The hypocrite’s three replies: counsels, care for the church, love of the robber

Third, it is gathered that those who adulterate holy scripture in [the matter of] this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence are hypocrites, whom the apostle prophesied to Timothy would come into the churchecclesia: church in dangerous times.¹ For the explanation of this I suppose as a fact how modern churchmen pretend, according to human traditions, that not only is it lawful for them [to sue], but they would sin mortally by omitting to sue for the defence of mother church. Blessed Gregory recalls this (in the place cited): "If perhaps it is said to these men: Why do you do these things, who have left the world? they answer at once that they fear God, and therefore sweat with such zeal in defending the patrimonies of Christ."² And today it is added besides that the goods for whose acquisition, preservation and recovery we press so hard are the goods of the church and the patrimony of Christ; therefore it is lawful, for the good of the universal church, to press for their preservation. But this disguise is taken away by this: that by deserting them for Christ both the one who leaves them and the church itself has them, as Augustine says on John, homily 6.³ Therefore, as blessed Gregory says: "She hath laboured in vain, no fear constraining her"; and, as is said in Psalm 13:5: "There have they trembled for fear, where there 52was no fear." "Behold," he says, "it is commanded by the divine voice: If any man take away thy coat and will contend with thee in judgment, let go thy cloak unto him. And again: If any man take away what is thine, ask it not again. Paul the apostle also, desiring his disciples to despise outward things so that they may be able to keep inward ones, admonishes them, saying: There is plainly a fault among you, that you have law suits one with another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?"⁴

Nor does the hypocrite’s gloss avail, that these are counsels, not precepts. For if they are Christ’s counsels, and you in your habit make a show of loving Christ above others, you would adhere to his gentle counsel, the precepts of the world being passed over; for otherwise you would be a hypocrite, offending in the love of God above all things.⁵

Nor, second, does it avail to say that someone must be solicitous about these goods, lest the church be defrauded; for, these being left for Christ, you would more truly have these goods, and so would the church.⁶ So you choose to expose yourself to danger by abandoning the perfection of the divine counsel rather than by accepting [it], [though] God could not fail of his promise of temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods; for since this office falls to laymen, it is clear that the church’s want consists in the fewness of those who take care for the spiritual goods of the church, as was the case with the contemplatives when the church grew.⁷ Since, therefore, this office is higher, more wholesome and more necessary to the church, it is manifest that a culpable love of temporal goods is the cause of this blind choice. Hence Gregory in the same place, chapter 10: "He is convicted of loving himself more than God who, neglecting the things that are God’s, protects his own; for hypocrites do not fear to destroy the souls of men, and 53they fear to lose things that pass away with the world, as men who will render account to a strict judge; as if they would find him appeased, for whom, the things he desired, that is, rational things, being lost, they preserve things without sensationinsensibilis: imperceptible; of a thing that cannot feel, without sensation and not sought." It is certain that they will not. "We want," he says, "to possess something in this world, and behold, the Truth cries out: Unless a man renounce all that he possesseth, he cannot be my disciple. How, then, ought a perfect Christian to defend by quarrelling earthly things which he is commanded not to possess? And so, when we lose our own things, if we follow God perfectly, we are relieved of a great burden on the journey of this life." We ought not, therefore, by exposing ourselves to danger, to leave the more perfect state and choose a state more dangerous, further removed from Christ and more apt to delay.⁸ Nor does the hypocrite’s third reply avail, by which he says that he contends out of love for the one who unjustly occupies [the goods], lest he sin by unjust detention, but so that he himself may have the instruments of the virtues by which he may profit his mother more, to the honour of God.⁹ Hence, for the first part, blessed Gregory says (in the place cited): "Some, when they seize our things, are only to be borne with; but some are to be restrained, charitycaritas: charity being kept; yet not with the sole care that they not take away what is ours, but that, seizing what is not theirs, they not destroy themselves." This disguise is more cloaked than the others: for (as I have shown elsewhere) it is lawful for the lower [members] of the church to contend for goods of fortune, charity being kept on both sides, and with holy intention, with a lawful form of procedure.¹⁰ Therefore the man of that reply ought to beware, lest nearness to the whirlpool of danger prepare [him] for ruin. For, as blessed Gregory says in the same place: "We ought to fear more for the robbers themselves than to gape after the irrational things themselves, 54to defend them; for those things, even unseized, we lose in dying, but with these men, both now by the order of our condition and, if they strive to be corrected, after the receiving of the final reward, we are one. And who does not know that we ought to love less the things we use, and more what we are? If, therefore, we speak to robbers for their own advantage, we claim now not for ourselves the things that are temporal, but also for them the things that are eternal.¹¹ In which matter this must be looked to the more shrewdly: lest, through fear of necessity, the desire of things creep in, and the restraint, kindled by zeal, distended by the impetus of immoderation, break out even into the foulness of hateful contention. And while peace with a neighbour is cut off from the heart for an earthly thing, it appears plainly that the thing is loved more than the neighbour. For if we do not have the bowels of charity even towards the neighbour who robs us, we persecute ourselves worse than the robber himself, and lay ourselves waste more heavily than the other could; because, freely deserting the good of love, what we lose within is from ourselves, we who were losing from him only outward things. But the hypocrite does not know this form of charity, because, loving earthly things more than heavenly, he inflames himself in his inmost parts with monstrous hatred against him who plunders temporal goods."¹²