Letters439 Letter CDXXXIX. To a person unknown.

He exhorts him to prefer the care of his soul to anxiety about the body, and to renounce the world.

The lord Bishop of Aveia 1 * * has done me a great kindness, after giving me his acquaintance, which I much desired, in making mention of me to your Charity, and gratifying me by informing me of your safety. And indeed, what the Bishop said of my soul I accepted the more willingly as he spoke thus of my body: 41 love your body indeed, but I love your soul more: for I love not my own body, except for the sake of my soul, according to that rule which you know is held dear by me: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (S. Matt. xxii. 39), and as I prefer my soul to my body, so do I likewise with yours. For take away the soul, and what will the body be, except what all human bodies are said to become: Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return (Gen. iii. 19). But the soul is in a state to be preferred when it is released from the body, only if it is not weighed down with sins so great, that this which was taken from the dust hinders, in returning to the dust, the spirit from returning to God who gave it (Eccles. iii. 7). It is evidently not just that that which is moved should be loved equally with that which moves it; that which is ruled with that which rules; that which imparts life and that which receives it; that, in fine, which is dust and comes from the dust, and that which comes from above, and is made in the image of a higher nature. Yet how frequently, alas is this herb of the field and its ill-savoured flower, the flesh, and the pleasures of the flesh, held not only equal to, but of greater worth than the reasonable soul, capable of eternal blessedness! I know well that you are wiser, but I grieve that you do not yet live 1 [There were two places of this name: one in Spain, a town of the Basques, in the Tarraconensis: the other of the Vestini, in Italy, now destroyed; the See being removed to Aquila.]

Letter CDXL.

according to your wisdom; do thou therefore, beloved of God, have pity on thine own soul (Ecclus. xxx. 23). Why should you live as those with whose opinion you do not agree? Either change your life, or hide your sentiments. But this is the better course, not to contradict in your actions, what your reason has understood, and your heart embraced. A wise man does not think lightly of the counsel of the wise: What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul! (S. Matt. xvi. 26). What does it help you to retain the truth in your mind, when you still act according to vanity in your life? Depart, I pray you, from among the sons of the strangers, whose mouth talketh of vanity and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. These indeed call such a people blessed: but do you with the Prophet not only cry out in word, but realize in practice that Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord (Ps. cxliv. 15). Let those whose doom it is to perish with the world, take their pleasure in it: but do thou delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee thy heart’s desire: it is good for thee to hold fast to Him, so that you too may be able to say with Jeremiah, The Lord is good unto the soul that seeketh Him (Lam. iii. 25) and if to one that seeks Him, how much more to one who finds?