AGAINST THE DETESTABLE VICE OF DETRACTION
even in the choir of maidens, such are found who watch closely the actions of the Bride, not to imitate them, but to detract from their merit. By the good deeds of their elders they are tormented, but upon the evil they gloat and feed. You see them walking apart, drawing together, and making little knots, where they indulge themselves without restraint in insolent words and scurrilous whispers. They are joined close one to the other, so that not a breath can escape, so great is their eagerness to detract from others and to listen to detraction. They associate themselves together in order to speak ill of their neighbour, and are united to cause disunion. They form among themselves friendships full of unfriendliness, combine under a common impulse of malignity, and make odious cabals. It was thus that Herod and Pilate formerly acted, of whom the Gospel relates that in t/iat day were they made friends together (Luke xxiii. 12), that is, on the day of the Passion of Our Lord. When they assemble together in such a spirit, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, but rather to give to others, and to drink themselves, of the cup of demons; while some bear on their tongues the poison that slays the souls of others, and others willingly receive the mortal venom which enters their heart through their ears. That is how, according to the Prophet, death enters in through our windows (Jer. ix. 21), when with [slavering] mouths and itching ears we give to, and receive from, each other in turn the mortal cup of scandal and detraction. Let not my soul come into their meeting, for they are hated by God, as the Apostle bears witness: Detractors [are] hateful to God (Rom. i. 30, Vulg. and Douay). Listen in what terms God Himself, speaking in a Psalm, confirms that statement: Whoso privily slander eth his neighbour•, him will I destroy (Ps. ci. 5).
4. Nor is that wonderful to us when we perceive that this vice conflicts with, and persecutes, more even than others, charity, which is [the nature of] God Himself, as you yourselves can easily discern. For everyone who slanders his neighbour gives proof, in the first place, that he is wholly void of charity. In the second place, what other object can he have in uttering the slander than to induce others to hate or despise those of whom the slander is spoken? The slanderous tongue strikes, therefore, a deadly blow at charity in all those who hear the calumny, and, as far as its power extends, entirely destroys and extinguishes it; and not only in them, but in all those who are absent, but to whom the calumny is, perhaps, repeated, as words fly from lip to lip by those who have heard it. You see, then, how a malicious report may in a brief space of time easily infect with the plague of its malice a great number of souls. Wherefore the prophetic spirit says of such: Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood (Ps. xiii. 3, Vulg. and Douay). And speech speeds as rapidly as the feet of a swift runner. If there be one only who speaks, and he speaks but one sole word, yet that one word enters into the ears of a multitude of hearers, and in one moment slays their souls; for a heart full of the venom of envy can scatter bitter words only through its bitter instrument of the tongue, according to the saying of the Lord: Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh (Luke vL 45). There are different varieties of this pest. There are some persons who vomit forth the poison of detraction, nakedly and without discrimination, as it comes into their heads. And again, there are others who take pains to conceal the malice they have conceived, and which they are no longer able to keep to themselves, with the cloak of an affected reserve. Before the slander is uttered, you see the man heaving deep sighs, putting on a grave look and a pretended sadness, casting his eyes down to the ground, speaking slowly, and uttering his slanders with a plaintive voice. Thus they produce so much the greater effect, as those who hear them believe that they are spoken with regret, and rather with reluctance than with malice. *I regret it very much,' he protests, ' on his account, because I have great love for him; but I have never been able to correct him in this respect.' * I knew well/ says another, • that he was subject to that vice, though I should never have made it known. But since the fact has been declared by someone else, I am no longer able to deny the truth. I do it with regret, but it is true, nevertheless., And he adds: 4 It is a great pity, for he has good qualities in other respects; but in that matter he is, to speak the truth, inexcusable.'
5. Having said these few words respecting a vice so full of malignity, let me return to my orderly exposition, and show who are they who are spoken of here as the upright, I suppose that there is no one of right intelligence who imagines that it is ' uprightness ' in a bodily sense that is predicated of those who love the Bride, therefore it is to be explained of spiritual uprightness, that is, rectitude of heart and of mind. It is the Spirit who speaks, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Therefore God * made man upright ' according to the mind, not according to the earthy and material body. For He created him in His own image and similitude (Gen. i. 27), and as you sing in the Psalms, The Lord our God is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him (Ps. xcii. 15). God, then, who is upright, made man upright and similar to Himself, that is to say, without unrighteousness, even as there is no unrighteousness in Him. Now, unrighteousness is a vice of the heart, not of the flesh, and from this you know that the likeness of God which you have is to be preserved, or to be restored, in the spiritual part of your nature, and not in its earthy and clayey part. For God is Spirit, and it behoves those who desire to become like Him, or to persevere in His likeness, to enter into their heart, and to employ themselves in the spirit in that blessed work; so that with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, they may be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. iii. 18).
6. Perhaps it may be said, again, that God has bestowed upon man an upright stature in body also, so that this exterior and bodily uprightness, though of a lower kind, may admonish the inner man to preserve his spiritual uprightness, and the beauty of the perishable clay may rebuke the deformity of the mind; for what can be more indecent than to bear a bent and deformed mind in an upright body? It is a thing unfitting and shameful that a frame of clay, which is what our earthly body really is, should have its eyes raised on high, directed freely towards heaven, and taking pleasure to contemplate the great lights of the heavens; but that the being of spiritual and heavenly nature should, on the contrary, have its eyes, that is, its inward senses and affections, drawn downwards towards the earth, and that which ought to be nourished upon golden and precious sustenance should be clinging to the soil, wallowing in filth, like an unclean swine. Blush with shame, O my soul, to have changed the Divine likeness for that of the brute; and being of the heavens, to be wallowing in the mire. Blush with shame, O my soul, says our body, when you consider yourself and me. You were created upright and similar to your Creator, and you received me for a helper like unto yourself, at least, as far as the lineaments of bodily uprightness were concerned. Whithersoever you turn, whether it be to God above or to me below (for no man ever hated his own flesh), on every side meet you the various kinds of your own excellence; everywhere you have the familiar teachings of wisdom, bidding you preserve the nobleness and dignity of the state in which you have been placed. Why, then, are you not stricken with shame for having lost your glorious prerogative, while I have preserved and retained mine, which I only received in order to be a companion and helper to you? Why shall the Creator have to behold His likeness obliterated in you, while He preserves yours in me, and it is always a representation of you? But now you have turned that companionship and assistance, which was due to you from me, into a cause of confusion and shame; you abuse the service which I render you; and, as if you had become a brute and bestial spirit, treat unworthily the noble human body which you inhabit.
7. Souls which are thus bent and deformed are not capable of loving the Bride, because those who are lovers of the world are not of the Bridegroom. Whosoever will be a friend of I he world is, it is said, the enemy of God (James iv. 4). Therefore, to seek and to have a love for things which are on the earth is to bend down and deform the soul; while, on the contrary, to think of, and to long for, the things which are above is its uprightness. And in order that this rectitude may be perfect, it must exist first in the mind, and then pass into the life (in sensu et consensu).1 I should, in fact, call you upright if you think aright in all things, and your actions accord with your thoughts. Let your faith and your actions declare the condition of your mind, which is invisible. Consider as upright him whom you have ascertained to be Catholic in faith and righteous in actions. If one of these two be wanting, do not hesitate to conclude that he is deficient in uprightness; for you have in the Scripture: If thou offerest rightly, but dost not rightly divide, thou hast sinned (Gen. iv. 7). Whichsoever, indeed, of these two, faith and works, you offer to God, you do rightly; but you do not rightly to divide either from the other. Since you are right in offering, be not wrong in dividing. Why do you divide works from faith? Wrongly are you dividing, and the division destroys your faith; for faith without works is dead (James ii. 20). Will you offer to God a service that is dead? For if devotion is as a kind of soul to faith, what is faith which does not work by love but a dead corpse? Do you think to honour God with a gift that is foetid? Do you think to please Him by being the murderer of your faith? How can the offering be a cause of peace in which there is a discord so cruel? It is not astonishing that Cain should have used murderous violence against his brother, when he had first slain faith in himself. Why do you wonder, O Cain, if He who despises you has no respect unto your offerings? (Gen. iv. 5). Nor is it matter for surprise that He has no respect unto you who are so divided against yourself. If you give your hand to the duties of religion, why do you give your heart as a sacrifice to jealousy? While you are at discord with yourself, you cannot be at peace with God; and so far from winning His favour, you offend against Him anew; not, indeed, as yet by offering violence to your brother, but by wrongly dividing your own offering. Though not yet guilty of the death of your brother, you are of the death of your faith (fratricida, fideicida). Can you possibly suppose yourself to be upright, when, even while you stretch your hand to God, jealousy and hatred of your brother are bending your heart down to the earth? while your faith is dead, while your works are but death, while your heart is without devotion, but filled with bitterness? Faith there was indeed in his offering, but no love in his faith; a right oblation, but a cruel division of it.
8. Separation from charity is the death of faith. Do you believe in Christ? do, then, His works, that your faith may continue living. Let love animate your faith, and action prove its reality. Let not him be bowed to the earth by the works of earth, whom faith lifts up towards heavenly things. You who declare that you are abiding in Christ ought even so to walk as He walked. But if you seek your own glory, if you envy the prosperous, if you slander the absent, if you tender back evil for evil, you act quite otherwise than Christ acted. You confess that you know God, but in words you deny Him. You have acted not uprightly, but impiously, in thus giving your tongue to Christ, but your heart to the devil. Listen to the Saviour's words: This man Iionoureth me with his lips, but his heart is far from Me (Is. xxix. 13, and Matt. xv. 7). Assuredly you are not upright, who are so far from right in dividing your offering. You cannot lift up your head, for it is pressed down under the yoke of the devil. Iniquity rules over you, so that you cannot raise yourself, and stand upright. Your iniquities have gone over your head, as an heavy burden they are too heavy for thee (Ps. xxxviii. 4). As says the Prophet, Wickedness sits upon a talent of lead (Zech. v. 7). You see, then, that faith, which worketh not by love, even though it be right, does not make a man upright. But he who is without love is Hot able to love the Bride. Again, neither do works, however upright they be, suffice, without faith, to render the heart upright. For who can call a man upright, who is not pleasing to God? But without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. xi. 6). And he who does not please God is not able to find pleasure in God. But on the contrary, he who does please God cannot fail to find pleasure in Him. Furthermore, he who finds no pleasure in God can find no pleasure either in [the Church, which is] His Bride. How, then, can a man be upright who loves neither God, nor the Church of God, of which it is said, The upright love thee? If, then, neither faith without works, nor works without faith, are sufficient for uprightness of soul, let us, brethren, who believe in Christ, study to make the works of our hands and the desires of our hearts alike upright Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God, that we may be found upright wholly; approving by right actions the rectitude of our faith, that we may be lovers of the Bride, and beloved by the Bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.