The good name consists in a virtuous life. It is acquired with labor, effort and sweat. What, however, is pleasant in the moment oftentimes is gained without labor and one’s own effort. . . .

Those who really make progress regarding their inner person and who lead a spotless life, they have a good name. This is better than ointment, better than pleasantness.

Whoever does not focus attention on perishable goods and does not think highly of them but knows that it is better to be with Christ after death thinks that the day of death is better than the day of birth. The latter is the beginning of many evils; the former, however, the end and termination of evil.

If the death by which the righteous die with Christ^[1] is praiseworthy because it separates the soul from evil and ignorance, then such a death is the opposite of the birth that unites the soul with evil and ignorance. Therefore, such a death is much more honorable than such a birth.

If anyone wants to ascend, let him seek not the joys of the world or the pleasant things or the delights but whatever is filled with pain and weeping; for it is better to go into a house of sorrow than into a house of rejoicing. Indeed, Adam would not have come down from paradise unless he had been beguiled by pleasure.

The final end of human beings is a state of blessedness. If the Lord in the Gospel calls those who mourn blessed—Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted^[1]—then Solomon quite rightly calls mourning the end of every human being, because those who live in that state of mourning are filled with an abundance of spiritual blessings.

Where there is mourning, there is no moral superficiality. Happiness and laughter are avoided; the calamity prohibits it. Sometimes we refrain from appearing happy out of regard for those who mourn and for those who ex-perience harm. In the house of feasting, however, the opposite happens: Dances and songs bring reproof, since they indicate a disorderly life. . . .

The house, however, signifies a condition or an attitude, not a location. . . . The one who goes to the house of mourning knows that everyone dies in the end. Once he knows that he has to die, he will not think about and dedicate his effort to owning something, if it is a possession that is lost in death such as wealth, reputation and honor. . . .

One can understand the living in the following way: one who lives according to God’s will. Those people were Abraham and his descendents.

It is better, we read, to go into the house of mourning than into the house of laughter. But, likely enough, you do not like the saying and want to evade it. Let us however see what sort of man Adam was in paradise, and what he was afterwards; what sort of man Cain was before, and what he was afterwards.

Is it better to go where there is weeping, lamentation, and groans, and anguish, and so much sadness, than where there is the dance, the cymbals, and laughter, and luxury, and full eating and drinking? Yes, truly, [Solomon] replies. And tell me why it is so, and for what reason? Because, at the former place, insolence is bred; at the latter, sobriety. And when a person goes to the banquet of one who is more opulent, he will no longer behold his own house with the same pleasure, but he comes back to his wife in a discontented mood. In discontent he partakes of his own table and is peevish toward his own servants, and his own children, and everybody in his house, perceiving his own poverty the more forcibly by the wealth of others. And this is not the only evil. But he also often envies him who has invited him to the feast and returns home having received no benefit at all. But with regard to the house of mourning, nothing of this sort can be said. On the contrary, much spiritual wisdom is to be gained there, as well as sobriety. For when once a person has passed the threshold of a house which contains a corpse and has seen the departed one lying speechless, and the wife tearing her hair, mangling her cheeks, and wounding her arms, he is subdued; his countenance becomes sad. And every one of those who sit down together can say to his neighbor but this: We are nothing, and our wickedness is inexpressible! What can be more full of wisdom than these words, when we both acknowledge the insignificance of our nature and accuse our own wickedness and account present things as nothing? Giving utterance, though, in different words, to that very sentiment of Solomon—that sentiment which is so marvelous and pregnant with divine wisdom—Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. He who enters the house of mourning indeed weeps for the departed, even though he is an enemy. Do you not see how much better that house is than the other? For there, though he is a friend, he envies; but here, though he is an enemy, he weeps.

Take the case that someone has subjects, for example, children or slaves. If he is angry^[1] with them and in a fury so that he limits the evil, then his anger is good, not anger as such, but the anger of a father over his child, of a guardian’s anger over his charge. . . .

He calls that kind of anger good that prevents sins from becoming so big that punishment has to follow.

For most people it seems to be right to avoid the critique of a wise man, especially if they like to sin. Whoever desires amusement and sin avoids the person who wants to hinder it. Whoever has no insight is pleased with flatterers, preferring flattery to critique. It is the characteristic of the wise man that he criticizes the one he loves. . . . The flatterers sing in a certain way. Even when they give ethical speeches, they want to make their audience happy instead of looking out for their best interests. Such song is a speech that gives joy, but a rebuke helps one to find the right way.

Thorns that burn under a pot make loud crackling noises. This is like the laughing of the foolish. It makes noise and is crackling, but not because it educates the soul. . . . As the thorns produce noise when they as plants are burned under a pot, in the same way the laughter of the foolish comes out of a bad soul that is burning. . . . Thorns are earthly worries, shameful desires and uncurbed joys.

The end of words is more likely to be good than their beginning. . . . A speech is given in order to actualize something. . . . Oftentimes someone who teaches has with patience led someone who is not highly intelligent to learning. He does not give up after the first or second admonition but tries to heal him in every case. Such a patient teacher is better than an arrogant one, or someone proud in spirit.

When the peace of the mind is lashed with anger, torn and rent, as it were, it is thrown into confusion, so that it is not in harmony with itself and loses the force of the inward likeness. Let us consider, then, how great the sin of anger is, by which, while we part with mildness, the likeness of the image of the Most High is spoiled. By anger, wisdom is cast off, so that we are left wholly in ignorance of what to do and in what order to do it.

When anyone lacks patience about being looked down upon in this world, he tries to display any hidden good qualities he may have, and so through impatience is drawn on to arrogance. While he cannot bear contempt, he boasts ostentatiously in self-display. Therefore Scripture says, Better is the patient than the arrogant. Indeed, one who is patient chooses to suffer evil rather than have his hidden good qualities come to be known through the vice of ostentation. But the arrogant, on the contrary, prefers to have good attributed to him falsely, rather than to suffer the slightest evil.

The deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost corners of our soul. For as long as this remains in our hearts and blinds with its hurtful darkness the eye of the soul, we can neither acquire right judgment and discretion nor gain the insight which springs from an honest gaze, or ripeness of counsel. Nor can we be partakers of life, or retentive of righteousness, or even have the capacity for spiritual and true light, for, says one, mine eye is disturbed by reason of anger.^[1] Nor can we become partakers of wisdom, even though we are considered wise by universal consent, for anger rests in the bosom of fools. INSTITUTES 8.1.^[1]

Even among the Greeks there were many opponents to those who claimed that the cosmos came into being by itself. . . . Since providence of necessity is concerned with the details and God is providence, his providence concerns the cosmos that he himself has created. Now admit even something else: God watches over the cosmos that he himself has created out of providence, so that it might go well. . . . God knows the reasons for everything that came into being, and he knows why they are hidden. . . . In no way do you have sufficient knowledge of God’s creations, if you take offence at them, because you are not reasonable. Watch God’s creatures! What for others is a reason for offence will be for you knowledge of the Creator and of the created.

God does not make crooked by causing destruction but by showing that someone is crooked. . . . It is written, Those who turn to crooked ways, the Lord will lead away together with those who have committed injustice.^[1] It is not God himself who leads them away against their will together with those who have committed injustice, but he has shown that those who turn from the way after their own moral decision are such people.

There is an absolute righteousness and a righteousness that is only righteous for one. . . . A righteous person can get lost in what is only righteous for him. Those, however, who are really righteous . . . do not remain in what is righteous for them alone and do not trust in this as their own right. This is why he does not perish in absolute righteousness, as the psalmist says: In your righteousness I will live.^[1] Paul, for example, who was a great man who lived in Christ and for whom truth was revealed, said, I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.^[2]

Neither those who love too much nor those who hate, abide by the rule of truth. The former lie through love; the latter lie through hatred. It is right to place a bridle even on charity and to permit it freedom to roam only insofar as it does not rush headlong over a cliff. Scripture says, in Ecclesiastes, Do not be righteous in excess, nor think yourself more than you are, lest perhaps you should be struck dumb. Following this, I can say something similar. Do not love a man with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with all your strength. Do not love an angel with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with all your strength. In accord with the Savior’s words, keep this command in respect to God alone. For, he says, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with all your strength.^[1]

No one can say that he has strayed from ignorance into some silly fancy of separating, locally, the supreme from that which is below, and assigning to the Father as it were the peak of some hill, while he seats the Son lower down in the hollows. No one is so childish as to conceive of differences in space, when the intellectual and spiritual is under discussion. Local position is a property of the material, but the intellectual and immaterial is confessedly removed from the idea of locality. What, then, is the reason why he says that the Father alone has supreme being? For one can hardly think it is from ignorance that he wanders off into these conceptions, being one who, in the many displays he makes, claims to be wise, even making himself overwise, as the Holy Scripture forbids us to do.

One is victorious who hopes for the grace of God, not he who presumes upon his own strength. For why do you not rely upon grace, since you have a merciful Judge in the contest? For the Lord is merciful and just, and our God shows mercy.^[1] Mercy is mentioned twice, but justice once. Justice is in the middle, enclosed by a double wall of mercy. Sins superabound. Therefore let mercy superabound. With the Lord there is an abundance of all powers, for he is the Lord of hosts. Yet there is neither justice without mercy, nor without the exercise of mercy is there justice, for it is written, Be not overjust. What is above measure, you cannot endure, even if it is good. Preserve measure, that you may receive according to the measure.

He who endeavors to amend the faults of human weakness ought to bear this very weakness on his own shoulders, let it weigh upon himself, not cast it off. For we read that the Shepherd in the Gospel carried the weary sheep and did not cast it off.^[1] And Solomon says, Be not overmuch righteous, for restraint should temper righteousness. For how shall he offer himself to you for healing whom you despise, who thinks that he will be an object of contempt, not of compassion, to his physician?

And as God promises to them that serve him truly, I will fulfill the number of your days,^[1] Abraham dies full of days, and David called on God, saying, Take me not away in the midst of my days.^[2] And Eliphaz, one of the friends of Job, being assured of this truth, said, You shall come to your grave. . . like as a shock of corn comes in its season.^[3] And Solomon confirming his words, says, The souls of the unrighteous are taken away untimely.^[4] And therefore he exhorts in the book of Ecclesiastes, saying, Be not overmuch wicked, neither be hard: why should you die before your time?

Perhaps a person possesses no bread to extend as an alms to the needy, but still greater is what a person who has a tongue is able to give. It is more important to refresh a mind that will live forever with the food of the word than to satisfy with earthly food the stomach of a body that is going to die. Therefore, brethren, do not take from your neighbors the alms of the word. Paul says, If we have sown for you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we reap from you carnal things?^[1] Do good to the just, and you shall find great recompense: and if not of him, assuredly of God.^[2] It is good that you should hold up the just, and from him withdraw not your hand, for he that fears God neglects nothing.

The inhabited world arises in no other way than in the wisdom of God. For wisdom gives strength to the wise beyond ten rulers who live in the city. And the one who despises wisdom and instruction is miserable, and his hope empty, and his labors unprofitable, and his works useless,^[1] says the Book of Wisdom ascribed to Solomon. Hence insofar as possible, since the inhabited world is set aright in the wisdom of God,^[2] let us ourselves desire that our inhabited world, which perhaps has fallen, be set aright. For this inhabited world has fallen whenever we went to the place of affliction. This inhabited world has fallen whenever we sinned, did wrong, acted wickedly,^[3] and it has need of being set aright.

Look for the might of a general in his wisdom rather than in the size of his troops. . . . If a city has many mighty men but lacks wisdom, these cannot help the city. In a spiritual exegesis the world is called city, that is, the earthly realm around us. No one can live without harm, if he is not given divine wisdom. If wisdom does not help, the mighty ones cannot do anything, whether you mean angels or holy men. If wisdom does not help, the city will not be saved. One can also see the soul of every human being as a city. Even if one had a thousand earthly thoughts that could help a city, it cannot be helped if God’s wisdom is not sent down to help and to create and sustain order.

There are less serious sins about which it has been written that there is not a righteous person on earth who does what is good and does not sin, and, No living person will be made righteous in your sight.^[1]

The Lord himself gives us sure confidence of obtaining what we properly ask when he adds, Therefore if you, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give his good Spirit to those who ask him?^[1] His disciples were good, as far as human judgment can see. He calls them evil because there is surely no one in this life who is capable of being free from moral faults, as Solomon states when he says, There is not a just person on earth, who does good and does not sin.

Because the prophet says, Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did my mother bring me forth,^[1] no one coming into the world with sin can be sinless. That is why the same prophet says, No one living shall be considered righteous in your sight,^[2] and Solomon, There is no righteous man on earth, who does good, and does not sin.

And it is likely also that in countless other things demons delude us and influence us to act according to their will. And it is possible that, just as no one among us is clean from defilement,^[1] and there is no just person on the earth who will do good and will not sin, so also there is no one who has always been free of demons and has never fallen victim to their influence.

If you wish to recall some other of the saints, the word of Scripture replies to you, saying, There is no one upon the earth who does good and sins not. Therefore only Jesus rightly has perfect hands; who alone does not sin,^[1] that is, who has perfect and whole works of his hands.

The following is one of the many arguments that Pelagius uses in treating this subject: Once more I repeat: I say that it is possible for a person to be without sin. And what do you say? That it is impossible for a person to be without sin? But I do not say, he adds, that there is a person without sin, nor do you say that there is not a person without sin. We are disputing about what is possible and impossible, not about what is and is not. Next he notes that a number of the passages of Scripture which are usually invoked against them do not bear upon the question in dispute, namely, whether or not a person can be without sin: For there is no one who is free from pollution,^[1] and, There is no one that does not sin,^[2] and, There is no just person on the earth, and, There is no one that does good.^[3] These and other similar texts, he says, apply to nonexistence, not to impossibility. By examples of this kind it is shown how some persons were at a given time, not that they could not have been something else. For this reason they are justly found to be guilty. For if they were as they were because they could not have been otherwise, then they are free from blame.

Now the subject of God is harder to come at, in proportion as it is more perfect than any other, and is open to more objections, and the solutions of them are more laborious. For every objection, however small, stops and hinders the course of our argument and cuts off its further advance, just like people who suddenly check with the rein the horses in full gallop and turn them right around by the unexpected shock. Thus Solomon, who was the wisest of all^[1] whether before him or in his own time, to whom God gave breadth of heart, and a flood of contemplation, more abundant than the sand, even he, the more he entered into profundities, the more dizzy he became. And he declared the furthest point of wisdom to be the discovery of how very far away wisdom was from him.

Consider therefore how it is written in the book of Ecclesiastes, I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me. That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who shall find it out? [Consider] what is said in the Psalms, The knowledge of you is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.^[1] And Solomon says, It is the glory of God to conceal a thing.^[2] [Therefore] I frequently designed to stop and to cease writing; believe me, I did. But lest I should be found to disappoint you, or by my silence to lead into impiety those who have made enquiry of you and are given to disputation, I constrained myself to write briefly, what I have now sent to your piety.

Even if all minds, in fact, should combine their researches and all tongues would concur in their utterance, never, as I have said, could anyone achieve a worthy result in this matter. Solomon, the wisest of all, presents this thought clearly to us when he says, I have said: I will be wise; and it departed farther from me; not that it really fled but because wisdom appears unattainable particularly to those to whom knowledge has been given in an exceptionally high degree by the grace of God.

As the breath of the Divine Spirit drives us further in, so is there an ever-widening and immeasurable vastness opened to us, reaching beyond the sight of our eye. As Solomon says, It will become much further from us than it was, and a great depth. Who shall find it out? Therefore let us pray to the Lord that both his fear and his love, which cannot fail, may continue steadfast in us, make us wise in all things, and ever shield us unharmed from the darts of the devil. For with these guards it is impossible for anyone to fall into the snares of death.

Who is it, who made all things by his Word,^[1] and formed man by his Wisdom, and gathered into one things scattered abroad, and mingled dust with spirit, and compounded an animal visible and invisible, temporal and immortal, earthly and heavenly, able to attain to God but not to comprehend him, drawing near and yet far off? I said, I will be wise, says Solomon, but she^[2] was far from me beyond what is, and, Verily, he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.^[3] For the joy of what we have discovered is no greater than the pain of what escapes us; a pain, I imagine, like that felt by those who are dragged, while yet thirsty, from the water, or are unable to retain what they think they hold, or are suddenly left in the dark by a flash of lightning.

What Ecclesiastes is saying is this: Before I turned my thoughts to ponder over God’s work, I was not aware of God’s magnificence. I said, I must have wisdom; that is, I must inquire into the nature of every cause; and wisdom withdrew farther away from me than it ever was before. By that I mean, formerly I was not in quest of wisdom because I was unaware of it, and afterwards, when I began to seek it, I could not find it.

My heart took a circuit to know the joy of the impious man and to examine carefully and to seek wisdom and a mode of calculating and to know joy through the impious man and trouble and disquietude, and I find that it is bitterer than death—not because death is bitter, but because it is bitter for the impious one. And yet life is bitterer than death. For it is a greater burden to live for sin than to die in sin, because the impious person increases his sin as long as he lives, but if he dies, he ceases to sin.

Although a perfect apprehension of the truth is at present far removed from us by reason of the infirmity of the flesh, yet it is possible, as the Preacher himself has said, to perceive the madness of the impious, and having found it, to say that it is more bitter than death. Therefore for this reason, as perceiving this and able to find it out, I have written, knowing that to the faithful the detection of impiety is a sufficient information wherein piety consists. For although it is impossible to comprehend what God is, yet it is possible to say what he is not.

Be admonished, O man: for, if such men as these have been brought to ruin through women, what is your righteousness, or what are you among the holy, that you consort with women and with maidens day and night, with much silliness, without fear of God? Not thus, my brethren, not thus let us conduct ourselves; but let us be mindful of that word which is spoken concerning a woman: Her hands lay snares, and her heart spreads nets; but the just shall escape from her, while the wicked falls into her hands. Therefore let us, who are consecrated, be careful not to live in the same house with females who have taken the vow. For such conduct as this is not becoming nor right for the servants of God.

Solomon seems to me very wise in bestowing upon an indecent woman the face of every heresy and then saying about her that it is necessary to repudiate and to flee such a woman, who is a hunter’s snare, and her heart is a net, and in her hands are bonds. The good man before the face of God will be rescued from her and the sinner will be ensnared by her.

In many passages of divine instruction, thoughts and mindsets are called women of those who have them, both in a positive and in a negative sense. So it is said, for example, Sophia gives birth to a man’s insight,^[1] and, Your wife is like a good vine, your sons like offshoots of olive trees.^[2] Out of this woman male offshoots emerge, nourishment for fire and light, since the blessing from these plants gives nourishment for fire and light. In the negative sense again it is said, Do not pay attention to a bad woman; honey runs from the lips of every prostitute who makes your throat sweet only for a brief time. Later you will find it more bitter than bile.^[3] . . . If you want to understand it in an allegorical sense the bad and frivolous thought is a temptation. It is sophistical and heretical; it is like an evil woman.

But because [God] knows that some humans act according to his will and some do not, for that very reason he proclaims the virtue of the one part in order to incite the others to a zeal for the good from the womb. In the same way too, concerning those others, he proclaims their worthlessness. It is not as if he creates one worthless from the womb, and another useful. And if such were the case, why would it be necessary to praise the worthy and to blame the worthless if he himself is the creator of worthiness and worthlessness? Thus one ought not to be held blameable for that worthlessness if he had created him so from the womb.

And now it is clear that God’s saying beforehand, Jacob I have loved and Esau have I hated^[1] means that this one will become beloved by his conduct, and that one hateful. . . . As it also says elsewhere: God made man upright, and they thought a thought of evil.

For [the soul] is made to see God and to be enlightened by him; but of its own accord in God’s stead it has sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit says somewhere in writing, God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions. Thus it has been then that people from the first discovered and contrived and imagined evil for themselves. But it is now time to say how they came down to the madness of idolatry, that you may know that the invention of idols is wholly due not to good but to evil. But what has its origin in evil can never be pronounced good in any point—being evil altogether.

The reason that we, being bad, have a good Father is in order that we may not always remain bad. No bad person can make a good one. If no bad person can make a good one, how can a bad man make himself good? The only one who can make a good person out of a bad one is the one who is always good. Heal me, Lord, he says, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved.^[1] Why do they say to me, silly people saying silly things, You can save yourself if you want to? Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed. We were created good by the good God, seeing that God made man upright. But by our own decision we became bad. We were able to change from good to bad, and we shall be able to change from bad to good. But it is the one who is always good that can change bad to good, because man, by his own will, cannot heal himself. You don’t look for a doctor to wound you; but when you have wounded yourself, you look for one to heal you.

Let us be displeased with ourselves when we sin, because sins displease God. And because we are not in fact without sin, let us at least be like God in this respect, that what displeases him displeases us. Now you are displeased with that in yourself which he also hates who made you. He designed and constructed you; but take a look at yourself and eliminate from yourself everything that does not come from his workshop. For God, as it says, created man upright.

There is also a good world consisting of people, but made so out of a bad one. The whole world, you see, if you take the world as meaning people, leaving aside world in the sense of heaven and earth and all things that are in them; if you mean people by world, then the whole world was made bad by the one who first sinned. The whole mass is vitiated in its root. God made man good; that is what Scripture says: God made man upright, and they themselves have sought out many devices.

The Manichaeans deny that to a good man the beginning of evil came from free will; the Pelagians say that even a bad man has free will sufficiently to perform the good commandment. The Catholic church condemns both, saying to the former, God made man upright, and saying to the latter, If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.

God has created human beings straightforward, that is, morally perfect without anything crooked or oblique. But they themselves found many thoughts. . . . They did not devise one thought but many. Evil, thus, is manifold. . . . There is only one single human form that makes a person like God, but there are many into which he can transform himself. If he is cunning, he has the face of a fox; if he shows a poisonous, dangerous face, he has the face of a snake; if he looks wild, he has the face of a lion; if his face is ungovernable, flattering and desiring pleasures, he has the face of a dog. Generally out of one human being and one form emerge a whole plurality of characters and forms. Thus it is the goal to get rid of all forms—even if some people do not share this opinion—in order to show that he has the face that God created.

Our struggle against the vices has not been naturally implanted in us by God our Father and Creator but is proved to have befallen us from our love of this world, which we preferred to our Creator. For God made human beings upright, and they have involved themselves in endless questions, as Solomon bears witness. Hence James also says, Let no one, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not the instigator of evil, for he himself tempts no one. Each one, in fact, is tempted, drawn on and lured by his own concupiscence.^[1]