Salvian, On the Government of God (1930) pp.37-65. Preface and Book 1
Preface, to Salonius : That the salutary purpose of the present work should atone for its lack of the vain adornments of rhetoric
Book I : The government of God proved by the general conviction of mankind, and by his judgment recounted in the books of Moses
[Translated by Eva M. Sanford]
PREFACE
T O THE HOLY BISHOP SALONIUS, S ALVIAN SENDS GREETINGS IN THE L ORD
Practically all men who have chosen some form of literary composition as a fitting expression of their native genius have taken especial pains, whether they were writing of useful and worthy matters, or of useless and unworthy, to lighten the order of their discourse by the brilliance of their language and to illumine by their style the questions under discussion. It is to style therefore that the majority of writers on secular topics, whether in prose or verse, have paid most attention, not considering sufficiently the necessity of choosing subjects worthy of approbation, provided that whatever they said was either chanted in smooth and elegant verse, or narrated in distinguished prose.
These authors have sought their own ends, and looking toward their individual praise rather than the benefit of others have not tried to be considered salutary and helpful, but rhetorical and eloquent. Therefore their writings are swollen with vanity, infamous for their falsehood, smeared with filth, or vicious because of their obscene subjects. Trafficking in such unworthy fashion to purchase praise for ingenuity seems to me less a glorification than a condemnation of one's genius. Since we, on the other hand, are lovers of deeds rather than words, we seek utility rather than applause. |38
It is not, then, for vain and worldly adornments that we solicit praise, but for salutary prescriptions. Our writings, trifling though they are, shall present no vain lures but actual remedies, calculated not to please idle ears but to benefit the minds of the sick. So do we hope to gain our full reward from heaven.
Now if this healing grace of ours cures the unfavorable opinion of our God held by certain men, it will be no small reward that I have thus aided many. But if no such benefit accrues, the very fact that I have tried to be of service may not be unfruitful. For a mind devoted to a good work and a charitable aim, though it has not achieved full success in its undertaking, is still rewarded for its good intent. At this point then I shall begin. |39
THE FIRST BOOK
1. By certain men God is said to be careless and neglectful of human actions, on the ground that he neither protects good men nor restrains the wicked; and they claim that this is why at the present time the good are generally wretched and the wicked happy. Since we are dealing with Christians the Holy Scriptures alone should be sufficient to refute this charge. The many who are still somewhat infected by pagan unbelief may perhaps be convinced by the testimony of the greatest pagan philosophers. Let us, then, prove that not even these men had any conception of a God careless and neglectful of the world, though they had no means of really knowing God, since they were outside the true faith and were ignorant of the law through which he is apprehended.
Pythagoras the philosopher, whom Philosophy herself regarded as her master, said in his discourse on the nature and beneficent works of God: "The Soul moves to and fro and is diffused through all parts of the world, and from it all living creatures receive their life..."
How then can God be said to neglect the world for which he so far shows his love that he extends his own being through its whole mass? Plato and all the Platonic school confess that God is the controller of all things. The Stoics testify that he remains always as steersman within that which he guides. What truer or more religious conception could they have had of the loving care of God than this comparison with a helmsman? For they clearly understood that as the helmsman never takes his hand from the tiller, so God |40 never in the slightest degree withdraws his care from the world; and as the pilot catching the breezes, avoiding rocks, watching the stars, is completely absorbed, body and soul, in his task, so our God never turns his most gracious eyes from the whole extent of the world, nor takes away the guiding power of his providence, nor removes the indulgence of his most kindly love. Whence comes also that ancient mystic saying by which Maro wished to prove himself no less philosopher than poet: "For God makes his way through all lands and the paths of the sea and the high heavens." Tully also says: "Nor indeed can God himself, who is known by us, be known in any other way than as a mind loosed and free and separated from all mortal matter, understanding all things and moving them." Elsewhere he states that nothing is more immediately present than God; by him the world is necessarily ruled. God, therefore, is neither subject nor obedient to any natural force; he himself rules all nature. Unless forsooth we are led by our great wisdom to believe that he, by whom we say all things are ruled, at the same time both rules and neglects them! Since even men outside our faith have been compelled by sheer necessity to say that all things are known by God and are moved and ruled by him, how is it that some now think him careless and neglectful of the world? Is it not he who comprehends all creation by the fineness of his perception, moves it by his strength, rules it by his power, and protects it by his kindness?
I have told you what men preeminent alike in philosophy and eloquence have thought of the majesty and government of the most high God. Moreover, I have cited the noblest masters of both these supreme arts expressly to facilitate my proof that all others have either agreed, or, if they have disagreed, have done so without any authority. And, in fact, I can find none who have differed from this |41 judgment, except for the delirious ravings of the Epicureans and certain of their imitators. These last have associated God with carelessness and sloth, just as they have linked pleasure with virtue ---- so it appears that those who entertain this idea are likely to follow the vices of the Epicureans along with their opinion and doctrine.
2. I do not think that we need also use the divine word to prove so obvious a case, especially since the sacred writings furnish such abundant and open refutation of all the claims of ungodly men that, in meeting those of their vile charges which follow, we shall be able to refute more fully those already mentioned. They say that God neglects us entirely, since he neither restrains the wicked nor protects the good, and therefore in this world the condition of the better men is substantially the worse. They contrast the poverty of good men with the wealth of the wicked, their weakness with the strength of the wicked, their constant grief with the others' perpetual joy, their misery and mean estate with the honors and prosperity of sinners.
I wish at the outset to ask those who mourn this state of affairs, or base their accusations on it, this one question: is their grief for the saints, that is, the true and faithful Christians, or for the false impostors? If for the false, it is a needless grief that mourns for the unhappiness of the wicked, since, to be sure, all evil men are made worse by success in their undertakings, and rejoice at the lucky turn of their folly. Yet they ought to be most wretched in order that they may cease to be wicked, that they may cease to apply the name of religion to their most evil gains and to bestow the title of sanctity on their sordid traffickings; in such a case, indeed, a comparison of the misfortunes of sinners with their misdeeds |42 shows that they are less unfortunate than they deserve, for the utmost misfortunes they can suffer leave them still less wretched than they are wicked. It is foolish to grieve for their lack of wealth and happiness. Far less should we lament in the case of the saints, for however unhappy they may seem to men who do not understand their condition, it is impossible for them to be otherwise than happy. Moreover, it is superfluous to think them wretched because of sickness or poverty or any like misfortune, in the midst of which they count themselves happy; for no man is wretched because of other men's judgment, but only in his own.
So those who are truly happy in their own estimation cannot be unhappy through the false conception of any man; for none, I think, are more fortunate than those who live and act according to their own determination and vows. Religious men are lowly ----they wish to be so; poor ---- they delight in poverty; without ambition---- they spurn it; unesteemed ---- they flee from honors; they mourn ---- but they seek out occasion for mourning; they are weak ----nay, they rejoice in weakness. For the apostle said, "When I am weak, then am I strong." Nor was this opinion held undeservedly by the man to whom God himself spoke thus: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."
It is useless for us to bemoan this affliction of bodily illness, which we know is the mother of strength. Therefore, whatever their sorrows may have been, any who are truly religious should be called happy, since amid any hardships or difficulties whatsoever none are happier than those who are what they wish to be. Although we all know individuals whose aims are vile and shameful, who think themselves happy in gaining their desires, yet in actual fact such men are not happy, because they ought not to desire what |43 they do. Moreover, the religious are happier than all others in this, that they have what they wish and at the same time cannot possibly wish for anything better than they have. So toil, fasting, poverty, humility and weakness are not burdensome to all who suffer them but only to those who are unwilling to bear them. For the mind of the sufferer determines whether his troubles are heavy or light to endure. Just as no task is so light that it is not heavy to the man who performs it unwillingly, none is so heavy that it does not seem light to him who performs it gladly.
Or are we perhaps to think that it was a burden to those ancient patterns of virtue, the Fabii, Fabricii and Cincinnati, that they, who did not wish riches, were poor? Remember that they directed all their efforts, all their labor, to the common good, and by their individual poverty contributed to the growing wealth of the state. Surely you do not think that it was with groans and sadness that they endured their famous life of rustic economy, when they ate their cheap country fare before the very fire over which they had cooked it, and delayed even this poor meal until evening? Did they take it ill that they were not piling up talents of gold in the pursuit of miserly wealth, when they were passing laws to restrict the circulation even of silver? Could men who judged a patrician unworthy of the senate because he had wished to increase his wealth |44 to the sum of ten pounds of silver possibly think it a penalty for their illicit greed that they had not their purses stuffed with gold?
In those days, I think, men did not despise humble ways of life, when they wore only one short and shaggy garment, when they were summoned from the plow to the dictator's fasces, and, on the point of winning fame in the consular robes, very likely wiped off their dusty sweat on those same imperial togas that they were about to don. In their time the magistrates were poor, but the state wealthy, whereas now the wealth of officials makes the state poor. What madness, I ask you, or what blindness, leads men to think that private fortunes can survive in the midst of the need and beggary of the state? Such were the ancient Romans; so they in their day scorned riches, though they knew not God, just as in ours men who follow the Lord still scorn them.
But why do I speak of those men who in their desire to extend the Roman power turned their scorn of private means to the public enrichment, and while individually poor still had abundance in the common wealth of the state? Even Greek philosophers without any interest in public gain, through sheer greed of glory have been known to strip themselves of almost all articles of common use, and, not content with this, have exalted their creed to the lofty pinnacle of contempt of suffering and death, saying that even in chains and punishment a wise man still is happy. They would have it that the power of virtue is so great that a good man can never fail to be content. If, then, certain wise men now think that those men were not unhappy, though they received no reward for their efforts but transient praise, how much more must religious and saintly men cease to be thought wretched, who both enjoy at this present time |45 the delights of their faith, and are to attain as well the reward of eternal blessedness?
3. One of those of whom we complain said to a certain holy man who followed the true doctrine, that is, that God rules all things and tempers his governance and guidance according to his knowledge of human necessities: "Why then, I ask, are you yourself infirm?" His line of reasoning, I suppose, was as follows: "if God, as you think, rules everything in this present life, if he dispenses all fortunes, then how is it that a man whom I know to be a sinner is strong and healthy, whereas you, whose sanctity I do not question, are infirm?"
Who does not marvel at the depth of feeling of one who considers the merits and virtues of a godly man worthy of such great recompense that he thinks they should be rewarded in this present life by the fleshly strength of the body? I answer, therefore, not in the name of any one saint but of them all: "Do you ask, then, whoever you are, how it is that holy men come to be weak? My answer is brief: they make themselves infirm for the express reason that if they are strong, they can hardly be holy." I think that men gain strength entirely through their food and drink, and are weak through abstinence, thirst and fasting. Therefore it is not strange that those are weak who scorn the use of the means by which others are made strong. And there is good reason for such scorn, according to the words of the apostle Paul, when he said: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." If the apostle himself considered the weakness of the body an end to be sought, who acts wisely in avoiding it? If the apostle feared the strength of the flesh, who rightly presumes to |46 be strong? This, then, is the reason why men who have given themselves over to Christ both are and wish to be weak. Far be it from us to think that holy men are neglected by God for the very reason for which, we trust, they are the more loved by him. We read that the apostle Timothy was most weak in the flesh. Was this a sign of God's neglect, or did Timothy through his weakness fail to please Christ, willing as he was to be weak in order to please him? Even so the apostle Paul, though Timothy was suffering from serious infirmities, yet permitted him to take and sip only a very little wine; that is, he wished him to have regard for his weakness but not so far as to attain full vigor. And why was this? What other reason could there be but that which he himself has given? "For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary," he says, "the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."
It was not without insight that a certain author said in this connection that if the strength of the body prevents us from doing what we wish, the flesh must be weakened in order that we may achieve our desires. For he says: "The weakness of our flesh sharpens the vigor of the mind, and when our limbs are weakened bodily strength is transformed into spiritual virtue. Then our inmost parts no longer seethe with disgraceful passions, and secret desires no longer kindle a diseased mind; our senses do not roam wantonly over various enticements, but the soul alone exults, rejoicing in the weakness of the body as over a defeated adversary." |47