1. 1. I ought to obey your command, holy brother Aurelius, the more devotedly the more clearly I saw that whoever gave me the command did so through you. For our Lord Jesus Christ, dwelling within you and inspiring in you the concern of a fatherly and brotherly love, has taken up your will and your tongue into his own work and has commanded me through you to write something to you on this question: whether this license is to be permitted to our sons and brothers the monks who neglect to obey the blessed apostle Paul when he says, If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10). May he therefore be present to me as well, so that I may obey in such a way as to understand, by the very profit of fruitful labor, that my obeying him is itself his gift.

1. 2. First, then, we must see what is said by the men of that profession who are unwilling to work; then, if we find that they do not judge rightly, we must argue against them for their correction and for the fulfilling of our episcopal office. The Apostle, they say, did not give his command about this bodily work in which farmers or craftsmen labor, when he said, If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10). For he could not be contrary to the Gospel, where the Lord himself says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your soul, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things. And your Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matt 6:25-34). See, they say, where the Lord commands us to be untroubled about our food and our covering. How then could the Apostle judge against the Lord, so as to charge us that we ought to be so anxious about what we eat and what we drink and how we are clothed that he would burden us even with the trades, cares, and labors of craftsmen? Therefore in what he says, If anyone will not work, let him not eat, we ought, they say, to understand spiritual works, of which it is said in another place, To each as the Lord gave: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1 Cor 3:5-6); and a little later, Each shall receive his wages according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's tillage, God's building: according to the grace given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation (1 Cor 3:8-10). As the Apostle therefore works by planting, watering, building, and laying a foundation, so whoever will not work, let him not eat. For what does it profit to eat spiritually, that is, to be fed by the word of God, if one does not thereby work for the building up of others? As it did not profit that lazy servant to receive the talent and hide it and not work for his lord's gain. Did it not lead to its being taken from him in the end, and to his being cast into the outer darkness? So too, they say, we do the same: we read with the brothers who come to us wearied from the heat of the world, that they may find rest among us in the word of God, and in prayers, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We address them, we console them, we exhort them, building up in them whatever we perceive their life to lack according to its rank. If we did not do such works, we would be taking from the Lord that very spiritual food at our peril. For this is what the Apostle said: If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10). So these men suppose that they are obeying the apostolic and evangelical judgment, since they both believe that the Gospel commanded that the bodily and temporal want of this life is not to be cared for, and that the Apostle spoke of spiritual food and work when he said, If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10).

2. 3. But they do not consider that, if someone else were to say that the Lord, speaking in parables and similitudes, was warning about spiritual food and covering, so that his servants should not be anxious about them (as he says, When they bring you to trial, do not be anxious what you are to say. For it will be given you in that hour what you are to say; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you (Matt 10:18-20); for the discourse of wisdom is spiritual, and about it he did not want them to be anxious, promising that it would be supplied to them without their being anxious about it), but that the Apostle, now speaking in the apostolic manner more plainly, and more properly than figuratively, as most and nearly all things stand in the apostolic letters, spoke properly of bodily work and food when he said, If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10) their interpretation would be left doubtful, unless, considering the rest of the Lord's words, they found something by which they might prove that he spoke of not caring for bodily food and clothing when he said, Do not be anxious what you shall eat, and what you shall drink, and what you shall put on (Matt 6:25,31) as if they took note of what he says, For the Gentiles seek all these things (Matt 6:32), for there he shows that he was speaking of those very bodily and temporal things. Thus then, if the Apostle had said only this on the matter, If anyone will not work, let him not eat, these words could be turned to another meaning; but since in many other places of his letters he teaches most plainly what he means by it, they labor in vain to draw a fog over themselves and others, so that what that love usefully urges they are not only unwilling to do, but unwilling either to understand themselves or to let others understand it, not fearing what is written, He refused to understand that he might do well (Ps 36:3 (35:4)).

3. 4. First, then, we must show that the blessed apostle Paul wanted the servants of God to do bodily works that would have their end in a great spiritual reward, to this purpose: that they should need no one for their food and covering, but should provide these for themselves with their own hands. Then we must show that those evangelical precepts, by which some foster not only their laziness but even their arrogance, are not contrary to the apostolic precept and example. Let us see, then, how the Apostle came to say, If anyone will not work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10), and what he then joins on, so that from the very context of the reading the declared meaning may appear. We charge you, brethren, he says, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who walks in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; because we were not idle among you, nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but with labor and toil we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you: not because we had no right, but to give ourselves to you as an example, that you might imitate us. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command, that if anyone will not work, let him not eat. For we have heard that some among you walk in idleness, doing no work, but being busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quietness and to eat their own bread (2 Thess 3:6-12). What can be said against this, since, lest anyone afterward be permitted to interpret this according to his own will and not according to love, he taught by his own example what he had commanded? For though the Lord had appointed that he, as an apostle and preacher of the Gospel, a soldier of Christ, a planter of the vineyard, a shepherd of the flock, should live by the Gospel, yet he himself did not exact the support owed him, that he might give himself as an example to those who were desiring to exact what was not owed; as he says to the Corinthians, Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk? (1 Cor 9:7) Therefore what was owed to him he was unwilling to accept, that by his example those might be restrained who, not so ordained in the Church, supposed such things were owed to them. For what is it that he says, Nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but with labor and toil we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you: not because we had no right, but to give ourselves to you as an example, that you might imitate us (2 Thess 3:8-9)? Let those then hear to whom he gave this command, that is, those who do not have the right that he had, that working only spiritually they might eat bread free of bodily labor; and as he says, We command and exhort in Christ that working in quietness they eat their own bread (2 Thess 3:12), let them not dispute against the most manifest words of the Apostle; for this too belongs to the quietness with which they ought to work and eat their own bread.

4. 5. I would consider and treat these words still more carefully and diligently, were it not that I have other passages of his letters that are much plainer, by comparison with which these too are made clearer; and if these did not exist, those would suffice. For writing to the Corinthians on this same matter, he says, Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take about with us a woman who is a sister, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? (1 Cor 9:1-5) See how he first shows what is permitted to him, and permitted because he is an apostle. For he began thus, Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? And he proves that he is an apostle, saying, Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? Having proved this, he shows that what is permitted to the other apostles is permitted to him; that is, that he need not work with his own hands, but may live by the Gospel, as the Lord appointed, which he demonstrated most plainly in what follows. For to this end faithful women too, possessing earthly substance, went with them and ministered to them out of their substance, so that they might lack none of those things that pertain to the substance of this life. The blessed Paul shows that this was indeed permitted to him, as the other apostles also did, but he afterward recalls that he was unwilling to use that right. Some, not understanding this, have interpreted not a woman who is a sister when he said, Do we not have the right to take about with us a woman who is a sister? (1 Cor 9:5) but a wife. The ambiguity of the Greek word deceived them, since both wife and woman are said by the same word in Greek. And yet the Apostle so put it that they ought not to have been deceived; for he did not say merely a woman, but a woman who is a sister; nor to lead, but to take about. Other translators, however, were not deceived by this ambiguity, and interpreted it a woman, not a wife.

5. 6. Whoever thinks it could not have been done by the apostles, that women of holy conduct should go about with them wherever they preached the Gospel, ministering to them their necessities out of their substance, let them hear the Gospel and learn how they did this by the example of the Lord himself. For our Lord, in his accustomed mercy showing compassion to the weaker, although angels could minister to him, also had a money box into which was put the money that was contributed by the good faithful for the necessities of their support; and he entrusted this money box to Judas, so that even if we could not avoid thieves, we might learn to tolerate them in the Church. For he took away what was put in (John 12:6), as is written of him. And he willed that women should follow him to prepare and minister what was necessary, showing what is owed to evangelists and ministers of God, as to soldiers, by the people of God, as by provincials; so that if anyone were unwilling to use what was owed to him, as the apostle Paul was unwilling, he might spend more on the Church, not by exacting the support owed, but by managing his daily food from his own labors. For the innkeeper to whom that wounded man was brought had heard, Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I return (Luke 10:35). The apostle Paul therefore spent more, who served, as he himself testifies, at his own expense. For in the Gospel it is written, Afterward he himself went on through city and village, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God; and the twelve were with him, and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their means (Luke 8:1-3). The apostles imitated this example of the Lord in receiving the food owed to them; about which the same Lord speaks most plainly: As you go, he says, preach, saying that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay. Take no gold, nor silver, nor money in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff: for the laborer deserves his food (Matt 10:7-10). See where the Lord appointed what this same apostle recalls. For he said they should carry none of those things to this end, that where there was need they might receive from those to whom they announced the kingdom of God.

6. 7. But lest anyone suppose that this was granted to the twelve alone, see also what Luke relates: After this, he says, the Lord appointed seventy-two others, and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was about to come. And he said to them: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say: Peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they have; for the laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:1-7). Here it appears that these were not commanded but permitted; so that whoever wished to use it might use what was permitted to him by the Lord's appointment; but if anyone was unwilling to use it, he did not act against the command, but gave up his own right, conducting himself more mercifully and more laboriously in the Gospel, in which he was also unwilling to accept the wages owed him. Otherwise the Apostle acted against the Lord's command, for after he showed that it was permitted to him, he at once added, But yet I have not used this right (1 Cor 9:15).

7. 8. But let us return to the order of the text and consider carefully the whole of this passage of the letter. Do we not, he says, have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take about with us a woman who is a sister? (1 Cor 9:4-5) What right does he mean, except the one the Lord gave to those whom he sent to preach the kingdom of heaven, saying, Eat what is set before you by them, for the laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:7-8) and setting himself forth as an example of the same power, to whom the most faithful women ministered such necessities out of their means? But the apostle Paul did more, in that he brought forward his fellow apostles as proof of this right permitted by the Lord. For he did not add by way of reproach, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (1 Cor 9:5) but in order to show thereby that he was unwilling to accept what, by the practice of his fellow soldiers as well, he was proved to be permitted to accept. Is it only I and Barnabas who have no right to refrain from working? (1 Cor 9:6) See, he has removed all doubt even from the dullest hearts, that they may understand of what working he speaks. For why does he say, Is it only I and Barnabas who have no right to refrain from working? except because all the evangelists and ministers of the word of God had the power received from the Lord not to work with their own hands, but to live by the Gospel, working only spiritual things in the preaching of the kingdom of heaven and the building up of the peace of the Church. For no one can say that the Apostle spoke of spiritual working itself when he said, Is it only I and Barnabas who have no right to refrain from working? For all of them had this power not to work. Let him say, then, who attempts to distort and pervert the apostolic precepts into his own opinion let him say, if he dares, that all the evangelists received from the Lord the power not to evangelize. But if it is most absurd and most insane to say this, why are they unwilling to understand what is plain to all, that they did indeed receive the power not to work bodily works by which they might seek their food because the laborer deserves his food and his wages (Matt 10:10; Luke 10:7), as the Gospel says? Therefore it was not only Paul and Barnabas who did not have the power to refrain from working, but all alike had this power, which these men did not use, spending more on the Church, as they judged fitting for the weak in the places where they evangelized. And therefore, lest he seem to have reproached his fellow apostles, he adds, Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk? Do I say this on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For in the Law of Moses it is written: You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Or does he say it altogether for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher in hope of sharing in the crop (1 Cor 9:7-10). By these words the apostle Paul sufficiently indicates that his fellow apostles usurped nothing beyond what was owed them, in that they did not work bodily to have the necessities of this life, but, as the Lord appointed, living by the Gospel, ate bread freely given them by those to whom they preached the freely given grace. For they received their support like soldiers, and freely plucked from the fruit of the vineyard planted by them what was needed; and from the flock they tended, they drank milk; and from the threshing floor they threshed, they took their food.

8. 9. But he connects the rest more plainly, and altogether removes all the windings of doubt. If we have sown spiritual things among you, he says, is it a great matter if we reap your carnal things? (1 Cor 9:11) What are the spiritual things he sowed, except the word and the ministry of the sacrament of the kingdom of heaven? And what the carnal things he says it is permitted him to reap, except these temporal things that are granted for the life and need of the flesh? But he makes it clear that he did not seek or accept these things owed him from them, lest he should put any hindrance in the way of the Gospel of Christ. What remains, but that we understand he worked to have his food, by no bodily work other than with his own bodily and visible hands? For if he sought food and covering from spiritual work, that is, by receiving these from those whom he was building up in the Gospel, he would not consistently say, If others share in your power, do not we still more? But we have not used this power; rather we endure all things, lest we put any hindrance in the way of the Gospel of Christ (1 Cor 9:12). What power does he say he did not use, except the one he had over them, received from the Lord, to reap their carnal things for the support of this life, which is lived in the flesh? Others too were partakers of this power, who did not first announce the Gospel to them, but came afterward preaching the same thing to their church. Therefore, when he had said, If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it a great matter if we reap your carnal things? he added, If others share in your power, do not we still more? And when he had shown what power was theirs, But we have not used, he says, this power; rather we endure all things, lest we put any hindrance in the way of the Gospel of Christ (1 Cor 9:12). Let these men say, then, how the Apostle had carnal food from spiritual work, when he himself plainly says that he did not use this power. But if he did not have carnal food from spiritual work, it remains that he had it from bodily work, and therefore says, Nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but with labor and toil we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you: not because we had no right, but to give ourselves to you as an example, that you might imitate us (2 Thess 3:8-9). We endure all things, he says, lest we put any hindrance in the way of the Gospel of Christ (1 Cor 9:12).

9. 10. And he returns again, and in every way commends again and again what is permitted to him, and yet does not do it. Do you not know, he says, that those who work in the temple eat what is of the temple, and those who serve at the altar share with the altar? So also the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel. But I have made no use of any of these things (1 Cor 9:13-15). What is plainer than this? What is clearer? I fear that when I discuss it, wishing to expound it, what shines and cries out of itself may become obscure. For those who do not understand these words, or pretend not to understand them, understand mine much less, or confess that they understand them: unless perhaps they understand ours quickly for this reason, that they are permitted to deride what they have understood, but are not permitted the same with the Apostle's words. Therefore, where they cannot interpret them otherwise according to their own opinion, they answer that things even clear and manifest are obscure and uncertain, because they do not dare to call them depraved and perverse. The man of God cries out, The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel; but I have made no use of any of these things and flesh and blood attempt to distort what is straight, to close what is open, to cloud what is clear. He did spiritual work, they say, and lived from it. If that is so, he lived by the Gospel; why then does he say, The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel; but I have made no use of any of these things? Or if they want to interpret this very word living, said here, according to the spiritual life, then the Apostle had no hope toward God, since he did not live by the Gospel, because he said, I have made no use of any of these things. Therefore, that his hope of eternal life might be certain, the Apostle did indeed live by the Gospel spiritually. So what he says, But I have made no use of any of these things, he without doubt makes us understand of this life lived in the flesh, when he said that the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel, that is, should pass this life, which needs food and covering, by the Gospel; as he said above of his fellow apostles: whence the Lord himself says, The laborer deserves his food (Matt 10:10), and, The laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:7). This food, then, and these wages for sustaining this life, owed to evangelists, the Apostle did not accept from those whom he evangelized, saying truly, But I have made no use of any of these things.

10. 11. And he goes on and adds, lest perhaps anyone suppose that he did not accept it because they had not given it: I have not written this to secure any such provision for myself. For it is better for me to die than for anyone to deprive me of my ground for boasting (1 Cor 9:15). What boasting, except that which he wished to have before God, suffering with the weak in Christ, as he is about to say most plainly very soon? For if I preach the Gospel, he says, that gives me no ground for boasting; for necessity is laid upon me (1 Cor 9:16) that is, the necessity of sustaining this life. For woe to me, he says, if I do not preach the Gospel (1 Cor 9:16); that is, to my own harm I shall not preach, because I shall be tormented by hunger, and shall not have the means to live. For he goes on and says, For if I do this willingly, I have a reward (1 Cor 9:17). He says he does it willingly if he does it compelled by no necessity of propping up this life; and for this he has a reward, namely, of everlasting glory before God. But if unwillingly, he says, a stewardship has been entrusted to me (1 Cor 9:17); that is, if by the necessity of carrying on this life I am unwillingly compelled to evangelize, a stewardship has been entrusted to me; so that, from my stewardship, since I preach Christ, since I preach the truth, although on this occasion, although seeking my own, although compelled by the necessity of earthly gain, others profit, but I do not have before God that glorious and everlasting reward. What then, he says, is my reward? (1 Cor 9:18) He said it as a question; therefore the delivery is to be suspended until he answers. That this may be more easily understood, let us, as it were, question him: What then will be your reward, Apostle, when you do not accept that earthly reward owed even to good evangelists who evangelize not for this purpose, but who, by the Lord's ordinance, take it as a consequence offered to them? What then will be your reward? See what he answers: That in my evangelizing, he says, I may make the Gospel free of charge (1 Cor 9:18); that is, that the Gospel may not be costly to believers, lest they think they are being evangelized for this purpose, so that the evangelists may seem, as it were, to sell it. And yet he returns again and again, to show what is permitted him by the Lord's right, and that he himself does not do it: That I may not make full use, he says, of my power in the Gospel (1 Cor 9:18).

11. 12. Now, because he did this out of compassion for the weakness of men, let us hear what follows: For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more: to those who are under the Law, as one under the Law, though I myself am not under the Law, that I might win those who were under the Law; to those who are without the Law, as one without the Law, though I am not without the law of God, but am under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without the Law (1 Cor 9:19-21). This he did not out of the cunning of pretense, but out of the mercy of compassion; that is, not as if to feign himself a Jew, as some have supposed because he observed the old legal customs at Jerusalem. For he did this according to his own free and manifest judgment, in which he says, Was anyone called when circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin (1 Cor 7:18); that is, let him not so live as if he had drawn on a foreskin and covered what he had bared; as he says in another place, Your circumcision has become a foreskin (Rom 2:25). According therefore to this judgment of his, in which he says, Was anyone called when circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was anyone called when uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised (1 Cor 7:18) he did those things which, by those who did not understand and paid little attention, he was supposed to have feigned; for he was a Jew and called when circumcised, and he was unwilling to draw on a foreskin, that is, unwilling to live as if he were not circumcised. For this he now had in his power. And he was indeed not under the Law, like those who served it in a servile way; but yet he was in the law of God and of Christ. For that law was not one thing and the law of God another, as the lost Manicheans are accustomed to say. Otherwise, if he is to be thought to have feigned in observing those Jewish customs, he also feigned being a pagan and sacrificed to idols, since he says he became to those who are without the Law as one without the Law. By these he certainly wishes to be understood none but the Gentiles, whom we call pagans. To be under the Law, then, is one thing; to be in the Law another; to be without the Law another. The carnal Jews are under the Law; in the Law are spiritual men, both Jews and Christians whence the former kept that ancestral custom, but did not impose unaccustomed burdens on the believing Gentiles; and therefore the former too were circumcised: without the Law, however, are the Gentiles who have not yet believed, to whom nevertheless the Apostle testifies that he conformed himself through merciful compassion, not through shifty pretense; that is, so that he might come to the aid of the carnal Jew or pagan in the very way in which he himself, if he were such, would have wished to be helped: bearing their weakness in a likeness of compassion, not deceiving in a fiction of falsehood; as he immediately goes on to say, I became weak to the weak, that I might win the weak (1 Cor 9:22). For from this he was speaking, so as to say all those things too. As, therefore, his becoming weak to the weak was no falsehood, so neither were those other things said above. For what weakness does he say he had toward the weak, except that of having compassion on them so far that, lest he seem a seller of the Gospel, and lest, falling under evil suspicion among the inexperienced, he hinder the course of the word of God, he was unwilling to accept what was owed him by the Lord's right? And if he had wished it, he would certainly not have lied, because it was truly owed; and because he was unwilling, he certainly did not lie. For he did not say it was not owed him, but showed it was owed, and that he had not used the debt, and professed he was unwilling to use it at all having become weak by this very thing, that he was unwilling to use his power; clothed, namely, with so merciful an affection that he considered how he himself would wish to be treated, if he too were so weak that, seeing those through whom the Gospel was preached to him accepting support, he might suspect, as it were, a peddling of merchandise.

12. 13. Of this weakness of his he speaks in another place: We became little ones in your midst, like a nurse cherishing her own children (1 Thess 2:7). For the context of the reading indicates this: For we never, he says, used words of flattery, as you know; nor a pretext for greed, God is witness; nor did we seek glory from men, neither from you nor from others; though we could have been a burden to you, as apostles of Christ: but we became little ones in your midst, like a nurse cherishing her own children (1 Thess 2:5-7). What therefore he says to the Corinthians, that he has the power of his apostleship, as the other apostles also have, which power he testifies he did not use this also he says in this passage to the Thessalonians: Though we could have been a burden to you, as apostles of Christ (1 Thess 2:7) according to what the Lord says, The laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:7). For that he says this in this sense is indicated by what he set down above, Nor a pretext for greed, God is witness (1 Thess 2:5). For through what was owed by the Lord's right to good evangelists who evangelize not for this purpose, but seek the kingdom of God, that all these things might be added to them others found a pretext, of whom he says, For such persons do not serve God, but their own belly (Rom 16:18). From these the Apostle wished to cut away this pretext, by giving up even what was justly owed him. For he himself plainly shows this in the second letter to the Corinthians, saying that his needs were supplied by other churches. For he had come, as it appears, to such want that necessities were sent to him from distant churches, while nevertheless he accepted nothing of the kind from those among whom he was. Did I commit a sin, he says, in abasing myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's Gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support to serve you; and when I was with you and was in want, I did not burden anyone. For what I lacked the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied, and in everything I kept myself from being a burden to you, and so I will keep myself. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine shall not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows. But what I do and will continue to do is to cut away the pretext of those who desire a pretext, so that in what they boast they may be found just as we are (2 Cor 11:7-12). From this pretext, then, which here he says he wishes to cut away, he wished to be understood what he said there, Nor a pretext for greed, God is witness (1 Thess 2:5). And what he said here, abasing myself so that you might be exalted (2 Cor 11:7) this in the first letter to the same Corinthians is, I became weak to the weak (1 Cor 9:22); this to the Thessalonians is, I became a little one in your midst, like a nurse cherishing her own children (1 Thess 2:7). Accordingly, attend to what follows: So, he says, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the Gospel of God but also our own souls, because you had become very dear to us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you (1 Thess 2:8-9). This, therefore, is what he said above, Though we could have been a burden to you, as apostles of Christ (1 Thess 2:7). For he did this trembling, as it were, with fatherly and motherly affection, at the dangers of the weak, lest, stirred by false suspicions, they should hate the Gospel as something for sale. So too in the Acts of the Apostles he speaks the same, when, sending from Miletus to Ephesus, he had summoned from there the elders of the church, to whom among many things he says, I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel, you yourselves know; for these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by so toiling one must help the weak, remembering also the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:33-35).

13. 14. Here perhaps someone may say: If the Apostle worked bodily work to sustain this life, what was that work itself, and when did he have leisure both to work and to preach the Gospel? To him I answer: Suppose I do not know; nevertheless, that he worked bodily and from this lived in the flesh, not using the power that the Lord had given to the apostles, that announcing the Gospel he might live by the Gospel, the things said above testify without any doubt. For it was not said in one place only, nor briefly, so that it could be turned and perverted into another meaning by the evasion of any most cunning person. Since, then, the opposition of those who contradict is crushed by so great and frequent masses of authority, why do they ask of me either what work he did or when he did it? One thing I know, that he did not commit thefts, nor was he a burglar or a robber, nor a charioteer, nor a hunter, nor an actor, nor a maker of shameful gain; but he worked innocently and honorably at things suited to human uses, as are the works of smiths, builders, cobblers, farmers, and the like. For honesty itself does not reproach what is reproached by the pride of those who love to be called honorable but do not love to be so. The Apostle, then, would not have disdained either to take up some rustic work or to engage in the labor of craftsmen. For he who says, Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the Church of God (1 Cor 10:32) whom in this matter he could have feared, I do not know. If they should say the Jews, the patriarchs tended cattle; if the Greeks, whom we also call pagans, even philosophers most honorable to themselves had cobblers; if the Church of God that just man, chosen to be a witness of the conjugal virginity that was always to remain, to whom the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ, was betrothed, was a carpenter. Whatever, then, of these things men work with innocence and without fraud, is good. For the Apostle himself guards against this too, lest anyone slip into evil works from the necessity of sustaining life. Let the thief, he says, no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing good work with his hands, that he may have something to share with anyone in need (Eph 4:28). This therefore is enough to know, that even in bodily work itself the Apostle worked what is good.

14. 15. But when he was accustomed to work, that is, at what intervals of time, so as not to be hindered from evangelizing, who could comprehend? Certainly that he worked at both day and night hours, he himself did not keep silent. Yet these men, who, as though very busy and occupied, inquire about the time of working, what do they do? Have they themselves filled the lands with the Gospel from Jerusalem round about as far as Illyricum? Or have they taken upon themselves whatever of the barbarous nations still remains to be visited and filled with the peace of the Church? We know them gathered most idly into a certain holy fellowship. The Apostle did a marvelous thing, who truly, in so great a care of all the churches, both those founded and those to be founded, belonging to his charge and labor, even worked with his hands: yet for this reason, when he was among the Corinthians and was in want, he was a burden to none of those among whom he was; but plainly what he lacked, the brothers who came from Macedonia (2 Cor 11:9) supplied.

15. 16. For the Apostle himself, on account of such necessities of the saints who, although they obey his precepts to work in quietness and eat their own bread, can nevertheless for many reasons need some supplement of such support when he had said, teaching and forewarning such things, Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quietness and eat their own bread (2 Thess 3:12) lest those who had the means to supply the necessities of the servants of God should, on this occasion, grow slothful, foreseeing this, he at once added, But you, brethren, do not grow weary in well-doing (2 Thess 3:13). And when he wrote to Titus, saying, Speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way diligently, that they may lack nothing (Titus 3:13) to show whence they ought to lack nothing, he at once added, And let our people too learn to apply themselves to good works, for necessary uses, so that they may not be unfruitful (Titus 3:14). Timothy too, whom he calls his most genuine son, since he knew him to be weak in body, as he shows, advising him not to drink water, but to use a little wine, for the sake of his stomach and his frequent infirmities (1 Tim 5:23) because he could not labor in bodily work, lest perhaps, since he was unwilling to lack daily food from those to whom he ministered the Gospel, he should seek for himself some occupations in which the purpose of his mind might be entangled (for it is one thing to labor with the body with a free mind, as a craftsman does, if he is not fraudulent and greedy and avid of private gain; but another thing to occupy the mind itself with the cares of gathering money without bodily labor, as do traders, or stewards, or contractors: for they preside by care, they do not work with their hands, and therefore occupy their own mind with the anxiety of possessing) Timothy, then, lest he fall into such things, since through the infirmity of his body he could not work with his hands, he thus exhorts and advises and consoles: Labor, he says, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service for God gets entangled in worldly affairs, that he may please the one who enlisted him. And the athlete who competes is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules (2 Tim 2:3-5). Here, lest he should suffer the straits of saying, I cannot dig, and I am ashamed to beg (Luke 16:3) he added, It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops (2 Tim 2:6); according to what he had said to the Corinthians, Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk? (1 Cor 9:7) Thus he made the chaste evangelist secure, who evangelizes not in order to sell the Gospel, but who nevertheless is not able to supply the necessities of this life for himself by his own hands; that he might understand that what he took as necessary from those to whom he served as a soldier among, as among provincials, and whom he worked over as a vineyard by cultivation or fed as a flock, was not begging, but a right.

16. 17. On account, therefore, of these occupations of the servants of God, or of bodily infirmities, which cannot be altogether absent, the Apostle not only permits the needs of the saints to be supplied by the good faithful, but even most wholesomely exhorts it. For apart from that power which he says he himself did not use, but which nevertheless he commands the faithful to render, saying, Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches (Gal 6:6) apart, then, from this power, which he often testifies that preachers of the word have over those to whom they preach, he also commands and exhorts that necessities be contributed from the churches of the Gentiles even to those saints who had sold and distributed all their goods, and lived at Jerusalem in a holy fellowship of life, calling nothing their own, to whom all things were common, having one soul and one heart toward God. From this comes that passage to the Romans: Now, he says, I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints who are at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they are in debt to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things (Rom 15:25-27). This is like what he says to the Corinthians, If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it a great matter if we reap your carnal things? (1 Cor 9:11) Likewise to the Corinthians in the second letter: We make known to you, brethren, he says, the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a severe test of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the riches of their generosity; for, I bear witness, according to their means and beyond their means they gave of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor and fellowship of the ministration that is made for the saints: and not as we had hoped, but they gave themselves first to the Lord, and to us by the will of God, so that we asked Titus that, as he had begun, so he should also complete this grace among you. But as you abound in everything in faith, in word, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in the love that is from us in you see that you abound in this grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor, though he was rich, that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this I give my counsel: for it is profitable to you who began a year ago not only to do but also to will: now therefore complete the doing also, that as your readiness in willing was prompt, so it may also be in completing it out of what each one has. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one has not. For it is not that others should have relief and you affliction, but as a matter of equality: at the present time let your abundance supply their want, so that their abundance also may supply your want, that there may be equality, as it is written, He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. But thanks be to God, who put the same earnestness for you into the heart of Titus: for he accepted our appeal; and being himself more earnest, of his own accord he went out to you. With him we have sent the brother whose praise in the Gospel is throughout all the churches. And not only this, but he was appointed by the churches to be the companion of our travels in this grace which is administered by us for the glory of the Lord and to show our readiness: avoiding this, that anyone should blame us about this abundance which is administered by us. For we provide good things, not only before God but also before men (2 Cor 8:1-21). In these words it appears how greatly he wished not only that it should be the care of the holy peoples to minister necessities to the holy servants of God, giving counsel in this because it profited those who did it more than those toward whom they did it (for to the latter something else was profitable, namely, to use this service of their brothers toward them in a holy way, and not to serve God for this purpose, nor to take these things except to supply need, not to feed laziness): but the blessed Apostle also says his own care in this ministration, now being transmitted through Titus, was so great that he mentions that the companion of his travels was appointed for this by the churches, a man of God of good testimony, whose praise, he says, in the Gospel is throughout all the churches (2 Cor 8:18). And he says he was appointed his companion for this, that he might avoid the reproaches of men, lest, without the testimony of the saints who were his associates in this ministry, he should be supposed to take for himself, and to turn into his own bosom, from the weak and the impious, what he received to supply the necessities of the saints, to be carried or distributed by himself to the needy.

16. 18. And a little later he says: Concerning the ministry that is for the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you. For I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the Macedonians; that Achaia has been ready since a year ago, and your zeal has stirred up many. But I have sent the brothers, lest our boasting about you should prove vain in this matter, so that, as I said, you may be ready: lest, if some Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we should be put to shame to say nothing of you in this confidence. So I thought it necessary to ask the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance this blessing of yours that has long been promised, that it may be ready as a blessing and not as an extortion. The point is this: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows in blessing will also reap in blessing. Let each one do as he has purposed in his heart, not out of sadness or out of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make every grace abound in you, so that in all things, always having all sufficiency, you may abound in every good work: as it is written, He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower will also supply bread for food, and will multiply your sowing, and will increase the growing fruits of your righteousness, so that you may be enriched in all things for all generosity, which through us produces thanksgiving to God: for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God, while through the test of this ministration they glorify God by your obedience in the confession of the Gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all, and in their prayer for you, as they long for you because of the surpassing grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift (2 Cor 9:1-15). With how great a richness of holy gladness was the Apostle filled, while he speaks of the mutual supplying of the want of the soldiers and provincials of Christ here of carnal things toward the saints, there of spiritual things toward these so that he cried out, and as it were belched forth with the fullness of holy joys, saying, Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! (2 Cor 9:15)

16. 19. As, therefore, the Apostle did not cease nay, rather the Spirit of God possessing and filling and moving his heart did not cease to exhort the faithful who had substance of this kind, that nothing should be lacking to the necessities of the servants of God, who wished to hold a loftier degree of holiness in the Church, so as to cut away all the bonds of worldly hope and dedicate a free mind to the divine warfare: so ought they too to obey his precepts, that they should have compassion on the weak, and, not bound by the love of private property, labor with their own hands in common, and obey their superiors without murmuring; so that this may be supplied from the offerings of the good faithful, which they have judged to be lacking to those who labor and work for something whereby to carry on their life, yet because of the bodily infirmities of some, and because of ecclesiastical occupations or the learning of wholesome doctrine.

17. 20. For what those do who are unwilling to work bodily, to what they devote themselves, I desire to know. To prayers, they say, and psalms, and reading, and the word of God. A holy life indeed, and praiseworthy for the sweetness of Christ: but if we are not to be called away from these, then we are not to eat, nor are these foods to be prepared daily so that they can be set out and taken. But if the necessity of our own infirmity compels the servants of God to devote themselves to those things at fixed intervals of time, why do we not also assign some portions of time to observing the apostolic precepts? For the one prayer of an obedient man is sooner heard than ten thousand of a despiser. But the divine songs they can easily sing even while working with their hands, and console the labor itself as with a divine work-chant. Or do we not know in what vanities, and often even shameful things, of theatrical tales all craftsmen give over their hearts and tongues, while their hands do not withdraw from the work? What then hinders a servant of God, working with his hands, from meditating on the law of the Lord and singing to the name of the Lord Most High so indeed that, for learning those things which he may recall by memory, he should have times set apart? For to this end those good works of the faithful too, as a help to supplying necessities, ought not to be lacking, so that the hours in which one is so devoted to instructing the mind that those bodily works cannot be done may not be oppressed by want. But as for those who say they devote themselves to reading, do they not find there what the Apostle commands? What perversity, then, is this: to be unwilling to obey reading, while wishing to devote oneself to it; and, that what is good may be read at greater length, for that reason to be unwilling to do what is read? For who does not know that each one advances the more quickly the more quickly he does what he reads, when he reads good things?

18. 21. But if a discourse is to be delivered to someone, and it so occupies him that he has no leisure to work with his hands surely not all in the monastery can, for the brothers who come to them from another kind of life, either expound the divine readings or wholesomely dispute about certain questions? Since, then, not all can, why do all wish to be at leisure under this pretext? And yet even if all could, they ought to do it in turns; not only lest the rest be kept from necessary works, but also because it suffices that, with many listening, one should speak. Then, how would the Apostle himself have leisure to work with his hands, unless he set fixed times for delivering the word of God? For God did not wish this to be hidden from us either. For both of what trade he was a craftsman, and at what times he had leisure to dispense the Gospel, holy Scripture did not keep silent. For when the day of his departure pressed upon him, while he was stationed at Troas, even on the first day of the week, when the brothers were gathered to break bread, so great was his attention and so necessary his discourse that the speech was prolonged until midnight, as though it had escaped them that on that day there was no fasting: but when he was about to stay for a while in some place, he disputed daily; who could doubt that he had hours assigned to this office? For when he was at Athens, because he had found most studious investigators of things, it is thus written of him: He disputed therefore with the Jews in the synagogue, and with the resident Gentiles in the marketplace every day with all who were present (Acts 17:17). For not in the synagogue every day, where the custom was to discourse on the Sabbath: but in the marketplace, he says, every day; on account of the studies of the Athenians, indeed. For thus it follows: Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conferred with him (Acts 17:18). And a little later it says, Now the Athenians and the foreigners sojourning there devoted themselves to nothing else but telling or hearing something new (Acts 17:21). Let us suppose that on all those days the Apostle was at Athens he did not work; for on this account his want was supplied from Macedonia, as he says in the second letter to the Corinthians: although he could work at other hours and at night, because he was so strong in both mind and body. But when he had left Athens, let us see what Scripture says: He disputed, it says, in the synagogue every Sabbath (Acts 18:4): this at Corinth. At Troas, then, where by the necessity of the imminent departure the speech was prolonged until midnight, it was the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day: whence we understand that he was not with the Jews, but with the Christians; since the narrator himself also says they were gathered to break bread. And this is the best governance, that all things, distributed in their own times, should be carried out in order, lest, wrapped in turbulent entanglements, they disturb the human mind.

19. 22. There too it is said what the Apostle worked. After this, it says, having left Athens, he came to Corinth; and finding a certain Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy, with Priscilla his wife, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome, he went to them, and because of the likeness of their trade he stayed with them and worked: for they were tentmakers (Acts 18:1-3). If they should attempt to interpret this allegorically, they show how they advance in the ecclesiastical writings to which they boast they devote themselves. And surely those things said above, Is it only I and Barnabas who have no right to refrain from working? (1 Cor 9:6) and, We have not used this power (1 Cor 9:12); and, Though we could have been a burden to you, as apostles of Christ (1 Thess 2:7); and, Working night and day, that we might not burden any of you (2 Thess 3:8); and, The Lord commanded those who proclaim the Gospel to get their living by the Gospel: but I have made no use of any of these things (1 Cor 9:14-15) and the rest of this kind let them either expound otherwise, or, if they are pressed by the most brilliant light of truth, let them understand and obey: or, if they are either unwilling or unable to obey, let them at least confess that those who are willing are better, and those who are also able are happier. For it is one thing either to allege a true bodily infirmity, or to feign a false one: but another thing so to be deceived, and so to deceive, that moreover for this reason there seems to be greater righteousness in the servants of God, because laziness has been able to reign among the inexperienced. For he who shows a true infirmity of body is to be treated humanely; but he who feigns a false one and cannot be convicted of it is to be left to God: yet neither of them sets up a pernicious rule; because the good servant of God both serves his manifestly weak brother, and, when he believes one who deceives, since he does not think him evil, does not imitate him so as to be evil himself; and if he does not believe him, he thinks him a deceiver, and nonetheless does not imitate him. But as for the one who says, This is true righteousness, that, working nothing bodily, we imitate the birds of the air, since whoever has worked any such thing acts against the Gospel whoever, weak in mind, hears this and believes it, is to be lamented, not because he thus has leisure, but because he thus errs.

20. 23. Here a second question arises. For perhaps someone may say: What then? Did the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas, because they did not work, sin? Or did they bring a hindrance to the Gospel, since the blessed Paul said that he did not use this power for this reason, that he might put no hindrance in the way of the Gospel of Christ? For if they sinned, because they did not work, then they had not received the power not to work, but to live by the Gospel. But if they had received this power, since the Lord ordained that those who announce the Gospel should live by the Gospel, and said, The laborer deserves his food (Matt 10:10) a power that Paul, spending more, was unwilling to use then they certainly did not sin. If they did not sin, they gave no hindrance. For it is no small sin to hinder the Gospel. But if this is so, they say, we too are free both to use and not to use this power.

20. 24. I would solve this question briefly if I were to say and I would say it justly that the Apostle is to be believed. For he himself knew why in the churches of the Gentiles the Gospel ought not to be carried about for sale, not blaming his fellow apostles, but distinguishing his own ministry: because they had so distributed among themselves the provinces of evangelizing, the Holy Spirit doubtless admonishing them, that Paul and Barnabas should go to the Gentiles, but the others to the circumcised. Yet that he gave this command to those who did not have such power, the many things already said make plain.

21. 24. But these brothers of ours rashly arrogate to themselves, as I judge, that they have such power. For if they are evangelists, I admit, they have it: if they are ministers of the altar, dispensers of the sacraments, they rightly do not arrogate it to themselves, but plainly claim that power.

21. 25. If at least they had had something in this world by which they could easily sustain this life without labor, which, being converted to God, they distributed to the needy, then their weakness is to be believed and borne. For such men are accustomed not better, as many think, but, what is true, having been raised more delicately to be unable to bear the labor of bodily works. Such men were perhaps many at Jerusalem. For it is written that they sold their lands and laid the prices of them at the apostles' feet, that distribution might be made to each as he had need. Because they were found near, and were useful to the Gentiles, who were called from afar from the worship of idols, according to what was said, Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem (Isa 2:3) the Apostle called the Christians from among the Gentiles their debtors: They are in debt to them, he says; and he added why: For if the Gentiles, he says, have come to share in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things (Rom 15:27).

22. 25. But now they come, for the most part, to this profession of the service of God even from a servile condition, or as freedmen, or freed or to be freed by their masters for this purpose, and from a rustic life, and from the practice of craftsmen and plebeian labor the more happily, indeed, the more sturdily they were raised: and if they are not admitted, it is a grave offense. For from that number many truly great and worthy of imitation have arisen. For it is for this reason that God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and the ignoble things of the world, and the things that are not, as though they were, that the things that are might be brought to nothing: that no flesh might glory before God (1 Cor 1:27-29). This pious and holy reflection, then, makes it so that even such men are admitted, who bring no proof of a life changed for the better. For it does not appear whether they came from a purpose of serving God, or whether, fleeing a needy and laborious life, they wished, being empty, to be fed and clothed, and moreover to be honored by those by whom they had been accustomed to be despised and crushed. Such men, then, since they cannot excuse themselves from bodily infirmity so as not to work for they are convicted by the habit of their past life screen themselves with the shade of a bad upbringing, so as to plot to pervert the apostolic precepts out of a misunderstood Gospel: truly birds of the air, but by lifting themselves up on high through pride; and grass of the field, but by being carnally minded.

22. 26. For there has befallen them what the same apostle says is to be guarded against in undisciplined younger widows: For at the same time they learn also to be idle; and not only idle, but also busybodies and gossips, saying what they ought not (1 Tim 5:13). This he said of bad women, which we also grieve and lament in bad men, who, against the very man in whose letters we read these things, idle and gossiping, say what they ought not. And those among them who came to the holy warfare with this purpose, to please him who enlisted them, though they so flourish in bodily strength and soundness of health that they could not only be instructed but also work according to the Apostle being caught up in the idle and corrupt talk of these men, which through inexperienced novitiate they are not strong enough to judge, are changed into the same ruin by a pestilent contagion: not only not imitating the obedience of the holy ones who work in quietness, and of other monasteries that live in most wholesome discipline according to the apostolic rule; but even insulting their betters, preaching laziness as though it were a preserver of the Gospel, accusing mercy as though it were a transgressor. For he works much more mercifully toward the souls of the weak who takes thought for the good reputation of the servants of God, than he does toward the bodies of the needy who breaks bread for the hungry. Wherefore, would that these men who wish to be at leisure as to their hands were altogether at leisure also as to their tongues! For they would not invite so many to imitation, if they set before them examples not only lazy but also mute.

23. 27. But now against the apostle of Christ they recite the Gospel of Christ. For so marvelous are the works of the lazy that they wish to hinder with the Gospel that which the Apostle for this very reason commanded and did, that the Gospel itself might not be hindered. And yet, if we compel them to live according to their own understanding out of the very words of the Gospel, they will first try to persuade us that those words are not to be understood as they understand them. For they say they ought not to work for this reason, because not even the birds of the air sow or reap, of whom the Lord gave us a likeness, that we should not be anxious about such necessities. Why then do they not attend to what follows? For it was not said only that they do not sow nor reap; but it was added, nor do they gather into storehouses (Matt 6:26). Now "storehouses," or "barns," or, word for word, may be called "repositories." Why then do these men wish to have idle hands and full repositories? Why do they store up and keep what they take from the labors of others, that it may be brought out daily? Why, finally, do they grind and cook? For birds do not do this. Or if they find those whom they can persuade even to this work, to bring them food prepared day by day; at least they bring themselves water, either from springs, or draw it from cisterns or wells and store it: this the birds do not do. But if this is pleasing, let the good faithful too, the most devoted provincials of the eternal King, strive to serve his most valiant soldiers even to such things, so that they may not be compelled even to draw their own water, if indeed they have already surpassed by a new degree of righteousness even those who were then at Jerusalem. For when a famine threatened, and was foretold beforehand through the prophets who were then, the good faithful from Greece sent grain; from which, I believe, those men made bread for themselves, or at least saw to its being made: which birds do not do. But if these men, as I had begun to say, have already passed even those by some degree of righteousness, and altogether, in those things that pertain to carrying on this life, act as the birds do: let them show us men serving the birds, as they wish to be served, except those that are caught and shut up, in which no faith is placed, lest, flying off, they not return: and yet even these prefer to enjoy liberty, and to take from the fields as much as is enough, rather than to take what is set out and prepared by men.

23. 28. Accordingly, again, those will surpass these by another and loftier degree of righteousness who shall have so ordered themselves that daily they go out into the fields, as if to pasture, and gather whatever they find at the time, and return when their hunger is allayed. But plainly, on account of the keepers of the fields, how good it would be if the Lord deigned to bestow wings as well, so that the servants of God, found in others' fields, might not be seized as thieves, but driven off as starlings! But now he, as far as he can, will imitate the bird whom the hunter could not catch. But behold, let all the owners of fields grant that, when they wish, they may go out into their fields, and from there depart secure and refreshed: as it was commanded the people of Israel by the law, that in their fields no one should hold a thief, unless one who wished to carry off something with him; for him who had touched nothing other than what he had eaten, they were to let go free and unpunished. Whence also, when the Lord's disciples plucked the ears of grain, the Jews complained rather about the Sabbath than about theft. But what is to be done in those times of the year in which food that can be taken at once is not found in the fields? Whoever shall attempt to carry home something to prepare for himself by cooking will, according to their understanding, hear from the Gospel: Put it down; for the birds do not do this.

23. 29. But let us grant this too, that throughout the whole turn of the year there may be found in the fields, whether from a tree or from herbs or from any roots, something that can be taken as food uncooked; or at least that so great a hardening of the body may be applied that the things which ought to be cooked, taken even raw, do no harm, and that one may go out to pasture even in any winter harshnesses; and so it may come about that nothing is carried off to be prepared, nothing is stored up for tomorrow: those will not be able to keep these things who, separating themselves from the sight of men for many days, and offering no access to themselves, shut themselves in, living in great intentness of prayers. For these are accustomed to shut in with themselves food, the easiest indeed and cheapest, but enough to suffice for those days on which they have determined to be seen by no one: which birds do not do. And the exercise of these in so marvelous a continence, since they have leisure in which to do these things, and set themselves forth to be imitated not by proud elation, but by merciful holiness, I not only do not reproach, but cannot praise as much as it deserves. Yet what do we say of these, according to the understanding of those men, out of the evangelical words? Or perhaps, the holier they are, the more unlike the birds, because, unless they store up food for themselves for very many days, they will not be able to shut themselves in as they do? And surely with us they hear, Do not therefore be anxious about tomorrow (Matt 6:34).

23. 30. Wherefore, to put it briefly, these men who, out of the Gospel by a perverse understanding, endeavor to pervert such manifest apostolic precepts, let them either not be anxious about tomorrow, like the birds of the air; or obey the Apostle, like beloved sons: nay, let them do both, because both agree. For Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus, would not advise things contrary to his Lord. For this we say to them openly: If you so understand the birds of the air in the Gospel that you are unwilling to procure your food and covering by working with your hands; then store up nothing for tomorrow either, just as the birds of the air store up nothing. But if to store up something for tomorrow can be not against the Gospel, where it is said, Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses (Matt 6:26) then it can also be not against the Gospel, nor against the likeness of the birds of the air, to carry on this life of the flesh by the labor of bodily work.

24. 31. For if they are pressed from the Gospel to store up nothing for tomorrow, they answer most rightly: Why then did the Lord himself have a money box, where he might store up the collected money? Why, so long beforehand, when a famine threatened, was grain sent to the holy fathers? Why did the apostles so procure the necessities for the want of the saints, lest there should be a lack afterward, that the most blessed Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his letter, Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also do: on the first day of the week let each of you lay something by him in store, treasuring up whatever has pleased him, so that there may be no collections when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem. And if it is fitting that I should go also, they shall go with me (1 Cor 16:1-4). These and many other things they bring forward most copiously and most truly. To them we answer: You see, then, that although the Lord said, Do not be anxious about tomorrow (Matt 6:34) you are nevertheless not compelled by these words to reserve nothing for tomorrow: why then do you say that you are compelled by the same words to be at leisure? Why are the birds of the air not an example to you for reserving nothing, and yet you wish them to be an example for doing no work?

25. 32. Someone will say: What then does it profit a servant of God, that, leaving behind the former acts he had in the world, he is converted to this spiritual life and warfare, if it is still necessary for him, like craftsmen, to ply trades? As though indeed it could easily be explained in words how much it profits that the Lord told the rich man who was seeking counsel for gaining eternal life to do, if he wished to be perfect that, selling what he had and distributing it to the need of the poor, he should follow him. Or has anyone followed the Lord with so swift a course as he who said, I did not run in vain, nor labor in vain (Phil 2:16)? who nevertheless both commanded and did these works. This so great authority ought to have sufficed for us, learned and informed, as an example both of relinquishing former resources and of working with our hands. But we too, helped by the Lord himself, can perhaps in some way know what it profits that the servants of God, even while thus working, have nevertheless left their former occupations. For if anyone is converted to this life from being rich, and is hindered by no infirmity of body, are we so without the savor of Christ that we do not understand how great a swelling of former pride is healed when, the superfluities being cut away by which the mind was before destructively puffed up, even the humility of a craftsman is by no means refused for the little that remains naturally necessary to this life? But if anyone is converted to this life from poverty, let him not think he is doing what he was doing, if, from the love of increasing some little private property however small, now no longer seeking what is his own but what is Jesus Christ's, he has transferred himself to the love of the common life, to live in the fellowship of those who have one soul and one heart in God, so that no one says anything is his own, but all things are common to them. For if the ancient princes of this earthly commonwealth are accustomed to be praised by the most brilliant eloquence of their writers, because they so preferred the common cause of the whole people of their city to their own private affairs that one of them, the conqueror who subdued Africa, had nothing to give his daughter on her marriage but what was provided for her dowry from the public treasury by decree of the senate: with what mind ought a citizen of that eternal city, the heavenly Jerusalem, to be in his commonwealth, except that the very thing he works out with his own hands he should have in common with his brother, and, if anything is lacking to him, supply it from the common store; saying with him whose precept and example he has followed, As having nothing, yet possessing all things (2 Cor 6:10)?

25. 33. Wherefore even those who, having relinquished or distributed wealth whether ample or of whatever sort, have wished to be numbered among the poor of Christ by a pious and wholesome humility if they are so strong in body, and are at leisure from ecclesiastical occupations (although to them, who bring so great a proof of their mind, and who contributed of the things they had, either very much or not a little, to the want of that same fellowship, the common store itself and brotherly love ought to render in turn the sustenance of their life), yet if they too work with their hands, that they may take away the excuse from the lazy who come from a humbler and on that account more hardened life, they act much more mercifully than when they distributed all their goods to the needy. And if indeed they are unwilling to do this, who would dare to compel them? Yet works are to be found for them in the monastery, even if freer from bodily function, but to be attended to with watchful administration, so that they too may not eat their bread without working, since it has now become common bread. Nor is it to be regarded in what monasteries, or in what place, each one spent what he had on the needy brothers. For there is one commonwealth of all Christians. And therefore whoever has spent necessities on Christians anywhere, wherever he himself also receives what is necessary for him, receives it from the goods of Christ. For wherever he too has given to such persons, who but Christ has received it? But those who, even apart from this holy fellowship, carried on their life by the labor of the body of whose number more come to the monasteries, since in the human race too they are the more numerous if they are unwilling to work, let them not eat either. For the Christian warfare does not on this account humble the rich to piety, that the poor may be exalted to pride. For it in no way befits that, in that life where senators become laborious, craftsmen should there become idle; and that where those who had been lords of estates come, having left their delights, there rustics should be made delicate.

26. 34. But indeed the Lord says, Do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on (Matt 6:25). Rightly, since he had said above, You cannot serve God and mammon (Matt 6:24). For he who preaches the Gospel for this purpose, that he may have something to eat and to be clothed with, thinks himself to serve both God, because he preaches the Gospel, and mammon, because he preaches for the sake of those necessities: which the Lord says cannot be done. And through this, he who preaches the Gospel for the sake of those things is convicted of serving not God but mammon; even if God uses him for the advancement of others in a way he himself does not know. For to this saying he adds, saying, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on (Matt 6:25): not that they should not procure those things, as much as is enough for need, whence they honorably can; but that they should not look to those things, and for the sake of those things do whatever in the preaching of the Gospel they are commanded to do. For he calls that intention with which a thing is done the eye: whence a little above he was speaking, that he might come down to this, and was saying, The lamp of your body is your eye; if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is wicked, your whole body will be full of darkness (Matt 6:22-23); that is, your deeds will be such as your intention is in doing them. For to come to this he had above given precepts about almsgiving, saying, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves dig through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not dig through and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matt 6:19-21). Then he added, The lamp of your body is your eye (Matt 6:22): that those, namely, who give alms should not do it with this intention, either to wish to please men, or to seek to be repaid on earth for what they do. Whence the Apostle too, when he was instructing Timothy to admonish the rich: Let them readily give, he says, share, treasure up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life (1 Tim 6:18-19). Since, then, the Lord has directed the eye of those who give alms to the future life and to the heavenly reward, so that the very deeds may be full of light when the eye is single (for to that last recompense applies what he also says elsewhere, He who receives you receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward: and whoever shall give to one of these least ones even a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple; amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward (Matt 10:40-42)); lest perhaps, the eye of those who spend necessities on the needy and on prophets and righteous men and disciples of the Lord being corrupted, the eye of those toward whom these things are done should be depraved, so that for the sake of receiving those things they should wish to serve Christ as soldiers: No one, he says, can serve two masters (Matt 6:24). And a little later, You cannot, he says, serve God and mammon (Matt 6:24). And at once he joined on, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on (Matt 6:25).

26. 35. And what follows about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, he says for this purpose, lest anyone think that God does not care for the necessities of his servants; since his most wise providence reaches even to the creating and governing of these things. For he himself does indeed feed and clothe even those who work with their hands. But lest they twist the Christian warfare to this, that they may seek after those things, the Lord forewarns his servants of this, that in the ministry which is owed to his sacrament we should think not of those things, but of his kingdom and his righteousness: and all these things shall be added to us, whether to those working with their hands, or to those hindered by infirmity of body, or to those held by such an occupation of the warfare itself that we are able to do nothing else.

27. 35. For because God said, Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me (Ps 50:15 (49:15)) the Apostle ought not on that account to have refrained from fleeing, and being let down through the wall in a basket, that he might escape the hand of his persecutor, but rather to have waited to be seized, so that God might deliver him as he did the three young men from the midst of the fire. Or for this reason ought not the Lord either to have said, If they persecute you in one city, flee to another (Matt 10:23) because he himself said, If you ask anything in my name, it will be given you (John 14:14)? As, therefore, if anyone should raise against the disciples of Christ fleeing persecution a question of this kind, why they had not rather stood firm, and, God being called upon, been rescued by his marvels, as Daniel from the lions, as Peter from his chains and they would answer that they ought not to tempt God, but that he would then have done such things, if he willed, when they had nothing they themselves could do; but, since he had put flight within their power, even if they are delivered through it, they are delivered by none but him so too, if anyone, to the servants of God who are at leisure and able, by apostolic example and precept, to carry on their living with their own hands, should raise a question out of the Gospel about the birds of the air, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses, and about the lilies of the field, because they neither toil nor spin; they will easily answer: If we too, through some infirmity or occupation, cannot work, he will feed and clothe us, just as the birds and the lilies, which work nothing of the kind: but when we can, we ought not to tempt our God; because even what we can, we can by his gift, and when we live from this, we live by his bounty, who bestowed that we should be able. And therefore about these necessities we are not anxious; because when we can do these things, he feeds and clothes us, by whom men are fed and clothed: but when we cannot do these things, the same one feeds and clothes us, by whom the birds are fed and the lilies clothed; since we are of more value than they. Wherefore in this warfare of ours, we are not anxious even about tomorrow; because it is not for the sake of those temporal things, to which tomorrow belongs, but for the sake of those eternal things, where it is always today, that we have proved ourselves to him, that, entangled in no worldly affairs, we may please him.

28. 36. Since these things are so, permit me a little, holy brother (for the Lord gives me great confidence through you), to address those very sons and brothers of ours, whom I know with how great a love you are bringing to birth, until the apostolic discipline be formed in them. O servants of God, soldiers of Christ, do you so disregard the snares of the most cunning enemy, who, that he may by every means obscure with his stenches your good reputation, that good fragrance of Christ lest good souls say, After the fragrance of your ointments we will run (Song 1:3), and so escape his nooses has scattered everywhere so many hypocrites under the habit of monks, going about the provinces, nowhere sent, nowhere fixed, nowhere standing, nowhere sitting? Some peddle the limbs of martyrs if indeed of martyrs; others magnify their fringes and phylacteries; others falsely claim to have heard that their parents or kinsmen are living in this or that region, and that they are going to them; and all beg, all demand either the costs of a lucrative neediness, or the price of a feigned holiness: while meanwhile, wherever they are caught in their evil deeds, or in any way become known, under the general name of monks your purpose is blasphemed so good, so holy, which in the name of Christ we desire, as through other lands, so through all Africa, to sprout forth. Are you not then inflamed with the zeal of God? Does not your heart grow warm within you, and in your meditation a fire blaze up, so that you should pursue the evil works of these men with good works, that you may cut away from them the occasion of those shameful traffickings, by which your esteem is injured and a stumbling block is placed before the weak? Have mercy, therefore, and have compassion, and show men that you seek, not an easy living in idleness, but, through the narrow and strait life of this purpose, the kingdom of God. The same cause is yours that was the Apostle's, that you cut away the occasion from those who seek an occasion, so that those who are choked by their stenches may be refreshed by your good fragrance.

29. 37. We do not bind heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, which we are unwilling to touch with a finger. Inquire and learn the labors of our occupations, and in some of us also the infirmities of our bodies, and the custom now established of the churches we serve, such that they do not allow us to be at leisure for those works to which we exhort you. For although we can say, Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk? (1 Cor 9:7) yet I call the Lord Jesus, in whose name I say this securely, to witness over my soul, that, as far as concerns my own advantage, I would much rather work something with my hands each day at fixed hours, as much as is appointed in well-ordered monasteries, and have the other hours free for reading and praying, or for doing something from the divine writings, than to endure the most tumultuous perplexities of others' lawsuits about worldly affairs, either by deciding their settlement or by intervening to cut them short: with which troubles the same apostle has bound us not by his own judgment, indeed, but by that of him who spoke through him though we do not read that he himself endured them. For the course of his apostleship ran otherwise. Nor did he say, If therefore you have worldly cases, bring them to us; or, set us up to judge: but, those who are contemptible in the Church, these, he says, appoint. I say it to your shame: is there then no one among you wise, who can judge between his brother? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers! (1 Cor 6:4-6) The wise, therefore, who were stationed in their places, faithful and holy, not those who ran about here and there for the Gospel, he wished to be the examiners of such affairs. Whence it was never written of him that he was ever at leisure for such things from which we cannot excuse ourselves, even if we are contemptible; because he wished even these to be appointed, if the wise were lacking, rather than that the affairs of Christians should be carried to the forum. Yet this labor we undertake not without the Lord's consolation, for the hope of eternal life, that we may bear fruit with patience. For we are servants of his Church, and especially of its weaker members, whatever sort of members we ourselves may be in the same body. I pass over the other innumerable ecclesiastical cares, which perhaps no one believes except one who has experienced them. We do not, then, bind heavy burdens and lay on your shoulders what we ourselves do not touch with a finger; since, if we could with the sound reckoning of our office (he sees who tests our hearts), we would prefer to do these things, which we exhort you to do, rather than those which we are compelled to do. Indeed, for all of us and you, laboring according to our degree and office, the way is narrow in labor and toil; and yet for those who rejoice in hope his yoke is easy and his burden light, who called us to rest, who first made the passage from the valley of weeping, where he himself was not without pressures. If you are our brothers, if our sons, if our fellow servants, or rather if we are your servants in Christ; hear what we advise, acknowledge what we command, accept what we dispense. But if we are Pharisees binding heavy burdens and laying them on your shoulders; do what we say, even if you disapprove of what we do. But to us it is a very small thing that we should be judged by you, or by any human day. With what genuine love we have care for you, let him look who gave us what we may offer to be looked upon by his eyes. Finally, think what you will of us: the apostle Paul commands and exhorts you in the Lord, that working in quietness, that is, peaceably and obediently ordered, you eat your own bread. And about him, as I judge, you believe nothing evil, and in him who speaks through him you have believed.

30. 38. These things, my most beloved and, in the bowels of Christ, venerable brother Aurelius as much as he granted me the power who commanded me through you to do it I have not delayed to write about the work of monks; taking care above all of this, that good brothers, obedient to the apostolic precepts, should not even be called transgressors of the Gospel by the lazy and disobedient: so that those who do not work may at least not doubt that those who do work are to be preferred to themselves. For the rest, who can bear that men obstinately resisting the most wholesome admonitions of the Apostle should not be tolerated as the weaker, but even be proclaimed as the holier; so that monasteries founded on a sounder doctrine are corrupted by a twofold enticement, both by the dissolute license of leisure and by the false name of holiness? Let the other brothers and sons of ours too know, then who are accustomed to favor such men, and to defend a presumption of this kind through ignorance that they themselves are above all to be corrected, so that those men may be able to be corrected, not weakened, in doing good. Indeed, in that they readily and eagerly supply necessities to the servants of God, we not only do not reproach them, but most sweetly embrace it: but let them beware lest by a perverse mercy they harm those men's future life more than they help their present.

30. 39. For there is less sinning if the sinner is not praised in the desires of his soul, and he who has done iniquitous things is not blessed.

31. 39. But what is more iniquitous than to wish to be obeyed by those beneath, and to be unwilling to obey those above? I speak of the Apostle, not of us so far that they even grow their hair long: whereupon he was unwilling that there be any disputing at all, saying, But if anyone is disposed to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor have the churches of God. Now this I command (1 Cor 11:16-17): namely, that the cleverness of one disputing should not be sought, but the authority of one commanding should be attended to. For to what does even this pertain, I ask, to act so openly against the Apostle's precepts? Must one be so at leisure that not even barbers may work? Or because they say they imitate the evangelical birds, do they fear, as it were, to be plucked, lest they be unable to fly? I am afraid to say more on this fault, on account of certain long-haired brothers, in whom, apart from this, we venerate many and nearly all things. But the more we love them in Christ, the more anxiously we admonish them. For we do not fear that their humility will reject our admonition; since we too desire to be admonished by such men, where perhaps we stagger or go astray. This, then, we admonish such holy men, that they not be moved by the foolish argumentations of vain men, and imitate in this perversity those from whom in other things they are far unlike. For those men, carrying about a hypocrisy that is for sale, fear lest a tonsured holiness be held cheaper than a long-haired one, so that, namely, whoever sees them may think of those ancients of whom we read, Samuel and the rest who did not shear their hair. Nor do they consider what difference there is between that prophetic veil and this revelation of the Gospel, of which the Apostle says, When you pass over to Christ, the veil will be taken away (2 Cor 3:16). For what the veil interposed between the face of Moses and the sight of the people of Israel signifies, that in those times the hair of the saints also signifies. For the same apostle says that even hair is for a veil, by whose authority these men are pressed. For he plainly says, If a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace to him (1 Cor 11:14). We take on that very disgrace, they say, deservedly for our sins: holding out for this the shade of a feigned humility, that under it they may set forth a pride that is for sale; as if the Apostle taught pride, when he says, Every man praying or prophesying with his head veiled dishonors his head (1 Cor 11:4); and, A man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God (1 Cor 11:7). He, then, who says, ought not, perhaps does not know how to teach humility. But if these men long for this disgrace, in the time of the Gospel, which was a sacrament in the time of prophecy, for the sake of humility; let them shear themselves and veil their head with sackcloth. But then there will not be that appearance which is for sale, because Samson was veiled not with sackcloth but with hair.

32. 40. Now that other thing, if it can be told, how mournfully ridiculous it is, which again they have found for the defense of their hair. The Apostle, they say, forbade a man to have long hair: but those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven are no longer men. O singular madness! Deservedly does he who says this arm himself with a plan of unspeakable impiety against the manifest proclamations of holy Scripture, and persist in a crooked path, and attempt to bring in a pestilent doctrine; because that man is not blessed who has not walked in the counsel of the impious, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence (Ps 1:1). For if he meditated on the law of God day and night, he would find there the apostle Paul himself, who, having certainly professed the highest chastity, says, I would that all men were as I myself (1 Cor 7:7), and yet shows himself a man not only by so living, but also by so speaking. For he says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child; but when I became a man, I put away the things of a child (1 Cor 13:11). But why do I mention the Apostle, when those who say these things do not know what to think about our Lord and Savior himself? For of whom else is it said, Until we all attain to the unity of faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we may no longer be children, tossed and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the trickery of men, in craftiness to the contriving of error? (Eph 4:13-14) By what trickery these men deceive the inexperienced, by what craftiness and contrivings of the enemy they are themselves both carried about, and, clinging together in their being carried about, attempt in a way to whirl about the minds of the weak, so that together they do not know where they are. For they have heard, or read, what is written, For all of you who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ: where there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither slave nor free; neither male nor female (Gal 3:27-28); and they do not understand that this was said with regard to the concupiscence of carnal sex, because in the inner man, where we are renewed in newness of our mind, there is no such sex. Let them not, then, on this account deny themselves to be men, because in the masculine sex they do nothing. For married Christians too who do this are not, on this account at any rate, Christians, in that they have it in common with other non-Christians, and with the very beasts. For it is one thing that is either conceded to weakness or rendered to mortal propagation; but another thing that is sealed by faithful profession for the laying hold of incorrupt and eternal life. That, then, which is commanded about men not veiling their head is figured indeed in the body, but is enacted in the mind, where is the image and glory of God, the very words indicate: A man indeed, he says, ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God (1 Cor 11:7). But where this image is, he himself declares, when he says, Do not lie to one another; but stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him (Col 3:9-10). Who can doubt that this renewal takes place in the mind? But even he who doubts, let him hear a plainer judgment. For, admonishing the same things, he thus says in another place, As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to your former manner of life, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of deception; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who is created according to God (Eph 4:21-24). What then? Do women not have this renewal of the mind, where the image of God is? Who would say this? But by the sex of their body they do not signify it: on that account they are commanded to be veiled. For they signify that part by the very fact that they are women, which can be called the concupiscential part, over which the mind rules, itself also subject to its God, when one lives most rightly and in most orderly fashion. What therefore in one man is mind and concupiscence (for the one rules, the other is ruled; the one is master, the other subject), this in two human beings, man and woman, is figured according to the sex of the body. Speaking of which sacrament, the Apostle says that the man ought not to be veiled, but the woman ought. For the mind is promoted to higher things the more gloriously, the more diligently concupiscence is restrained from lower things; until the whole man, with even this now mortal and frail body, in the last resurrection puts on incorruption and immortality, and death is swallowed up in victory.

33. 41. Wherefore those who are unwilling to do right things, let them at least cease to teach perverse ones. But there are others whom we rebuke in this discourse: those, namely, who by this one fault of hair let down against the apostolic precept offend and disturb the Church: for since some, unwilling to think anything evil of them, are compelled to distort the manifest words of the Apostle into a perverse meaning, while others prefer to defend the sound understanding of the Scriptures than to flatter any men whatever, there arise among the brothers most bitter and most dangerous contentions between the weaker and the stronger which those men, if perhaps they knew it, would without doubt correct this too, whose other things we admire and love: those, then, we do not rebuke, but we beg and beseech them, by the divinity and humanity of Christ, and by the love of the Holy Spirit, that they no longer place this stumbling block before the weak, for whom Christ died, and aggravate the grief and torment of our heart, when we consider how much more readily the evil can imitate this evil for the deceiving of men, when they see it in those whom, on account of so many other good things, we honor with the due offices of Christian love. But if, after this admonition, or rather our beseeching, they think they ought to persevere in it, we shall do nothing other than grieve and groan. Let them know this, it is enough: if they are servants of God, they will have mercy; if they will not have mercy, I do not wish to say anything more grave. All these things, then, in which I have perhaps been more talkative than your occupations or mine would wish, if you approve, make known to our brothers and sons, on account of whom you deigned to lay this burden on me: but if anything seems to need to be withdrawn or amended, let me know by the rescript of your Beatitude.