Letters

⁵ For what shall I answer to the Lord my Judge? Shall I say, “I was not able to acquire the things of which I stood in need, because I was engrossed wholly with the affairs of the Church”? What if He thus replies: “You wicked servant, if property belonging to the Church (in the collection of the fruits of which great labour is expended) were suffering loss under some oppressor, and it was in your power to do something in defence of her rights at the bar of an earthly judge, would you not, leaving the field which I have watered with my blood, go to plead the cause with the consent of all, and even with the urgent commands of some?

And if the decision given were against the Church, would you not, in prosecuting an appeal, go across the sea; and would no complaint be heard summoning you home from an absence of a year or more, because your object was to prevent another from taking possession of land required not for the souls, but for the bodies of the poor, whose hunger might nevertheless be satisfied in a way much easier and more acceptable to me by my living trees, if these were cultivated with care? Wherefore, then, do you allege that you had not time to learn how to cultivate my field?”

Tell me, I beseech you, what could I reply? Are you perchance willing that I should say, “The aged Valerius is to blame; for, believing me to be instructed in all things necessary, he declined, with a determination proportioned to his love for me, to give me permission to learn what I had not acquired?”