you have prevented [them] from suffering. And they, having not even advanced far into the contests, but having been tripped up from the very starting-blocks, one might say, and at the starting line itself: you, however, having circled the final turn six hundred times, have snatched the prize in every race, having displayed varied forms of wrestling and contests, and most justly so. For the contests of virtue are found neither in age nor in body, but in the soul and the mind alone. Thus even women have been crowned, and men have been tripped; thus even children have been proclaimed victors, and old men have been put to shame. It is always necessary to admire those who pursue virtue, but especially when, while many abandon it, some are found clinging to it. For this reason, it is B worthy in the highest degree to admire your refinement, because while so many men, women, and old men—those who seemed to hold the greatest reputation—turned away, and while all were in plain view, having fallen not from a great rush of war, nor from a fierce battle line of enemies, but having fallen before the clash and having been defeated before the engagement, you, after so many battles and battle lines, have not only not been softened, nor have you been embalmed by the multitude of evils, but you behave with even greater youthful vigor, and the addition of contests gives you an addition of strength. For the memory of those things already successfully accomplished becomes for you a cause of gladness, of joy, and of even greater zeal. For these reasons we rejoice, we leap for joy, we are glad; for I will not cease speaking of this continually, and carrying everywhere the cause of my joy. So that if our separation disquiets you, yet this is for you the greatest consolation for your successes; since we, too, although living at such a great distance of travel, derive no small gladness from this—I mean from your courage.
On the same letter VII.
1. What are you saying? Have you not set up a trophy, nor attained C a brilliant victory? Have you not bound your head with a crown that blooms forever? But is this not what the whole inhabited world says, which everywhere on earth sings of your successes? For even if the sports grounds and the contests are located in one place, and the laps of your races, and your wrestling matches filled with blood instead of sweat took place there, yet their glory and their fame have reached the boundaries of the inhabited world. You, wanting to make them greater and to earn more prizes, have added to them the crowns of humility, saying that you are as far from these trophies as the dead are from the living. For that these words are of humility, I will try to prove to you from the events themselves. You were exiled from fatherland, home, friends, kinsmen; you were transported to a foreign land; you did not cease dying every day, and fulfilling what was lacking in nature by the abundance of the intention. For since it is not possible for a human being by experience to die many deaths, you have done this by your will. And the greatest thing, D while suffering some things and expecting to suffer others, you did not cease to offer up glory to God who permits these things to happen, and by doing so, you dealt a vital blow to the devil. For that he indeed received a vital blow, he showed by the way in which he armed himself, approaching with greater fury: therefore the later trials became worse than the first. For just as a scorpion or a snake, when it receives a deeper wound, raises its sting higher and rises up against the one who struck it, providing evidence of the great pain by the violent rush against the one wounding it: so too that shameless beast, since it received wounds into the depths from your admirable and lofty soul, leaped up more fiercely and brought on more temptations. He brought them on, indeed, not God; but God permitted it, increasing your wealth, making the commerce greater, providing a larger reward, and a more bountiful recompense. Do not therefore be troubled, nor dismayed. For who has ever labored while being rich? Who has been confounded when rising to the highest offices? But if those who gather these human things—things that are short-lived and more fragile than shadows, and more withered than rotting flowers—leap for joy, dance, and fly about, driven by a pleasure that both appears and flies away at the same time, and which mimics the course of river currents; it is all the more fitting for you, even if you were previously in discouragement, to make the present time a cause for the greatest joy. For your treasure, which you have gathered, is inviolable; and the dignity, which was built up for you through these sufferings, knows no succession, nor does it await an end, but it is infinite, and not to be interrupted by the difficulty of times, nor by the plots of men, nor by the assaults of demons, nor even by death itself. And if you wish to mourn, mourn for those who do such things, the authors of these evils, the servants, who have laid up for themselves the greatest punishment for the future, and who have already paid the final penalty here, with so many turning away from them, holding them as enemies, cursing them, and condemning them. But if they do not perceive these things, and for this reason especially are they miserable and worthy of tears, just like those possessed by the disease of phrenitis, kicking and striking those they meet at random and in vain, and often even those who have benefited them and their friends, yet not perceiving the madness with which they are mad. Therefore they suffer from incurable diseases, neither admitting physicians nor enduring medicines, but rewarding those who wish to heal and benefit them with the opposite. So that for this reason too they are miserable, if they do not perceive such great wickedness. But if they do not turn toward the condemnation of others, it is impossible for them to escape the judgment of their own conscience, that inescapable one, that incorruptible one, that which yields to no fear, which is not corrupted by flattery, nor by the giving of money, nor is it withered by long time.
2. For that son of Jacob, who said to his father that a wicked beast had devoured Joseph, and who acted out that wicked drama, and by the—
trying to cover up the fratricide, he deceived his father at the time, but he did not deceive his conscience, nor could he persuade it to be quiet; rather, it kept rising up against him continuously, crying out, and it could not be silenced. For when a long time had passed, the one who had denied the deed to his father—never having told anyone else, with no one accusing him, no one convicting him, no one pressing him, and no one reminding him of that drama—when he was in danger regarding his freedom and his very life, he showed that the accuser of the conscience had not been silent or suppressed during that long time, using these words: "Verily, we are in sin regarding our brother, because we disregarded his tribulation and the pain of his soul when he besought us, and now his blood is being required of us" (Gen. XLII, 21). A And yet the crime that was being laid to his charge was something else, for he was being judged for theft, as if he had stolen a golden cup, and was being brought into court; but because he was not conscious of any such crime, he felt no pain on this account, and did not say that he was suffering these things for which he was being judged and led in chains, but for those for which no one was blaming him, nor demanding an reckoning, nor dragging him into court—nay, rather, things that he had not yet fully paid for, he himself was confessing and accusing himself. For conscience was griping him; and he who had poured out the blood of his brother with such a firm and bold B mind, without being affected by any sense of grief, was now grieving for his sake; and he was accusing those whom he had held as companions and partners in the murder, and he was describing all the cruelty in tragic terms, saying, "When he besought us, and we disregarded his tribulation and the pain of his soul." This is as much as to say: "Nature itself was enough to soften our souls and turn us toward mercy; but he even added tears, and he was beseeching us as a suppliant; and not even then did he soften us—nay, we 'disregarded his tribulation and the pain of his soul.'" "Therefore," he says, "this judgment has been prepared for us; therefore we are in danger of our blood, because we have sinned against blood." In this way, too, Judas, not enduring the trial of his conscience, rushed to the noose, and by means of the rope put an end to his life. And when he C was not hesitant to undertake that shameless compact, saying, "What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you?" (Matt. XXVI, 15), he did not fear those who were hearing him—namely, that being a disciple he was plotting such things against a Master—nor during those days that followed between the events was he stung by any pain, but, intoxicated by the pleasure that the greed for money brought him, he did not particularly feel the accusation of conscience. But after he carried out the crime and took the money, and the pleasure of the gain ended, but the accusation of the crime began to flourish, then finally, with no one accusing, no one using force, no one urging him, he went off of his own accord, then threw the money back to those from whom he had received it, and confessed his crime to those who were hearing him, with these words: "I have sinned, in handing over innocent blood" (Matt. XXVII, 4). For he could not bear the D conscience that was convicting him. The conscience of sin is an executioner; sinners ought to be mourned; vice is the death of the soul. For such is the nature of sin, that before it is accomplished, it affects a man with intoxication; but after it is finished and complete, then that pleasure takes itself off and is extinguished, and only then does the accuser stand by, with conscience truly occupying the place of an executioner, and tearing the sinner to pieces, and demanding extreme punishments from him, and pressing upon him more heavily than any lead. Moreover, you know what will be proposed in the future for those who have bound themselves to these crimes. Therefore, it is fitting to follow these with tears and to mourn them, for Paul also does so, while he congratulates those who strive and contend and suffer evil, but mourns those who sin: and for this reason he also used to say, "Lest perhaps when I come, my God may humble me before you, and I may mourn many of those who sinned before, and did not commit repentance for the uncleanness and fornication and lewdness which they committed" (2 Cor. XII, 21); and again to those who were involved in the struggle: "I rejoice, and I congratulate you all" (Phil. II, 17). Therefore, let nothing that has happened, nor what is being threatened toward you, disturb you. For waves do not shake a rock, but the more vehemently they rush upon it, the more they are broken and destroyed by it: this also happened in those cases, and will happen, indeed much more so. For while the waves do not shake the rock, yet they have not only not shaken you, but have even made you firmer. For such is the nature of evil, and such is the nature of virtue. The former, while it wages war, is crushed; the latter, while it is harassed by war, shines forth more clearly. And this one obtains the palm not only after the struggles, but even in the struggles themselves, and the struggle itself becomes the reward for the struggle: the former, however, when it conquers, then it is suffused with greater shame, then it is tortured, then it is overwhelmed with great ignominy, and before the punishment stored up for it, it is tortured not only after the crime is committed, but even in the work itself. But if this seems clearer to you, hear the blessed Paul, distinguishing both of these. For writing once to the Romans, and exposing the impure life of some, and showing that sin even before the punishment is brought upon it, has attached punishment in the action itself, when he had commemorated the wicked deeds of both women and men, who had violated the laws prescribed by nature, and had devised a certain monstrous lust, he speaks in this way: "For their females changed the natural use into that which is against nature. In like manner also the males, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their desires toward one another, males with males working out uncleanness, and receiving in themselves the recompense, which it was fitting, of their error" (Rom. I, 26, 27). What are you saying, Paul? Are those who dare these things not affected by pleasure, and do they not perform this shameful and divinely forbidden union with desire? How then do you say they pay the penalty in this very thing? Because the sentence, he says, is not from the pleasure of the diseased, but from the nature of the things.
by nature. Since the adulterer, even before the punishment, is punished in the very act of adultery, even if he seems to take pleasure in it, making his soul worse and more depraved. And the murderer, before he sees the tribunal, and the sharpened swords, and renders an account of his crimes, has perished in the very act of murdering, again making his soul more depraved for himself. 587 And whatever infirmity is in the body—fever, or dropsy, or something else of this kind—and rust in iron, moth in wool, worm in wood, and wood-borers in horns, this is what vice is in the soul. For it makes it slavish and ignoble; and what do I mean by slavish and ignoble? It makes the soul into one of the irrational creatures, rendering it the soul of a wolf, or of a dog, or of a snake, or of a viper, or of some other beast. And the prophets, by declaring this and making the transformation resulting from vice known to all, one of them said: "Dumb dogs, not able to bark," comparing those who are deceitful among men and who plot secretly to those dogs that are rabid. For when they are rabid, they do not attack with barking, but approaching in silence, they do greater harm to those they catch than those that bark. Another again called certain men "crows." And another said: "Man, being in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless cattle, and was made like them." And the greatest of the prophets, the son of the barren woman, standing by the Jordan, called some "snakes and offspring of vipers." What then could be equal to this punishment, when he who was made in the image of God, and having enjoyed such honor, being a rational and most gentle animal, falls into such bestiality?
4. Have you seen how wickedness holds the punishment within itself even before the chastisement? Learn how it is also in virtue, and how virtue becomes its own reward, even before the promised rewards. For, as in the body—since nothing prevents me from using the same example again, which produces much clarity—just as in the body, he who is healthy and in good condition, and is freed from every illness, finds pleasure even in this very thing before the delicacies, having pleasure conjoined with his health, and neither the unevenness of the air, nor drought, nor cold, nor the simplicity of a table, nor any other thing of this kind could grieve him, as health is sufficient to ward off the harm arising from these things; so it is the custom for it to happen also in the soul. For this reason, Paul also, being whipped, being driven about, and suffering ten thousand terrible things, rejoiced, saying thus: "I rejoice in my sufferings for you." Not only is the reward of virtue laid up in the kingdom of heaven, but also in the very act of suffering, since this too is a very great reward, to suffer something for the truth. For this reason, the chorus of the apostles also returned from the council of the Jews rejoicing, not only for the kingdom of heaven, but because they were deemed worthy to be dishonored for the name of Jesus. Indeed, this very thing, by itself, is a very great honor and a crown, and a prize, and a subject for unfading pleasure. 588 Rejoice, then, and exult. For this is no small struggle, but this struggle of slander is very great indeed, especially when it happens over such a great accusation, for which we have now been slandered, when they accuse us of arson in a public tribunal. Therefore, Solomon also, wishing to represent the harshness of the struggle, says: "I saw the slanders that take place under the sun, and behold, the tears of the slandered, and there was no one to comfort them." But if the struggle is great, as indeed it is great, it is manifest that the crown laid out for this is greater. For this reason, Christ also commands those who are struggling in this struggle with the fitting patience to rejoice and exult. "For rejoice," he says, "and exult when they say every evil word against you, lying, for my sake, for your reward is great in the heavens." Do you see how much pleasure, how much reward, how much joy our enemies cause us? How then is it not absurd, as to the evils those men were unable to inflict, but rather of which they have done the opposite, to inflict these upon yourself? What is it that I am saying? Those men not only were unable to exact punishment from you, but they even provided you with an occasion for joy and a subject for unfading pleasure; but you, by straining yourself so much under despondency, exact punishment from yourself, being confounded, being troubled, being filled with much grief. For this is what they ought to have done, if indeed they ever had the inclination to recognize their own evils. It would be right for them now to mourn, to lament, to hide themselves, to cover their faces, to be buried in the earth, not even to see this sun, but having shut themselves up somewhere in darkness, to lament both their own evils and those that they brought upon so many Churches; but it is for you to exult and rejoice, because the crown of your virtues has been accomplished. For you know, you know clearly, that there is nothing equal to patience, but this is especially the queen of virtues, the foundation of achievements, the harbor without waves, the peace in wars, the serenity in a storm, the security in plots, that which makes the one who has accomplished it stronger than adamant; which no moving weapons, no armies arrayed for battle, no siege engines brought up, no bows, no spears being released, not the army of the demons itself, not the fearful phalanxes of the opposing powers, not the devil himself, arrayed with all his army and his equipment, will be able to harm. Why then do you fear? Why do you grieve, when you have practiced despising even life itself, if the time calls for it? But you desire to see a release from the evils that beset you. This too shall be, and