Letter 10
Late Antiquity Jerome, Saint Latin- You ask me, dearest Nepotian — you ask in letters from across the sea, and ask repeatedly — to set out for you in a short book the precepts of living, and to show by what method a man who has left the world's military service and begun to be either a monk or a cleric may hold to the straight path of Christ and not be swept aside into the various byways of the vices. When I was a young man — indeed, almost a boy — and was reining in the first onsets of a wanton age by the hardship of the desert, I wrote to your uncle, the holy Heliodorus, a letter of exhortation, full of tears and complaints, such as might show the feeling of a deserted companion. But in that work I played the part of my years, and, while still warm with the studies and teachings of the rhetoricians, I painted certain things with the flower of the schools. Now my head is white and my brow lined, and the dewlaps hang from my chin like an ox's: The chill blood stiffens around my heart;
and so the same poet sings elsewhere: Time bears away all things, the mind as well; and shortly after: Now so many songs are gone from my memory, and even my voice fails Moeris.
But that I may not seem to draw this only from heathen literature, learn also the mysteries of the sacred volumes. David, at seventy years of age, once a warlike man, could not be warmed in the chill of his old age. So a girl is sought from all the borders of Israel, Abishag the Shunammite, that she might sleep with the king and warm his aged body. Does it not seem to you, if you follow the surface of the letter, either a fiction out of a mime or the buffoonery of the Atellan farces? A chilled old man is wrapped in clothing, and grows warm only in the embrace of youth. Bathsheba was still living, Abigail still survived, and the rest of his wives and concubines whom Scripture records: all of them are passed over as though they too were cold, and the old man warms in the embraces of one alone. Abraham was far older than David, and yet, while Sarah lived, he sought no other wife; Isaac was twice David's years, and never grew cold with Rebecca, though she was now old; I say nothing of the men before the flood, who, after nine hundred years, with limbs not merely aged but almost decayed, by no means sought the embraces of girls; Moses, certainly, the leader of the people of Israel, was a hundred and twenty years old, and did not exchange Zipporah for another.
Who, then, is this Shunammite, a wife and a virgin so fervent that she warmed the cold, so holy that she did not provoke the warmed man to lust? Let the wisest Solomon set forth his father's delight, and let the man of peace tell of the warrior's embraces: Get wisdom, get understanding. Forget it not, neither decline from the words of my mouth, neither forsake her, and she will lay hold of you; love her, and she will keep you. The beginning of wisdom: get wisdom, and in all your getting get understanding; embrace her, and she will exalt you; honour her, and she will encompass you, that she may give to your head a crown of graces, and may protect you with a crown of delights. Almost all the powers of the body are altered in the old, and while wisdom alone increases, the rest decrease: fastings, sleeping on the ground, running here and there, the receiving of strangers, the defence of the poor, perseverance in standing at prayer, the visiting of the sick, the labour of the hands by which alms are supplied, and — that I may not draw out my discourse too far — everything that is performed through the body grows less as the body breaks down. Nor do I say this as though wisdom grew cold in the young and those still of firmer age — at least in those who have pursued knowledge through labour and the most ardent zeal, through holiness of life too and frequency of prayer to God — wisdom that withers with age in most of the old; but rather that youth endures many wars of the body, and amid the incentives of the vices and the ticklings of the flesh is choked, like fire in greener wood, and cannot unfold its full radiance. But old age — again I remind you — in those who have furnished their youth with honourable arts and have meditated in the law of the Lord day and night, grows more learned with age, more practised by use, wiser with the passage of time, and reaps the sweetest fruits of its old studies. And so that wise man of Greece, when, having completed a hundred and seven years, he saw that he was about to die, is said to have grieved that he was then leaving life just when he had begun to be wise; Plato died in his eighty-first year, pen in hand; Isocrates filled out ninety-nine years in the labour of teaching and writing; I say nothing of the other philosophers — Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenocrates, Zeno, Cleanthes — who flourished in the studies of wisdom when already of great age: I come to the poets, Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, Stesichorus, who, far advanced in years, with death near, sang some swan-song sweeter than their wont. Sophocles, when on account of his extreme old age and the neglect of his household affairs he was accused of madness by his sons, recited to the judges the tragedy of Oedipus which he had lately written, and gave so great a proof of wisdom in his now-broken age that he turned the severity of the tribunal into the applause of the theatre. Nor is this any wonder, since even Cato, the most eloquent of the Roman race, when already a censor and an old man, neither blushed at nor despaired of learning Greek letters. Homer, certainly, relates that from the tongue of Nestor, now aged and almost decrepit, speech flowed sweeter than honey. But the mystery of the very name Abishag indicates the fuller wisdom of the old. For it is interpreted "my father is superabundant," or "the roaring of my father." The word "superabundant" is ambiguous, and in the present passage signifies virtue, in that wisdom in the old is fuller and overflowing and lavish; but in another passage "superabundant" is put for "superfluous," as not necessary. "Sag," that is, "roaring," is properly so named when the waves of the sea resound, and, so to speak, the roar coming from the deep is heard. By this it is shown that the most abundant thunder of the divine word, beyond the human voice, abides in the old. Furthermore, "Shunammite" in our tongue is rendered "scarlet," to signify that wisdom is warm and glows with divine reading; which, though it points to the mystery of the Lord's blood, nevertheless also shows the fervour of wisdom. And so that midwife in Genesis binds the scarlet thread upon the hand of Pharez, who, from the fact that he had divided the wall that separated two peoples before him, received the name of the "divider," that is, Pharez. And Rahab the harlot, as a type of the Church, let down the little cord that contained the mysteries of the blood, that she might be saved at the destruction of Jericho. And in another passage Scripture records concerning holy men: These are the Kenites who came from the warmth of the house of Rechab. And our Lord in the Gospel: I have come, he says, to send fire upon the earth, and how I wish that it were already kindled! It was this fire, kindled in the hearts of the disciples, that compelled them to say: Did not our heart burn within us while he spoke on the way and opened to us the Scriptures?
To what end has all this been recalled in so long a preface? That you may not seek from me boyish declamations, little flowers of maxims, the allurements of words, and at the close of each chapter certain pointed and briefly concluded turns of phrase, such as rouse the applause and shouts of the hearers. Let wisdom alone embrace me, and let our Abishag, who never grows old, rest in my bosom. She is unpolluted and of perpetual virginity, and, after the likeness of Mary, since she daily brings forth and is ever in travail, she is uncorrupted. From this, I think, the Apostle too said that he was "fervent in spirit," and the Lord proclaimed in the Gospel that at the end of the world, when, according to the prophet Zechariah, a foolish shepherd shall arise, wisdom shall decrease and the love of many shall grow cold. Hear me, then — as blessed Cyprian says — words not eloquent but strong. Hear a brother by fellowship, a father by age, who would lead you from the cradle of faith to the perfect age, and who, in laying down precepts for living through each of its degrees, may through you instruct others as well. I know indeed that from your uncle, the blessed Heliodorus, who is now a bishop of Christ, you have both learned the things that are holy and learn them daily, and have the example of his virtues as your rule of life; but receive also my own contributions, such as they are, and join this little book to his, so that, while he has trained you as a monk, this may teach you to be a perfect cleric.
Therefore let the cleric who serves the Church of Christ first interpret his own title, and, having set the definition of the name before him, strive to be what he is called. For if kleros in Greek is called sors ("lot") in Latin, clerics are so named either because they are of the Lord's lot, or because the Lord himself is the lot — that is, the portion — of the clerics. Now he who is either himself a portion of the Lord, or has the Lord as his portion, ought so to conduct himself that he both possesses the Lord and is himself possessed by the Lord. He who possesses the Lord and says with the prophet, "The Lord is my portion," can have nothing apart from the Lord; for if he have anything else besides the Lord, the Lord will not be his portion. For example, if he have gold, if silver, if possessions, if various furnishings — with such portions the Lord does not deign to become his portion. But if I am a portion of the Lord and the cord of his inheritance, and receive no portion among the rest of the tribes, but, like a Levite and a priest, live by the tithes and, serving the altar, am sustained by the offering of the altar — having food and clothing, with these I shall be content, and naked I shall follow the naked cross. I beseech you, then, and, repeating it again and again, I shall warn you, not to think the office of the clergy a kind of the old military service — that is, not to seek the world's gains in the warfare of Christ, not to have more than when you began to be a cleric, lest it be said to you: Their portions shall not profit them. Let the poor and strangers, and with them Christ, know your little table as their guest; flee like a kind of plague a cleric turned trader, made rich from poor, made glorious from low-born. Evil conversations corrupt good manners. You despise gold, another loves it; you trample on riches, he pursues them; silence, gentleness, seclusion are dear to your heart, but to him wordiness, a brazen brow, the marketplaces, the public squares, and the doctors' shops are pleasing: amid so great a discord of manners, what concord can there be?
Let women's feet rarely or never enter your little lodging. Either be equally ignorant of all maidens and virgins of Christ, or love them equally. Do not stay under the same roof; do not trust in your past chastity. You cannot be holier than David nor wiser than Solomon; remember always that a woman cast the dweller of paradise out of his possession. When you are sick, let some holy brother attend you, or a sister, or a mother, or any woman of approved faith in the eyes of all. But if there be no persons of such kinship and chastity, the Church maintains many old women who may both render service and receive a benefit by ministering, so that even your sickness may have the fruit of almsgiving. I know of some who have recovered in body and begun to sicken in soul. She ministers to you at peril whose face you frequently regard. If, on account of the clerical office, you visit a widow or a virgin, never enter the house alone, and keep such companions as will not bring you into disrepute by their company. If a reader, an acolyte, or a singer follows you, let them be adorned not with clothing but with character, nor let them curl their hair with a curling-iron, but let them promise chastity by their dress. Do not sit alone and without a witness with a woman alone. If something more private must be said, she has a nurse, the elder virgin of the house, a widow, a married woman; she is not so unsociable as to have no one but you to whom she would dare to confide. Beware of all suspicions, and whatever can plausibly be invented, avoid beforehand, that it may not be invented. Holy love has no place for frequent little gifts, napkins and garters and garments laid to the mouth, tasted morsels, and coaxing, sweet little notes. "My honey, my light, my desire," and the other follies of lovers, all the dalliances and charms and laughable refinements — these we blush at in comedies, we detest in men of the world: how much more in clerics, and in clerics who are monks, whose priesthood is adorned by their profession and whose profession by their priesthood! Nor do I say this because I fear such things in you or in holy men, but because in every profession, in every rank and sex, both good men and bad are found, and the condemnation of the worse is the praise of the good.
I am ashamed to say it: the priests of idols, mime-actors and charioteers and harlots receive inheritances; to clerics and monks alone this is forbidden by law — and forbidden not by persecutors but by Christian emperors. Nor do I complain of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved this law. A cautery is a good thing, but what is the wound that I should need a cautery? The provision of the law is foresighted and stern, and yet not even thus is avarice restrained. By trusts we mock the laws, and, as though the decrees of emperors were greater than those of Christ, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. Let there be an heir, but the mother of her sons — that is, the Church, the mother of his flock — who bore them, nourished them, and fed them. Why do we thrust ourselves between mother and children? It is the glory of a bishop to provide for the needs of the poor; it is the shame of all priests to study their own riches. Born in a poor house and in a country hut, I who could scarcely fill my roaring belly with millet and coarse bread now turn up my nose at fine flour and honey; I know the kinds and the names of fishes, on what shore a shellfish was gathered; by their flavour I distinguish the provinces of birds, and at last the very rarity of foods and their cost delight me. I hear, moreover, of the shameful servility of some men toward childless old men and women. They themselves set out the chamber-pot, they besiege the bed, and with their own hands they take up the corrupt matter of the stomach and the phlegm of the lungs. They tremble at the entrance of the physician, and with quivering lips ask whether the patient is better; and if the old man grows a little stronger, they are in peril, and with feigned gladness the mind within is tortured with avarice. For they fear lest they lose their service, and they compare the long-lived old man to the years of Methuselah. Oh, how great would be the reward with the Lord, if he hoped for no present price! With what great sweats is a vain inheritance sought! With less labour Christ's pearl might have been bought.
Read the divine Scriptures often — indeed, let the sacred reading never be laid down from your hands. Learn what you may teach; hold fast the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that you may be able both to exhort in sound teaching and to convince the gainsayers. Continue in the things which you have learned and which have been entrusted to you, knowing from whom you have learned them, always ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you. Let not your works confound your speech, lest, when you speak in the church, anyone silently reply: "Why, then, do you not do these things yourself?" He is a dainty master who, with full belly, disputes about fastings; even a thief can accuse avarice; let the mind and the mouth of Christ's priest agree. Be subject to your bishop, and look up to him as to the parent of your soul: to love is the part of sons, to fear the part of servants. "And if I am a father," he says, "where is my honour? And if I am a master, where is my fear?" In the same man you have more than one name to regard: monk, bishop, uncle. But let bishops too know that they are priests, not lords: let them honour clerics as clerics, that they too may be reverenced by clerics as bishops. There is a witty saying of the orator Domitius: "Shall I," he says, "hold you as a chief, when you do not hold me as a senator?" What Aaron and his sons were, that let us understand the bishop and the presbyters to be: one Lord, one temple, let there be also one ministry. Let them always recall what the apostle Peter enjoins upon priests: Feed the flock of the Lord which is among you, taking care of it not by constraint, but willingly, according to God; not for the sake of base gain, but freely; not as lording it over the clergy, but being made an example to the flock from the heart, so that, when the chief of the shepherds shall appear, you may receive the unfading crown of glory. It is a most wretched custom in certain churches for the presbyters to keep silent, and not to speak when the bishops are present, as though the bishops either envied them or did not deign to hear them. "And if anything," says the apostle Paul, "be revealed to another that sits by, let the first hold his peace. For you may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets: for God is not the God of dissension, but of peace." A wise son is the glory of his father; let the bishop rejoice in his own judgment, when he has chosen such priests for Christ.
When you speak in church, let it be not the shout of the people but their groaning that is roused; let the tears of your hearers be your praise. Let the discourse of the presbyter be seasoned by the reading of the Scriptures. I would not have you a declaimer and a brawler and a babbler, but skilled in the mystery and most learned in the sacraments of your God. To roll out words and, by the swiftness of speaking, to win admiration from an unskilled crowd is the mark of ignorant men. A brazen brow often expounds what it does not know, and, when it has persuaded others, claims knowledge for itself as well. My teacher once, Gregory of Nazianzus, when I asked him to explain what was meant in Luke by the "second-first" Sabbath — that is, the secundoprimum — gracefully jested: "I will teach you," he said, "about this matter in church, where, with all the people applauding me, you will be compelled against your will to know what you do not know; or else, if you alone keep silent, you alone will be condemned by all for folly." Nothing is so easy as to deceive a cheap little crowd and an unlearned assembly by a glib tongue, for whatever it does not understand it admires the more. Marcus Tullius — of whom that most beautiful tribute was made: "Demosthenes took from you the being the first orator; you took from him the being the only one" — mark what he says in his oration for Quintus Gallius about the favour of the crowd and about unskilled speakers: "But at these games — for I speak of what I have myself lately experienced — a certain poet holds sway, a man very lettered, whose are those banquets of poets and philosophers, when he makes Euripides and Menander dispute with each other, and in another place Socrates and Epicurus, whose ages we know were separated not by years but by centuries. And how great is the applause and the shouting that he stirs! For he has many fellow-pupils in the theatre who likewise never learned their letters."
Avoid dark garments as much as white; finery and squalor are alike to be shunned, since the one savours of luxury, the other of vainglory. Not to go about without a linen cloak, but to have no money for linen garments, is praiseworthy; otherwise it is ridiculous and full of disgrace to boast, with a full purse, that you have no handkerchief or napkin. There are some who give little to the poor that they may receive more, and under the pretext of almsgiving seek riches; this is rather to be called hunting than almsgiving. Thus are wild beasts, thus birds, thus fishes caught: a little bait is set upon the hook, that the purses of matrons may be drawn out upon it. The bishop, to whom the church is entrusted, knows whom to set over the distribution and care of the poor. It is better not to have what I might give than shamelessly to beg. But it is also a kind of arrogance to wish to seem more merciful than the bishop of Christ. We cannot all do all things. One in the church is an eye, another a tongue, another a hand, another a foot, another an ear, a belly, and the rest. Read Paul to the Corinthians: diverse members make up one body. Let not the unlettered and merely simple brother therefore think himself holy if he knows nothing, nor let the skilled and eloquent in speech reckon his eloquence holiness. Of the two imperfect things, it is far better to have a holy rusticity than a sinful eloquence.
Many build walls and lay down columns for the church: the marbles gleam, the panelled ceilings glitter with gold, the altar is set with gems — and yet there is no choosing of Christ's ministers. Nor let anyone object to me the wealthy temple in Judaea, the table, the lamps, the censers, the dishes, the cups, the little mortars, and the rest skilfully wrought of gold. These things were approved by the Lord then, when the priests sacrificed victims and the blood of beasts was the redemption of sins — though all these things had gone before as a figure. But they were written for our sakes, upon whom the ends of the ages have come; now, however, since a poor Lord has consecrated the poverty of his house, let us think upon the cross, and we shall reckon riches mire. Why do we wonder that Christ calls riches "unrighteous mammon"? Why do we look up to and love what Peter testifies he does not possess? Otherwise, if we follow only the letter, and the plain narrative delights us in gold and riches, let us observe the rest along with the gold: let Christ's bishops marry virgin wives; however good of mind a man be, if he have a scar and is deformed, let him be deprived of the priesthood; let leprosy of the body be preferred to the vices of the soul; let us grow and multiply and replenish the earth; let us neither sacrifice the lamb nor celebrate the mystical Passover, since these are forbidden by law to be done without the temple; let us pitch the tabernacle in the seventh month and sound the solemn fast with the trumpet. But if all these things we should understand spiritually, comparing spiritual with spiritual, and knowing with Paul that the law is spiritual, and singing the words of David, "Open my eyes, and I shall consider the wondrous things of your law," so as to understand even as our Lord himself understood and interpreted the Sabbath, then let us either reject gold along with the rest of the superstitions of the Jews, or, if gold pleases us, let the Jews please us too, whom along with their gold we must either approve or condemn.
You must avoid the banquets of worldly men, and especially of those who are swollen with honours. It is shameful that, before the doors of a priest of the crucified and poor Lord — who fed even on borrowed food — the lictors of consuls and soldiers should keep watch, and that the judge of the province should dine better at your house than in the palace. But if you allege that you do these things in order to plead for the wretched and the oppressed: the worldly judge defers more to a self-controlled cleric than to a rich one, and reveres your holiness more than your wealth; or, if he be such a man as will not hear clerics save among the dishes, I shall gladly do without a benefit of this kind, and shall plead with Christ as my judge, who can better come to my aid; for it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man, better to hope in the Lord than to hope in princes. Never smell of wine, lest you hear that saying of the philosopher: "This is not to offer a kiss, but to offer a toast." Drunken priests both the Apostle condemns and the old law forbids. They that serve the altar shall not drink wine and strong drink. "Strong drink" in the Hebrew tongue is the name for any drink that can intoxicate, whether it is made with ferment, or fruit-juices are boiled down into a sweet and outlandish drink, or the fruit of palms is pressed into liquor, or a thicker water is strained from cooked grain. Whatever intoxicates and overturns the steadiness of the mind, flee it as you would wine. Nor do I say this so as to condemn a creature of God — since the Lord too is called a wine-drinker, and to Timothy with a sick stomach a little draught of wine was allowed — but we require, in drinking, a measure proportioned to age, to health, and to the constitution of the body. But if without wine I burn — and I burn with youth and am inflamed with the heat of the blood and am of a juicy and vigorous body — I shall gladly do without the cup in which there is the suspicion of poison. It is finely said among the Greeks, though I do not know whether it sounds as well among us: "A fat belly does not beget a fine perception."
Impose on yourself only as much fasting as you can bear. Let your fasts be pure, chaste, simple, moderate, not superstitious. What profit is it not to eat oil, and to seek out certain troubles and difficulties of foods? Dried figs, pepper, nuts, the fruit of palms, fine flour, honey, pistachios — the whole cultivation of gardens is harassed, that we may not eat the common bread. I hear, moreover, of some who, against the nature of things and of men, drink no water and eat no bread, but sip dainty little broths and crushed herbs and the juice of beets, not from a cup but from a shell. For shame! Do we not blush at follies of this kind, nor weary of the superstition? Besides, we even seek a reputation for abstinence amid delicacies. The strongest fast is water and bread; but because this has no glory, and we all live on bread and water, it is reckoned, as it were, no public and common fast.
Take care that you do not go fowling for the little rumours of men, that you do not exchange an offence against God for the praise of peoples. "If I yet pleased men," says the Apostle, "I should not be the servant of Christ"; he ceased to please men and became a servant of Christ. Through good report and evil, on the right hand and on the left, the soldier of Christ marches; he is neither lifted up by praise nor broken by blame, he is not puffed up by riches, nor cast down by poverty, and he despises both glad things and sad. By day the sun shall not burn him, neither the moon by night. I would not have you pray on the corners of the streets, lest the breath of popular favour break the straight course of your prayers; I would not have you broaden your fringes and, for ostentation, wear pious phylacteries and, with a repugnant conscience, surround yourself with Pharisaic ambition. It is better to carry these things in the heart than on the body, to have God as your supporter, not the gaze of men. Do you wish to know what ornaments the Lord seeks? Have prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. Be enclosed within these regions of heaven; let this team of four, like a charioteer, bear you, swift, to the goal of Christ. Nothing is more precious than this necklace, nothing more variegated than this variety of gems. On every side you are adorned, girding and protecting; and they are to you both an ornament and a defence: the gems are turned into shields.
Take care also that you have neither an itching tongue nor itching ears — that is, neither disparage others yourself, nor listen to others disparaging. "You sat," he says, "and spoke against your brother, and laid a stumbling-block against your mother's son; these things you did, and I was silent. You thought iniquity, that I would be like you; I will reprove you, and set you before your own face." It is to be understood: "Your words, and all that you have spoken of others, that by your own sentence you may be judged, being yourself caught in those very things which you reproved in others." Nor indeed is that a just excuse: "When others report a thing to me, I cannot help doing an injury." No one willingly reports to an unwilling hearer. An arrow is never driven into a stone; sometimes, rebounding, it strikes the one who aimed it. Let the slanderer learn, when he sees that you do not gladly listen, not to slander readily. "With slanderers," says Solomon, "do not mingle, for their destruction shall come suddenly, and the ruin of both, who knows it?" — that is, of him who slanders as well as of him who lends his ear to the slanderer.
It is your duty to visit the sick, to know the households, the matrons and their children, and not to be ignorant of the secrets of men of rank. Let it therefore be your duty to keep not only your eyes chaste, but your tongue as well. Never discuss the beauty of women, nor let one household learn through you what is going on in another. Hippocrates binds his disciples by an oath before he teaches them, and compels them to swear in his own words; he extorts silence by a solemn pledge; he prescribes their speech, their gait, their dress, and their manners: how much more ought we, to whom the medicine of souls has been entrusted, to love the households of all Christians as our own. Let them know us rather as comforters in their sorrows than as banqueters in their prosperity. The cleric is easily despised who, often invited to dinner, does not refuse.
Let us never accept while asking, and rarely while asked. For somehow even the very man who entreats you to take, when you have taken, judges you the cheaper, and, strange to say, admires you the more if you have scorned his request. A preacher of continence, let him not arrange marriages. He who reads the Apostle, "It remains that they that have wives be as though they had none," why does he compel a virgin to marry? He who is a priest of one marriage, why does he exhort a widow to be twice-married? How can men be the agents and stewards of others' houses and estates, who are bidden to despise their own means? To snatch something from a friend is theft; to defraud the Church is sacrilege. To have received what is to be distributed to the poor, and, while many are starving, to be cautious or timid, or — what is most manifest wickedness — to subtract anything from it, surpasses the cruelty of all robbers. I am tortured with hunger, and do you judge how much is enough for my belly? Either distribute at once what you have received, or, if you are a timid steward, dismiss the giver, that he may himself distribute his own. I would not have your little bag full on my occasion. No one can keep my own better than I can. He is the best steward who reserves nothing for himself.
You have compelled me, dearest Nepotian — now that my little book on virginity, which I wrote at Rome for the holy Eustochium, has been stoned — after ten years to open my mouth again at Bethlehem, and to expose myself to be pierced by all men's tongues. For either I ought to have written nothing, that I might not undergo the judgment of men — which you forbade me to do — or, in writing, I ought to know that the darts of all the evil-speakers will be hurled against us. I beseech them to be quiet and to cease their reviling; for we have written not as adversaries but as friends, nor have we inveighed against those who sin, but warned them not to sin. And we have been stern judges not against them only but against ourselves as well, and, wishing to take the mote from another's eye, we have first cast out our own beam. We have injured no one, no one has been so much as marked by description, no one has my speech assailed by name: the discussion of the vices is general. Whoever shall wish to be angry with me first confesses of himself that he is such a man.