Letters

¹⁵ Do not associate with young women or cleave to them, for it is on account of such that the apostle makes his concession of second marriage, and so you may be shipwrecked in what appears to be calm water. If Paul can say to Timothy, “the younger widows refuse,” and again “love the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity,” what plea can you urge for refusing to hear my admonitions? Avoid all persons to whom a suspicion of evil living may attach itself, and do not content yourself with the trite answer, 'my own conscience is enough for me; I do not care what people say of me.' That was not the principle on which the apostle acted. He provided things honest not only in the sight of God but in the sight of all men; that the name of God might not be blasphemed among the Gentiles. Though he had power to lead about a sister, a wife, he would not do so, for he did not wish to be judged by an unbeliever's conscience. And, though he might have lived by the gospel, he laboured day and night with his own hands, that he might not be burdensome to the believers. “If meat,” he says, “make my brother to offend. I will eat no flesh while the world stands.” Let us then say, if a sister or a brother causes not one or two but the whole church to offend, 'I will not see that sister or that brother.' It is better to lose a portion of one's substance than to imperil the salvation of one's soul. It is better to lose that which some day, whether we like it or not, must be lost to us and to give it up freely, than to lose that for which we should sacrifice all that we have. Which of us can add— I will not say a cubit for that would be an immense addition— but the tenth part of a single inch to his stature? Why are we careful what we shall eat or what we shall drink? Let us “take no thought for the morrow: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Jacob in his flight from his brother left behind in his father's house great riches and made his way with nothing into Mesopotamia. Moreover, to prove to us his powers of endurance, he took a stone for his pillow. Yet as he lay there he beheld a ladder set up on the earth reaching to heaven and behold the Lord stood above it, and the angels ascended and descended on it; the lesson being thus taught that the sinner must not despair of salvation nor the righteous man rest secure in his virtue. To pass over much of the story (for there is no time to explain all the points in the narrative) after twenty years he who before had passed over Jordan with his staff returned into his native land with three droves of cattle, rich in flocks and herds and richer still in children. The apostles likewise travelled throughout the world without either money in their purses, or staves in their hands, or shoes on their feet; and yet they could speak of themselves as “having nothing and yet possessing all things.” “Silver and gold,” say they, “have we none, but such as we have give we you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” For they were not weighed down with the burden of riches. Therefore they could stand, as Elijah, in the crevice of the rock, they could pass through the needle's eye, and behold the back parts of the Lord.

But as for us we burn with covetousness and, even while we declaim against the love of money, we hold out our skirts to catch gold and never have enough. There is a common saying about the Megarians which may rightly be applied to all who suffer from this passion: “They build as if they are to live forever; they live as if they are to die tomorrow.” We do the same, for we do not believe the Lord's words. When we attain the age which all desire we forget the nearness of that death which as human beings we owe to nature and with futile hope promise to ourselves a long length of years. No old man is so weak and decrepit as to suppose that he will not live for one year more. A forgetfulness of his true condition gradually creeps upon him; so that— earthly creature that he is and close to dissolution as he stands— he is lifted up into pride, and in imagination seats himself in heaven.