Treatise on the Love of God

A pagan had led astray and made return to idolatry a Christian of Candia, recently converted to the faith. Carpus, a man eminent for purity and sanctity of life, who, as is very probable, was the bishop of Candia, conceived such an anger at it as he had never before entertained, and let himself be so far carried away with this passion, that having risen at midnight to pray according to his custom, he concluded with himself that it was not reasonable that the wicked men should any longer live, with great indignation beseeching the divine justice to strike down at once with his thunderbolts these two sinners together, the pagan seducer and the Christian seduced. But hear, Theotimus, how God corrected the bitterness of the passion which carried the poor Carpus beyond himself. First he made him, as another S. Stephen, see the heavens open, and our Saviour Jesus Christ seated upon a great throne, surrounded with a multitude of angels, who attended him in human form; then he saw below, the earth gaping as a horrid and vast gulf; and the two erring ones, to whom he had wished so much evil, he saw upon the very brink of this precipice, trembling and well-nigh paralysed with fear, as being about to fall down it; on the one side they were drawn by a multitude of serpents, which rising out of the gulf, wrapped themselves about their legs, and with their tails gradually moved and provoked them to their fall; on the other side, certain men pushed and beat them to make them tumble in, so that they seemed on the point of being swallowed up in this abyss. Now consider, my Theotimus, the violence of the passion of Carpus: for as he himself afterwards recounted to S. Denis, he never thought of contemplating our Saviour and the angels, who showed themselves in the heavens, such pleasure did he take in seeing below them the frightful distress of those two miserable wretches. His only trouble was that they were so long perishing, and thereupon he endeavoured himself to precipitate them down; and seeing he could not do it quite at once he was angry, and began to curse them, until at length, lifting up his eyes to heaven, he saw the sweet and most pitiful Saviour, who, moved by an extreme pity and compassion at what was happening, arising from his throne and descending to the place where the two miserable beings were, stretched out to them his helping hand, while the angels also, some on one side some on another, caught hold of them to hinder them from falling into that dreadful gulf; and, at last the amiable and mild Jesus, turning himself to the wrathful Carpus:—Nay, Carpus, said he, henceforth wreak your anger on me: for I am ready to suffer once more to save men and it would be a joy to me to do so, if it could be without sin on man's part: at any rate, think which would be the better for thee, to be in that gulf with the serpents, or to live with angels who are such great friends of men. Theotimus, the holy man Carpus had just reason to enter into zeal concerning these two men, and his zeal had but rightly raised his anger against them, but anger being once moved left reason and zeal behind, transgressing all the terms and limits of holy love and consesequently of zeal, which is its fervour: anger had changed the hatred of sin into the hatred of the sinner, and most sweet charity into an outrageous cruelty.

Thus there are persons who think one cannot be very zealous unless one is very angry, thinking that unless they spoil all they can manage nothing, whereas on the contrary true zeal most rarely makes use of anger; for as we never apply the lancet to the sick save when it cannot possibly be helped, so holy zeal does not employ anger save in extreme necessities.