sake.

23. 43. From among the very persecutors of the saints had been also the apostle Paul, and he raged especially against Christians; but afterward, believing and made an apostle, he was sent to preach the Gospel to the nations, having suffered heavier things for the name of Christ than he had done against the name of Christ. And establishing churches throughout all the nations where he sowed the Gospel, he earnestly enjoined that, since they, coming from the worship of idols and untrained in worshiping the one God, could not easily, with their goods sold and distributed, serve God, they should make offerings to the poor of the saints who were in the churches of Judea that had believed in Christ. Thus the apostolic teaching established the one as soldiers, the others as provincials paying their dues; setting Christ among them as a cornerstone, as had been foretold through the prophet, in whom both, like walls coming from different directions, namely from the Jews and from the nations, might be joined together in genuine love. But afterward heavier and more frequent persecutions arose from the unbelieving nations against the Church of Christ, and day by day the word of the Lord was fulfilled, who foretold: Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt 10:16).

24. 44. But that vine which throughout the world, as had been prophesied of it and foretold by the Lord himself, spread out its fruitful branches, sprouted forth the more abundantly the more richly it was watered by the blood of the martyrs. While these died innumerably throughout all lands for the truth of the faith, even the very kingdoms that persecuted gave way and, the neck of pride being broken, were converted to knowing and venerating Christ. But it behooved that this same vine, as had been again and again foretold by the Lord, should be pruned, and that there should be cut from it the unfruitful branches, by which heresies and schisms were made in various places, under the name of Christ, by those seeking not his glory but their own; through whose adversities the Church would be more and more exercised and proved and made illustrious, both in her teaching and in her patience.

24. 45. All these things, then, just as we read them foretold so long before, so also we know to have been done; and just as the first Christians, because these things did not yet seem to have come about, were moved by miracles to believe, so we, because all these things have been so fulfilled as we read them in the books which were written long before these things were fulfilled—where all future things were spoken of, and the present things are now seen—are built up unto faith, so that, enduring and persevering in the Lord those things also which remain, we may believe without doubt that they will come: namely, whatever tribulations are still read of as future in those same Scriptures, and the last day of judgment itself, when all the citizens of both those cities, having received back their bodies, will rise and render an account of their life before the tribunal of Christ the judge. For he will come in the brightness of power who first deigned to come in the humility of humanity; and he will separate all the pious from the impious: not only those who were utterly unwilling to believe in him, but also those who believed in him vainly and unfruitfully; about to give to the one the eternal kingdom with himself, but to the other eternal punishment with the devil. But just as no joy of temporal things can be found in any part like to the joy of eternal life which the saints are to receive, so no torment of temporal punishments can be compared to the everlasting torments of the wicked.

25. 46. And so, brother, confirm yourself in the name and help of him in whom you believe, against the tongues of those who mock our faith, through whom the devil speaks seductive words, wishing especially to mock the faith of the resurrection. But from your own self believe that you will be when you are dead, since, although you were not before, you now see that you are. For where was this mass of your body, and this form and structure of your members, a few years ago, before you were born, or even before you were conceived in your mother's womb—where was this mass and this stature of your body? Did it not come forth into the light from the hidden secrets of this creation, the Lord God invisibly forming it, and rise up by fixed increments of age into this size and form? Is it then difficult for God, who even draws the heaped clouds out of the hidden in a moment, and covers the sky in the twinkling of an eye, to restore this quantity of your body as it was, who was able to make it thus when it was not? Believe, then, firmly and unshaken, that all things which seem to be withdrawn from human eyes as though by perishing, are safe and whole to the omnipotence of God: who, when he wills, without any delay and difficulty, will repair them—those, at least, which his justice judges are to be repaired: so that in these bodies men may render an account of their deeds, in which they did them; and in these may merit either a change to heavenly incorruption for the merits of piety, or a corruptible condition of the body for the merits of iniquity—a condition not dissolved by death, but furnishing material for everlasting griefs.

25. 47. Flee, then, by immovable faith and good conduct, flee, brother, those torments where neither do the tormentors fail, nor do the tormented die; for whom death is without end—namely, not to be able to die amid torments. And burn with the love and desire of the everlasting life of the saints, where there will be neither toilsome action nor idle rest: there will be praise of God without weariness, without failing; no weariness in the mind, no labor in the body; no want, neither your own, in which you would desire to be helped, nor your neighbor's, to which you would hasten to bring help. God will be all delight and the fullness of the holy city, living in him and from him wisely and blessedly. For we shall be made, as we hope and await it promised by him, equal to the angels of God, and together with them shall enjoy that Trinity now through sight, in which we now walk by faith. For we believe what we do not see, that by the very merits of faith we may merit also to see what we believe, and to cleave to it: so that the equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the unity of the Trinity itself—how these three are one God—we may no longer sound out in the words of faith and the clatter of syllables, but may drink in, in that silence, by a most pure and most ardent contemplation.

25. 48. Hold these things fixed in your heart, and call upon God in whom you believe, that he may protect you against the temptations of the devil; and be cautious lest that enemy creep upon you from some other quarter, who, for the most malevolent solace of his own damnation, seeks those who may be damned with him. For it is not only through those who hate the Christian name, and grieve that the world is occupied by that name, and still desire to serve images and the curiosities of demons, that he dares to tempt Christians, but also through those whom we recalled a little before, cut off from the unity of the Church as from a pruned vine, who are called heretics or schismatics, he tries this too sometimes. But nevertheless he also sometimes tries to tempt and seduce even through the Jews. But most of all it is to be guarded against, lest through men who are within the catholic Church itself, whom she bears like chaff until the time of her winnowing, each one be tempted and deceived. For God is patient toward them for this reason: both that he may confirm the faith and prudence of his own elect by exercising it through their perversity; and because, of their number, many advance, and, taking pity on their own souls in order to please God, are converted with great impetus. For not all treasure up for themselves, through the patience of God, wrath against the day of wrath of his just judgment; but the same patience of the Almighty leads many to the most salutary grief of repentance. And until this comes about, the patience—not only the tolerance but also the mercy—of those who already hold the right way is exercised through them. You will see, then, many drunkards, the avaricious, cheats, gamblers, adulterers, fornicators, men binding sacrilegious remedies on themselves, given over to enchanters and astrologers or diviners of any impious arts whatever. You will notice too that those crowds fill the churches on the feast days of Christians who also fill the theaters on the solemn days of pagans; and seeing these things, you will be tempted to imitate them. And what shall I say?—you will see what even now you assuredly already know: for you are not ignorant that many who are called Christians do all these evils which I have briefly recalled. And perhaps you are not unaware that men do somewhat graver things, whom you know to be called Christians. But if you have come with this mind, that, as though secure, you may do such things, you greatly err; nor will the name of Christ profit you, when he has begun to judge most severely who first deigned most mercifully to come to your aid. For he foretold these things, and says in the Gospel: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, in your name we ate and drank (Matt 7:21–22). To all, then, who persevere in such works, damnation is the end. When, therefore, you see many not only do these things but even defend and urge them, hold yourself to the law of God, and do not follow its transgressors. For you will be judged not according to their notion, but according to his truth.

25. 49. Join yourself to the good, whom you see loving your King together with you. For you will find many such, if you too have begun to be such. For if in the spectacles you used to desire to be with those and to cling to those who together with you loved some charioteer, or hunter, or some actor, how much more ought the company of those to delight you who together with you love God—of whom his lover will never be ashamed, because not only can he himself not be conquered, but he will also render his lovers unconquered. Nor yet, even in the good themselves, who either precede you or accompany you to God, ought you to place your hope, because you ought not to place it even in yourself, however much you have advanced, but in him who, by justifying both them and you, makes you such. For you are secure concerning God, because he is not changed; but concerning man no one is prudently secure. But if we ought to love those who are not yet just, that they may be so, how much more ardently are those to be loved who already are. But it is one thing to love a man, another to place hope in a man; and there is so great a difference that God commands the one, the other he forbids. But if you have suffered some insults or tribulations for the name of Christ, and have not failed in faith nor strayed from the good way, you will receive a greater reward; but those who in these things yield to the devil lose even the lesser. But be humble to God, that he may not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength.

26. 50. When these things have been said, he is to be asked whether he believes them and desires to observe them. And when he has answered, he is of course to be solemnly signed and dealt with according to the custom of the Church. Concerning the sacrament indeed which he receives, when it has been well commended to him—that the visible things are signs of divine realities, but that the realities themselves, invisible, are honored in them; and that this appearance, sanctified by the blessing, is not to be regarded as it is in any ordinary use—it must also be said what that discourse signifies which he heard, what it seasons in him, whose likeness that thing bears. Then he is to be admonished from this occasion that, if he hears anything in the Scriptures too which sounds carnal, even if he does not understand it, he should nevertheless believe that something spiritual is signified, which pertains to holy conduct and the life to come. And this he learns so briefly: that whatever he has heard from the canonical books, which he cannot refer to the love of eternity and truth and holiness, and to the love of neighbor, he should believe was said or done figuratively; and so let him try to understand it, that he may refer it to that twofold love. Yet in such a way that he understand "neighbor" not carnally, but as everyone who can be with him in that holy city, whether he already appears so or not yet; and that he despair of the correction of no man whom he sees, by the patience of God, to be living, for no other reason, as the Apostle says, than that he may be led to repentance.

26. 51. If this discourse, by which I have instructed, as it were, a present uninstructed man, seems long to you, you are permitted to say these things more briefly; yet I do not think it ought to be longer—although it makes a great difference what the matter itself, when it is being treated, suggests, and what the presence of the hearers shows that they not only bear but even desire. But when there is need of speed, see how easily the whole matter can be unfolded. Suppose again that someone is present who wishes to be a Christian: he too, then, having been asked, answered what the former answered; for even if he does not answer this, it must be said that he ought to have so answered. Then in this way the rest is to be woven together.

26. 52. Truly, brother, that is the great and true blessedness which is promised to the saints in the age to come. But all visible things pass away, and all the pomp and delights and curiosity of this world will perish and will drag their lovers with them to destruction. From which destruction, that is, from everlasting punishments, God, being merciful, willing to free men—if they are not enemies to themselves and do not resist the mercy of their Creator—sent his only-begotten Son, that is, his Word equal to himself, through whom he founded all things. And remaining indeed in his divinity, and not departing from the Father, nor changed in anything, yet by assuming man, and by appearing to men in mortal flesh, he came to men: so that, just as through one man who was made first, that is, Adam, death entered into the human race, because he consented to his wife, seduced by the devil, that they should transgress the precept of God, so through one man, who is also God, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, all past sins being blotted out, those believing in him might all enter into eternal life.

27. 53. For all the things which you now see done in the Church of God and under the name of Christ throughout the whole world were already foretold ages ago, and just as we read them, so also we see them; and from this we are built up unto faith. There once happened a flood throughout the whole earth, that the sinners might be destroyed; and yet those who escaped in the ark showed forth the sacrament of the future Church, which now swims in the waves of the world and is freed from submersion through the wood of the cross of Christ. It was foretold to Abraham, the faithful servant of God, one man, that from him a people would be born who would worship the one God among the other nations who worshiped idols; and all the things which were foretold as coming to that people came to pass as they were foretold. There was prophesied in that people also Christ, the King of all the saints and God, to come of the seed of that same Abraham according to the flesh which he assumed, so that all who imitated his faith might also be children of Abraham; and so it was done: Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, who was of that lineage. It was foretold through the prophets that he would suffer on the cross from that same people of the Jews, of whose lineage according to the flesh he was coming; and so it was done. It was foretold that he would rise again: he rose, and according to those same predictions of the prophets ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples. It was foretold not only by the prophets but also by the Lord Jesus Christ himself that his Church would be throughout the whole world, spread abroad through the martyrdoms and passions of the saints; and it was foretold at the time when his name was still hidden from the nations, and where it was known it was mocked: and yet by the powers of his miracles, whether those which he did through himself, or those which he did through his servants, while these are announced and believed, we now see that what was foretold has been fulfilled, and the very kings of the earth, who before persecuted Christians, now subjugated to the name of Christ. It was foretold too that schisms and heresies would go out from his Church, and under his name, in places where they could, would seek their own glory, not Christ's; and these things have been fulfilled.

27. 54. Are not those things, then, which remain going to come? It is manifest that, just as these foretold things have come, so also those will come, whatever tribulations of the just still remain; and the day of judgment, which will separate all the impious from the just in the resurrection of the dead, and will set apart, for the fire due to them, not only those who are outside the Church, but also the chaff of the Church herself, which she must most patiently bear with until the last winnowing. But those who mock the resurrection, thinking that this flesh, because it rots, cannot rise again, are going to rise again in it unto punishments; and God will show them that he who was able to make these bodies before they were, is able in a moment to restore them as they were. But all the faithful who are to reign with Christ will so rise again in the same body that they merit also to be changed unto angelic incorruption: so that they become equal to the angels of God, as the Lord himself promised, and praise him without any failing and without any weariness, living always in him and from him, with such joy and blessedness as can neither be told nor thought by man.

27. 55. You, therefore, believing these things, beware temptations (because the devil seeks those who may perish with him): that not only through those who are outside the Church, whether pagans, or Jews, or heretics, may that enemy not seduce you, but that also those whom you see living badly within the catholic Church herself—whether given to immoderate pleasures of the belly and the gullet, or unchaste, or devoted to vain or unlawful curiosities, whether of spectacles, or of remedies or diabolical divinations, or in the pomp and conceit of avarice and pride, or in any life which the law condemns and punishes—you may not imitate; but may rather join yourself to the good, whom you will find easily, if you too have been such; that together you may worship and love God freely: because our whole reward will be himself, that in that eternal life we may enjoy his goodness and beauty. But he is to be loved, not as something which is seen by the eyes, but as wisdom is loved, and truth and holiness and justice and love, and whatever else of such kind is named—not as these are in men, but as they are in that very fountain of incorruptible and unchangeable wisdom. Whomever, then, you see loving these things, join yourself to them, that through Christ, who was made man that he might be the mediator of God and men, you may be reconciled to God. But perverse men, even if they enter within the walls of the Church, do not think that they will enter into the kingdom of heaven: because in their own time they will be separated, if they do not change for the better. Imitate, then, good men, bear with the bad, love all: because you do not know what he will be tomorrow who today is bad. Nor love their injustice, but love them for this reason, that they may lay hold of justice: for not only is the love of God commanded us, but also the love of neighbor, on which two precepts the whole Law hangs and the Prophets. And this no one fulfills except him who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, equal of course to the Father and the Son: because that very Trinity is God; in which God all hope is to be placed. It is not to be placed in man, of whatever sort he may be. For he by whom we are justified is one thing, those with whom we are justified another. Now the devil tempts not only through cupidities, but also through the terrors of insults and griefs and death itself. But whatever a man has suffered for the name of Christ and for the hope of eternal life, and has endured by persevering, a greater reward will be given him: for if he has yielded to the devil, he will be damned with him. But works of mercy, with pious humility, obtain this from the Lord, that he may not allow his servants to be tempted more than they can bear.