Letters

⁵ Since you ask me as a brother in what path you should walk, I will be open with you. If you wish to take duty as a presbyter, and are attracted by the work or dignity which falls to the lot of a bishop, live in cities and walled towns, and by so doing turn the salvation of others into the profit of your own soul. But if you desire to be in deed what you are in name— a monk, that is, one who lives alone, what have you to do with cities which are the homes not of solitaries but of crowds?

Every mode of life has its own exponents. For instance, let Roman generals imitate men like Camillus, Fabricius, Regulus, and Scipio. Let philosophers take for models Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Let poets strive to rival Homer, Virgil, Menander, and Terence. Let writers of history follow Thucydides, Sallust, Herodotus and Livy. Let orators find masters in Lysias, the Gracchi, Demosthenes, and Tully. And, to come to our own case, let bishops and presbyters take for their examples the apostles or their companions; and as they hold the rank which these once held, let them endeavour to exhibit the same excellence.

And last of all let us monks take as the patterns which we are to follow the lives of Paul, of Antony, of Julian, of Hilarion, of the Macarii. And to go back to the authority of scripture, we have our masters in Elijah and Elisha, and our leaders in the sons of the prophets; who lived in fields and solitary places and made themselves tents by the waters of Jordan. The sons of Rechab too are of the number who drank neither wine nor strong drink and who abode in tents; men whom God's voice praises through Jeremiah, and to whom a promise is made that there shall never be wanting a man of their stock to stand before God. This is probably what is meant by the title of the seventy-first psalm: “of the sons of Jonadab and of those who were first led into captivity.” The person intended is Jonadab the son of Rechab who is described in the book of Kings as having gone up into the chariot of Jehu.

His sons having always lived in tents until at last (owing to the inroads made by the Chaldean army) they were forced to come into Jerusalem, are described as being the first to undergo captivity; because after the freedom of their lonely life they found confinement in a city as bad as imprisonment.