Sermons on the Song of Songs36 Sermon XXXVI. The knowledge of literature is good for our instruction, but the knowledge of our own infirmity is more useful to salvation
Sermon XXXVI. The knowledge of literature is good for our instruction, but the knowledge of our own infirmity is more useful to salvation
Iam here in fulfilment of my promise, in order to comply with your requests, and in discharge of the duty I owe to God. It is a threefold reason, as you see, which urges me on to speak: respect for my promise, brotherly charity, and the fear of the Lord. If I be silent, my own mouth will condemn me. If, on the contrary, I speak, I still fear the same judgment, inasmuch as my mouth will none the less condemn me because I say and do not. Aid me, I entreat you, by your prayers, that I may be able to speak what is true and edifying, and to carry out in my actions that which I preach to others. You are aware that I propose to speak to-day of ignorance, or rather of the various kinds of ignorance; for, if you remember, we distinguished two kinds—the one in regard to ourselves, the other to God—and I warned you that each was to be avoided, because each was a cause of condemnation. What I have to do now is to expound this subject more clearly and at greater length. But I think we must in the first place inquire whether every kind of ignorance be a cause of condemnation? And it seems to me that this is not the case; that it is not every [kind or degree of ignorance that is blamable, since there are many things—they are, indeed, innumerable—of which we 2. I may seem to you, perhaps, to speak too severely of knowledge; to blame, as it were, the learned, and to forbid the study of literature. But I would by no means do this. I am not ignorant how great are the services that have been rendered to the Church, and are rendered to her continually, by her learned sons, whether in repulsing the attacks of her enemies or in instructing the simple. Besides, I have read the words of the Prophet: Because thou hast rejected knowledge I will also reject thee, and thou shall be no priest to Me (Hosea iv. 6); and also: They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to- righteousness as the stars for ever and ever (Dan. xii 3). But I know also where I have read: Knowledge puffeth up (1 Cor. viii. 1); and again: He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow (Eccles. i. 18). You see that there is a difference between these [kinds of knowledge], for one kind renders [the possessor vain, and another renders him sad. Now, I would ask you whether of the two is the more conducive to salvation, that which puffs up or that which saddens? But I doubt not that you would prefer the latter, since pain is a means to health, of which tumour and swelling is but a semblance. But he who entreats for salvation is near to gain it, for he that asketh receiveth (Luke xi. 10). Also, He who heals the heart that is broken holds in abhorrence that which is swollen with pride, as the-highest Wisdom teaches us: God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble (James iv. 6). And the 3. But it is better to send you at once to the Master, for this teaching comes not from us, but from him; or, rather, it is ours, because it is the word of Truth. If any man, he says, think that he knouteth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know (1 Cor. viii. 2). You see that he does not praise the person who knows many things if he is still ignorant of the right manner to know them, and that it is in that very point he places the fruit and usefulness of knowledge. What, then, does he understand by the manner of knowing? What else can he mean by it than in what order, with what degree of eagerness, and with what intention and object we ought to acquaint ourselves with all things? In what order? that is to say, so as to acquire first that which is more fitted to the work of our salvation. With what degree of eagerness? by which we learn that we ought to apply ourselves with the greatest ardour and vehemence to make progress in that which excites us the most strongly to the love of God. And lastly, with what intention and object? not to learn, that is to say, in order to satisfy vainglory, to indulge curiosity, or any motive like that, but only for our own edification or that of our neighbour. For there are those who wish to learn merely in order that they may know, and such curiosity is blamable. There are others who wish to learn for no other reason than that they may be looked upon as learned, which is a ridiculous vanity; and these will not escape the censure which a satiric poet levels against them when he says: 4 To know a thing *is nothing in your eyes, unless some other person is 1 John of Salisbury writes in a very similar way: ' Some are drawn towards learning by curiosity, others by the desire to be accounted learned, or even by motives of self-interest. There are very few who pursue study in a disposition of charity or humility, to instruct themselves or to be of service to others' (*Polycraticus,' Bk. vii c. 15).
4. Of all these the two last are the only learners who do not fall into an abuse of knowledge; since they wish to know only that they may do good. Says the Psalmist: A good understanding have all they that do His commandments (Ps. cxi. 10). But let all the others note what is said by the Apostle: To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin (James iv. 17); as if he had said by a metaphor: * To take food, and not to digest it, is injurious to the health. For food badly cooked and ill-digested generates unhealthy humours, and injures the body instead of nourishing it. So also much knowledge stuffed into the memory, which is, as it were, the stomach of the soul, if it is not digested by the fire of charity, and transfused into the limbs, that is, into the actions and habits, so that it is made the means of good actions through the good that is known, shall not that knowledge be counted for sin, like food turned into bad and injurious humours?' Is not sin, in fact, as a bad humour in the soul? and are not bad tendencies and habits as depraved humours? He who knows the good, and does it not, will his conscience not suffer from inflammations and torturing pains? Will it not return in itself a response of condemnation and death, as often as that Divine saying comes into the memory: That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes? (Luke xii. 47). It is perhaps the cry of such a soul to which the Prophet gives utterance, when he says: My bowels, my bowels I Jam pained at my very heart (Jer. iv. 19). Except that perhaps the very repetition seems to point to a double sense in the words, and obliges me to look for some other than that I have given. I think that the Prophet may have spoken this in regard to himself, inasmuch as being full of knowledge and of charity, and earnestly desiring to communicate that knowledge, he could find no one who cared to listen to him, and thus his knowledge was, as it were, a burden to him, since he was unable to communicate it. Therefore the pious teacher of the Church laments, both for those who scorned the opportunity of learning their duty, and for those who, knowing it, yet lived evil lives. And on this account he repeats the word.
5. Do you observe with what emphatic truth the 'Apostle asserts that knowledge puffeth up? I wish, then, that the soul should first of all commence by acquiring a knowledge of itself, as is required both by natural order and by that of usefulness. The natural order, because we are to ourselves the first and nearest fact; but also that of usefulness, since the knowledge of ourselves does not puff us up, 6. As for me, as long as I look at myself, I see only one subject after another for bitter regret. But if I look up, and lift up my eyes towards the help of the Divine compassion, the joyful sight of God tempers at once the bitter revelation of myself, and I say to Him: My soul is troubled within me, therefore will I remember Thee (Ps. xlii. 6). Nor is that vision of God of small avail, in which we have experience of His kindness and readiness to be entreated. For He is in truth good and merciful, so much better than we are evil, as to prevail over our ill (Joel ii. 13). His Nature is goodness, and to Him it belongeth to have mercy always and to spare. Through such an experience, and in such an order of events, then, does God make Himself known to us, and to our great benefit; that is to say, after man has become aware of the deplorable condition in which he is, and has cried unto the Lord, the Lord hears and helps him, declaring: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me (Ps. 1. 15). Thus, the knowledge of thyself will be a step to the knowledge of God: He will become visible in His image, which is renewed in thee; whilst thou, beholding with confidence as in a glass the glory of the Lord, art changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. iii. 18).
7. But now notice, finally, how each of these kinds of knowledge
1. En ego meae promissioni; en ego desideriis vestris; en ego etiam Deo pro debito famulatu. Triplici, ut videtis, ratione urgeor ad loquendum; pacti veritate, charitate fraterna, timore Domini. Si tacuero, os meum condemnabit me. Quid, si loquar? Profecto vereor idem judicium, ne loquentem videlicet, et non facientem, identidem os meum condemnet me. Juvate me orationibus vestris, ut semper possim et loqui quae oportet, et opere implere quae loquor. Non ignoratis hodiernum nobis propositum esse sermonem de ignorantia, vel potius de ignorantiis; quoniam duae, si meministis, propositae sunt, nostri una, et altera Dei: quas et monuimus ambas esse cavendas, quod ambae damnabiles sint. Superest ut clarius hoc ipsum faciam, edisseram plenius. Sed prius quaerendum existimo, sitne ignorantia omnis damnabilis: Et mihi quidem videtur non esse: neque enim omnis ignorantia damnat; sed multa et innumera esse, quae nescire liceat absque diminutione salutis. Verbi gratia, si ignoras fabrilem artem, seu carpentariam, aut caementariam, et quaecunque istiusmodi sunt artes, quae ad usus vitae hujus praesentis ab hominibus exercentur, nunquid impedit ad salutem? Etiam absque omnibus illis artibus, quae liberales dicuntur (quamvis honestioribus utilioribusque studiis et discantur et exerceantur), quamplurimi hominum salvi facti sunt, placentes moribus atque operibus: quantos enumerat Apostolus in Epistola ad Hebraeos, factos dilectos, non in scientia litterarum, sed in conscientia pura et fide non ficta. Omnes placuerunt Deo in vita sua, vitae meritis, non scientiae. Petrus, et Andreas, et filii Zebedaei, caeterique condiscipuli omnes, non de schola rhetorum aut philosophorum assumpti sunt; et nihilominus tamen Salvator per ipsos operatus est salutem in medio terrae. Non in sapientia, quae in ipsis esset plus quam in cunctis viventibus (quemadmodum sanctus aliquis de semetipso confessus est), sed in fide et lenitate ipsorum salvos fecit illos, etiam et sanctos, etiam et magistros. Denique notas mundo fecerunt vias vitae, et non in sublimitate sermonis, aut in doctis humanae sapientiae verbis, sed sicut placuit Deo per stultitiam praedicationis eorum salvos facere credentes, quia mundus eum in sua sapientia non cognovit.
2. Videar forsitan nimius in suggillatione scientiae, et quasi reprehendere doctos, ac prohibere studia litterarum. Absit! Non ignoro quantum Ecclesiae profuerint et prosint litterati sui, sive ad refellendos eos qui ex adverso sunt, sive ad simplices instruendos. Denique legi: Quia tu repulisti scientiam, repellam et ego te, ut non fungaris mihi sacerdotio (Osee IV, 6): legi: Qui docti fuerint, fulgebunt quasi splendor firmamenti; et qui ad justitiam erudiunt multos, quasi stellae in perpetuas aeternitates. Sed et scio ubi legerim: Scientia inflat: et rursum: Qui apponit scientiam, apponit et dolorem. Vides quia differentia est scientiarum, quando alia inflans, alia contristans est. Tibi vero velim scire quaenam harum videatur utilior seu magis necessaria ad salutem, illane quae tumet an quae dolet. Sed non dubito quin dolentem tumenti praeferas, quia sanitatem, quam tumor simulat, dolor postulat. Qui autem postulat, propinquat saluti; quoniam qui petit accipit. Denique qui sanat contritos corde, exsecratur inflatos, dicente Sapientia, quia Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam. Et Apostolus aiebat: Dico autem per gratiam quae data est mihi, omnibus qui sunt inter vos, non plus sapere quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad sobrietatem. Non prohibet sapere, sed plus sapere quam oportet. Quid est autem sapere ad sobrietatem? Vigilantissime observare quid scire magis priusve oporteat. Tempus enim breve est. Est autem, quod in se est, omnis scientia bona, quae tamen veritate subnixa sit: sed tu qui cum timore et tremore tuam ipsius operari salutem pro temporis brevitate festinas, ea scire potius ampliusque curato quae senseris viciniora saluti. Nonne medici corporum medicinae portionem definiunt eligere in sumendis cibis, quid prius, quid posterius, et ad quem modum quidque sumi oporteat? Nam, etsi bonos constat esse cibos, quos Deus creavit, tu tamen ipsos tibi, si in sumendo modum et ordinem non observes, reddis plane non bonos. Ergo quod dico de cibis, hoc sentite et de scientiis.
3. Sed melius mitto vos ad Magistrum. Non est enim nostra ista sententia, sed illius; imo et nostra, quoniam Veritatis. Qui se, inquit, putat aliquid scire, nondum scit quomodo oporteat eum scire. Vides quoniam non probat multa scientem, si sciendi modum nescierit. Vides, inquam, quomodo fructum et utilitatem scientiae in modo sciendi constituit? Quid ergo dicit modum sciendi? Quid, nisi ut scias quo ordine, quo studio, quo fine quaeque nosse oporteat? Quo ordine, ut id prius, quod maturius ad salutem: quo studio, ut id ardentius, quod vehementius ad amorem: quo fine, ut non ad inanem gloriam, aut curiositatem, aut aliquid simile, sed tantum ad aedificationem tuam vel proximi. Sunt namque qui scire volunt eo fine tantum, ut sciant; et turpis curiositas est. Et sunt qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi; et turpis vanitas est. Qui profecto non evadent subsannantem satyricum, et ei qui ejusmodi est decantantem:
Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.
Et sunt item qui scire volunt ut scientiam suam vendant; verbi causa, pro pecunia, pro honoribus: et turpis quaestus est. Sed sunt quoque qui scire volunt, ut aedificent; et charitas est. Et item qui scire volunt, ut aedificenfur: et prudentia est.
4. Horum omnium soli ultimi duo non inveniuntur in abusione scientiae, quippe qui ad hoc volunt intelligere ut bene faciant. Denique: Intellectus bonus omnibus facientibus eum. Reliqui omnes audiant: Scienti bonum et non facienti, peccatum est ei; ac si per similitudinem dicat: Sumenti cibum et non digerenti, perniciosum est ei. Cibus siquidem indigestus, et qui bonam non habet decoctionem malos generat humores, et corrumpit corpus, et non nutrit. Ita et multa scientia ingesta stomacho animae, quae est memoria, si decocta igne charitatis non fuerit, et sic per quosdam artus animae, mores scilicet atque actus, transfusa atque digesta, quatenus ipsa de bonis quae noverit, vita attestante et moribus, bona efficiatur; nonne illa scientia reputabitur in peccatum, tanquam cibus conversus in pravos noxiosque humores? An non malus humor peccatum? an non mali humores pravi mores? At non inflationes et tortiones in conscientia sustinebit qui hujusmodi est, sciens videlicet bonum et non faciens? An non responsum mortis et damnationis toties in semetipso habebit, quoties in mentem venerit sermo quem dixit Deus, quia servus sciens voluntatem Domini sui, et non faciens digna, plagis vapulabit multis. Et vide ne forte in persona talis animae propheta plangeret, dicens: Ventrem meum doleo, ventrem meum doleo. Nisi quod ipsa ingeminatio geminum videtur innuere sensum, ut praeter hunc quem diximus, etiam alium requiramus. Puto enim quod in sua persona potuit hoc dixisse Propheta, quod videlicet scientia plenus, et aestuans charitate, et omnino effundere cupiens, non inveniret qui curaret audire; et sic quasi oneri sua sibi scientia erat, quam communicare non poterat. Plangit itaque pius Ecclesiae doctor tam illos qui scire contemnunt quomodo sit vivendum, quam illos qui scientes, male nihilominus vivunt. Et hoc pro eo quod eumdem sermonem Propheta repetit.
5. Advertisne jam quam verum sensit Apostolus, quia scientia inflat? Volo proinde animam primo omnium scire se ipsam, quod id postulet ratio et utilitatis et ordinis. Et ordinis quidem, quoniam quod nos sumus primum est nobis; utilitatis vero, quia talis scientia non inflat, sed humiliat. et est quaedam praeparatio ad aedificandum. Nisi enim super humilitatis stabile fundamentum, spirituale aedificium stare minime potest. Porro ad se humiliandum nihil anima invenire vivacius seu accommodatius potest, quam si se in veritate invenerit: tantum non dissimulet, non sit in spiritu ejus dolus, statuat se ante faciem suam, nec se a se avertere abducatur. Nonne se ita intuens clara luce veritatis, inveniet se in regione dissimilitudinis: et suspirans misera, quam jam latere non poterit quod vere misera sit, nonne cum Propheta clamabit ad Dominum: In veritate tua humiliasti me? Nam quomodo non vere humiliabitur in hac vera cognitione sui, cum se perceperit oneratam peccatis, mole hujus mortalis corporis aggravatam, terrenis intricatam curis, carnalium desideriorum faece infectam, caecam, curvam, infirmam, implicitam multis erroribus, expositam mille periculis, mille timoribus trepidam, mille difficultatibus anxiam, mille suspicionibus obnoxiam, mille necessitatibus aerumnosam, proclivem ad vitia, invalidam ad virtutes? Unde huic jam extollentia oculorum, unde levare caput? Nonne magis convertetur in aerumna sua, dum configitur spina. Convertetur, inquam, ad lacrymas, convertetur ad planctus et gemitus, convertetur ad Dominum, et in humilitate clamabit: Sana animum meam, quia peccavi tibi. Porro conversa ad Dominum recipiet consolationem, quia Pater est misericordiarum, et Deus totius consolationis.
6. Ego quandiu in me respicio, in amaritudine moratur oculus meus. Si autem suspexero et levavero oculos ad divinae miserationis auxilium; temperabit mox amaram visionem mei visio laeta Dei, cui et dico: Ad me ipsum anima mea conturbata est, propterea memor ero tui. Nec mediocris Dei visio, pium et deprecabilem experiri, sicut revera benignus et misericors est, et praestabilis super malitia (Joel II, 13), quippe cujus natura bonitas, et cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere. Tali itaque experimento et tali ordine salubriter innotescit Deus, cum prius se homo noverit in necessitate positum, et clamabit ad Dominum, et exaudiet eum, et dicet: Eruam te, et honorificabis me. Atque hoc modo erit gradus ad notitiam Dei cognitio tui; et ex imagine sua, quae in te renovatur, ipse videbitur, dum tu quidem revelata facie gloriam Domini cum fiducia speculando, in eamdem imaginem transformaris de claritate in claritatem, tanquam a Domini Spiritu.
7. Sed jam demum adverte quomodo utraque cognitio sit tibi necessaria ad salutem, ita ut neutra carere valeas cum salute. Nam, si ignoras te, non habebis timorem Dei in te, non humilitatem. An vero sine timore Dei et sine humilitate de salute praesumas, tu videris. Bene fecistis grunniendo significare quod minime ita sapiatis, imo quod non ita desipiatis, ne in eo quod planum est immoremur. Sed attendite caetera. An potius pausandum est nobis propter somnolentos? Putabam me uno sermone implere quod promisi de duplici ignorantia; et fecissem, nisi fastidiosis longior videretur. Quosdam siquidem oscitantes, quosdam et dormitantes intueor. Nec mirum: praecedentis noctis vigiliae (longissimae quippe fuerunt) excusant eos. Verum illis quid dicam, qui et tunc dormierunt, et modo nihilominus dormiunt? Sed non pergo nunc ulterius exagitare verecundiam eorum: sufficit tetigisse. Puto quod melius deinceps vigilabunt, nostrae observationis cauterium verituri. In hac spe gerimus eis hac vice morem; et quod continuandum ratio exigebat, eorum charitate, pendente licet disputatione, partimur, facientes finem, ubi non erat finis. Ipsi vero super sibi facta indulgentia nobiscum glorificent Sponsum Ecclesiae, Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum, qui est super omnia Deus benedictus in saecula. Amen.