Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
In this chapter St. James passes from faith to the doctrine of faith, namely to the office of teaching; and to contention and ambition he opposes a humble and gentle wisdom. First, therefore, he reproves those who ambitiously sought the office of teaching, on the occasion of which he digresses into the vices of the tongue, and says that the tongue is untamable, a fire consuming all things, and so a universe of iniquity. Finally, in verse 13, he teaches that the true wisdom of learning and teaching does not consist in contention and zeal, but in gentleness and peace.
Vulgate Text: James 3:1-18
1. Be not many masters, my brethren, knowing that you receive the greater judgment. 2. For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man; he can also with a bridle lead about the whole body. 3. For if we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we turn about their whole body also. 4. Behold also ships, whereas they are great, and are driven by strong winds, are turned about with a small helm wherever the impulse of the steersman wills. 5. So also the tongue is indeed a small member and boasts of great things. Behold how great a forest a small fire kindles! 6. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members, which defiles the whole body and inflames the wheel of our nativity, being inflamed by hell. 7. For every nature of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of the rest, is tamed and has been tamed by the human nature. 8. But the tongue no man can tame: an unquiet evil, full of deadly poison. 9. By it we bless God the Father, and by it we curse men, who are made after the likeness of God. 10. From the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing. These things ought not so to be, my brethren. 11. Does the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet and bitter water? 12. Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear grapes, or the vine, figs? So neither can salt water yield sweet. 13. Who is wise and instructed among you? Let him show, by a good conversation, his work in the meekness of wisdom. 14. But if you have bitter zeal, and there be contentions in your hearts: glory not, and be not liars against the truth. 15. For this is not wisdom descending from above; but earthly, sensual, devilish. 16. For where envy and contention is, there is inconstancy and every evil work. 17. But the wisdom that is from above, first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, judging without dissimulation. 18. And the fruit of justice is sown in peace, to them that make peace.
Verse 1: Be Not Many Masters, My Brethren, Knowing That You Receive the Greater Judgment
1. Be not many masters. — In Greek, do not become many teachers. "Master" is the Latin term for any official; whence one is called master of morals, master of the cavalry, master of the ship, master of the people, that is, dictator, master of the flock, that is, shepherd. Hence "to master" is to rule, and from this comes the name "magistrate," says Festus. Whence first, some take "masters" as Bishops: for the Bishop is the teacher of the people, as the Apostle says, 1 Tim. III, 2, as if to say: Do not become many Bishops of the same place and city: for one city demands one Bishop, and one Bishop one city; just as a bridegroom demands one bride, and a bride one bridegroom. For from this have arisen heresies and schisms, says St. Cyprian, book I, epistle 3 to Cornelius, because many wished to be Bishops and Pontiffs, and consequently "that obedience is not given to the one priest of God, nor is one priest considered for a time in the Church as judge in place of Christ: to whom if the universal brotherhood obeyed according to the divine teachings, no one would stir up anything against the college of priests." And Lactantius, book IV, last chapter: "The heresiarchs," he says, "striving to increase wealth and honors, sought after the great priesthood, and being beaten by their betters, preferred to secede with their supporters, rather than endure as superiors those whom they themselves had previously coveted to be set over." To this is added Thomas the Englishman, who thus expounds, as if to say: let no one wish to be master in many Churches, and to obtain great benefits.
Secondly, more plainly and more fully, as if to say: Do not many of you ambition the doctoral chair, that is, do not, individually from among the many, ambition the office of teacher and become masters of the faithful. For by "many" he understands individuals from among many, by syllepsis, by which one is put for many, as in Aeneid II: "They fill it with armed soldiery," that is, with armed soldiers; so conversely, many are put for one, as in Aeneid IX: "You, O Calliope, I pray, breathe upon me as I sing." But he says "many" rather than "individuals" because many were rushing and seeking the office of master, as they still rush and seek it now, as if to say: Many are wont to aspire to the office of master and to ambition it: I forbid this from being done, because few who are appointed and authorized for it by the Prelates of the Church are sufficient: but if many become so, they will hinder the few; and this first, because in plurality there is always confusion. Secondly, because among many, the unlearned, indiscreet, perverse, and scandalous easily creep in. Again, among many, ambition and contention easily arise from a slight cause, while one strives to excel or suppress another. Thirdly, because many have many and diverse judgments; whence they will easily teach diverse and contrary things, from which lawsuits and scandals will arise. Fourthly, because among many there easily inserts himself someone of heterodox and proud brain, who will strive to be the only wise one, and to draw disciples after him, in order that he may be considered the author and chief of a new school, opinion, and sect; and so he will introduce heresy and become a heresiarch. For this ambition impelled Simon, Arius, Pelagius, Calvin, Luther, and the other innovators to invent their heresies, as Tertullian teaches in his book On the Prescription of Heretics, ch. xli, and St. Justin, Question iv to the Orthodox. Hence St. Augustine in the prologue to book I of the Retractations: "Masters," he says, "are then said to become many, when they have different and mutually opposed opinions: but when all say the same thing, and say what is true, then by one true master's teaching they do not depart. They offend, however, not when they say many things, but when they add their own: for thus indeed they fall from much-speaking into false-speaking."
The occasion of James's writing this was that which Bede gives: "Many," he says, "there were in the times of the Apostles, who going down from Judaea to Antioch, not well instructed in the law of faith, were teaching the believers from the Gentiles that they ought to be circumcised, and were introducing other errors, of which Luke speaks in the Acts of the Apostles." Such were Ebion, Cerinthus, Simon, and the like, as I have said at Acts xv. Therefore St. James teaches that these are to be avoided, just as St. Paul does, Acts xx, 29: "I know," he says, "that after my departure ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them," namely, that they may be called masters by them.
St. James alludes to that saying of Christ in Matt. xxiii, 6, where reproving the arrogance of the Pharisees: "They love," He says, "the first chairs in the Synagogues, and salutations in the marketplace, and to be called Rabbi by men: but you, do not be called Rabbi. For one is your Master (Christ), and you are all brethren," as if to say: Do not arrogate to yourselves the honor and title of Rabbi over Christ, indeed excluding Christ, as the Pharisees do, but rather as disciples follow and call upon Christ as your one Master, and preach His doctrines, not your own, not so much as masters, as disciples and heralds of Christ. St. Augustine wrote a book On the Teacher, in which he teaches that there is no other teacher who teaches man knowledge, than God; for men only externally admonish, but Christ internally teaches the truth. For while we speak and teach, he asserts that by speaking we "do nothing else than remind, since the memory, to which the words adhere, by turning them over, makes the things themselves come to mind, of which the words are signs." Whence he concludes thus: "I have indeed learned by the admonition of your words, that nothing else is done by words than that man is admonished, that he may learn, and that very little is shown by speech of how much thought is in the speaker. But whether what is said be true, He alone teaches who admonished that He dwells within when He was speaking outwardly. Whom, by His favor, I shall now love so much the more ardently, as I shall be the more advanced in learning." The same, sermon 122 On Various Subjects, ch. II: "It is therefore safer that both we who speak, and you who hear, should know ourselves to be fellow-disciples under one Master: it is altogether safer and this is profitable, that you hear us not as masters, but as your fellow-disciples." Hence the heretics, wishing to be masters, departed from the one Master, Christ. "For when men are called Phrygians, or Novatians, or Valentinians, or Marcionites, or Anthropians, or any others, they have ceased to be Christians, who, having lost the name of Christ, have put on human or external names," says Lactantius, book IV, last chapter. Such were those who proudly called themselves Gnostics, that is, knowers of all things, as Clement of Alexandria attests, book I of the Paedagogus, ch. vi. Therefore James here only forbids the ambition of teaching, especially of young and unlearned men, who wish to teach before they have learned, and in order to be teachers, deign to be disciples: against whom St. Jerome inveighs, in his Epistle to Paulinus, and at the same time teaches that it is safer to learn than to teach, according to that of Psalm L, 15: "To my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness." See what I have said against ambition at 1 Tim. III, 1.
Wherefore the heretics ineptly twist this saying of James against the Academies and against academic degrees, as if James forbade the creation of Bachelors, Licentiates, and Doctors; for Wycliffe asserted that they profit the Church no more than the devil, as Praeteolus testifies; and Andreas Karlstadt, who from a Doctor became a baker, inscribed on the Wittenberg chair where the candidates for the doctorate stood: "Be not called masters," which when Luther read, he said that nothing else was sanctioned by this saying of Christ and James, than that no one should devise and teach a new dogma, as Cochlaeus reports in the Acts of Luther. Ineptly, I say. For Paul was the teacher of the Gentiles, and he says that God placed teachers in the Church, Eph. IV, 11; and such in the school of Alexandria were Clement, Origen, Heraclas, Pantaenus, Dionysius, Theonas, Achillas, etc., and Charlemagne established similar ones at Paris, whom Albert the Great, Alexander of Hales, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure followed, who also received the insignia of the doctorate. See Middendorp, De Academiis, and the decrees On Masters in the Synods of Vienne, Basel, the Lateran, and Trent. Finally, Nazianzen, oration 1 against Julian; St. Augustine, book XVIII On the City of God, ch. v, and the ancients everywhere reproach Julian the Apostate for having forbidden Christians to teach, in order that he might wrest from them the weapons by which they were destroying his paganism.
Mystically St. Augustine on Psalm CXLIV: "Brief is the office of teaching, that you always praise God, and with a true heart, not false, say: I will bless the Lord at all times: His praise shall be always in my mouth. Brief is the mystery (or teaching), namely that you know that He gives mercifully when He gives, and mercifully takes away when He takes: nor believe yourself forsaken by His mercy, who either flatters you in giving lest you fail, or chastises you when exulting lest you perish. Whether therefore in His gifts, or in His scourgings, praise Him. The praise of the scourger is medicine for the wound."
Knowing that you receive the greater judgment. — In Greek λήψομεθα, that is, we shall receive, namely we masters, as if to say: The office of master is λῆμμα, that is, a burden and weight, which one imprudently takes upon his shoulders, unless it is imposed by a superior. He gives the reason why the office of master should rather be fled than sought, namely because the masters before Christ the judge will undergo a heavier and more severe judgment and condemnation than the disciples, if they arrogantly seek glory and despise others, or if they teach evil things, or live wickedly: for the masters ought to shine before the disciples not only by word, but also by example. Whence St. Augustine cautiously warns, in his book On Pastors, ch. x: "Be not torn by thorns, that is, do not imitate the deeds of the wicked; gather the grape hanging among the thorns, but born from the vine. Let the nourishment of the cluster come to you, the torment of fire is reserved for the thorns." The same, in tractate 46 on John: "Pluck the cluster, beware the thorn: true doctrine through evil men is a vine-shoot among thorns: pluck the cluster among the thorns cautiously, lest while you seek fruit you tear your hand, and when you hear one speaking good things, do not imitate one doing evil." The Author of the Imperfect Work in St. Chrysostom, homily 43: "Is precious gold," he says, "despised because of cheap earth? No: as gold is chosen and earth is left behind, so also do you accept the doctrine and leave behind the morals." And after a few intervening words: "Bees," he says, "gather flowers, leave the herbs; so also do you gather the flowers of doctrine, and leave the conversation."
Furthermore, says Hugh, great is the judgment if the master is unlettered; greater, if he is undisciplined; greatest, if he is deficient in both, which the Wise Man in chapter vi, 6, asserts will be most severe for him who is over others. Wherefore terrible is what St. Chrysostom writes, homily 3 on Acts: "I do not say this rashly, but as I am affected and feel: I do not think that among priests there are many who will be saved, but far more who will perish. What others sin is imputed to the priest. If even one alone die uninitiated, does he not subvert the whole of his salvation? For if the salvation of one soul is of such great value that for this the Son of God became man, and suffered so much, how great a punishment, think, will perdition obtain? But if anyone is worthy of death because of a man lost in this life, how much more he?"
Therefore the Emperor rightly warns, in book "Si quemquam," ch. On Bishops and Clerics: "He ought to be so far removed from ambition, that he must be sought to be compelled, asked he withdraws, invited he flees. For truly he is unworthy of the priesthood, unless he has been ordained against his will."
Verse 2: For in Many Things We All Offend; If Any Man Offend Not in Word, the Same Is a Perfect Man
2. For in many things (in Greek πταίομεν, that is, we fall) we all offend, — both by word, when we wish to teach others, of which it is properly here treated; and by example, as if to say: Since each one, even living for himself alone and for God, offends in many things, surely anyone will imprudently seek the office of teaching others, when in it he will offend in far more things, of which he will have to render an exact account at the judgment of God. Hear St. Augustine, sermon 122 On Various Subjects, ch. II: "See, because solicitude is imposed upon us, where it is said: Be not many masters, for in many things we all offend. Who would not tremble when the Apostle says, all? etc. Therefore you ought to be not only hearers of those who speak, but compassionate ones of those who fear: that in what we truly say, since what is true is from the truth, you may praise not us, but Him (the true and the truth, who is God Himself): but where, as men, we offend, you may pray to Him for us." This is what Ecclesiastes says, ch. vii, 21: "There is no just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not"; and Prov. xxiv, 16: "For a just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again." Whence Clement of Alexandria, I Paedag., ch. ii: "To sin in nothing at all," he says, "is proper to God." And clearly St. John, epistle I, ch. I, verse 8: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and St. Paul, 1 Cor. IV, 4: "I am not conscious to myself of anything, yet am I not hereby justified." Whence St. Gregory, XXIV Morals, ch. xi or xviii: "What therefore," he says, "shall the boards do, if the columns tremble? Or how shall the immovable shoots stand, if even the heavens are shaken by the whirlwind of this terror?" Wherefore singularly by the precept of Christ we pray daily: "Forgive us our debts"; and that truly, not from feigned humility, and in our own person, not in that of another, as the Council of Milevis defines against Pelagius, canon 6.
Therefore it is of faith that a just man cannot, even with the special help that is ordinarily conferred, without a singular privilege, avoid all venial sins for a long time. So the Council of Trent defines, sess. VI, can. 23: "If anyone," he says, "shall say that a man once justified can in his whole life avoid all sins, even venial ones, except by a special privilege of God, as the Church holds concerning the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema." Where note first, that a just man can be free of every sin altogether for a time, e.g., when he is baptized, when he is contrite for all from his whole heart and confesses, when he obtains a plenary indulgence, etc. But he cannot through his whole life, as the Pelagians wished, nor indeed for a long time keep himself from every venial sin.
The reason is, because every help of grace which God ordinarily confers does not take away concupiscence, as is clear in St. Paul, Rom. vii, and 2 Cor. xii, 7. And consequently it does not prevent all those motions which precede reason, by which we are carried away into unlawful things. These motions of concupiscence are various and almost innumerable, and while we overcome one, another and another arises and as it were boils up almost continually. Wherever there are such and so many motions enticing to sin, it is morally impossible, considering human weakness, that one should not sometimes sin venially. For if anyone has been even a little negligent in one thing, immediately there is venial sin; but it is not of human industry to maintain that extreme diligence and vigilance in all the motions of the mind. Therefore it cannot morally be brought about that by ordinary special help, which is conferred even on the most holy, a man should avoid in his whole life, indeed in a single year, every venial sin. For the smallest negligence is sufficient for a venial sin, because it does not require perfect deliberation or advertence. Thus it is impossible that anyone should write or print some great work, or build a ship, a house, a temple, and not commit any error, not even the smallest; because it is impossible that the human mind should keep watch and remain vigilant over all things, even the smallest. Whence the saying: "Sometimes good Homer dozes." As therefore some string in a cithara is easily loosened over a long time and produces dissonance: so also in man the tension of the mind cannot endure long, without slackening and faltering in something. Again, as those who walk many days through the Alps over rough mountains and rocks find it impossible always to be so cautious as never to strike against and stumble on some rock: so for a man among so many occasions of falling and scandals, it is morally impossible sometimes not to strike and offend. For although individual acts and lapses are free, and therefore it is in man's power to avoid them, yet all taken together are not so in man's power that he can avoid all. Liberty therefore is of individual things, but the necessity of sometimes sinning is of all taken together and at once. Finally, venial sin does not take away the justice or grace of God, but coexists with it, and is like a mole on a beautiful face: whence likewise it does not prevent the just man from being judged to fulfill the law according to the possibility of this life. For the praetor, and much more God, does not care about the smallest errors, so as to be greatly angered by them, and pursue man with hatred and punish with death.
You will say: If a man can only morally not maintain this integrity free from venial lapse, yet physically he can, therefore it is not absolutely impossible to him; and consequently it could happen that someone in the whole human race, through God's common help, might avoid every venial sin. I reply: When we say that a man cannot morally do this, we do not so understand it as if it could in some way, however rarely, or only with the greatest difficulty, be brought about that a man should avoid every sin altogether; but because he does not lack the intrinsic power, namely liberty and physical will, which in itself with God's grace is sufficient for accomplishing this: yet this is so beset with so many difficulties and changes that, considering the condition of human fragility, it can never be reduced to act; and therefore we say this is morally impossible, yet physically possible, as Andreas Vega rightly teaches, book XIV on Council of Trent xxv.
If you should ask whether the just man with special help cannot avoid at least all venial sins from their kind, which are committed with full deliberation? Durand replies in book II, dist. xxviii, Quaest. III, num. 8, that this can be done; and this is not improbable, if we are speaking of some most holy man, such as St. John the Baptist, who is never seen to have spoken an idle word. Whence the Church sings of him that as a boy he went into the desert, "that he might not stain his life even with light speech." The same perhaps could be said of St. Paul the first hermit and Anthony, that they were able to avoid these for some years: although I would not dare to affirm it of their whole life; for very easily over so long a time some lapse of tongue or imagination and mind happens, as St. James here teaches. Thus formerly I felt and our Lessius taught in his tract on Grace.
Morally, this necessity of sinning is matter for profound humility, and sharpens man's vigilance, zeal, and struggle, that he may sin as little as possible, and therefore God permits it in the just man, as St. Paul says that a sting of the flesh was left to him, lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt him, and the divine power should be perfected in his weakness, 2 Cor. xii, 9. Therefore this Jebusite dwelling in our flesh can be subjugated, but cannot be uprooted, just as formerly the same was left by God to the Hebrews, that He might prove Israel by him, Judges ii, 22. He again admonishes us to have mercy on others, and to give pardon easily to those who have offended us, as conscious of fragility both our own and another's, and likewise to correct sinners in a spirit of meekness, Gal. vi, 1. Whence St. Augustine, book II On the Sermon of the Lord on the Mount, ch. xx, prescribes this manner of correcting, that the corrector consider whether he has at some time had the same vice or not: "If he has not had it, let him think that he is a man, and could have had it; if he had it and does not have it, let common fragility touch his memory, that not hatred but mercy may precede the rebuke. If he is in the same vice, let him not reproach or rebuke, but groan together and invite to like caution." Hence we read of St. Francis and many other Saints, that they constantly called themselves sinners, and indeed the greatest, so that our Francis Borgia subscribed nothing else in his letters than "Francis the sinner," as Ribadeneira reports in his Life. Of others we read that they wished to be freed from this exile and to pass to Christ, that they might escape this miserable necessity of offending Him.
If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man. — Didymus takes this of the internal word of the heart, not of the external word of the mouth; for he who, he says, has the truth of perception about things which are, will have an unoffending word: and perfection consists in the moderation and bridling not so much of words as of thoughts and passions. But this is symbolic. For James treats of the use and vice of the tongue, as is clear from what follows; for the perpetual moderation of the tongue is the effect and certain sign of the moderation of thoughts and passions. For as the life is, so is the speech. Whence Hugh Victorinus, in his annotation on ch. xii of the Epistle to the Romans, teaches that perfection consists not so much in the moderation of the tongue, as the crown of perfection: just as we call him an old man who is in his hundredth year; for although the hundredth alone does not bring on old age, yet it does so if joined to the rest preceding. Such a man Ecclesiasticus required as scarcely to be found, ch. xix, verse 17: "Who is he that hath not offended with his tongue?" The reason is, first, because among the vices of corrupt human nature, not the least is innate loquacity, that what one desires and conceives, one is eager to utter; as is to be seen in children and women: but to restrain and rule this, because it is an innate and quasi-natural propensity, is most difficult. "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," Matt. xii, 34.
Second, because the tongue is near the brain, the mouth of the imagination, so that what the imagination thinks it soon derives into the mouth and flows into words: wherefore unless you rule the imagination (which is most difficult), you will not have ruled the tongue; for the word of the mouth is the offspring of the word of the mind; speech is the fruit of thought, the image of the heart, the index of the senses of the mind. Hence Socrates used to say: "Speak, young man, that I may see you." Whence the Psalmist, Psalm xxxviii, 1: "I said: I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue."
Third, because there is need in speaking of great circumspection of all things and circumstances, that you may speak suitably to place, time, and persons hearing, lest you offend anyone. But this circumspection is an act of great prudence and perfection, and cannot be maintained by the powers of nature in every speech for a long time, but for this there is need of God's special grace. Wherefore truly St. Augustine, epistle 7 To Marcellinus: "Although Tully (as it is written)," he says, "never uttered a word which he wished to recall, yet this praise is more credible of an exceedingly foolish man, than of a perfect wise man."
Fourth, because man is prone to praise himself and to detract from others: likewise to flatter, dissemble, deceive, and lie: again to speak curious, fabulous, idle, and superfluous things, even though Christ declares in Matt. xii, 36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment."
This is what the Wise Man pronounces, Prov. xvi, 1: "It is the part of man to prepare the soul: and of the Lord to govern the tongue." This the Psalmist prays, Psalm cxl, verse 3: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips, that my heart may not incline to evil words, to make excuses in sins." Wherefore one of the Seraphim with a burning coal touched the lips of Isaiah, that being purged they might learn to speak right and fiery things, Isaiah vi. The Gentiles saw the same. Aristotle, when asked in Stobaeus, sermon 33, what was the most difficult thing for a man? answered: "To be silent about things to be kept silent." The same Aristotle went further in Antonius in Melissa, part I, sermon 73, vol. I of the Library of the Holy Fathers: for when it was asked of him who was able to keep a secret entrusted to him, he said: "He who can hold a burning coal on his tongue." Cicero relates in agreement, book II On the Orator, that Ennius used to say that a flame is more easily suppressed by a wise man with a burning mouth than that he should keep good sayings.
And these apophthegms of the Philosophers illustrate that of Ecclus. xix, 12: "As an arrow that sticketh in a man's thigh, so is a word in the heart of a fool," that is, like a fleeing bull when struck by a two-edged axe, bearing wound and weapon (as Seneca speaks in Hercules Furens), most bitterly wounded fills the heaven with horrid bellowing, until he shakes out the spear driven and deeply fixed in him: so the fool, until he blurts out the word entrusted to him, like one in labor, or one nauseated from drinking poison (which similes the Holy Spirit there also employs), takes no intervals of rest. Therefore upon so unbridled a beast the bridle of reason must be cast, Sirach XXVIII, 30: "Make right bridles for your mouth, and take heed lest perhaps you slip with your tongue." Psalm XXXVIII, 2: "I have set a guard over my mouth" — in Hebrew, a bridle.
One asking the dogma of salvation and saying: "Tell me, Abba, the word by which I may be saved," heard from him: "If you wish to be saved, when you go to anyone, do not speak first before he questions you." So it is found in the Lives of the Fathers, book V, chapter X On Discretion, no. 19.
St. Anthony's saving counsel was: "Restrain the tongue and the belly." Another elder in the Lives of the Fathers called those who do not restrain the tongue "a stable without a door: because whatever rises into their heart, they speak with their mouth." In the same place Abba Sisoes says: "For thirty years I do not entreat God on account of my sins, but praying I say this: Lord Jesus Christ, protect me from my tongue. And up to now every single day I fall through it and offend." In the same place Abba Hyperichius says: "A monk who does not restrain his tongue in time of anger, will not at any time be a restrainer of bodily passions either." And Abba Lucius said to a certain man wishing to go on pilgrimage: "If you do not hold your tongue, wherever you go, you will not be a pilgrim; but bridle your tongue here, and you will be a pilgrim even here." Abba Agatho for three years carried a stone in his mouth, in order to learn by compulsion to be silent; and he so learned this that afterward, when he wished to speak, he could scarcely do so.
The Gentiles also saw the same thing. Hesiod, cited by Plutarch in the Laconian Sayings: "The best treasure for man," he says, "is of the tongue, and the great grace which measures each word with sparing speech."
Anacharsis, when asked what was the best and worst thing in man, replied: "The tongue," as Laertius testifies, book I, chapter IX. The Egyptians, when sacrificing to Harpocrates, the god of silence, used to cry out: "The tongue is fortune, the tongue is a demon," as Plutarch testifies in his book On Isis.
For in much speaking sin is not lacking. Wherefore St. Augustine, in the preface to the book of Retractations, testifies that he wrote the books of Retractations in order to chastise the many things he had spoken ill. "For I should not have to censure these things, if I should have spoken them: but he who could not hold first place in wisdom, may hold the second place in modesty: so that he who was not able to say all things requiring no repentance, may at least repent of those which he has come to know should not have been said."
From what follows shortly: "For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." I do not even now arrogate this perfection to myself, though I am already an old man — how much less when as a young man I began to write, or to speak to the people: and so much was bestowed on me that wherever it was needful to speak to the people in my presence, I was very rarely allowed to be silent and to listen to others, and to be swift to hear, but slow to speak.
Among others, eminent was Abba Pamho, who by his silence reached such perfection that at his death he protested that no word had ever escaped him for which he repented. For when he was untaught, says Socrates, book IV, chapter XVIII, he went to a master, from whom hearing the first verse of Psalm XXXVIII: "I said: I will keep my ways, that I sin not with my tongue," he refused to hear the second, but departing he said: "This one verse is enough, if only I am able to learn it in deed and in work." And when after six months he was asked by his master, why for so long he had not come back to him? he replied that he had not yet learned the verse of the Psalm in deed. After many years, being asked whether he had learned it? he said that in nineteen full years he had scarcely learned to fulfill it in deed. Wherefore as he was dying, says Palladius in the Lausiac History, chapter X, he said: "I do not remember having eaten bread freely given by anyone, nor up to this hour do I repent of any word I have spoken; and so I go to God as one who has not even begun to be pious or religious." Palladius adds, "that he never, when asked about Sacred Scripture or any matter, immediately replied, but said: I have not yet found what I might answer. Three months would pass, and he would give no answer, saying: I have not yet understood. So considerately did he give answers from God, that all received them from God with all reverence; for he was said to have practiced this virtue beyond the great Anthony and beyond all the Saints, namely to be accurate and perfect in speaking."
Similar was Arsenius, formerly tutor of the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, who, fleeing their wrath, went into the desert, and heard from an angel: "Arsenius, flee, be silent, be still, these are the principles of salvation," putting which into practice, he became a man of marvelous holiness.
Furthermore, the means and manner of directing the tongue lest it give offense is silence. Do you wish to learn to speak? Be silent, and in silence think what and how it must be spoken. For this reason in all Religious Orders there is such discipline and care of silence, because it is most useful, indeed necessary, for avoiding offenses and for purity and innocence of heart. The Italians wisely sound out this proverb to their own: Odi, vedi e taci, se vuoi vivere in pace, that is, Hear, see, and be silent, if you wish to live in peace.
Read the Lives of the Fathers, and you will find by countless examples that this is so.
He can also with a bridle lead around (the Syriac: to subject and reduce to servitude) the whole body. — In Greek δυνατός, that is, able; but the meaning comes to the same thing, as if to say: Just as he who bridles the mouth of a horse, through it bridles, governs, and leads around wherever he wishes the whole body of the horse, and the whole horse: so he who bridles the mouth and the tongue, can lead, govern, and turn and lead around the whole body wherever he pleases. Some understand by "body" the body of sin, namely the mass of vices, which, as it were, makes up and integrates one whole body out of the various species and acts of sins, as if out of parts and members, as Cassian teaches, Conferences XII, chapters I and II. Others understand by "body" the mass of passions, which is integrated from anger, hatred, hope, fear, and other passions: for the passions are as it were untamed horses, which must be tamed and led around by bridles. So Origen, homily 45 on Joshua. Thirdly, others understand the body of all actions, as if to say: He who bridles and governs the tongue is equally able to bridle and govern the passions and motions of the soul, and all actions. For, as St. Augustine says, sermon 47 On the Words of the Apostle: "Nothing makes the tongue guilty except a guilty mind." Fourthly, in the genuine and proper sense, as if to say: He who knows how to bridle the tongue, this man is perfect, and therefore is able to bridle the other members of the body, and to moderate and arrange all actions and motions according to the laws of modesty and virtue. The reason why he is perfect I gave a little above.
Verse 3: For if We Put Bits Into the Mouths of Horses, That They May Obey Us
3. And if. — The Interpreter reads with some εἰ δέ; now many read ἰδού, or ἴδε, that is, "behold I have seen": for James shortly repeats this in the other simile of the ships, saying: "Behold (ἰδού) the ships also," etc. Some read "sicut" (just as) for "si" (if). It is an anantapodoton, for the other part of the comparison is missing, which Bede thus supplies and completes, as if to say: If we govern a horse by a bridle put in his mouth, then much more does it become a man, by bridling his mouth and tongue, to govern and moderate his whole body and all his actions. Or, as Gagneius: but if we put bridles into the mouths of horses, we lead about their whole body; so he who imposes bridles on the tongue, drives it wherever he wills, nor allows it to be borne headlong. But this completion is excessive, and supplies and assumes too much. Therefore James completes the rendering and comparison of both this and the following simile about the ship, when after both he subjoins: "So also the tongue is a little member, and exalts great things." That this is so is plain from the Greek text. For James declares by a double simile of how great moment it is to bridle the tongue; the first is taken from horses, the second from ships, as if to say: Just as we tame, turn, and bend horses, however generous, strong, and untamed, by a bridle put in their mouth, wherever we wish; and again, just as we direct the vastest ship by a small rudder wherever we wish: so likewise if you cast a bridle on the tongue, which is a small member, you will bridle and govern the whole body and soul of a man. Or certainly it must be said that δέ ("but") is put for enim ("for"), as is done elsewhere. Hence the Syriac translates, "behold for"; and Hugo, "because if," so as to give the reason for what he said: "He is able also with a bridle to lead around the whole body," because, namely, in like manner if we put a bridle into the mouths of horses, we lead around their whole body. So Francis Lucas in his Notes on this place. Hence that maxim of Theophrastus in Laertius, book V, chapter II: "One must trust an unbridled horse more than an ill-composed word," as if to say: From this there is more danger, and more harm, than from an unbridled horse. James persists in the simile of the horse governed by the bridle, which because he had touched on a little before in a word, he here explains and treats fully and clearly, and teaches that not only is the tongue to be bridled, but it is itself a bridle, by which all the members and the whole body are bridled, as if to say: What the bridle is to horses, this the tongue is to men: but horses are governed, directed, and bent around by the bridle according to the rider's will: therefore the tongue too, restrained and tempered by the laws of the fear of God and the love of neighbor, will moderate, direct, and lead all human faculties and actions, both of body and of soul, to their proper end.
To make them consent (πρὸς τὸ πείθεσθαι, that is, to obey, namely, to make to obey; it is a Hebraism; the qal is put for the hiphil, namely a neuter verb for an active) to us. — As if to say: By the bridle we make untrained horses trained, untamed horses tamed, inflexible horses flexible and ductile, that they may obey us in all things, according to that of Ovid, IV Tristia, elegy 6: "In time the spirited horse obeys the gentle reins, and takes the hard bits in his peaceful mouth."
Hence Cassiodorus on Psalm XXXI thinks that "frenum" is so called from "holding back the wild beast (that is, the horse): for the ancients called the horse a 'wild beast' (ferum)," although others think it derives from "breaking," because it breaks the mouths of horses.
And we turn about their whole body. — περιάγομεν, that is, we lead around. The reason is, because while the rider by the bridle governs the mouth of the horse, he equally governs the whole head of the horse and its imagination: but this governs the whole body of the horse, and all its affections, motions, and steps; for the horse in all things follows his imagination, and is borne thither, where it leads him. In a similar manner, by bridling the tongue through continence, we equally bridle our head, and its imagination, mind, and will, which once bridled equally bridles the whole body, and all its motions and acts: both because the bridle of all is the same, namely continence, which if it bridles the most difficult part, namely if it bridles the tongue, easily will bridle the other less rebellious and less difficult members; and because the tongue cannot be bridled unless first the inclination and eagerness for speaking which is in the imagination and appetite is bridled: but with the imagination and appetite bridled, all actions and motions which flow from them are bridled; and finally because the tongue is near the brain, in which resides, just as the imagination and the appetite, so also the motive power of the whole body through the nerves, muscles, and spirits which it derives and transmits from itself into the rest of the members. Therefore when the tongue is bridled, equally bridled is the brain, its imagination, appetite, and motive power, and all the nerves, muscles, and motive spirits.
Mystically, the horse is the body of man; the rider is Christ, who by His grace bridles and governs it. So St. John, Apocalypse VI, 2: "Behold," he says, "a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given him, and he went forth conquering that he might conquer." Here the horse is the Apostles, the rider is Christ, who through them conquered and subdued the whole world. The horse therefore notes the Apostles' first, obedience to Christ; second, patience in labors; third, alacrity; fourth, fierceness against demons, infidelity, and sins; fifth, swiftness in evangelizing; sixth, that they bore Christ and the name and kingdom of Christ throughout the whole world. See what is said there. Hence St. Chrysostom, homily 31 on Matthew, calls our tongue a royal horse, which if you bridle, you will make it a smooth-going steed, worthy that Christ should sit upon and ride it. St. Ambrose, book IX, on chapter XIX of St. Luke, verse 30, asking why Christ wished to be carried by an ass on Palm Sunday and by it to enter Jerusalem, replies: "It was not," he says, "with public display that the Lord of the world delighted to be borne on the back of an ass, but in order that, by a hidden mystery, He might overspread the inmost parts of our mind, and as a mystic rider sit in the inner assembly in the secret places of souls, as if infused by a certain body of divinity, governing the steps of the mind, bridling the wantonness of the flesh, that He might tame the affection of the Gentile people accustomed to be led by piety. Happy are those who have received such a rider in their inner reins. Happy clearly those whose mouths the rein of the celestial word has restrained, lest they be loosened by much speaking. What is that rein, brethren? Who will teach me how he restrains or looses the mouths of men? He showed me that rein who said: That speech may be given to me in the opening of my mouth. Speech therefore is the rein, speech is the goad, and therefore it is hard for you to kick against the goad. He has taught therefore here not to open the mouth, to endure the goad, to bear the yoke. Let another also teach to bear the curbs of the tongue. For rarer is the virtue of being silent than of speaking. Let him plainly teach, who as if mute did not open His mouth against deceit, ready for scourges, and not refusing blows, that He might be the pious seat."
Note here first: Just as by the bridle horses, camels, bears, and other wild and untamed animals are tamed, according to that of Martial, book I, epigram 103: "That on its painted neck the leopard bears the delicate yokes, and the wicked tigresses yield patience to the lash: that stags bite the golden curb-bits, that the Libyan bears are tamed by bridles, and one as great as Calydon is said to have borne. The boar obeys the purple muzzles: that the foul bisons draw the chariots." Thus there is no tongue, no imagination, no desire so fierce and vehement that it cannot be tamed by the grace of Christ and continence, made docile, and brought under the yoke of reason and the divine Spirit. This is what Sirach warns, chapter XXVIII, verse 29, saying: "Melt down your gold and your silver, and make a balance for your words, and right bridles for your mouth." Explaining which words St. Ambrose, book I On Duties, chapter III: "Your possession," he says, "is your mind; your gold is your heart; your silver is your speech, etc.; let there be a yoke for your words and a balance, that is, humility and measure, that your tongue may be subjected to the mind. Let it be restrained by the bonds of the rein: let it have its bridles, by which it can be called back. Let it bring forth speech by measure, weighed by the scales of justice, that there may be gravity in the sense, weight in the speech, and measure in the words. If anyone keeps these things, he becomes mild, meek, modest."
Furthermore Philo, in the book Who is the Heir of Divine Things, at the beginning, asserts that the bridle of the tongue is meditation on divine things. The same elsewhere: "Those who," he says, "narrate what is unbecoming, do not display eloquence, but the inability to be silent."
Note second: Just as the horse is bridled and held back by the bridle with pain, and therefore the bridle is called "frenum" from breaking (frangendo) the mouth, as I already indicated: so also force must be applied to the tongue through silence and continence, with pain. Whence Seneca, book IV On Benefits, chapter XXXVI: "Behold," he says, "that you may grieve, that afterward you may speak more considerately, what we are accustomed to call a 'tongue-strap' (linguarium)," that is, the bond and curb of the tongue, e.g. a muzzle (with which the mouths and lips of biting horses are wont to be closed and constrained), "I will give." For the pleasure, eagerness, and as it were itch for speaking what we have seen, heard, or know, is so innate to us that it cannot be restrained without pain. For in many the tongue itches more for speaking than the mind for thinking, or the hand for working. Wherefore wisely St. Gregory, book V Morals, chapter XI, elsewhere XII: "Good men," he says, "hold back the precipitation of the word with the bridle of counsel, and cautiously consider lest, by relaxing the wantonness of the tongue, they transfix the conscience of the hearers with incautious speech. Whence well is it said by Solomon: He who lets out water is the head of strifes. For water is let out, when the flow of the tongue is unbridled: but the one who lets out water becomes the head of strifes, because through the incontinence of the tongue the origin of discord is given. Therefore just as the depraved are light in sense, so they are headlong in speech, and neglect to keep silent in considering what they say; but what light desire conceives, the lighter tongue immediately puts forth."
Note third: Just as the rider by loosening the rein and prodding with spurs incites the horse to the course, so likewise Christ commands and incites His heralds and faithful, that at the fitting time they speak, and confidently and boldly preach, admonish, and rebuke the vices of men. Wherefore He must be asked to send into us the Holy Spirit, who may give us fiery and Seraphic tongues, with which we may both celebrate His mighty works and inflame all to His love; and may also confidently and boldly invoke God, and with a certain pious liberty and force as it were compel Him to grant our petitions, as Moses did, Exodus XXXII, 32. Because, as Philo says in the cited place: "Freedom of speech is akin to friendship: for it belongs to the arrogant rashness, but to a friend confidence." Wherefore St. Bernardine, On the Passion of the Lord, chapter XXVI: "The door," he says, "is not always open, nor always shut; but in the house of the wise man it is open to the wise, and shut to the foolish: so also our mouth, which is the door of our heart, through which words go out as it were certain messengers, announcing what is being done within the heart, which must be opened in due time with prudent and useful words, but must be perpetually shut to perverse words which arise from the evil habits of the heart. For there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, and he sins no less who withholds a word at an opportune time than he who scandalizes others by speaking depraved things." The same teaches St. Gregory, book VII Morals, at the end. To this point pertains that of Theophrastus to a certain man, who at a banquet was perpetually silent: "If you are unlearned and imprudent," he says, "you act prudently; but if learned, imprudently." So Laertius, book V, chapter II. But Plutarch writes that he said thus: "If you are foolish, you do a wise thing: but if wise, a foolish one. For it is no light part of wisdom to cover folly with silence."
Verse 4: Behold Also the Ships, Whereas They Are Great and Driven by Strong Winds, Are Turned About by a Small Helm
4. Behold also the ships. — It is a second simile taken from the rudder of ships, and therefore similar to the first taken from the bridle of horses. For the ship at sea is what the horse and chariot is on land; and just as the horse is governed by the bridle, so the ship by the rudder. Hence the ship is called by Plautus in the Rudens, act I, a wooden horse. And Homer, Odyssey IV: "Swift," he says, "are ships at sea in place of horses." Hence also the sailors are called by Varro in Nonius "horse-grooms" (equisones); and Seneca in Medea, act I, gives a bridle to a raft or ship, as if it were to be bridled like a horse. And Pindar Pythian ode 3 says the anchor is the bridle of the ship; nay even Horace, book IV Odes, ode 4, says that the East Wind "rides through the Sicilian waves." Beautifully indeed Catullus in the poem on the nuptials of Peleus calls the ship "the chariot flying on a light breath," because it is driven by the breath of the winds. "She herself," he says, "made the chariot flying on a light breath, joining the pine-fabric to the curved keel." So conversely Martianus, book II, calls the rowing of a ship "the horses of the sun."
When they are great. — ΤΗΛΙΚΑΥΤΑ ΟΝΤΑ, that is, when they are so great, namely so large and vast.
And by strong winds, — σκληρῶν. Vatablus, "fierce"; Pagninus, "hard"; others, "rough, rigid."
Are driven, — ἐλαυνόμενα, that is, are driven; Pagninus, "are conveyed"; others properly: "are propelled."
Are turned about with a small (ἐλαχίστου, that is, smallest) helm, — namely the helm; for what in the horse is the bridle, in the chariot the pole, this in the ship is the helm. Hence the proverbs, "to sit at the helm," "to hold the helm of the republic," that is, to preside over the republic, and govern and rule it. So Cicero to Paetus, book IX, epistle 15: "We were sitting at the stern and holding the helm; now however there is scarcely a place in the bilge."
Whither the impulse of the governor will. — "Impulse," that is, the will; but he says ὁρμή, that is, force, because the helmsman wishing to direct the ship straight, must often resist winds and waves; and therefore with force and effort oppose the helm to them, or certainly so adjust and adapt it and the whole ship that, if not a straight course, at least it may keep a side course, and be borne to the place destined by him. Add that ὁρμή can be taken for impulse, that is, impulse, zeal, and effort of the will: for in the helmsman sitting at the helm, in order to govern it rightly, there is more need of attention of mind and dexterity than of force of arms and impulse of strength. Truly Plato, epistle to Axiochus: "By bridles," he says, "and the lash we direct horses, and we sail sometimes by spreading the sails of the ship, sometimes by bridling, that is, weighing down with anchors we hold it back: so the tongue is to be governed, Axiochus, now that we may arm it with words, now that we may repress it with silence."
Verse 5: So Also the Tongue Is Indeed a Little Member and Boasts Great Things; Behold How Great a Forest a Small Fire Kindles
5. So also the tongue is indeed a little member, — Truly Nazianzen, in the poem On Silence, says among other things: "The tongue is small indeed, but in strength conquers all," especially in a priest, "whose tongue," he says, "is a musical instrument." St. Bernard, sermon On the Custody of the Tongue, the Hand and the Heart: "The tongue," he says, "is a small member, but unless you take care, a great evil." The same, On the Interior House, chapter L, derives "lingua" from licking (lingendo), or binding (ligando): "Because," he says, "it licks by flattering, bites by detracting, kills by lying, etc.; it binds and cannot be bound; it is slippery, and cannot be held; but slips and is deceived: it slips like an eel, penetrates like an arrow; it takes away friends, multiplies enemies; stirs up quarrels, sows discords, with one stroke strikes and kills many; it is fawning and crafty, broad and ready to drain off goods and mix evils."
And exalts great things. — Here is the apodosis, or rendering, of both similes, namely of the bridle governing the horse and the rudder governing the ship, to which he compared the tongue. For "exalts great things," in Greek it is μεγαλαυχεῖ, which first, many according to the proper signification of the word received in common usage translate "boasts magnificently"; the Syriac, "exalts itself," namely, as the Poet says: "He throws out flasks and foot-and-a-half words," as if to say: A tiny member is the tongue, but boastful, which by the throw, force, and weight of its words as if of so many blows sets whole kingdoms and whole peoples in conflict with each other; and therefore its direction and moderation is most to be cared for. Hence Bede and others read for "exalts" "exults" (the Author of the Commentary on Psalm CXIX in St. Jerome reads erroneously "ulcerates"), that is, exults impotently, boasts, and by its boasting as it were leaps on high, rages and is fierce, so that it cannot be contained, unless you apply the bridle of reason and continence. So Cicero, IV On the Republic, said: "To exult in all cruelty," which Nonius interprets as "to rage." Again Cicero, book On Old Age: "Fabius," he says, "by his patience softened Hannibal exulting in youthful manner," that is, raging and being savage.
And so St. James does not here take μεγαλαυχεῖ for vain boasting, ostentation, and glorification: for this effects little good or evil; but for an impetuous and efficacious boasting, by which the tongue often impels and incites many — and indeed entire peoples — to great things, whether good or evil. Hence by metalepsis μεγαλαυχεῖ is the same as "exalts great things," as Our translator renders, that is, raises up, effects, works great things. Whence Pagninus and Vatablus translate, "hurls great things," namely words and blows; Œcumenius, "works great things," both good and evil: so also Mariana and others. Emmanuel Sa: "stirs up great tumults." μεγαλαυχεῖ alludes to αὐχήν, that is, the neck, the collar, as if to say μεγάλα αὐχεῖ, that is, raises up great things upon the neck, raises great things on high, exalts great things: whence he alluded to the same in the word κατακαυχᾶται, that is, superexalts, as I said in chapter II, verse 13. Again αὐχήν is the part of the helm or rudder upon which the helmsman leans, says Pollux, almost the same as αὐχέν named here by St. James, so that μεγαλαυχεῖ is the same as "bears and governs the helm of a great ship." The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as the bridle drives the neck of the horse and the whole horse, and raises it on high; and just as the helm governs itself and the whole ship, and raises it above the waters and waves, that it may not be overwhelmed and submerged by them, but be borne above them and ride them: so also the tongue not only by its boasting raises the whole man on high, but also raises whole assemblies and republics on high, and drives them whither it wills, and therefore exalts great things, whether good or evil, that is, raises up, effects, produces; just as the chariots of charioteers, fixed deep in the mire, by a small iron instrument which, turning itself like a vertebra, lifts itself and gradually rises, easily raise and lead them out. With a similar vertebra and small wheel I saw in Belgium very large bridges and ships raised on high by a single boy. The tongue does likewise; for although it is the least member, yet it can and effects great things.
James therefore says: Just as a rider skilled in horsemanship governs the horse by the bridle, so that he may be borne by it wherever he pleases; but an unskilled rider or one negligent of the bridle causes both himself and the horse and chariot, and all who are borne by it, to be endangered, so that they are dashed in headlong course, thrown out, or rush to the precipice. Again, just as a skilled helmsman by the helm governs the ship and all who are borne by it, that with waves and winds overcome they may be brought safe into port; but the unskilled or one negligent of the helm exposes himself, the ship, and all who are borne in it, to certain danger of shipwreck, so that dashed against the rocks it falls apart, or is swallowed by winds, waves, and whirlpools: so likewise the prudent man, who rightly moderates his tongue, raises himself and many others to great goods; but the imprudent man, who does not know how to govern it, brings and procures great evils for himself and many others: for the unbridled petulance of the tongue stirs up quarrels, brawls, hatreds, wars, ruin of families, of cities, and of peoples; but the bridled and moderated tongue procures salvation for itself, for the household, for the city, and for the whole people. Just therefore as a directed bridle and helm is for the safety of the horse, ship, and passengers, but neglect of both brings danger and ruin to both: so likewise the tongue too, prudently directed by the prudent, will procure peace and every good; but imprudently directed by the imprudent, will procure war and every evil for himself and many others. For he compares the tongue to the bridle and helm, the man to the rider and helmsman, the household, city, and republic to the horse and chariot, and to the ship and passengers. All these things St. James understands, and with one word "exalts great things" embraces, in his zeal for brevity. Whence Œcumenius: "His discourse," he says, "is not so explicit, because he who writes this is a disciple of the abbreviated Word."
Mystically Bede, Hugo, Lyranus, and Thomas the Englishman: "The tongue exalts great things," they say, that is, brings great rewards or great penalties.
Examples of a good tongue procuring great goods are in Valerius Maximus, book VIII, chapter IX. First, of Valerius, who when the plebs, separated from the senate by a pestilential sedition, had withdrawn to the Sacred Mount, by his oration and persuasive eloquence, "recalled to saner counsels, subjected it to the senate, that is, joined the city to the city. To eloquent words therefore wrath, consternation, arms gave way."
Second, of Hegesias the Cyrenaic philosopher, "who so represented the evils of life" by his eloquence, "that the pitiful image of them being implanted in the breasts of his hearers, he engendered in many the desire of seeking voluntary death: and therefore by King Ptolemy he was forbidden to discourse further on this matter."
Third, let it be Amphion, who by his oration is said to have drawn stones for building the Theban walls. Whence Horace, On the Art of Poetry: "And Amphion is said, the founder of the Theban city, to have moved stones with the sound of the lyre, and with soothing prayer to lead them where he wished." The same, book III On Odes, ode 11: "Amphion moved stones by singing." And Statius, book VIII of the Thebaid: "And Amphion animating the hard rocks."
Thus Orpheus and Arion are said by their song and sweet speech to have moved trees, woods, and wild beasts: not that they really did this, but because by their oration they enticed hard, stupid, and barbarous men, living like wild beasts in woods, to civil, human, and social life, and to building and inhabiting cities for that reason.
Fourth, let it be Cicero, who at Rome was able to do everything, and persuaded the Romans of whatever he wished; he expelled Catiline, Antony, and others ambitious for tyranny from the city. Hear Plutarch in his Life: "Indeed this man showed to the Roman people how much seasoning eloquence brings to what is honorable: and that what is just is invincible, if it be rightly spoken: and that he who diligently manages the Republic should always indeed in things to be done prefer the honorable to the flattering, but in speaking should remove the bitter from what is profitable." And further on: "Cicero's power at that time was the greatest at Rome; and when he could effect everything he wished, he overthrew Antony by faction," etc. He adds that Augustus, afterward Caesar, through Cicero requested and obtained the consulate, by which he paved the way for himself to the triumvirate, and then to the monarchy.
Similar to Cicero in sweetness of speaking, but superior in efficacy of speaking, was Demosthenes at Athens; for of him Plutarch thus writes in his Life: "The force of this orator which roused minds and inflamed them to glory, blocked all the rest, so that as if frenzied, snatched away by his oration, they cast aside the honorable, fear, reason, favor, so that Philip would send legates to seek peace, all Greece would rise up; and there yielded to Demosthenes not only the Athenian generals, obedient to his word, but also the Bœotarchs, that he might preside over all the public assemblies there, of the Thebans equally as of the Athenians."
But all these Christian orators surpassed, and immeasurably Christ Himself, who bent the crowds whither He willed, so that those sent by the Pharisees to seize Him returned stupefied and said: "Never has man spoken so as this man," because, namely, He was the Word speaking in the flesh with celestial and divine tongue, John VII, 46; and Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go (unless to Thee)? Thou hast the words of eternal life," John VI, 69. Hence to the Apostles He gave fiery tongues, and especially to St. Paul, who drew kings and princes, orators and philosophers, Jews and Greeks, and indeed the Gentiles of the whole world, to the faith and worship of Christ. His disciple was St. John, Patriarch of Constantinople, who from his golden mouth and tongue for persuading anything was surnamed Chrysostom. Such in later centuries were St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Bernardine, who by their sermons bent the stony hearts of men to repentance and holiness; so much so that their tongues were plectra and organs of the Holy Spirit.
Examples of an evil tongue procuring great evils Valerius recounts in the cited place: "Pisistratus," he says, "is reported to have prevailed so much by speaking, that the Athenians, captivated by his oration, granted him royal command, especially since on the opposite side Solon, most loving of the fatherland, was striving; but the harangues of the one were more wholesome, of the other more eloquent. Pericles imposed the yoke of servitude on the free necks of the Athenians: for he drove and turned that city at his own will, and although he spoke against the will of the people, his voice was nonetheless pleasing and popular; whence they confessed that on the lips of the man dwelt a charm sweeter than honey. Wherefore a certain old man exclaimed that that citizen ought to be guarded against, because his oration was most similar to Pisistratus's. Nor did the estimation of eloquence or the augury of habits deceive the man. For what was the difference between Pisistratus and Pericles? except that the one armed, the other without arms exercised tyranny."
C. Gracchus by his eloquence disturbed the republic, says Valerius, book VIII, chapter XI. Among the faithful, what is more miserable than Eve and Adam and the whole human race? What threw it into these miseries? The tongue of the serpent, Genesis III. What is more deadly than the tongue of Judas? Which betrayed and destroyed Christ, the only good and joy of men and angels. What is more insane than the foolish tongue of Roboam? Which by its savagery turned the whole kingdom of Israel from itself, from Juda, from the temple and from God, 3 Kings XII. What today stirs up wars between Christian kingdoms and kings, which bring innumerable calamities and disasters to both? The pestilent tongues of the envious and the unquiet, who reckon common war as their own peace, who reckon the losses of others as their own gains, who hunt for plunder and spoils. See here how many conflagrations, how many violations, how many thefts, how many ruinations, how many funerals it heaps up, raises, and exalts, small but most harmful — the tongue. Truly the Wise Man, Proverbs XVIII, 21: "Death and life," he says, "are in the hands of the tongue."
Behold. — In Greek there is this third ἰδού, that is, see, behold. For this is the third simile, by which he teaches with how great care the tongue must be moderated. For first he likened the tongue to the bridled mouth of a horse, or the bridle of a horse. Second, to the rudder of a ship. Third here he likens it to a small fire or spark, which burns up a whole house, forest, and city.
How great, — that is, how little, how slight: for in Greek it is ὀλίγον, that is, small, little; the interpreter seems to have read ἡλίκον, that is "how great," for so the Veronese Greek text has, on the testimony of Gagneius, who in explaining adds: "And in this way it is to be read ironically: See with how great and how large a fire the forest needs to be set on fire," as if to say: Not much is needed, but a small amount, indeed only a single spark. So, as St. Jerome says on chapter III to the Galatians, "Arius in Alexandria was a small spark, but because he was not immediately suppressed, his flame ravaged the whole world." So Faustus the Manichee by his eloquence, says St. Augustine, book V Confessions, chapter III, "was a great snare of the devil, and many were entangled in it through the allurement of his sweet speech."
Thus Luther's tongue was like a spark of fire, which because it was not at once repressed, creeping along set on fire all of Germany, Calvin's Gaul, Wycliffe's Bohemia, etc. Are not these the torches of the world?
Verse 6: And the Tongue Is a Fire, a World of Iniquity, Set Among Our Members, Inflaming the Wheel of Our Nativity, Being Inflamed by Hell
6. And the tongue is a fire. — "And," that is, so, in like manner, equally. For here begins the apodosis, or rendering of the simile, as if to say: Just as a small fire kindles the whole forest, in like manner the tongue is a fire; the forest is the universe of iniquity, which the tongue kindles: while it fills houses, cities, republics, and kingdoms with quarrels, lawsuits, wars, and other crimes, according to that of Proverbs XVI, 27: "The impious man digs up evil, and in his lips a fire blazes." And Sirach XXVIII, 11: "An angry man kindles strife, etc. For according to the wood of the forest, so does the fire blaze up." He compares the tongue to fire. First, on account of its form and shape: for both have a pyramidal form. Second, on account of similar color: for both are red. Third, on account of similar speed, mobility, and agility. Fourth, on account of equal efficacy; for a biting word burns and tortures one's neighbor like fire. Fifth, on account of a similar manner of acting: whence both flame and tongue are said to lick the thing they kindle, according to that line of Claudian, I Rapt.: "The harmless flame licks the unbroken frosts."
Sixth, because the tongue betrays the inner fire, that is, love, whether impure and carnal, or pure and divine, which accordingly imparted fiery tongues to the Apostles. Wherefore wisely and piously St. Augustine, in book X Confessions, ch. xxxvii: "Our daily furnace," he says, "is the human tongue, demanding from us continence in this kind also: give what You command, and command what You will. You know my groaning of heart toward You concerning this, and the rivers of my eyes. For I do not easily gather how much cleaner I am from this pestilence; and I greatly fear my hidden things which Your eyes know but mine do not. For there is some faculty for examining myself in other kinds of temptations, in this scarcely any." And below: "I confess I am delighted by praises, but more by truth itself than by praises." Finally, as with fire, so the damage of the tongue is often irreparable. For fame once lost cannot be recovered, Proverbs xxv, 8.
Morally: Just as the tongue and talkativeness rouse fire and a vast conflagration, so silence and moderation of the tongue lull and extinguish the same. Whence the Wise Man, Prov. xxvi, 20: "When the wood faileth, the fire shall go out: and when the talebearer is taken away, contentions shall cease." And Ecclus. viii, 4: "Strive not with a man that is full of tongue, and heap not wood upon his fire." Wherefore St. Basil, having been gravely deceived and offended by the heretic Eustathius, whom he had admitted to communion when he feigned conversion, was silent for three years, and did not even write a single letter to him, lest he should seem to expostulate with him from grief rather than from reason, and lest he should stir up new quarrels. Thus his Life has it.
St. Gregory Nazianzen imitated St. Basil as a comrade and brother. For when some hurled reproaches at him to elicit fire, that is, anger, he relates that he was silent, in his oration On His Discourses: "They declare," he says, "that they will not cease to pound me with insults, like pyrite (which is a stone having internal fire that it gives forth when struck, says Nicetas), until from a small spark they have stirred up a vast flame of words."
As a symbol of this thing, God extinguished a fire by the voice of one who was silent. This was Ralph, surnamed The Silent on account of his continual silence: for through sixteen years he had not let a single word out of his mouth. He lived in the monastery of Afflighem, which adjoins Brussels and is well-known and celebrated among the Belgians. In that place a fire arose which could not be extinguished by any force, and Ralph, breaking his silence, declared with confidence: "Stand still, fire; flame, be utterly quiet"; immediately the fire stood still, as the sun stood still at the command of Joshua. So Thomas of Cantimpré, book II On Bees, ch. xiii, § 4. Wherefore St. Ephrem, On the Passion of the Soul, teaches us thus to pray to God before speaking, for the moderation of the tongue: "May the finger of Your grace, O Lord, always move my tongue, as the string of a harp to Your glory. Grant me, Savior, the petition of my heart, and let my tongue become like a harp to ever resound Your praises." And Esther, xiv, 13: "Give me well-ordered speech in my mouth." And the Psalmist, Ps. 50, 17: "O Lord, You will open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Your praise." And Ps. LXX, v. 8: "Let my mouth be filled with praise, that I may sing Your glory."
A world of iniquity. — "World" (universitas), that is, a heap, a mass; by a similar proverb we speak of an ocean of evils, an Iliad of evils; in Greek ὁ κόσμος τῆς ἀδικίας, that is, the world of unrighteousness, namely the tongue, or rather the forest which the tongue, as fire, kindles. For just as he compares the tongue to fire, so he compares the wicked world to a forest into which the fire of the tongue acts; otherwise, what has fire to do with a world of iniquity? Now κόσμος, that is, world, first, with our Interpreter, can be taken for the universe, or universality, as if to say: As the world embraces the variety and totality of all things, so the tongue produces and contains every iniquity; or rather, as if to say: The tongue, like infernal fire, kindles this whole world, which is nothing other than a certain forest of iniquity and unrighteousness. Again, as if to say: The tongue fills the whole universe with iniquity. For there is no region, no city, no street, indeed often no house that the slanderous tongue does not fill with detractions, calumnies, lawsuits, tumults, wars, lusts, sensualities. To this it can be added that the world of iniquity can be taken as the very heap of injuries and crimes: for the bellows and cause of these is the tongue; so much so that it fills the very tribunals, which are sanctuaries of justice, with false witnesses, unjust advocates, attorneys, and judges. Thus the impious and heretical tongue blasphemes God, heaps reproaches on all the Saints, corrupts the word of the Lord, blinds the minds of hearers, kindles wills to dare anything, banishes faith, turns hope into presumption, extinguishes charity, takes away humanity, kindles the torches of sedition and wars; makes men proud, envious, contentious, greedy, gluttonous, lustful; defiles bodies and plunges souls into hell. Is it not therefore itself a world of iniquity? For all iniquities and crimes are either accomplished, or persuaded, or defended, or excused through the tongue; "For the tongue is the procuress and reconciler of sins," says St. Basil on Psalm XXXIII. Finally, the tongue is a world and a totality of iniquity, because it stains the whole body and the whole life of every man, as St. James adds and explains. Some add: The tongue is "a world," that is, an academy, "of iniquity"; because just as in academies all arts and sciences are taught, so the tongue teaches every kind of iniquity. But κόσμος does not signify an academy.
Second, κόσμος, that is, world, can be translated as adornment and ornament; for thus a woman's "world" is called the adornment of women, as if to say: The tongue is the veil and ornament of iniquities. For just as a harlot covers her shame and filth with silken and golden garments, so many veil their crimes, excuse them, indeed even adorn them with their garrulity and falsehood-speaking. So Œcumenius and Isidore of Pelusium, book IV, epist. 10. Hence so many times in the Scriptures the tongue is said to "concinnare," that is, to deck and adorn lies or tricks, as in Ps. XLIX, 19; Job vi, 26; Prov. XII, 19. But the former sense is more apt and vigorous, and clearly genuine.
Symbolically, first, Thomas the Englishman: The tongue, he says, fills the whole Universe — namely heaven, earth, and hell — with iniquity. For in heaven Lucifer, saying: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars, etc., I will be like the Most High," Isaiah ch. xiv, 13; and persuading and urging the same upon his followers, filled heaven with sedition and apostasy. So also the impious "have set their mouth against heaven," Ps. LXXII, 9, by cursing God and the heavenly ones. Again: "Their tongue hath passed through the earth," because they fill the earth with quarrels, wars, perjuries, etc. The damned, indeed, fill hell with their blasphemies, brawls, sneers, curses. Second, the tongue assails God by blaspheming, neighbor by calumniating, oneself by boasting. Third, our Salmeron and Paës here through the letters of the alphabet show that the tongue is the alphabet and aggregate of all vices: for from the tongue arises adulation, blasphemy, calumny, detraction, excuse in sins, boasting, heresy, hypocrisy, mockery, lamentation, lying, trifles, idle words, perjury, complaint, quarreling, whispering, revelation of secrets, scandal, harmful silence, vituperation, bitter zeal. Our John Pellecyus of our Society writes a book with this title, A World of Iniquity, in which he shows how many and how great are the vices of the tongue.
The tongue is set among our members. — In Greek they add οὕτως, that is, "thus." For here the apodosis ends: for here James completes the comparison he had begun of fire and forest with the tongue and the world of iniquity. But because he is concise, he leaves much to be understood, as I noted above from Œcumenius. Wherefore his whole sentence seems to need to be rendered and connected thus: Behold how small a fire kindles how great a forest: for one spark can kindle the whole Hercynian Forest, whose breadth, as Caesar says in book VI of his Commentaries, extends to nine days' journey, and its length to over sixty days' journey. In like manner, the tongue is fire, the world of iniquity is the forest into which the tongue, like fire, acts; therefore, just as a modest fire set in a forest sets the whole on fire, so the tongue, as a small particle of the body, is placed among the members like a spark, which defiles the whole body with its foul exhalation and burning, and sets the whole course of life ablaze with the flames of malice. That this is the sense is evident from the Greek, and the coherence and connection of this verse with the preceding one demands it, nor can any other suitable reason be given why James should say that the tongue is set among our members.
Note: The tongue was placed by God in the mouth of man and animals for four reasons: The first is that it should be the interpreter of the mind, and announce its thoughts and affections. For, as St. Augustine says in his preface to Psalm xciii, "What the heart wishes, the tongue testifies." And Aristotle, in his book On Interpretation, teaches that voices are signs of the concepts and passions of the soul.
The second, that it may serve food and eating: for the tongue gathers the foods crushed and ground by the teeth, and by its own force presses down those gathered and transmits them to the stomach. Wherefore Varro thinks the tongue is named from "binding" (ligando), because it binds the food: although others would have it named from "licking" (lingendo).
The third: with the tongue we feel and discern flavors so that we may separate beneficial foods from inconvenient and harmful ones; therefore the tongue is, as it were, the foretaster and pre-taster of the stomach.
The fourth: the tongue helps beasts in drinking: for they, with the tongue extended and hollowed, draw up water, and clap it, gathered in the lap of the tongue, against the palate with quick necessity, lest it flow away by tardiness and delay, and so cast it into the stomach.
But corrupted and vitiated man abuses all these, and turns them into vice and crime — the first, namely, into lies, perjuries, detractions, quarrels, etc.; the second, third, and fourth into gluttony and excess.
Which defiles. — He continues in the metaphor of fire. For fire, while it burns a thing, infects and stains it with a black color as well as with an odor: so the tongue, while it burns the whole man, defiles and stains him with the foul color and odor of lusts, brawls, wounds, and every vice, as well as of infamy. So Œcumenius. He proves that the world or world of iniquity is the forest which the tongue, as fire, kindles, from the fact that the tongue defiles and sets ablaze the whole body, the whole life, and all the actions of every man: for from all men the world is forged together, and from the wicked life of each man the world of iniquity is forged together.
The whole body. — By this some understand all the powers, habits, and passions of man, which, subordinated to one another, constitute as it were one body. Others, the whole heap of human actions, and a body. But this body is mystical rather than literal. Others, as if to say: The tongue brings the vices of the soul into the light, and so the whole, as it were, body of man it publicly dishonors. I here understand the proper stain and the body of man, which consists and is integrated by its members: for in these he takes the whole body, which is the vehicle of the soul, as if to say: The tongue brings into peril the whole body and the soul, that is, the whole man, if it is moved without counsel: just as the millstones of mills set the whole mill on fire when they have caught fire from too much motion.
Furthermore, by "body" understand synecdochically the soul and the whole man, as if to say: The tongue stains the body and the soul, that is, the whole man and all his actions: for, as St. Chrysostom explains in homily 22 To the People, with the body stained, the soul is necessarily stained, according to that saying: "Evil communications corrupt good manners," 1 Corinthians ch. xv, v. 33; for the tongue infects the ears, and through the ears the imagination, the head, the mind, and the will, with depraved desires, lusts, hatreds, enmities, errors, etc., from which follow excesses, fornications, adulteries, fights, blows, slaughters, etc., which defile the body. Again, the tongue infects the three appetites of man, and through them the whole man: for it infects the concupiscible appetite with concupiscences; the irascible with anger and quarrel; the rational with error, hatred, heresy, etc. As a sign and symbol of this thing, God struck Miriam, the sister of Moses, who abused her tongue and murmured against Moses, with leprosy in her whole body, Numbers xii, 1. For in like manner the lewd, contentious, blasphemous tongue, etc., defiles and as it were infects with leprosy the whole mind and the whole body, that is, the whole man.
And inflames the wheel of our nativity. — For γενέσεως, that is, of generation, of nativity, some in Œcumenius read γεέννης, that is, of Gehenna, as if to say: The tongue kindles and stirs up Gehenna against us, as it were making fire to rage against us. But it is itself also kindled by Gehenna, as is manifest from the rich man, who was tormented in the tongue, Luke xvi, says Œcumenius. To this also pertains that saying of Christ, Matt. ch. v, 22: "Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the fire of Gehenna." But others everywhere read γενέσεως, which first the Syriac translates as "genealogy." "It inflames the series of our genealogies, which run in the manner of wheels"; for the tongue, sowing hatreds among families, cities, and kingdoms, transmits the same to posterity through many generations and ages, so that perpetual, immortal, and irreconcilable strifes and enmities seem to exist among them.
Second, others by τροχὸν γενέσεως understand the whole created world, so that τροχὸς is put for κύκλου, that is, for circle and orb; and γενέσεως for κτίσεως, that is, for creation and constitution: for he refers to and explains what he had said, that the tongue is a fire by which is kindled κόσμος ἀδικίας, that is, the world or world of iniquity, as if to say: The tongue inflames the whole world with infernal fire.
Third, Vatablus said the tongue was set as the wheel of nativity, that is, a wheel born and begotten, not made by art by a craftsman, as if to say: The tiny tongue is set in the members of man, not so much as a member, as a particle and almost a point of the members. For what the center is in a circle, the hub in a wheel, this in the head is the tongue. Therefore, just as, when the center is moved, the whole circle is moved, and when the center is vitiated, the circle is vitiated, so when the tongue is moved and stained, the whole head and the whole body of man are moved and stained.
Fourth and genuinely, James calls the whole course of our life "the wheel of our nativity," which is inflamed by the tongue with anger, lust, pride, and other crimes, and burned with many troubles, diseases, vexations, and evils, says Vatablus. This course is called a wheel because, like a wheel, it is always turning from nativity to death together with the rotation of the heaven, to which it is subject, and by which it is governed and rotated. For the Greek τροχόν, if you place a grave accent on the last syllable, signifies both rotation and a wheel; but if you read τρόχοι with the accent on the penult, it signifies a chariot. Whence Bede: "The tongue," he says, "contaminates the course of human life, by which we are driven, as in a running wheel, even unto death." So Œcumenius: "Life," he says, "is called a wheel, because it is rolled back upon itself." And Isidore of Pelusium, book I, letter 158: "The time of our life," he says, "imitates the appearance of a wheel, inasmuch as it is twisted and rolled back upon itself. For day succeeds day, month month, year year, so that as one ends another begins, and thus day, month, and year, as it were, return to their beginning and revolve perpetually upon themselves, so that they seem to perform a continual dance." So also Lyranus, the Gloss, Hugh, Thomas the Englishman, Cajetan, Salmeron, Catharinus, Vatablus, and others everywhere.
Therefore our age and life are called a wheel. First, because it never stands still, but is always turned around like a wheel. Hear St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Sentences: "This brief and multifarious life," he says, "is a wheel uncertainly fixed. It is moved upward and dragged downward: nor is it stable, however much it may seem so: when fleeing it is held, and when remaining it flees away; it usually leaps, and yet cannot escape: it draws and draws back its own station by motion. Wherefore its emptiness can in no way be more rightly described than if it be called either smoke, or a dream, or the flower of grass. And of old indeed a certain miser is said to have used these words: 'I prefer a drop of fortune to a cask of mind.' But to him a certain wise man brilliantly opposed this: 'I value a drop of mind more than a cask of fortune.'"
St. James alludes to the wheels of chariots and to the iron bands which, fiery hot, are fixed all around the wheels by smiths, so that the wheels may be stronger and may longer resist the stones over which they are rotated. For he compares the tongue to these fiery bands, as if to say: What the fiery band is on a wheel, that the tongue is on the wheel of life: for just as this band is heated in a furnace, so the tongue is heated in the furnace of Gehenna; and just as the fiery band, while it is applied by smiths and affixed with nails to the wheel, vomits flames on every side and seems to set the whole wooden wheel ablaze all around, so likewise the tongue inflames the whole wheel of our life.
Thus St. Augustine said of the praising tongue, in book X Confessions, ch. xxxvii: "Our daily furnace is the human tongue." What would he have said of the wanton, lewd, slanderous, envious, contentious tongue?
Second, just as the wheel touches the earth only at a point, so the life of men only lightly tastes earthly things: for they are soon rotated and pass away.
Third, just as the larger wheel carries along the smaller one subjected and subordinated to it, so the rotation of heaven carries with it and rotates the wheel of our life, says Cajetan.
Fourth, because, like a wheel, it runs most swiftly to the goal and to death. Now it is called "the wheel of nativity" because from nativity itself we hasten to death, and run like a wheel. Whence from Isidore of Pelusium, Œcumenius: "The tongue," he says, "inflames the wheel of nativity, contaminates life, when it is moved rashly and wantonly; whence ἐξατονίζεται, that is, it is exacerbated, exasperated, and succumbs to innumerable varieties of things and troubles; or, as others read, ἐξαλίζεται, that is, our life, or the time and end of our life, is accelerated."
By a similar metaphor Eccles. xii, 6 says that at death the pitcher is broken upon the fountain, and the wheel is shattered upon the cistern. There the interpreters take by the pitcher the veins or gall, by the fountain the liver; or by the pitcher the body, by the fountain the elements into which the dying man passes and dissolves; by the wheel the head, by the cistern the heart, from which the head draws all vital spirits. For when the heart is extinguished, the brain also fails and is extinguished. Hence our Serarius here: "A wheel," he says, "is any innate disturbance, by which, as by a wheel, we are rotated and driven hither and thither."
Fifth, just as the wheel by rotating returns to its beginning, so our life, both by acting and by dying, returns to its beginnings. For while one action ends, another begins: so labor begets labor, and often when we believe it is ending, the same must be begun anew, according to that of Ecclus. xviii, 6: "When a man hath finished, then he shall begin." So Lyranus. Hence the ancients painted the year as a serpent driven into a circle, biting its tail with its mouth: because where the tail and end of one year leaves off, there the mouth and beginning of another begins.
Sixth, just as in a wheel while one part is pressed down, the opposite is raised up; so in this life, while these are pressed down, those are exalted; and vice versa. This is the wheel of fortune. Each one continually undergoes this wheel, so that now he is humbled, now exalted, now humbled again.
As a symbol of this thing, the Archbishop of Mainz bears a wheel as his coat of arms: of which the origin and author was Willigis, who, when from a carpenter and wheelwright he had been made Archbishop of Mainz, took the wheel for his insignia, that he might, ever mindful of his former meager fortune, contain himself in humility; which his successors thereafter retained, as our Serarius narrates in his Mainz, book IV, page 723.
Similar is what Glycas relates, book IV Annals, about a Sultan captured by the king of the Franks, who, when he had never laughed in chains, upon seeing the rotation of a chariot burst into laughter; being asked the cause, he said that this rotation had represented to him his own and the vicissitude of human affairs, by which now these, now those, indeed each one is now raised up, now cast down: wherefore, freed from his chains, he was admitted by the king into the number of his Counselors. This is what Boethius, having experienced it in himself, says concerning the wheel of fortune, book II On Consolation, prose 1: "This is our power, this is the game we continually play: we turn the wheel with rolling orb, we dare to change the lowest with the highest, the highest with the lowest. Ascend, if you please; but on this law, that you not, when the reason of my play demands it, think it an injury to descend."
Thus also Theodorus, the physician of Priscus, in Nicephorus, book XVIII, ch. xxix, recounts a certain king, joined to the chariot of King Sesostris, watching the continuous rotations of his wheels, and comparing our life to these, claimed liberty for himself and his men. For Sesostris had ordered four conquered kings to draw his chariot like horses; but, moved by the wise speech of this one, he loosed them from this yoke. Truly Pythagoras in Diogenes Laertius, book VIII, says that human life is like a market and a fair, to which while some come, others return, some to sell, some to buy, some to look on.
Furthermore, the other vices occupy a certain part of age and life, as gluttony childhood, lust youth, ambition the virile age, etc., and almost all grow old and die with the man: the vice of the tongue alone occupies all of life, as St. James here says, and endures in old age. For talkativeness is proper to old men, by which they recount all the things they have done, seen, and heard throughout their whole life; wherefore they think themselves wise, and that it is for them to speak, but for the young to be silent, to listen, or to learn. Now among all the vices of the tongue, the most harmful, perpetual, and as it were enduring through all of life, is detraction. This inflames the whole wheel and course of our age, and blackens and stains another's. This is what disturbs households, cities, and kingdoms: this is what stirs up hatreds, lawsuits, undying quarrels, and wars of mutual destruction. This is what everywhere rages and dominates: whence someone compares it to the steel flint of a musket, which by collision against the wheel-lock elicits fire which, igniting the sulphurous powder, hurls forth a leaden ball, by which it instantly strikes and kills anyone like a thunderbolt; but he wrongly thinks that St. James speaks of it: for this is not the wheel of nativity, nor known in the age of St. James, but a most recent invention of an anonymous German, who first displayed it to the Venetians in the war against the Genoese, in the year of the Lord 1330, as Polydore Vergil narrates, book II On the Inventors of Things, ch. XI.
Finally, our Augustine Quiros here newly, but ingeniously and aptly explains this wheel. "I think," he says, "that the wheel here is taken metaphorically for that most bitter and most ancient torture, which the Greeks called τροχόν, the Latins rota: of which torment mention is made in Proverbs ch. xx, v. 26: 'And he bends over them an arch'; where in the Hebrew text and in the Septuagint edition we read: 'And he shall bring upon them the wheel,' in Greek τροχόν; and Vatablus there observes that it was a kind of punishment used among the Hebrews. And indeed in that torment not only were men most atrociously dismembered with their limbs stretched and loosened, but they were also burned by fires brought near, as is plainly evident from Josephus in the book On the Maccabees, whose words are these: 'As he was affixed to the wheel, he is thrown to the fire on the rack; and so, with the spokes stretching the body and the flames contracting it, and then with the ribs laid bare, the vitals of his sides are burst.' And from Apuleius, book III On the Golden Ass: 'Without delay, fire and the wheel: then every kind of scourge is brought in.' Tertullian in his Apology, ch. L, affirms that Christians were called sarmentitii (faggot-men) by way of mockery from this kind of punishment: 'Because we are bound to a stake of half an axle,' he says, 'and burned with a circle of faggots.' Baronius treats of this torment in his Martyrology, on the 23rd of April; Pontanus in book VI of the Aeneid, col. 1485; Turnebus, book VII of his Adversaria, ch. xvi. But of all most recently, and most accurately, our Cerda in book VI of the Aeneid, v. 616, no. 10; Bisciola, tome II of his Spare Hours, book XII, ch. ix. 'The wheel of nativity' therefore I explain by metaphor as the torment of our nature: for Plautus too used metaphorically both the word and the punishment of the wheel, in the Cistellaria, act II, scene 1: 'I am tossed, tortured, driven, goaded, turned wretchedly on the wheel of love.' James used the same generative case, ch. 1, v. 23, when he called the natural face the 'countenance of nativity.' But what punishment more atrocious, what executioner of our nature more truculent can be devised than the uncontrollable disturbances of the mind? Since they are innate, that is, ingrained by nature itself, when they exceed the measure intemperately, they torture man most miserably and bitterly: so that they are deservedly called the wheel of nativity, that is, native torture. This explanation occurred to the most sagacious mind of our Serarius, when he says in his Commentary on this passage: 'Or the wheel is any innate disturbance, by which, as by a wheel, we are rotated and driven hither and thither.'" These are his words.
Therefore our life is a wheel, not just any wheel, but a torturing and tormenting one, and so it is itself the torment of the wheel, because it is nothing other than a continuous rotation of labors, diseases, pains, anxieties, disturbances, cares, fears, lusts, miseries, and all evils, which continually but variously rotate, tear, rend, drive out the brain of the man: but to this torment of the wheel the wanton tongue adds another, namely fire, when, like fire, it burns, tortures, consumes the man already rotated by so many evils: just as was the torment of the wheel; for which the body, in order to be fitted to the wheel, had necessarily to be broken, deboned, dislocated. Then the body thus bound to the wheel and hanging was rotated in a circle, and that most swiftly and reversibly, so that now it was turned to one side, now to the opposite side with rocking motion: by which it came about that all the entrails and members were tossed and torn apart in a wretched manner, according to that of Seneca in Hercules Furens: "Twisted Ixion is whirled on the swift wheel." And Statius, in book VIII of the Thebaid: "I break with Ixion's whirlings." Finally, not seldom a fire was placed beneath the man thus affixed to the wheel, as Josephus testifies was done to the Maccabees in their Life. Such also is the wheel of our life, kindled by the fire of the tongue.
This Ecclesiasticus, ch. xxviii, v. 16, calls "a third tongue," because it sows discord between two, and because it detracts a third party who is absent. Others explain "third" as three-pronged, because like a trident, a three-headed sword, and a three-forked thunderbolt, it strikes and finishes off three with one blow — namely the detractor, the hearer, and the absent one against whom it detracts, as St. Bernard notes in his sermon On the Threefold Custody of the hand, the tongue, and the heart. But let us hear both. "A third tongue," says Ecclesiasticus, "hath disturbed many, and scattered them from nation to nation: it hath destroyed the strong cities of the rich, and overthrown the houses of great men: it hath cut down the virtues of peoples, and undone strong nations: a third tongue hath cast out manly women (in Greek ἀνδρείας, that is, virile women, viragoes), and deprived them of their labors. He that hearkens to it shall not have rest, nor shall he have a friend in whom to repose. The stroke of a whip makes a bruise: but the stroke of the tongue will break the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have perished by their own tongue. Blessed is he that is defended from a wicked tongue, that hath not passed into the wrath thereof, and that hath not drawn the yoke thereof, and hath not been bound in its bands: for its yoke is a yoke of iron, and its band is a band of brass. The death thereof is a most evil death: and hell is preferable to it," — as if to say: It is better to die and go to the underworld and the state of the departed, that is, to limbo, than to suffer the vexations of the third tongue, that is, of the detractor.
St. Bernard's words are: "Is not this tongue a viper? Most ferocious indeed, which so lethally infects three with one breath. Is not this tongue a lance? Surely, and most sharp, which penetrates three with one blow. 'Their tongue,' says the Psalmist, 'is a sharp sword.' Indeed a sword two-edged, nay three-edged, is the tongue of the detractor. Nor would you fear to call such a tongue more cruel even than that very point with which the Lord's side was pierced. For this also pierces the body of Christ, and member by member, nor does it pierce when already lifeless, but makes lifeless by piercing: it is even more harmful than those thorns which military fury imposed upon that so sublime Head; even than those six iron nails which the consummation of Jewish iniquity drove into those most holy hands and feet. For unless He had preferred the life of that body which is now stricken and transfixed to the life of His own body, He would never have delivered the latter for the sake of the former to the injury of death, to the ignominy of the cross. And we say: A light thing is speech, tender, soft, and slight is flesh, the tongue of man: what wise man should reckon it of much account? Speech is indeed a light thing, because it flies lightly, but wounds gravely; it passes lightly, but burns gravely; it penetrates the mind lightly, but does not depart lightly; it is uttered lightly, but is not lightly recalled; it flies easily, and so easily violates charity. A dying fly is a vile thing, but it destroys the oil of sweetness. The tongue is a tender member, yet it can scarcely be held: in substance indeed weak and slight, but in use is found great and powerful. It is a small member; but unless you take care, a great evil."
Inflamed by hell. — Cajetan translates this actively, "inflames under Gehenna," as if to say: The tongue inflames the wheel of our nativity, that is, the present life as to fault, but the future as to punishment: for in Gehenna and under Gehenna — that is, placed below and subjected to the fire of Gehenna — the burning, sulphurous wheel will inflame, throughout all eternity, the man who has abused his tongue all his life. Thus the rich Glutton in Gehenna was tormented in his tongue, by which, living delicately, he had despised Lazarus: whence he begged that Lazarus be sent to him, so that the cold thrown on him might mitigate the burnings of his tongue, Luke xvi.
But "inflamed" must be rendered passively, as our translator and others everywhere render it: for it is the Hebrew passive φλογιζομένη, set in apposition to the active φλογιζούσα, which he said of the wheel of nativity, as if to say: The tongue is so deadly, so consumes all things, so inflames the wheel of our whole life, that it seems forged in the furnace of Gehenna, and there inflamed by Tartarean fire, to inflame the wheel and course of every man's whole life, and consequently of the whole Universe: just as the Poets imagined the furies, with torches kindled from Erebus, breathing them out upon the earth lying near above them, by a catachresis by which we assign each thing to the places in which they abound. Thus all rivers are said to arise from the sea, Eccles. 1, 7, because the sea abounds in waters. Therefore, just as a wright or carpenter, in preparing his hammer for crushing and cutting woods and stones, first sends the same to the fiery anvil, that it may there be fitted and sharpened: so the slanderous man, by infernal and diabolical impulse, kindles his tongue in the furnace of Gehenna, that he may afterward set ablaze others.
Add that the tongue is said to be inflamed by Gehenna by metonymy, namely because it is inflamed by the devil, who is the king and president of Gehenna. Therefore, just as the Saints, especially doctors and preachers, speak with the tongue of angels — indeed, angels speak through their tongue — so on the contrary the perverse, especially teachers, like heretics, schismatics, whisperers, sowers of quarrels and wars, teachers of obscene things, biters of another's reputation, etc., speak with the tongue of demons — indeed, demons speak through their mouths and tongues. Whence St. Augustine teaches that all heresiarchs learned their heresies from the devil their teacher, in book II On Genesis against the Manichees, ch. xxv and xxvi; Irenaeus, book V, ch. xxiii; St. Athanasius, oration against the Arians. Indeed Irenaeus relates, book I, ch. ix, and book II, ch. lvii, that they had demons as paredri, that is, assessors and familiars. I have shown at 1 Timothy IV, 1, that Berengarius, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli had the same. This is what Job says, ch. xli, v. 12, about Behemoth, that is, the elephant, who is a type of the devil: "His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth." And St. John, Apocalypse ch. IX, v. 17: "And I saw the horses in the vision, and they that sat upon them had breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and of brimstone, and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and from their mouth came forth fire, and smoke, and brimstone." See what is said there. Let St. Chrysostom conclude, in his homily To Those to be Baptized, tome V: "On every side," he says, "the demon is wont to prepare snares for us; but more easily when one sins with the tongue and mouth: for no instrument is so suitable to him in the ministry of destruction and sin."
Finally, Gehenna is the proper place of fire and conflagrations, and as it were their fountain, indeed their ocean and abyss: for the damned burn, as with every fault and crime, so also with every punishment and fire; wherefore just as Aetna, Vesuvius, Hekla, and similar mountains which vomit fires are said by many to be kindled by the fire of hell, and to be as it were its mouth, chimneys, and vents: so also the tongue, which stirs up the burnings of lawsuits, wars, conflagrations, and of all crimes and evils both of fault and of punishment, is said to be inflamed by Gehenna, as if it inflamed the whole world; this is a catachresis: for the slanderous tongue is not truly and properly inflamed by Gehenna, but by likeness; namely because it is so slanderous, so pestilent and burning, that it seems to be kindled not by earthly but by infernal fire. For in hell the damned, in their desperation, with a fiery and raging tongue curse God, the Saints, and all creatures. By a similar trope we say: This pride of the tyrant, this anger, this envy is so great that it seems not human, but infernal and diabolical.
Gehenna. — So by crasis it is called in Hebrew "ge-ben Ennom," that is, the valley of the son of Ennom, which was near Jerusalem, in which parents burned their sons to the idol Moloch, and lest they hear them wailing, they beat the toph, that is, the timbrel; whence the place was called Tophet. There also 185 thousand soldiers of Sennacherib were slain by the angel with hidden burning and fire: hence on account of similar cruelty, slaughter, and burnings, hell is called Gehenna and Tophet, as I said on Isaiah xxxii, 33, and Jeremiah vii, 31, and xix, 2.
Finally, Abbot Gilbert excellently treats this whole sentence of James in the Appendix to the Canticles of St. Bernard, sermon 24, and says: "James says: The tongue, a small member, inflames the wheel of our nativity, being itself also inflamed by Gehenna. How can a tongue so very badly inflamed inflame well? The mobile corruption of vitiated nativity is by itself rolled too much toward evil, and is borne headlong by its own volubility. And what need is there to inflame this wheel, which cannot be made stable, but is borne by itself toward evil? Finally, it is carefully observed that the heart of man is bent on evil from his adolescence. From his first nativity it knows not how to bend its course when impelled, and yet do you with a perverse tongue impel it further and inflame it? The perverse tongue seeks occasions of anger and indignation, either feigns false injuries or exaggerates true ones, which it ought to have dissembled; it interprets even kindnesses as offenses, and applies the sparks of poisoned speech to stir up its own heart. What, wicked tongue, do you apply such a flame to your own heart? Let its own flame suffice it, let the carnal ardor of concupiscence and the inborn heat of levity suffice it, by which your heart is driven as by a turning wheel. Then he reckons its origin and end. This flame your first nativity engendered for you, but the grace of being reborn restrains it. Do not add fire to fire, nor add malice to concupiscence: this fire which you vomit forth you draw from Gehenna: thence it begins, and thither it carries: The tongue, he says, is inflamed by Gehenna. This evil tongue is scarlet, but it is not a fillet. For it does not bind, but scatters. It kindles ill because it cuts asunder what is united, because it kindles the words of dissension, and such a flame is from below: for the flame which is from above is chaste, peaceful, agreeing with the good, and making men good. For a sweet word both multiplies friends and mitigates enemies. As flame consumes flame, so the upper consumes the lower, the heavenly the infernal; when the wise and pleasant word conquers the malignant, and the sweet softens the harsh, and therefore he says: Like a scarlet fillet are your lips, and your speech is sweet."
Verse 7: For Every Nature of Beasts, and of Birds, and of Serpents, and of the Rest, Is Tamed by the Human Nature
7. For every nature of beasts. — St. James, in order to show how great a force and efficacy the tongue has, and consequently how great care must be applied to it, first compared it to the bridle of a horse; secondly, to the rudder of a ship; thirdly, to a small fire setting a forest ablaze. Hence fourthly, here he compares it to the most ferocious beasts, and to those more savage and untamable than they: and this aptly with reference to the etymology of the tongue in Hebrew; for the tongue in Hebrew is called לשון lascon, which seems to be a diminutive from ליש lais, that is, lion (just as from איש is, that is, man, is derived ישרון iscon, that is, little man and pupil of the eye: for in it a little man appears). Hence lascon, that is, tongue, is the same as a little lion, a small lion; because just as the lion is fierce and the strongest of animals, and the king of all beasts: so also the tongue is most fierce and most strong, and chief and mistress of all. Again, just as the lion lurks in his cave, and from there suddenly leaps upon his seen prey: so the tongue lurks in the mouth as if in ambush, and from there invades all who come within reach and the unwary. Furthermore lais, that is, lion, is derived from לוש lus, that is, he subdued, because he subdues his prey and subjects all wild beasts to himself. Hence others derive lascon, that is, tongue, by metathesis from נשל nascal, that is, he stripped off, cast down: for in both cases the letters are exactly the same, but transposed: for lascon is nascal, that is, the tongue strips, casts down, subdues, and lays low all things like a lion. Furthermore from the Hebrew lascon some derive the Greek glosson, that is, tongue, with the addition of g, and from glosson they derive the Latin gloria, as if glosia: for it is the tongue that boasts, and it is the one instrument of boasting and vainglory. In a similar way some hold that the tongue is called lingua in Latin from ligando (binding), because, as if an untamed beast and lion, it is fenced and bound by the hedges of teeth and lips as by walls. Hence concerning the slanderous tongue Ecclesiasticus, chapter xxviii, verse 27, says: "It will be sent upon them (the unjust and impious) like a lion, it will harm them like a leopard." It is therefore as it were a leopard, more savage than a lion or a leopard, inasmuch as it has sucked out the savagery of each and joined them in itself. Hence also that of Proverbs xx, 2: "As the roaring of a lion, so also is the terror," namely of the tongue, and the terrifying voice, "of a king: he who provokes him sins against his own soul," as if to say: He creates danger to his soul, that is, his life. And Isaiah v, 29, concerning Nebuchadnezzar: "His roaring is as that of a lion, he shall roar like the whelps of lions." Ezekiel xxxii, 7; Zachariah xi, 3, are similar.
Note: In the state of innocence and integrity of nature, in which Adam was created and placed in paradise, all animals, even wild beasts, obeyed man at his nod. Hence each one came to Adam as servants to a master, and from him each received its name, Genesis ii, 19. This took place through an instinct of obeying man, which God instilled in them through the angels: for through such an instinct dogs, horses, asses, mules, and oxen obey man, and the cubs of wild beasts obey their wild mothers. The beasts lost this instinct when Adam sinned, who consequently lost his lordly right and dominion over them through sin. Yet eminent saints, who most closely approached primeval innocence, recovered this dominion, as Saints Paul, Antony, and Francis did. Other men by long practice, art, and industry impart a similar instinct to wild beasts, and so tame and domesticate them in some way.
Firstly therefore that all wild beasts can be tamed by man is taught by many examples. It is established by experience, and Pliny teaches in book VIII, chapter xvi, that by this art lions are tamed and conquered, even when raging and rushing in, if one casts upon their head a cloak or garment by which their eyes are veiled, "because all force and ferocity consists in the eyes." Pliny adds: "M. Antony first subdued them to the yoke, and was the first to harness them to a chariot at Rome, and indeed in the civil war, when battle had been fought on the Pharsalian fields. The first of men however who dared to handle a lion with his hand, and to display it tamed, was Hanno, of the most illustrious of the Carthaginians, and he was condemned for that reason, since a man of such artful genius seemed likely to persuade anything; and liberty was ill entrusted to one to whom even ferocity had so far yielded. Mentor of Syracuse, when in Syria a lion met him and rolled before him as a suppliant, struck with fear, when as he was fleeing the beast on every side set itself before him and licked his footprints like a fawning creature, noticed on its foot a swelling and a wound, and by drawing out a stick freed it from its torment."
Similar is what I recounted about the lion obedient to Androdus on account of a thorn drawn from its foot by him, on Isaiah i, 3. And Pliny adds the like concerning Elpis the Samian, and in chapter lviii, concerning Democritus the Physicist, who, taking cubs from a den from a fawning panther, "was led by her, glad and rejoicing, beyond solitudes, so that it easily appeared she was returning thanks." He adds about infants nourished by the milk of beasts, when they had been exposed, as Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf. Aelian in book XV, chapter xiv, relates that the Indians offered their king tame tigers, leopards, and four-horned oryxes. Paulus Venetus in his History of the Tartars relates that their great Khan keeps tame lions, tigers, leopards, bears, etc., with which he amuses himself in hunting, and hunts wild beasts of the same species. That tame rhinoceroses were brought to Rome under the Emperor Domitian, Suetonius and others relate. Concerning the astonishing docility of elephants, which seems to exceed belief, Lipsius reviews the testimonies of Aelian, Pliny, Oppian, Aristotle, and others, in century 1, epistle 50. Finally, the bestiarii, or keepers of beasts, at Rome reared and managed lions, tigers, leopards, bears, and all kinds of wild beasts, which they led from cages into the amphitheater for combats and spectacles, and led them back again.
James therefore, comparing the tongue with beasts, hints that there is in it something irrational, foolish, and bestial, and therefore untamable. Thus the Philosophers consider talkativeness to be a sign of a small brain and judgment, and so of foolishness. Whence Solon, when someone said that a certain man did not speak because he was insane, said: "No fool can keep silent." Theocritus, hearing the beginning of a speech by Anaximenes, said: "A river of words is beginning, a drop of mind," signifying that he was a great talker, but little wise. So Stobaeus, sermon 34. Alfonso, king of Aragon, according to Panormita in his Deeds, book IV, called men swollen and as if distended for talking "bottles and bladders": for they swell until they belch them out. Wherefore Aeneas Silvius prudently says, book I On the Deeds of the same Alfonso: "It is wiser to act than to speak": for the wise man never speaks unless necessity requires it; nor does he utter vain things, but weighty ones. To the fool, however, no time is closed for speech, but in any place and at any time he blurts out whatever comes into his mouth.
Secondly, that any kind of birds can be tamed by man, namely falcons, eagles, hawks, blackbirds, jackdaws, nightingales, etc., is clear from experience; and indeed many of them learn human speech, both Greek and Latin: as Pliny relates concerning the starling and the nightingales of the Caesars, in book X, chapter xlii. The same Plutarch affirms about the partridge in the Symposia. Concerning parrots the matter is plain. Pliny in the place cited asserts the same about magpies of a certain kind: "They love," he says, "the words which they speak; nor do they only learn, but they love, and meditating within themselves with care and thought, they do not conceal their intention. It is established that they die conquered by the difficulty of a word, and unless they hear the same words again and again, memory deceives them when they are searching; they are marvelously cheered if in the meantime they hear that word." Charming are the things Macrobius relates, book II of the Saturnalia, chapter x, at the end, concerning the ravens that saluted Augustus: "Hail, Caesar, victor, emperor," which he bought for twenty thousand sesterces. "Hunting after similar profit, a cobbler trained a raven to a like salutation. Hearing this as he passed by, Augustus replied: I have enough such greeters at home. The raven still had memory enough to add what it used to hear its master saying when seeking it: Labor and expense lost. At which Caesar laughed, and ordered the bird to be bought, for as much as he had not yet bought any." He adds about the jackdaw which used to offer Caesar an honorific epigram, and Caesar praised a similar one offered by reading it, admiring it as much in voice as in countenance, and gave Caesar a few denarii, adding these words: "Not according to your fortune, Augustus; if you had more, I would have given more." Therefore Augustus ordered one hundred thousand sesterces to be paid out to the jackdaw. But for "jackdaw" (graculo) one should read "little Greek" (Graeculo), namely a Greek fellow, as is clear from the sequence of the narrative and from the emended manuscripts of Macrobius.
Third, that serpents are tamed is clear from Pliny, book VIII, chapter VII, who relates that "Thoas in Arcadia was saved by a serpent. A boy had nourished it, loved it greatly, and fearing the nature and size of the serpent had carried it off into solitary places; in which, when surrounded by an ambush of robbers and recognized by his voice, the serpent came to his aid." The same author, book X, chapter LXXIV, relates a marvelous thing about an asp: "For when she had been continually fed coming to a certain man's table in Egypt, having brought forth her cubs, the host's son was killed by one of them: she, returning to her customary meal, understood the fault, and inflicted death on the cub, nor did she afterwards return to that house." Pliny and others relate that the Psylli and Marsi tame serpents, although some wise men think they are enchanters. Aelian, book VIII, chapter IV, relates that crocodiles are made tame: others add that the Tentyritae ride upon them; and he also adds that the moray fish recognized the voice of the Roman Crassus, and was so nourished and loved by him that it grieved at his death. About the dolphin's wonderful love and obedience toward men, Pliny relates in book IX, chapter VIII, namely that the dolphin itself, having received on its back the boy by whom it was fed, "used to carry him through the great sea to Puteoli to school: bringing him back in like manner for many years, until, when the boy had died of disease, the dolphin coming repeatedly to the accustomed place, sad and like one mourning, itself also expired from longing." And below: "These things make it believed that Arion also, the artist of cithara-playing, when sailors were preparing to kill him at sea to intercept his earnings, having coaxed them that he might first sing with his cithara, when dolphins had gathered at his song, when he had cast himself into the sea, was received by one and carried to the shore at Taenarus." He adds that dolphins called by fishermen run to them, and drive the mullets into their nets. What therefore of these untamable, talkative, and untamed men? Indeed dolphins and beasts are more docile than they, and allow themselves more to be tamed and ruled.
And of the rest — of animals. Thus the Roman edition reads: the Interpreter renders τῶν ἄλλων, that is, "of others"; or ἐναλίων, that is, "of various kinds": now they read ἐναλίων, that is, "of marine creatures": so the Syriac. Hence some think one should read "of sea-monsters" (cetorum) for "of the rest" (caeterorum). Thus Cajetan, Clarius, Salmeron, Gagneius, Catharinus, and others. For there are various species of sea-monsters, which Rondeletius and Aldrovandus list in their book On Fishes. The greatest is the whale, which a little fish, named the musculus, tames, indeed rules. For it leads and goes before her, and is as it were her eye, guide, and monitor, showing the shoals and dangers she must avoid, pointing out food, and foreseeing and forewarning of all other things: hence when it dies, the whale likewise dies, as Aelian testifies in book II, chapter XIII, and others. But the word "cetorum" does not correspond to the Greek ἐναλίων, that is, "of marine creatures": for there are countless kinds of marine animals, of which the whale is only one.
They are tamed — he does not say "made tame," because some beasts are so wild that they plainly cannot be made tame; but "they are tamed," so that, namely, their wildness may be checked and restrained. Now many are tamed by feeding: for they obey him by whom they are fed; others by bridles and halters; others by whips and beatings; others by things they fear, as lions are terrified by flames, wheels, and the voice of a rooster; others by hunger and starvation. Hence that saying: "Who taught his parrot 'hello' (χαῖρε)? Hunger." Others by animals hostile to themselves. Thus Pliny says in book X, chapter LXXIV: "Swans and eagles disagree, the raven and the kite, crows and owls, the weasel and the crow, the turtle-dove and the pyralis, ducks and seagulls, shrews and herons, the aegithus, smallest of birds, with the ass, foxes and the snakes of the Nile, weasels and pigs: jackals disagree with lions, and the smallest as much as the greatest."
Verse 8: But the Tongue No Man Can Tame, an Unquiet Evil, Full of Deadly Poison
8. But the tongue no man can tame. — Œcumenius reads it interrogatively, as if to say: Wild beasts are tamed, why cannot the tongue be tamed by man? It can altogether: for it is more human and more docile than wild beasts. The Pelagians abused this reading and exposition to prove that God's grace is not necessary, but that man by his own and nature's powers can restrain all the passions and concupiscences both of the tongue and of the soul. But wrongly: for the rest of the Greek and Latin writers read it assertively, not interrogatively. For there follows: "An unquiet evil, full of deadly poison." So St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, chapter XV. The same, in sermon 4 On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew: "Man," he says, "tames a wild beast, but does not tame his tongue; he tames a lion, and does not restrain his speech; he tames another, and does not tame himself; he tames what he feared, and so as to tame himself, does not fear what he ought to have feared." And shortly after: "Therefore let us understand, dearest brethren, that if no man can tame the tongue, we must flee to God, that He may tame our tongue. For if you wish to tame it, you cannot, because you are a man: no man can tame the tongue." Thus Christ, Matt. XIX, 24, says that it is as impossible for a rich man to be saved as it is impossible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. When the disciples wondered and said: "Who then can be saved?" Christ answered and explained Himself, saying: "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible," as if to say: Not by man's power, but by God's power and grace can a rich man be saved, just as a camel can pass through the eye of a needle. St. Augustine continues: "Consider the likeness from the very beasts which we tame. The horse does not tame itself, the camel does not tame itself, the elephant does not tame itself, the asp does not tame itself, the lion does not tame itself, and so man does not tame himself. But that the horse, ox, camel, elephant, lion, asp may be tamed, man is sought. Therefore let God be sought that man may be tamed: therefore, Lord, Thou hast become a refuge for us, etc. Why then, my brethren, ought we to doubt, that the Lord will make us gentle, if we offer ourselves to Him to be tamed? Thou hast tamed the lion which Thou didst not make; will not He tame thee who made thee? etc. The image of God tames the wild beast, and does God not tame His own image?" He adds the manner of God's taming, namely tribulations. "In Him," he says, "let us place our hope, and until we are tamed and thoroughly tamed, that is, perfected, let us bear the tamer. For our tamer often brings forth even whips. For if you, in order to tame your beasts of burden (that is, the helps of your weakness), bring out a rod, bring out a whip: shall God not bring out, in order to tame His beasts of burden, which we are, He who will make of His beasts of burden His own sons?" And shortly after He gives the spur of reward: "For thee when tamed God reserves an inheritance, which is God Himself; and He shall set thee with the angels for ever, where now thou wilt not need to be tamed, but only to be possessed by the most loving One. For God will then be all in all: nor will there be any unhappiness to exercise us, but only happiness which feeds us." He adds the example of the son whom the father chastises and instructs, that he may leave him heir of all his goods: "But thy God, thy Redeemer, thy chastiser, thy Father, instructs thee. Why? That thou mayest receive the inheritance, where thou shalt not bury the father, but shalt have as inheritance the Father Himself. Art thou instructed for this hope, and dost thou murmur, and if anything sad happens, dost thou perhaps blaspheme? Is it not better that He scourge thee and receive thee, than that He spare thee and forsake thee?" Whence he concludes: "Let us therefore say: From Thee we will not depart, when Thou hast freed us from all our evils, and filled us with Thy good things. Thou givest goods, Thou dost flatter, lest we be wearied in the way. Thou dost rebuke, beat, strike, direct, lest we wander from the way: whether therefore Thou dost flatter, lest we be wearied in the way: or chastise, lest we wander from the way; Lord, Thou hast become a refuge for us." This is what the Wise Man says in Prov. XVI, 1: "It is for man to prepare the soul, and for the Lord to govern the tongue." For, as Ecclesiasticus says, ch. XIX, v. 17: "Who is he that hath not offended with his tongue?" so that even St. Job, so praised by God, says, ch. XLII, v. 3: "I have spoken unwisely, and things that beyond measure exceeded my knowledge." For so great is the tongue's desire and itching to speak as is that of one who has drunk poison to vomit it forth, as great as that of bubbling new wine bursting flagons, as great as that of a pregnant woman to give birth, as great as that of a wounded man for the arrow to be removed. Hear Ecclesiasticus, ch. XIX, v. 10: "Hast thou heard," he says, "a word against thy neighbor? let it die in thee, trusting that it will not burst thee. At the face of a word the fool is in travail, as the groans of childbirth. As an arrow stuck in the flesh of the thigh, so is a word in the heart of a fool." Whence Elihu, Job XXXII, 18: "I am full of words," he says, "and the spirit of my belly straiteneth me. Behold, my belly is as new wine without vent, which bursteth new vessels." Hence the tongue is called by Nazianzen, in his treatise On Silence, ἀδάμαστος, that is, untamable; ἀχάλινος, that is, unbridled; ἄλεκτος, that is, lawless, because, namely, it cannot be bridled by nature, but by grace; not by man, but by God. Again, because with common and ordinary grace no one — that is, few and scarcely any — can so bridle it that it does not sometimes go astray, and shaking off the bridle like an unbridled horse run hither and thither, and rage to the harm of others. Hence Nazianzen, in the place cited, says that by fasts, vigils, hairshirts, sleeping on the ground, he had tamed gluttony, lust, anger, etc., but not the tongue.
"For, he says, my tongue is unbridled and garrulous, by which envy ever afflicts me with countless evils."
Truly he seems to speak not of his own tongue, but of the tongue of the envious who detract from him and harass him. Blessed Peter Damian splendidly handles this saying of James, in book II, epistle 18 to the Cardinal; and adds that for Religious, who are otherwise nearly secure, the danger of damnation comes from the tongue alone (which other wise men also formerly asserted, and still assert). "I confess, my brethren," he says, "that scarcely anything is done in monasteries from which my mind suspects the judgment of God to threaten more terribly over monks: for with continual impulse of passage, as a torrent flowing down sloping declivities, their tongue runs on; and when the little bell rings, it is to them as if their head were struck by a sudden blow. Which however I say of some — far be it from me to say of all, etc. Some, putting off the practice of laboring and reading at all hours, abuse it in stories, and whatever they owe to labors and readings they spend wholly on idle conversations." And shortly after, citing Prov. XVIII: "Death and life are in the hand of the tongue: How shameful it is," he says, "that in this gift, by which man is set above all creatures, the giver Himself is more often offended by man! And while man rules over the other natures, and subjects them to the laws of his dominion, what shame it is that the slender bit of flesh which he encloses within his jaws he cannot subdue! Hence James also says: Every nature of beasts and birds is tamable, but no man can tame the tongue. For no teacher's bridles can restrain the tongue of one unwilling to restrain himself (this is his new and third exposition of this passage of St. James); otherwise if he urges and strives, what he wishes he will doubtless attain." And below: "They are serpents of whom it is said: The poison of asps is under their lips. Where therefore one is occupied with superfluous trifles, and as it were tokens are heaped up with idle words, to the inwardly listening one not human speech, but as it were the manifold cry of beasts is discerned. He surely is the one of whom it is said in Canticles, ch. II: My beloved looks through the window, looks through the lattices. And He Himself through the Prophet (Jer. VIII): I have hearkened, He says, and listened; no one speaks what is good. But that our discourse may not depart from the matter once begun, and may pursue the vices of speakers through examples of non-speaking animals, the water-snake never enters the jaws, except when the crocodile is found yawning: for if it keeps its mouth closed, the snake fears not the assault of one lying in wait. The antelope, when it cries out, ignorant of its own destruction, invites the swords of the hunter; which, until it kept silent, deluded the pursuer's industry by the supposition of swift flight. And to add this, what the crab does to the oyster, the devil often does to the monk, etc. He skillfully reconnoiters, if at any time the oyster opens itself to the rays of the sun: then therefore the clandestine assailant inserts a pebble, and so finding the gaping doors, plucks the inner flesh of the oyster. The oyster signifies the monk, who indeed lives so long as he is enclosed under the censure of silence: but he perishes when he is opened too immoderately to speech. For what does the pebble signify, which is cast in lest the oyster close again, except the hardness of habit, by which each is hardened lest he soften himself to repentance? For as it were a certain little stone of evil habit hinders him who is given over to the trifles of stories from withdrawing himself from his own vanity. The crab, which by nature walks backwards, is the apostate spirit, who, after once having departed from his Creator, has never ceased to slip back into worse."
An unquiet evil — ἀκατάσχετον, that is, as Pagninus and Vatablus render, incoercible; St. Jerome, in book II Against Pelagius, "incontinens," namely passively, what cannot be contained and restrained; others, "incohibile"; the Syriac, "inimpedibile," "irremorabile"; others, intolerable.
Some read ἀκατάστατον, that is, inconstant, unstable, unable to remain still, just as the heart and the lung, to which the tongue corresponds and is likened in form, cannot stay still, but are perpetually moved: the heart, that it may supply vital spirits to the whole body; the lung, that it may cool the heart. Whence the Poet: "The heart understands, the lung speaks, the gall stirs anger, the spleen makes one laugh, the liver compels to love."
Likewise ἀκατάστατος is seditious and tumultuous: for ἀκαταστασία is sedition, inconstancy, tumult, confusion, the disturbed order of things. Hence there also follows: "Full of deadly poison." Furthermore, why the tongue is unquiet, St. Augustine gives the cause, sermon 31 On the Words of the Apostle: "The tongue," he says, "has facility of motion, is placed in moisture, easily slips in the slippery. The more quickly and easily it moves, the more fixed you must be against it. You will tame it, if you keep watch; you will keep watch, if you fear; you will love, if you remember that you are a Christian."
Full of deadly poison, by which it kills the reputation of one's neighbor, one's own soul and the hearer's, and often the bodies of many through the hatreds, quarrels, and wars which it stirs up; whence Ps. CXXXIX, 4: "They have sharpened their tongues, he says, like a serpent's: the poison of asps is under their lips." And Ps. V, 11: "Their throat is an open sepulchre, they dealt deceitfully with their tongues, judge them, O God." It is a sepulchre, first, because the cursing throat is deadly, and kills those it touches, and brings them into the sepulchre, according to that of Jer. V, 16: "His quiver is as an open sepulchre," as if to say: Nebuchadnezzar's arrows are deadly, and he will kill and bury all whom he transfixes.
Second, because like a sepulchre it exhales a foul and deadly breath, and the virulence of slanders, deceits, and impious machinations.
Third, those who speak obscenities, says St. Chrysostom in the same place, have mouths like sepulchres, because that spiritual stench, which arises from the putrefaction of the soul, is greater and more grievous than any sensible stench. The tongue therefore is like quicksilver, or living silver, which cannot stand still, but is perpetually agitated, and if it is touched, leaps into a thousand minute parts; and it is a deadly poison, so that if even the least bit of it is drunk, it kills at once: as I once saw at Louvain a young man who tasted it out of curiosity killed on the spot. Furthermore James alludes to the tongue of asps and serpents, which is venomous and pours forth poison by its bite. For animals which harm by venom have venom enclosed in a sac under the tongue; which, when they bite, breaks, and they pour forth poison by the bite, says Mercurialis, in his book On Poisons, according to that of Job, ch. XX, v. 12: "For when evil shall be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue."
Verse 9: By It We Bless God and the Father, and by It We Curse Men, Who Are Made After the Likeness of God
9. By it (that is, by it, through it) we bless God both by chanting psalms, by teaching, by preaching, etc. For this is the end of the tongue for which it has been given us by God, namely that by it we should glorify God, and teach others to glorify Him. Thus did St. Anthony of Padua, who by preaching with burning heart and tongue converted countless souls to God. Hence in the 32nd year after his death, his tongue was found incorrupt, fresh, and ruddy by St. Bonaventure, who weeping kissed it: "O blessed tongue," he said, "which always blessed the Lord and taught others to bless Him, now it is clear how pleasing thou wast to Him, and of how great merit with Him." So has his Life and the Chronicles of the Order of St. Francis: which also add that the tongue of St. Bonaventure himself, 160 years after his death, namely in the year of our Lord 1434, was found whole and fresh, just as was his heart and head at the translation of his relics. So the Psalmist, Psalm XXXIII, v. 1: "I will bless," he says, "the Lord at all times, His praise shall be ever in my mouth." So the Saints in heaven sing nothing else with their tongue than the praises and great deeds of God, Apoc. IV, 8, and ch. V, v. 8, and ch. VII, v. 12: see what is said there. Wherefore St. Paul, as it were an earthly angel, striving to make the faithful into citizens of heaven and angels: "Be filled," he says, "with the Holy Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father," Eph. V, 18. So St. Nazianzen in the poem On Silence sings of the tongue: "I am the lyre of the supreme King, and with melodious strains I sing of Him who shakes all things with trembling fear."
So St. Augustine, in all thirteen books of his Confessions, continually blesses and praises the Lord; whence he begins thus: "Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man, some portion of Thy creature, desires to praise Thee, even man bearing about his mortality, bearing about the witness of his sin, because Thou resistest the proud: and yet man desires to praise Thee, some portion of Thy creature. For Thou stirrest him up, that to praise Thee is delight to him: because Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rest in Thee." And book IX, chapter I: "Let my heart and my tongue praise Thee, and let all my bones say: Who is like unto Thee?" Wherefore the impious Nestorius, abusing his tongue and cursing Christ and His Mother, saying and teaching that Christ was not God, and consequently that His Mother was not the Mother of God (Deipara), but only the Mother of Christ (Christipara), was punished by God in the same: for his tongue was gnawed and eaten away by worms, as Cedrenus and Evagrius testify, book I, chapter VII. On the contrary, many Martyrs, whose tongues had been cut out for the sake of confession, praised God just as if they had not been cut out, as the African Martyrs did, as Victor of Utica testifies in the Vandal Persecution. Therefore the whole life of the faithful, especially of Clerics, Religious, and Preachers, ought to be nothing else than continual praise and proclamation of God.
James says this, that he may show the proper end and use of the tongue, which is to bless and praise God, so that from it he may show the gravity of the abuse, by which men everywhere abuse the same impiously and as it were sacrilegiously to cursing. For, as St. Chrysostom says, hom. 14 on the Epistle to the Ephesians: "Thou hast a mouth," he says, "spiritual, sealed with the Holy Spirit: consider what is the dignity of thy mouth. Thou callest God Father, and dost soon revile thy brother? Consider what table thy mouth has been deemed worthy of, what it touches, what it tastes, what food it enjoys. Weigh with whom thou standest at the time of the mysteries, namely with the Cherubim and Seraphim. The Seraphim revile no one, but one and the same use fills their mouths, namely to bless and glorify God. How then canst thou with them say: Holy, holy, holy, when thou abusest thy mouth for reviling?" Therefore he is a portent who with his tongue proclaims God's goodness, but sharpens the same against his fellows and neighbors. Unworthy of the name of man is he who has peace in his mouth, but in deed sows quarrels and wars; who promises the seed of heavenly doctrine, and sows pure aconite. The same Chrysostom, hom. 21 on the Epistle to the Romans: "How," he says, "wilt thou receive the sacred oblation, thou who hast bloodied thy tongue with human blood? How dost thou give peace with thy mouth, so filled with wars?"
God and Father — God who is the Father of all. See what was said in ch. I, v. 27.
And by it we curse men — καταρώμεθα, that is, we execrate, we wish evil upon, we devote with dire imprecations; again, we slander, revile, mock, deride, etc.: for the verb "we curse" signifies all these things by catachresis. The Gentiles saw this same thing through a shadow: Anacharsis, when asked what was best in a man, what was worst, answered: the tongue; Laertius is witness, book I, chapter IX. Bias, when Amasis king of Egypt asked from the victim the best and the worst, sent him the tongue, recognizing that the tongue, if ruled by reason, is man's best member; but if instigated by anger or other passion, it is the worst. So Plutarch reports, in his book On Garrulity. See Pierius, book XXXIII, on the title On the Tongue.
Who are made after the likeness (that is, the image: see what was said in Gen. I, 26) of God, as if to say: By cursing men, we curse God, because men are the work, the creature, and the image of God. Splendidly does St. Ambrose say, in his book On the Dignity of the Human Condition, ch. III: "What greater honor," he says, "could there be to man, than to be made after the likeness of his Creator?" And St. Leo, sermon 1 On the Fast of the Tenth Month: "If we faithfully and wisely understand the beginning of our creation, we shall find that man was made after the image of God for this end, that he might be the imitator of his Author, and that this is the natural dignity of our race, if in us as in a certain mirror the form of the divine goodness shines forth." He explains the deadly poison of the tongue, and properly censures those who appear pious, and bless God by chanting psalms, praying, preaching, and meanwhile, prone to malediction, with the same tongue continually and petulantly curse their neighbors, the more harmfully indeed because, from the appearance of piety which they put forward, they seem to do this justly and piously. Such are not a few who are frequent in the divine offices, and returning home fill it with quarrels, brawls, slanders, curses, so that in the temple they appear to be angels, but at home demons. Against these one must contend with great patience, and one must think on that saying of Seneca, On Remedies for Misfortunes: "They know not how to speak well; they do not what I deserve, but what they are accustomed to do: for to certain dogs it is so innate that they bark not from wildness, but from custom."
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Behold, the tongue is so full of deadly poison that, even when it praises God, it does not cease from curses against neighbors, and so does injury to God, and so curses and blesses God at once. For he who violates or curses the image, indeed the friend and son of the king, violates or curses the king himself; much more he who does so to God's image. For he passes into the nature of God, as if he himself were God. He despises in himself a part of human nature, trusting in the divinity of the other part: joined by kindred divinity to the gods, he despises the part of himself which is earthly: all other things, by which he knows himself to be necessary by heavenly disposition, he binds to himself with the bond of charity, and so looks up to heaven. So therefore he is placed in a happier middle position, that he may love what is below him, while he himself is loved by those above. He is mingled with the elements by his swiftness. By acuteness of mind he descends into the depths of the sea: all things shine for him. Heaven does not seem too high; for he gazes upon it as it were near, by the sagacity of his mind. The mist of the air does not confound the intention of his mind, the depth of the water does not blunt his sight: he is the same in all things, and everywhere the same. For, as the Theologians say: "Man was made that he might understand God, by understanding might love Him, by loving might possess Him, by possessing might enjoy Him."
Verse 10: Out of the Same Mouth Proceed Blessing and Cursing; These Things Ought Not So to Be
10. Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing. — He aggravates the indignity of the evil, and presses it home by insisting and repeating, as if to say: Out of the same mouth therefore proceed blessing and cursing, which is plainly so iniquitous and unworthy in itself that it needs not, indeed cannot, be more aggravated by other words; whence Œcumenius again reads and understands these words interrogatively: "Is it just that out of the same mouth both blessing and detestation should go forth? Certainly not." Hence with a gentle and pious, but efficacious rebuke, St. James warns us to take care of this very thing earnestly, saying: "My brethren, these things ought not so to be"; but with the mouth only for blessing (for to this it has been given us by God), not for cursing, as is fitting for us. St. Maximus, sermon 43, and others fittingly expound this saying of James of flatterers who praise openly, revile secretly, and from the same mouth, as is commonly said, blow hot and cold. But the former sense seems the genuine one: for he speaks of the same blessing and cursing of which he has spoken immediately before.
Learn here gentleness in rebuking from St. James, which he himself learned from Christ, to whom he was in all things like, and was therefore called the brother of the Lord: hence he calls those subject to him "brethren." Splendidly St. Chrysostom, hom. 52 to the People, says that our tongue becomes the tongue of Christ if in speaking, teaching, and rebuking we imitate the gentleness of Christ. So David of himself: "Remember, O Lord, David, and all his meekness," Ps. CXXXI, 1. And Paul, II Cor. X, 1: "Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ." And Eph. IV, 1: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called, with all humility and mildness." And I Tim. VI, 11: "But thou, O man of God, fly these things; and pursue justice, godliness, faith, charity, patience, meekness." And to Titus, III, 2: "To show all meekness towards all men." Golden is the saying of the Wise Man: "My son, do thy works in meekness, and thou shalt be loved beyond the glory of men," Ecclus. III, 19.
Œcumenius reads these words interrogatively: "By it do we bless God, and by it do we curse men?" as if to say: Can it happen that with the same mouth and tongue we praise God and revile men, who are God's special possession and image? Can it happen that you praise and revile God at the same time? praise Him in Himself, revile Him in His image? Whence James adds: "My brethren, these things ought not so to be"; but if thou praisest God, praise also man, who is a great portion of God. This is what the Wise Man says, Prov. ch. XIV, v. 31: "He that oppresseth the poor upbraideth his Maker; but he that hath pity on the poor honoreth Him." And the Psalmist, Ps. XLIX, 16: "But to the sinner God hath said: Why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth? etc. Thy mouth hath abounded with evil, and thy tongue framed deceits, sitting thou didst speak against thy brother." Such men are like the panther, which, when it cannot harm a man, tears his image to pieces, as St. Basil testifies, oration 10 On Envy: so these too, when they cannot harm God in Himself, harm Him in His image, namely in man.
Note: Although man is by nature inferior to the angel, and so a lesser image of God, yet in certain respects he surpasses the angel, and is more an image of God than the angel is. First, because this visible world was created for the sake of man, not for the sake of the angel, who is an invisible spirit. Man therefore in the world is as it were a prince, king, and a kind of earthly God; in this therefore he represents God more than the angel does. Second, because all beasts, birds, fishes, elements, stars, heavens, indeed even angels serve man as they serve God. Third, because man, through so many inventions of things, through so many fabrications and machines, through so many sowings and productions of fruits, through so many mechanical arts by which he accomplishes everything, seems to imitate God's omnipotence, omniscience, and the creation of all things. Fourth, because the production of man represents the Holy Trinity: Adam, namely, unbegotten, represents the unbegotten Father: Eve produced from Adam, the begotten Son; Seth, the Holy Spirit proceeding from both, as Nazianzen suggests, oration 39. Fifth, because just as in God all species and degrees of things are present either formally or eminently: so are they also in man. For man has being in common with inanimate things, life with plants, sensation with animals, understanding with angels. Finally, man is the kinsman, blood-relation, and brother of God through the Incarnate Word, not the angel: for Christ when born did not "take hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham," Heb. II, 16. Do not therefore, O man, cast thyself down and be unworthy of so great a race, but, sharer in the divine nature, despise these vile and trifling things, look up to those great and divine things, imitate thy God. "Be a kind of God walking on earth, and a holy angel in flesh."
Trismegistus saw these things through a shadow; whence writing to Asclepius he exclaims: "O Asclepius, a great miracle is man, an animal to be adored."
Verse 11: Does a Fountain Send Forth From the Same Opening Sweet and Bitter Water
11. Does a fountain send forth from the same opening sweet and bitter water? — As if to say: No. Therefore neither ought man from the same mouth to bring forth blessing, which is as it were sweet water; and cursing, which is as it were bitter water embittering God and men, but only blessing. Again, just as bitter water mingled with sweet makes it bitter, so the bitterness of cursing consumes the sweetness of blessing in the same mouth, says Bede; as a little leaven corrupts the whole lump, I Cor. V, 6. Yet this does not prevent the preacher from sometimes flattering the people, sometimes threatening and rebuking; sometimes proposing the sweet promises of God, sometimes His bitter threats and punishments: because all these things lead the people to serving and blessing God, and therefore are God's blessing, not curse.
Note: Certain fountains pour forth sweet and bitter water, but at different times or in different places. Hear Pliny, book II, chapter CIII: "In the country of the Troglodytes there is a fountain called the Fountain of the Sun, which is sweet and very cold around midday; soon gradually growing tepid, by midnight it becomes infested with heat and bitterness." And shortly after: "The Lyncestian water, which is called Acidula, makes one drunk like wine. On the island of Andros, in the temple of Father Liber, Mutianus believes that a fountain flows always with the taste of wine on the nones of January." Our Conimbricensian commentators add, tract 9 on the Meteora, ch. IX, "that in the country of the Troglodytes there is a lake which thrice a day becomes bitter and salty and then sweet, and as many times also at night." Similar are in Ardennes, not far from Liège, the Sphadanian acid fountains, which yield the taste of iron, niter, sulphur, and vitriol; for their water flows through veins of iron, niter, sulphur, and vitriol, and absorbs their power and taste, as I learned from frequenting them over three years' experience: wherefore even neighboring fountains have different tastes, due to the different veins through which they pass: indeed the same fountain, if it flows through another vein, will change its taste.
Such also is Arethusa, the fountain and stream of Syracuse, which is said to have different tastes in different places, because other fountains flow into it; and because it flows under the sea, if it draws anything from it, it will pour forth marine and salty water mixed with sweet; of which Virgil writes, eclogue X: "Grant me this last labor, Arethusa, so to thee, when thou shalt glide beneath the Sicanian waves, may bitter Doris not mingle in her own water."
But hear Thomas Fazello, an eye-witness, who writes thus of Arethusa, book IV On Sicilian Affairs, page 89: "It has thick and somewhat salty waters, unpleasant to drink; the use of which, since they are hard and indigestible, Athenaeus in book II teaches contributes little to human well-being. Not far from Arethusa, in the midst of the sea's waves, a fountain of sweet water marvelously gushes up, and lifts its head among the salt waters, commonly called the Eye of Cilica." And shortly after: "But if this is not one of the springs of Arethusa, it must necessarily be born from some neighboring mountain, and emerge upward from the depths of the sea, an inner wind expelling it." And earlier he reveals the cause, namely that the water of Arethusa does not originate in Sicily, but in Achaia and Peloponnesus. For, he says, Pindar first, then Timaeus, whom the Greeks and Latins followed, handed down that the Alpheus, a river of the region of Achaia, is absorbed by the earth, flows under the sea into Sicily for nearly five hundred thousand paces, and emerges again from this fountain of Arethusa. So Pliny writes of Lake Ascanius and the fountains of Chalcis, book XXXI, chapter X, that their surface is sweet and drinkable, but their lower parts nitrous and bitter.
But St. James speaks of common and ordinary fountains: for these do not yield sweet and bitter water at the same time; the few extraordinary ones already named are as it were portents and monsters of nature, and therefore are types and symbols of the tongue, which at once pours forth cursing and blessing, and therefore it likewise is a portent and monster of nature. Add that, although in the fountains just mentioned, the external fountain, namely the orifice of the fountain, is the same, which sends forth sweet and bitter water; nevertheless the inner fountain, that is, the very first vein and source, which is as it were the heart or liver of the fountain, is different, as is clear from what was said about the fountain of Arethusa, called the Eye of Cilica. But in man the matter is otherwise. For just as in him there is one external fountain, namely one mouth, bringing forth good and evil: so also there is one internal fountain, namely one heart and one soul, from which both flow. This therefore is like a portent and prodigy, namely that the same heart, through the same tongue, brings forth injury and praise, piety and impiety, death and life, truth and falsehood.
Verse 12: Can the Fig Tree, My Brethren, Bear Grapes; or the Vine, Figs; So Neither Can the Salt Water Yield Sweet
12. Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear grapes? — The Greek and the Syriac read for "grapes" ἐλαίας, that is, "olives," and then the antithesis is greater: for figs are sweet, but olives are bitter; but the following words indicate that grapes are meant. For he adds: "Or the vine, figs?" as if to say: By no means: for the vine of itself bears nothing but grapes, nor can the fig be grafted into the vine, so as to produce figs in it, as the pear is grafted into the plum, and in the plum produces pears.
So neither can the salt spring yield sweet water. — "Salsa," that is, a salt fountain: hence the Greek reads, "so neither can any salt fountain bring forth salt and sweet water." So the Zurich Bible, Pagninus, and others. For he proves the prior likeness, namely that from the same fountain sweet and bitter water do not flow (from which he proves and concludes morally that blessing and cursing cannot, that is, ought not to, proceed from the same mouth), by another likeness of the vine and the fig tree, of which the former bears not figs but only grapes, the latter not grapes but only figs.
Furthermore he adduces a fitting simile: for he drew the first from a fountain, the second from a vine and a fig, the third here from salt water, which from itself cannot pour forth fresh. Yet if it does pour forth, then it is a fountain and has the nature of a fountain: wherefore this simile is the same as the first. From these similes James shows that it is unnatural and contrary to the order of things, and as it were a fighting against nature itself, that from a mouth destined by God and nature for blessing there should proceed a curse: just as it fights against nature that from a sweet fountain bitter water should proceed, from a vine figs, from a fig grapes; and therefore this very thing cannot happen. Again, just as bitter water mingled with sweet makes it bitter, so a curse mingled with a blessing in the same mouth vitiates that blessing and as it were converts it into a curse; because, namely, that mouth is accursed which, being destined for blessing alone, of itself emits a curse: for good comes from an integral cause, evil from any single defect, as St. Dionysius says. Moreover, as the fig does not produce grapes, nor the vine figs, so the slanderer, although he may seem to speak something good for a time, can in no wise have the fruit of blessing. So Bede.
Furthermore Thomas Anglicus assigns eight differences and as it were species of an evil tongue: namely the "third tongue," he says, of which Ecclus. xxviii, 16, is that of detractors, which only detracts; false, that of flatterers, Ecclus. xx, 18; grandiloquent, that of the proud, Psalm xi, 4; viperous, that of heretics, Job xx, 16; blasphemous, that of slanderers, Job xv, 5; deceitful, that of hypocrites, Psalm cxix, 2; defiled, that of the lustful, Ecclus. li, 3; iniquitous, that of advocates, Prov. xvii, 4.
Note: St. James demonstrates the harm and damages of the tongue from twelve arguments, partly from attributes. The first is in verse 3, that it is like an unbridled horse. The second, verse 5, that, though small, it nevertheless boasts of great things. The third, in the same place, that it is like a spark which burns up a whole forest. The fourth, verse 6, that it is the universe of iniquity. The fifth, in the same place, that it defiles the whole body. The sixth, that it inflames the whole wheel of our nativity and life. The seventh, that it is set on fire by hell. The eighth, that it is more untamed than all wild beasts, and so can be tamed by no one. The ninth, that it is a restless evil. The tenth, that it is full of deadly poison. The eleventh, that, while it is given and dedicated to the blessing of God, it nevertheless at the same time curses our neighbors. The twelfth, that it is like a monstrous fountain belching forth at the same time sweet and bitter water.
Verse 13: Who Is a Wise Man and Endued With Knowledge Among You; Let Him Show by a Good Conversation His Work in the Meekness of Wisdom
13. Who is a wise man (σοφός, that is, learned, namely in things divine) and endued with knowledge, — ἐπιστήμων, that is, knowing those things which pertain to practice and morals, not only speculatively but also practically, that is, zealous for discipline.
Furthermore, the wise man and the disciplined man are the same; but the latter is added to the former to indicate that the wise man should be not merely speculative but also practical — that is, disciplined and well instructed. Hence in the final verse he expressly asserts that wisdom is chaste, peaceful, modest, persuadable, etc. "For discipline is the orderly correction of morals, and the diligent observance of the rules handed down by our forefathers." So Cicero, Tusculan IV: "The wise man," he says, "is one who is endowed with the knowledge of things divine and human (to which the discipline of morals belongs)."
Let him show by a good conversation his work in the meekness of wisdom. — The Syriac: "let him show his works in good conversations." St. James returns to the doctors and teachers of whom he treated in verse 1, on whose account he had hitherto digressed to the vices of the tongue. He therefore earnestly commends to them meekness and modesty, that they may teach more by example than by word; more by modest and gentle conversation than by a great display of wisdom.
For works teach and move more than words, life more than voice. Thus Christ first began to do, and then to teach, Acts I, 1. Imitating Christ, St. Peter sets forth this law for pastors in his first epistle, ch. v, v. 3: "Be made a pattern of the flock from the heart"; and he assigns the reward: "And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory." And St. Paul, Philippians III, 17: "Be followers of me, brethren, and observe those who walk so as you have our model." Hence the Aaronic pontiff bore on his breast in the Rational "urim and thummim," that is, doctrine and truth, to signify that in the Pontiff there is required both truth — that is, integrity of life and example — and the doctrine of the Law and Scripture, Exodus xxviii, 30.
Distinguished in this matter was Origen, of whom Eusebius writes, Hist. bk. VI, ch. III, "that as his speech was, such were his morals; and as his morals, such his speech"; and therefore he was held to be the oracle of the Church and the wonder of the world, and converted very many to the faith and to holiness. On the other hand, that man was a reproach who heard: "Thy words are the words of God, but thy deeds are the deeds of the devil."
More illustrious was St. Lucian the Martyr, who was so composed in his morals — pious, cheerful, and holy — that he seemed an angel and drew all to the love of himself and of Christ. For this reason the emperor Maximian did not dare to look upon him or to speak with him except from afar and through a veil, fearing that he too might be bewitched by him as by the philtre of virtue, and might wish to become a Christian. See what was said on Philippians IV, 5.
Similar was St. Bonaventure, at whose funeral, delivering the oration at the Council of Lyons in the year of the Lord 1274, Peter of Tarantaise, a cardinal of the Order of St. Dominic, who was afterwards created Pope and called Innocent V, said among his other praises: As many as looked upon or heard St. Bonaventure were captivated by love of him, yielded to him, and embraced his judgment and counsel; for he was kindly, affable, humble, dear to all, pious, prudent, chaste, peaceful, and adorned with every virtue.
Wisely St. Jerome, epist. 3, sets forth to Bishop Heliodorus this rule of living: "Upon thee," he says, "the eyes of all are turned: thy house and thy manner of life, set as it were upon a watchtower, is the mistress of public discipline. Whatever thou shalt do, all think they ought to do likewise. Beware lest thou commit anything by which either those who wish to reprove may seem to have torn thee worthily, or those who wish to imitate may be compelled to fall into sin."
Such was Gregory the elder, Bishop of Nazianzus, father of St. Gregory Nazianzen. For as the latter says of him in oration 19: "He mitigated the bestial morals of men with no great difficulty, partly by the discourses of pastoral skill, partly also by setting himself forth as a kind of spiritual statue, polished to the beauty of every best action, for them to imitate." The same in the Praises of St. Basil: "The discourse of Basil was thunder, because his life was lightning." On the contrary, St. Bernard, bk. II On Consideration to Pope Eugenius: "A monstrous thing," he says, "is a high place and a lowly mind; a first seat and a low life; a grandiloquent tongue and an idle hand; much speech and no fruit."
The same was discerned from afar even by the Philosophers of the Gentiles. Aristides in Plato's Theages declares that he had learned nothing from the speech of Socrates, but very much from his conversation and morals. Agesilaus, when asked by what means a man may best win the approval of men, said: "If he speaks the best things and does the most honorable." Famously Seneca, bk. I, epist. 6: "The living voice and intercourse will profit thee more than discourse. Thou must come into the actual presence. First, because men trust their eyes more than their ears. Next, because the journey through precepts is long, but short and effective through examples. Cleanthes would not have produced Zeno had he only listened to him: he was present in his life, scrutinized his secrets, observed whether he lived according to his own rule. Plato and Aristotle, and the whole crowd of philosophers destined to go in different directions, drew more from the morals than from the words of Socrates. It was not the school of Epicurus that made Metrodorus and Hermarchus and Polyaenus great men, but his fellowship." The same elsewhere: "Choose," he says, "that teacher whom thou wilt admire more when thou seest him than when thou hast heard him." Well known is that saying of Democritus in Laertius, bk. IX, ch. var: λόγος ἔργου σκιά, that is, speech is the shadow of action. As, therefore, the shadow stands to the body, so speech to the work: the work, therefore, is as it were the solid body, speech and discourse as it were the shadowy and evanescent, namely the shadow of the body and of virtue, not the body and solid virtue itself.
In the meekness of wisdom. — In a meek wisdom, which meekly hears, answers, admonishes, rebukes, and teaches. For such is the wisdom of Christ and of His disciples, according to the same Lord's word: "Learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart," Matt. XI. It is a Hebraism. Thus "the charity of brotherhood" is called fraternal charity, "the son of love" is called the beloved son, "the sons of disobedience and of unbelief" are called disobedient and unbelieving sons.
Note: The proper endowment and as it were the flower of true wisdom is meekness. See what was said on chapter I, 21.
Peter Damian asks, in the book On Contempt of the World, ch. xxviii, why, in 4 Kings IV, 31, Elisha was unable to raise up the boy by the staff laid upon him, but by his own person, bending over him, recalled him to life? and he answers: "He whom the rod of terror could not raise, returns to life through the spirit of love; and when he accommodated and conformed himself to the little one, he easily lifted him up and raised him." So subjects are often moved more by love of the prelate than by terror, if he gently accommodates himself to them and tempers and benignly orders his manners. St. Augustine, serm. 6 On the Words of the Lord, calls a harsh prelate a tempter of his subjects. See St. Dionysius, epist. 8 to Demophilus, and St. Bernard, serm. On St. Magdalene.
Verse 14: But if You Have Bitter Zeal and There Be Contentions in Your Hearts, Glory Not and Be Not Liars Against the Truth
14. But if you have bitter zeal. — "Bitter zeal" is envy; sweet zeal is fervent charity, from which Simon the Cananaean was surnamed Zelotes. He opposes to the meekness of wisdom bitter zeal, that is, embittered emulation and envy, which, born of pride and the love of excellence, gives rise to contentions and schisms, and so passes into errors, heresies, and lies; from which one catches at the glorious but vain name of teacher — that he may, namely, vainly boast and vaunt himself of a new sect invented by himself, of a new school, and of new disciples.
Isidore of Pelusium, bk. II, epist. 90, observes that there have been and are more sects, contentions, schisms, and heresies in Christianity than there were in Judaism and Paganism, because the devil, the author of sects, envying and indignant at the usefulness and excellence of Christ and of Christianity, in order to overthrow it, now sows and kindles them more than before — especially since paganism was wholly of the devil, and so was the far greater part of the Jews. Add, first, that among Christians there is greater wisdom and a greater zeal for wisdom; and among those zealous for wisdom various opinions and sects are wont to arise. Secondly, that in Christianity all errors cloak themselves under the most holy name of Christ, under the pretext of true faith and piety, which the devil holds out to teachers proud and greedy of new opinions, and so blinds them that they think they are acting truly, rightly, and piously.
Note the word "bitter": for envy is embittered, both toward those whom it envies and still more toward itself. For the envious man is wondrously tormented by the torment of his own envy, by which he twists and afflicts himself over the excellence of another, whom he grieves to see preferred to or equated with himself in wisdom, virtue, and glory: for then, as Statius says in book II of the Thebaid, "in secret he broods over savage envy." Hence note the marks of envy. The first is that envy is a sign of a small and abject soul: for in envying he acknowledges another to be superior, or equal, to himself. And those who envy are usually inactive, pusillanimous, downcast, according to that saying of Ovid, bk. V Ex Ponto: "Envy, sluggish vice, does not climb to lofty manners, but, like a viper hidden, creeps along the lowest ground." Whence Pliny, bk. VI, epist. 17: "Art thou the more eloquent? So much the more do not envy. For he who envies is the lesser."
Second, that which excels and stands out strikes the eyes of the envious, and is the object of envy. Whence Ovid, bk. I On the Remedy of Love: "Envy seeks the heights, the winds buffet the loftiest things, the lightning bolts hurled by Jove's right hand seek the heights." Wherefore the young Themistocles grieved that he was not envied: "for this," he said, "is a sign that I have so far achieved nothing illustrious." "For just as cantharides are born to the rose, so envy is born to virtue." Thus Antonius in the Melissa, sermon 62, where he also adds that Aristotle, when asked what envy was, replied that it is the antagonist of the fortunate.
Third, envy often impedes and overturns the greatest matters, as we experience from time to time in cities, wars, and assemblies even of good men. Familiar is the beggar's pitiable cry of Belisarius, the general of the Emperor Justinian, famed for so many victories but reduced to extremity by his rivals: "Give an obol to Belisarius, whom virtue raised up, envy blinded." Yet many — although some learned men from Zonaras and others refute it and assert that Belisarius lived and died always honored — hold the contrary. Truly Silius, bk. I: "O dread destruction to mortals, O thing that never suffers anything to grow nor great praises to arise, Envy!" Thus the first two brothers, Cain and Abel, could not be contained by one house, nay, by the whole world.
Fourth, it is plain that envy is bitter and gall-like: for it stirs up both gall and bile, both yellow and black, that is, both choler and melancholy; so much so that the envious man bears upon his face a black, gall-like, and livid color. Whence Martial, bk. I: "Lo, again the livid one gnaws his blackened nails. Mayest thou envy all, livid one; let none envy thee." And Silius, bk. XI: "— breasts black with the poison of envy and surging with dark gall."
Fifth, there are two acts of envy, namely: "To insult at evils, and to grow sick at glad fortunes," says Statius, bk. II.
Sixth, envy is the chief torment of the envious man, devours and consumes him with a slow and long wasting away; and hence envy is called "the eater." Whence Claudian, bk. III On the Rape of Proserpina: "The envious man grows lean at another's rich estate." And Horace, bk. I of the Epistles: "The Sicilian tyrants did not invent a greater torment than envy." Hence Socrates said envy is an ulcer, indeed a saw of the soul, as Stobaeus testifies in sermon 36, and Antonius in Melissa, serm. 62; and Martial, bk. IX: "They burst with envy because we are loved and approved; let whoever bursts with envy burst." And Ovid in Metamorphoses II graphically depicts her: "Most wretched, with slow wasting away she melts, as ice wounded by uncertain sun, and burns no more gently at the goods of fortunate Herse than when fire is set beneath thorny weeds, which give no flames and burn with a feeble warmth." Hence the poets feigned that the envious in the underworld feed on serpents and are refreshed by hydras. And indeed Cassian, Conf. XVIII, ch. xvii, mystically takes that passage of Jeremiah VIII, "Behold, I will send among you serpents, basilisks, against which there is no charm, and they shall bite you," of envy. See him. Agis, king of the Lacedaemonians, hearing himself envied by his rivals, said: "They shall therefore have a double trouble: for they shall be tortured both by their own evils and, moreover, shall be tormented by my goods and those of mine." A magnificent saying, signifying that those who are held by envy are more deserving of pity than of anger; and that the envious man pays penalty enough, even if no other avenger arises against him. So Plutarch in his Laconic Sayings; for, as Antisthenes says in Laertius, bk. VI, ch. 1: "As iron is consumed by rust born of itself, so the envious man wastes away by his own vice." More elegantly Chrysologus, serm. 172: "Envy has ever been the executioner of its own: it stretches the senses, tortures the souls, racks the minds, corrupts the hearts. What more? Whoever receives her endures his own punishments without end, because he loves to keep within himself a domestic torturer. What end of evils is there, where another's good is one's punishment? where another's happiness is one's torment?" Therefore Nazianzen acutely said, oration 27: "Of all the passions, envy alone is at once the most unjust and the most just: most unjust, because it is opposed to all good things; most just, because it eats up and destroys its own masters."
Seventh, the remedy of envy is humility, modesty, and contempt of glory. Hence Cato used to say that those who used fortune moderately and soberly were least assailed by envy. "For," he said, "men do not envy us, but the goods that surround us." External goods are outside the man; but the vice of one who uses them insolently is within the man — by which he kindles envy against himself and makes himself an object of envy and hatred. So Plutarch, Roman Apophthegmata. No one envied Diogenes the Cynic, since he was a despiser of all things. Crates the Theban used to say that for his country he held contempt of glory and poverty, over which fortune could exercise no right. He used to add likewise that he was a disciple of Diogenes, who lay open to no snares of envy. For wealth and honors generally beget envy, especially when sudden, if they greatly exceed one's lot and station. So Laertius, bk. VI, ch. v. Famously St. Ambrose, bk. II On Abraham, ch. IV: "A great mystery," he says, "is virtue, against which envy is quickly stirred. And therefore, to repress envy, one ought to show himself the more humble. Let him not claim for himself a primacy over all; let him not arrogate to himself alone an outstanding wisdom." The same, in the Conflict of Vices and Virtues: "Envy," he says, "says: In what art thou less than this man or that? Why art thou not at least their equal, or superior? How many things hast thou that they have not? Therefore they ought not to be either thy superiors or even thy equals. But fraternal love answers: If thou, O man, dost think thyself to surpass others in virtues, thou wilt keep thyself more safely in the lowest than in the highest place. For from a height the fall is always the worse. But if, as thou sayest, certain are thy superiors, others thy equals, what does it harm thee? what hurt does it do thee? Beware utterly, lest, while thou enviest others their place of loftiness, thou imitate him of whom it is written: By the envy of the devil death entered into the world. They imitate him who are on his side."
Eighth, finally, envy is wont to be ended by the death of him who was envied, and to be turned into commiseration, indeed even into admiration. "Envy feeds upon the living; after their death it rests." And: "We hate virtue while it is safe; once removed from our eyes, we who envied it seek it out." Thus Julius Caesar, hearing of the tragic murder of his rival Pompey, wept.
And there be contentions in your hearts. — Contentions are usually in the mouth and tongues, not in the hearts: by "contentions," therefore, understand here zeal and a fixed intent of contending: whence the Greek is ἐρίθεια, that is, "strife," in the singular — that is, the will and lust of contending, which a bitter zeal, namely envy, brings forth. For he who carries the gall of envy in the stomach of his mind is eager to exhale it through his mouth, to contradict all, and to contend with all. Famously the Wise Man, Proverbs xx, 3: "It is an honor for a man who separates himself from contentions: but all fools are mingled with insults," that is, with contentions, which both produce and in turn cast forth insults. "For it belongs to a childish spirit to contend," says St. Augustine, epist. 174, and to be eager that one should overcome another, when among Christians truth, peace, and humility ought to overcome. And Seneca, bk. II On Anger, ch. xxxiv: "To contend with an equal," he says, "is hazardous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, base; it is the part of a small and wretched man to bite back at one who bites. They think themselves harmed if they are touched, like mice and ants; whom, if you brush them away with your hand, they turn their mouths to bite."
What dost thou seek, O Christian, when, against the laws of Christ, thou contendest with thy brother? Surely the display of knowledge and the praise of victory among those like thyself — proud and foolish men. A glorious praise indeed thou winnest, that thou shouldst be called contentious, arrogant, an ostentatious sophist: how much more glorious would it be for thee to abstain from quarrelling, that among the wise thou shouldst be called wise, peaceful, religious, master and lord of mind and tongue? Wisely Papias, the disciple of St. John the Apostle and companion of St. Polycarp, hearing the truth of God being torn apart by the clamors of many, said: "We must give heed not to those who say many things, but to those who hand down true things." So Eusebius, bk. III, ch. LIX. Religiously St. Ignatius, founder of our Society, gave his men this maxim: "Resist no one, even the least, on any ground; let it please thee rather to yield than to overcome." And St. Bernard, On the Manner of Living Well, ch. xvii: "Meek men," he says, "always despise quarrels." And shortly after: "If detraction and quarrels are in the cloister, where is regular silence, where the sanctity of religion, where the silence of the Order, where the religiousness of the monastery, where the bond of charity, where the peace of unity, where the concord of brotherhood, where social love? Alas, woe! regular silence has perished, the sanctity of religion is taken away, the silence of the Order has failed, the religiousness of the monastery has come to nothing, the charity of brotherhood is annulled; but if those who ought to live in peace begin to contend, to litigate, to detract — where is the tranquil life, where the quiet life, where the peaceful life, where the honest life, where the modest life, where the chaste life, where the contemplative life, where the angelic life?" And further on: "Contention begets quarrels; contention extinguishes the peace of the heart; contention engenders brawls; contention sows wranglings; contention kindles the torches of hatreds; contention breaks concord; contention disturbs the eye of the mind." He adds the manner of excluding it, if a man everywhere chooses the meaner things; and concludes: "Strive in no cause to fight, save that thou mayest please God alone."
Glory not, and be not liars against the truth. — As if to say: If you feel in your mind an ardor for contending, do not follow it nor pour it forth and put it forth through your mouth and words, so as gloriously and mendaciously to oppose the truth; but rather repress this ardor in silence and restrain it by reason. Whence the Greek has: Glory not, neither lie against the truth; the Syriac: Be not puffed up against the truth, neither lie. For he who is driven by the lust of contending out of an eagerness to contradict, namely that he may seem to be wiser or more learned than all the rest, contradicts both truths and falsehoods, and assails all men and all things; and consequently he must often glory in vain and lie against the truth, as is plainly to be seen in sophists and heretics who attack a truth they have recognized. James signifies that zeal, or envy, is the mother and source of contention, of boastfulness, and of falsehoods. Furthermore, as it is the highest honor to defend the truth, so it is the highest disgrace to attack it and to champion falsehood — which the envious and the contentious do. Wherefore when it was asked what was the strongest thing, and one answered that it was the king, another that it was wine or women, Zerubbabel, hitting the matter on the point, answered that it was truth — and discoursing on it before King Darius, he obtained from him for his whole nation full release from the Babylonian captivity and the rebuilding of the temple. See 3 Esdras, ch. iii, v. 12 and following, down to v. 47, ch. IV.
Famously St. Augustine, epist. 9 to St. Jerome: "Incomparably more beautiful," he says, "is the truth of Christians than Helen of the Greeks: for our martyrs have fought more bravely for this against this Sodom, than those heroes for her against Troy." The same, epist. 7 to Marcellinus: "He loves himself too perversely," he says, "who wishes others also to err, that his own error may lie hidden." Demosthenes, when asked "what men have like to God," answered: "To do good kindly, and to love the truth." So Maximus, sermon 8. Pythagoras affirmed these two things, far the most beautiful, to have been divinely given to men: to embrace truth and to give labor to good works; for each of these can be compared to the works of the immortal gods. So Aelian, bk. XII Various Histories.
Finally, truth and charity are sisters. And so God in His essence is as much truth as charity: he, therefore, who attacks the truth, attacks likewise charity and God Himself, who is the first truth and uncreated charity. The remedy of contention, then, and the shield of truth, is charity. For as the Apostle says, 1 Cor. xiii, 4: "Charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth." And St. Bernard, treatise On the Twelve Degrees of Humility: "Good," he says, "is the way of humility, by which truth is sought, charity acquired, and the generations of wisdom partaken. Lastly, as the end of the law is Christ, so the perfection of humility is the knowledge of truth. Christ, when He came, brought grace: truth gives charity to those to whom it makes itself known; and it makes itself known to the humble: therefore He gives grace to the humble." Three companions, then, and inseparable comrades, and as it were three Christian Graces, are humility, truth, and charity.
The same a little later assigns three degrees of truth: First, by which we acknowledge God and Christ and ourselves, and therefore reverence Him supremely and humble ourselves supremely under Him. Second, by which we discern the faults and miseries of our neighbors and have compassion on them. Third, by which we contemplate God — partly here in a dark figure, partly in heaven face to face by the beatific vision — according to that word: "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God." To the first, he says, we ascend by the labor of humility; to the second by the draught of compassion; to the third by the ecstasy of contemplation. In the first, truth is found severe; in the second, pious; in the third, pure. To the first reason leads us, by which we examine ourselves; to the second affection draws us, by which we have mercy on others; to the third purity carries us off, by which we are lifted up to things invisible.
Tropologically Bede explains, as if James were to say: Do not, O Christians, lie to God, to whom in baptism you have promised that you would renounce Satan and his pomps: for you do not renounce these if you boast too insolently of your goods, and more vaingloriously, indeed mendaciously, preach above and against the truth. More to the mind of St. James, one might say that those lie to God who, while they profess themselves His worshipers, yet grow angry with their neighbors — whom God commands them to love as themselves — are indignant with them, envy them, contend and quarrel with them, and glory in this as in some illustrious and spirited deed.
Verse 15: For This Is Not Wisdom Descending From Above, but Earthly, Sensual, Devilish
15. For this is not wisdom (the wisdom of one having bitter zeal and being contentious, who hunts after glory and therefore mendaciously attacks the truth, that he may seem wiser than the rest) descending from above (infused from heaven by the God and Father of lights, as he said in chapter I, verse 17), but earthly (because of avarice, by which it seeks earthly riches), sensual (because of gluttony and lust, by which it lusts after the sensible pleasures of the belly and of Venus, and therefore its god is the belly, as the Apostle has it, Philippians III, 19), devilish, — because of pride, by which it strives to excel and be honored above others; and to this end devises subtle ways, deceits, and tricks, whose author and standard-bearer is the devil. On the contrary, the true wisdom of a humble, peaceful, and holy man and teacher is heavenly, spiritual, divine. Counter to this saying of James is that of St. John, 1 Epistle, ch. II, v. 16, who, attributing to the world that which James attributes to earthly and mundane wisdom, says: "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world, etc. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh," namely gluttony and lust, "and the concupiscence of the eyes," avarice, "and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world." A counter as well, and still more so, is that of St. Paul, 1 Cor. III, 3: "For whereas there is among you envy and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man?" Where Theodoret says: "He is carnal who is content with his own thoughts and does not admit the teaching of the Spirit." And Ambrosiaster: "He who, like cattle, casts down his understanding to the earth, and so does not attain to anything except what he sees, and does not think anything can be done except what he knows; therefore whatever else he hears than what he is acquainted with, he judges to be foolish." Such is heresy and the heretic, who grasps nothing but earthly things, grasps nothing but what he perceives and touches with his senses, savors nothing but the belly and Venus, aspires only to the first chairs, and is therefore full of envy, hatred, contention, haughtiness, ostentation, and falsehood.
Note: First, "sensual," Greek ψυχικός, is one who desires nothing, nor grasps and savors anything else than what is familiar and pleasing to the soul and to the animal nature — namely to sense, taste, and touch — like a beast: such are the gluttonous and the lustful. And, as St. Bernard (or whoever is the author) says in the book On the Solitary Life, he who serves the senses of the body and the desires of the sensitive soul, and feeds and putrefies his own sensuality, and so knows only how to imagine and think corporeal pleasures. Where he also adds that there are three degrees of the faithful, namely the first of beginners, the second of those advancing, the third of the perfect: the first being animal, the second rational, the third spiritual. Thus Tertullian, after he had become a Montanist, called the orthodox by way of scoffing "psychics" (Rhenanus wrongly reads "Physici"), that is, animals; but himself and the Montanists "spirituals," because they fasted three Lents, condemned second marriages, etc., which the orthodox admitted. Hence he wrote the book On Fasts against the Psychics. Again, heretics are animal who believe nothing but what they see and understand. For, as St. Augustine says, sermon 151 On the Seasons: "In a carnal man the whole rule of understanding is the habit of seeing."
Secondly, this wisdom of the world is called by James "devilish," both because it imitates the devil — for the devil first envied God in heaven His throne of glory, and willed to invade it, and contended and fought against Him and His angels, but, conquered, was cast down into Tartarus — and also because it is suggested and breathed by the devil, whence "by the envy of the devil death entered into the world," Wisdom II, 24. "And he is himself the prince over all the sons of pride," Job XLI, 25. Moreover he is a liar and the father of lies, John viii, 44. Thus Paul called Elymas, who resisted himself and Christ, "son of the devil," Acts xiii, 10. St. Polycarp called Marcion "the firstborn of Satan," as Eusebius testifies, bk. IV Hist., ch. xiv. Irenaeus, bk. III, ch. III, calls the same "the mouth of the devil." Furthermore, James alludes to the etymology of "demons": for demons are so called as if δαήμονες, that is "the knowing ones"; and to these the ancients attributed the invention of the sciences and of human arts; but properly they are themselves the first authors and inventors of worldly wisdom, which teaches a man to extol himself and what is his and to put down others, and therefore to stir up quarrels, contentions, and wars.
Therefore heavenly wisdom is "theodora," that is, the gift of God; but earthly wisdom is "daemonodora," that is, the gift of the devil. Thus Theodora, the wise wife of the Emperor Justinian, was made and called "daemonodora" when she bent Justinian to the Eutychian heresy, proscribed the Council of Chalcedon, seized Pope Silverius and forced him to die, and perpetrated other unspeakable deeds. So Theophilus in the Life of Justinian. Wherefore she was struck by a heavenly blow and perished miserably. Hear Victor of Tunnuna, bishop in Africa, in his Chronicle: "Theodora Augusta," he says, "the enemy of the Council of Chalcedon, with her whole body smitten by the plague of cancer, ended her life in a prodigious manner."
Verse 16: For Where Envy and Contention Is, There Is Inconstancy and Every Evil Work
16. For where envy and contention is. — "To contend," says St. Augustine, bk. IV On Christian Doctrine, ch. xxviii, "is to be careless how error may be overcome by truth, but only how thy own statement may be preferred to another's."
There is inconstancy. — In Greek ἀκαταστασία, that is "inconstancy," unrest, disorder, turbulence, disturbance, agitation, tumult, sedition, as I said on verse 8. James proves that the proud wisdom of the envious and the contentious is earthly, sensual, and especially devilish, from the fact that it is inconstant and turbulent, and stirs up tumults and seditions: which has been seen in heresy and in heretics in every age — they who have everywhere stirred up internecine wars and seditions. Whence here is true that saying of Tertullian, bk. On the Cloak, ch. v: "Togas have hurt the commonwealth more than coats of mail"; namely, the heresiarchs in peace have hurt the Church more than the tyrants in persecution: for from the latter came forth Martyrs invincible and glorious, but from the former came perfidious and seditious apostates, who tore the commonwealth and the Church asunder.
Furthermore, how inconstant heretics are in their heresy is plain from the fact that they daily forge new dogmas contrary to the earlier ones. Whence St. Hilary, in his book to the Emperors Constantius and Constans, asserts that "the Arians have yearly and monthly creeds"; for they are tossed about by every wind of doctrine, as the Apostle says, Ephesians IV, 14. Cochlaeus clearly shows this in Luther, in his book entitled Lutherus septiceps. The first reason is that heretics are driven by the spirit of dizziness; the second, that heresy is a lie: but every lie has weak feet; for soon its falsehood is detected, and then it devises another to cover and sustain itself. The third, because the devil, its author, is a liar and the father of lies, and drives his own to ever newer and greater crimes and blasphemies, out of the immense hatred with which he burns against God, and the envy with which he is consumed against men, lest they succeed to the heavenly thrones from which he himself fell.
And every evil work. — For from envy and contention arise quarrels, insults, blasphemies, fights, slaughters, robberies, schisms, heresies, sacrileges, and all crimes: for, as St. Cyprian says, sermon On Zeal and Envy: "Other evils have an end, and whatever sin is committed is finished by the completion of the offense: envy has no end, being a perpetual evil and a sin without end." See what crimes and disasters have followed from the heresy of the Donatists in Optatus against Parmenian, and from that of the Arians in Athanasius, Apology II, and in Victor of Utica in his Vandalic History. What a conflagration Luther and Calvin have brought upon France, Germany, England, etc., we have lately beheld, and still behold and lament.
Verse 17: But the Wisdom That Is From Above, First Indeed Is Chaste, Then Peaceable, Modest, Easy to Be Persuaded, Consenting to the Good, Full of Mercy and Good Fruits, Without Judging, Without Dissimulation
17. But the wisdom that is from above, first indeed is chaste. — He opposes it to the false wisdom of the envious, the proud, and the contentious, which is earthly, sensual and devilish, the true and holy wisdom of the faithful and of teachers who are devoted to humility, peace, charity, and edification, and to it he assigns nine marks — partly signs, partly effects and endowments. By wisdom he understands a savory knowledge (that is, conjoined with affection, love, and practice) of divine things, which lead the faithful to salvation and beatitude. This wisdom therefore embraces all the mysteries of the faith — the whole Christian doctrine, Theology, Sacred Scripture, Ethics, and everything else that conduces to living a Christian and holy life. This wisdom "is from above," because it was handed down by Christ, who for this reason descended from the heavens, that He might teach it to us. Again, because it cannot be understood or grasped without God's supernatural light and grace; yet it also requires man's cooperation and zeal: for though the Apostles received it by infusion, their successors must acquire and increase it by their own study and labor; whence those who devote themselves more to it become wiser than those who study it less, as may be seen in Theology and the theologians. For these, following the light and dogmas of faith, by speculation upon them search out other truths, and as it were elicit and gather theological conclusions from their principles. Finally, it "is from above," because the savor and love and practice of these things cannot be had without the grace of God.
Moreover, it is well to compare these nine antitheses of true and false wisdom which St. James here assigns, and to set them before the reader as in a synopsis. The first is: true wisdom is chaste; the false is sensual and unchaste. The second: the true is peaceable; the false, contentious. The third: the true is modest; the false, petulant and proud. The fourth: the true is persuadable; the false is unpersuadable, because she neither suffers anything to be urged upon her by true wisdom, nor can persuade herself to the wise. The fifth: the true consents to the good; the false envies the good, opposes them, and is quarrelsome. The sixth: the true is full of mercy; the false is unmerciful, cruel, and impious. The seventh: the true is full of fruits and good works; the false, full of evil works and every kind of crime. The eighth: the true judges no one rashly; the false hurries to judgment, because she censures and carps at everything. The ninth: the true is sincere; the false is feigned and hypocritical. In like manner the Apostle says, 1 Cor. xiii: "Charity (which this practical wisdom includes) is patient, is kind, envieth not, rejoiceth with the truth," etc. Now if wisdom is chaste, peaceable, modest, persuadable, etc., then the wise man also is chaste, peaceable, modest, persuadable, etc. The argument is from conjugates: "the wise man," I say, both the disciple and the doctor; for it is on account of doctors and teachers that James says these things, as is clear from verse 1.
Chaste, — ἁγνή, that is, pure, chaste, undefiled like a lamb, both from lust and from every impurity of perverse doctrine, of crime and of vice, so that she may be depicted under the figure of St. Agnes, who was equally an exemplar and living image of chastity and of Christian wisdom, so that she is rightly called and is Agnes. For no religion or sect teaches and commands such purity both of chastity and morals, and of truth and doctrine, as does the Christian. For this teaches concerning God all things august, divine, and worthy of Him. This sanctions everything that is honorable. This commands spouses to live chastely in marriage, to keep faith with one another, and not to use it for pleasure, but to receive and educate offspring for God. This counsels virginity, celibacy, and continence, and severely enjoins and imposes it upon all priests and religious.
Wherefore this purity of doctrine, chastity, and life is one of the marks of the true faith, religion, and Church. For from it the Gentiles, Mohammedans, and heretics have wandered far and still wander: for they teach that celibacy and continence are impossible for man; the Gentiles judged fornication to be lawful, as is gathered from Acts xv, 29. To Mohammedans as many concubines are permitted in the Koran as they can support. The same teach many things about God and Christ that are insipid, ridiculous, blasphemous, equally as do the Jews in the Talmud. That all the heresiarchs had their mistresses, St. Jerome teaches in his epistle to Ctesiphon: namely, Simon Magus, he says, had Helen the harlot; Nicolas of Antioch led troupes of women; Apelles had Philumene; Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla; Elpidius, Agape; Priscillian, Galla, etc. The Gnostics taught that fornication was to be frequented as a chief virtue, but that whatever was conceived in them was to be destroyed by abortion and the fetus killed, as Epiphanius testifies, in heresy 26; who also in heresy 27 reports that the Carpocratians taught that everyone ought to take pains to defile himself with every crime before death, otherwise he would have to be recalled to life as many times as it took until he had accomplished and perpetrated it. How impious and impure are the things Luther and Calvin teach is plain to all: that God is the author of evil works as well as of good; that Christ on the Cross suffered the pains of hell, and therefore despaired; that vows of chastity are to be violated by religious and priests; that there is no free will, but that those elected by God to heaven, and the reprobate to hell, are by the single decree of God, driven and impelled as by fate; that if a wife will not perform conjugal duty, a maidservant is to be called; that all works of the faithful, even pious and holy ones, are sins; that they have no merits; that everyone is saved by faith alone; that every believer must be certain of his faith, grace, and salvation, and must believe with divine faith that he will go to heaven to eternal glory.
Finally Dionysius the Carthusian says that true wisdom, namely the Christian faith and profession, is chaste, because it perceives how great is the foulness of every sin, and therefore flees and execrates it worse than a dog or a snake; and because, contemplating the beauty and purity of the highest truth and primal light, it begets in the mind a chaste shame and fear, by which a man fears and blushes to bear himself basely and shamefully in the presence and sight of the divine Majesty, or to think, say, or do anything that may offend the eyes of God. Moreover, because for past faults it inspires a salutary shame, that he may blot them out with contrition and tears. Thirdly, because it makes one approach the contemplation of God reverently, purely, and with modesty, not presumptuously, impudently, or rashly thrusting himself forward to the searching out of divine and incomprehensible things.
The reason is that wisdom is celestial and a participation in the most pure wisdom of God, and the daughter of God, as Alfonso, king of Aragon, used to say, in Panormitanus, book III. Therefore she requires a pure and celestial heart, not a foul and libidinous one: for this latter, plunged into the mire of luxury, cannot behold this celestial light. Whence the Wise One, depicting wisdom in chap. vii, verse 25, says: "She is the vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the brightness of the Almighty God, and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her; for she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness." On the contrary Hosea iv, verse 11, says: "Fornication, and wine, and drunkenness take away the heart." Thus Bathsheba deranged David, a man after God's own heart, and women deranged Solomon the wisest of mortals: for blindness of mind is the offspring of lust, says St. Gregory, book XXXI of the Morals. For "when the fire of concupiscence falls upon any man, the sun of understanding can no longer be seen by him," as St. Augustine teaches on Psalm lvii, verse 9. Thus Delilah blinded Samson, Judges xvi; and lust the Sodomites, Gen. xix, 11.
The same was seen by the Philosophers of the Gentiles. Seneca, in the preface to his Controversies, asserts that nothing is so deadly to talent as luxury. Plato was always continent for the sake of the study of wisdom, says St. Augustine, book On True Religion. The same chose the Academy, an unhealthy place and therefore apt for repressing lust, as the site of his school. Hence Plato's warning to the Muses, according to Laertius: "Tremble before Venus, ye Nymphs." To which the Muses replied: "That winged boy does not fly hither to us." Hence too they called the Muses Camenae, as it were of the chaste mind. The Sibyls, most wise, were virgins, indeed on account of their virginity they obtained the gift of prophecy, says St. Jerome against Jovinian and Lactantius, book I of the Divine Institutes. Averroes, book VII of the Physics, says that chastity and the other virtues by which the concupiscence of the flesh is restrained, avail very much for the acquisition of speculative sciences. Hippocrates called carnal copulation a little epilepsy: because in it a man is so carried away by base pleasure that he seems to be epileptic, and bereft of reason and mind: for lust, says Nyssen, book On Virginity, chap. iv and following, makes men like swine, whose eyes plunged in mire cannot look upon heaven and heavenly things. Cicero in the Hortensius asserts that the impulse of luxury, as it is the greatest, so it is most hostile to wisdom. Hence Venus, according to some, is so called from "ve," which is a privative particle meaning without, and νοῦς, that is, mind, as it were without mind, mindless; or rather, as Varro says, from "viere," that is, binding and chaining, because she binds the reason, mind, and will of the lover. For Venus turns a man into a brute; on the contrary, chastity turns a man into an angel.
Morally: Learn here that the inseparable companion and as it were sister of wisdom is chastity. Hence both appeared in dreams to St. Gregory Nazianzen and, embracing him, said: "Do not take it amiss, young man; we are well known to you and familiar: for one of us is called wisdom, the other chastity; and we have been sent by the Lord to dwell with you, because you have prepared in your heart a pleasant and clean dwelling-place for us." As Rufinus relates in the prologue of his Apology.
St. John the Apostle, because he was a virgin, was worthy to draw heavenly secrets from the breast of the eternal wisdom of Christ the Lord. Whence as an eagle he soared to the throne of the Holy Trinity and recounted the generation of the Eternal Word. There also he learned the Apocalypse, which has as many mysteries as words; whence he alone of the Apostles was surnamed The Theologian. Like to him was John the Baptist, equally as Elias, both virgins, both Prophets: for, as Clement of Alexandria says, III Paedagogus, chap. v: "At home, abroad, chastity is ever the companion of the wise man."
St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, had an angelic chastity as well as wisdom, and was therefore girded by angels in ecstasy with the cincture of chastity (which is religiously preserved at Vercelli in the church of the Dominican Fathers), and from that time on lacked every sense of lust.
Famous is what we read in the Life of St. Lawrence Justinian: for when he was in his nineteenth year, that turning-point of life which is wont to be slippery, Wisdom appeared to him — namely, Christ the Lord — in the form of a virgin whose splendor surpassed the splendor of the sun, and said to him: "Why, young man, do you pour out your heart, and in pursuing peace scatter yourself through many things? I, if you decide to take Me as your bride, most surely promise this peace." He, delighted by so magnificent a form and promise, asked what was her name, what was her lineage? Then she: "I am the Wisdom of God, who have assumed human form to reform men." Wherefore when Lawrence answered that he most willingly accepted her, she, having given him a kiss, departed glad and rejoicing: and he himself not much later betook himself to a monastery to the offered nuptials of wisdom and chastity, in which he abundantly experienced what he had received in promise.
With a similar vision and figure Wisdom betrothed to herself Henry Suso, who accordingly among other things composed an Office of the Eternal Wisdom, to be recited daily by all His students and disciples, and from this He was called the Minister of Eternal Wisdom, as His Life relates, chapter IV. With a similar appearance — but a real and visible one — the incarnate Wisdom, namely Christ Jesus, betrothed to Himself St. Catherine of Siena, a most chaste virgin, who, although untaught in letters, was thereby made most wise, and even received the spirit of prophecy. The ring of this her espousal is religiously preserved at Rome on the mount which is commonly called Magnanapoli, where it was shown to me.
Peaceable, — εἰρηνική, that is, a lover of peace, cherishing peace within herself, and consequently communicating and reconciling the same to others; the Syriac, "full of peace." On the contrary, false wisdom, like heresy, is ἐριθεία, that is, contentious, a lover of lawsuits, quarrels, and wars; as we have seen in every age, but especially in our own in France, Scotland, Germany, Holland, etc. The causes are: First, because true wisdom is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the author of concord and peace; while false wisdom is the gift of the devil, who is the prince of discord, war, and seditions. Second, because this wisdom rests on faith and charity, which is one and the same in all the faithful: whence "the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul," says St. Luke, Acts iv, 32. Thus the wisest of mortals was King Solomon, that is, the peaceful one. Hence Christ, Mark ix, last verse: "Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another." Salt is the symbol of wisdom; its companion is peace. "For salt without peace is not the gift of virtue, but the increase of damnation," says St. Gregory. Hence salt also among the ancients was the symbol of friendship, and therefore was customarily set before guests before other foods, as Pierius testifies in Hieroglyphics xiii. Whence the proverb: "One ought not to transgress the salt and the table," that is, the right of friendship. But hear St. Gregory, in the second part of the Pastoral, chap. iv: "By salt," he says, "is signified wisdom. Whoever therefore strives to speak wisely, let him greatly fear lest by his speech the unity of his hearers be confounded. Here Paul says: Not to be more wise than it behooveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety. Hence in the priest's vestment, according to the divine voice, pomegranates are joined to bells. For what is signified by pomegranates, but the unity of the faith? For just as in the pomegranate many seeds are protected within by one outer rind, so the unity of the faith covers the innumerable peoples of the Church, whom inwardly the diversity of merits holds." Third, because peace is nothing else than the tranquillity of order: but to order is the work of the wise man, says Aristotle, book I of the Metaphysics. Fourth, because the uncreated Wisdom, from which our created wisdom is derived, is Christ, who is our peace, Eph. ii, 14, and the prince of peace, Isa. ix, 6. Whence taking leave of His own, John xiv, 27: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." Hence of the Cherubim (who are the first and living exemplar of created wisdom) it is said, Ezek. i, 9: "Their wings were joined one to another," in token of peace and concord. Fifth, because wisdom is humble; but humility is the mother of peace: whence the humble are continually in peace, while among the proud there are always quarrels. Sixth, because the wise man knows that all good things consist by peace, but all evils are forged by dissension, strife, and war; therefore with all effort he pursues peace and flees lawsuits. Hence the Apostle, Phil. iv, 7: "And the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds." See what is said there. And St. Augustine, XIX City of God, xiii: "The peace of the body," he says, "is the ordered tempering of its parts. The peace of the rational soul is the ordered repose of its appetites. The peace of the rational soul is the ordered consent of cognition and action. The peace of body and soul is the ordered life and health of the living being. The peace of mortal man and immortal God is ordered obedience in faith under the eternal law. The peace of men is ordered concord. The peace of a household is the ordered concord of those dwelling together in commanding and obeying. The peace of a city is the ordered concord of citizens in commanding and obeying. The peace of the heavenly city is the most ordered and most concordant society of enjoying God and one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order. Order is the disposition assigning to equal and unequal things their proper places."
Modest, — ἐπιεικής; the Syriac, "gentle," "lowly," "humble"; the Zurich version, "fair"; Vatable and Pagninus, "compliant"; others, "moderate," "kindly," "easy," "civil": for the wisdom of the world makes men supercilious, morose, difficult; others, "moderate," "calm," "honorable," "praiseworthy": for τὸ ἐπιεικής signifies all these things. The mother of modesty is humility, its daughter shamefastness, its sister patience, to be exercised by a teacher: for, as Cicero says in the Pro Roscio Comoedo, the more skilful and clever a man is, the more wrathfully and laboriously does he teach; and what he himself has quickly grasped, when he sees it slowly perceived by his disciples, he is tortured. Moreover, modesty in the school and in disputation is necessary, that it may bridle the petulance and audacity of the young: whence modesty is called by the orators "the flower and ornament of youth"; by Euripides, "the most beautiful gift of the gods"; by St. Ambrose, "the purple of the virtues." Its sanction is this: "So compose your dress, voice, countenance, and gait, that it may befit God, that it may adorn you, that it may edify your neighbor; otherwise the grace lies hidden in the soul, while disgrace is open in voice, countenance, and dress." See what is said on Phil. iv, 5, and St. Nazianzen, oration 26, which is on moderation to be observed in disputation. Truly St. Bernard, sermon 36 on the Canticle: "Much knowledge," he says, "poured into the stomach of the soul, if it has not been digested by charity, is turned into corrupt and noxious humors, and produces inflations and torments of mind."
Persuadable, — that is, easily persuaded. In Greek εὐπειθής; the Syriac, "obedient," "compliant"; Pagninus, "tractable"; the Zurich version, "manageable"; others, "easily yielding and believing." On the contrary, false wisdom, like heresy, is ἀπειθής, that is, "unpersuadable," "intractable," "headstrong," "hard," "stiff-necked," "pertinacious," "obstinate" in its own opinion and error. It belongs therefore to the wise man to yield to reason, to open his heart to the truth, to acknowledge his error, to change his opinion. Whence the Apostle wishes the Bishop, who is the teacher of the people, to be teachable, II Tim. ch. ii, verse 24. And Solomon, asking wisdom from God, asked for a docile heart, in Hebrew "hearing," III Kings chap. iii. For docility is a part of prudence, says Plato in Macrobius, book I on the Dream of Scipio. Because, as St. Cyprian says in his epistle to Stephen, "the Bishop and teacher ought not only to teach, but also to learn: because he teaches the better who daily progresses and grows by learning better things." Thus St. Augustine, St. Damasus, and other doctors consulted St. Jerome on the difficulties of Holy Scripture. See St. Augustine in his epistles, of which he addressed many to him on these matters. The same Augustine to Dulcitius, Question III: "I," he says, "love to learn more than to teach."
Moreover: "persuadable" can be taken in two ways. First, passively, so as to be the same as that which "easily allows itself to be persuaded." Second, actively, "which is easily persuasive to others," because she easily persuades herself to them: for wisdom has so great an appearance of truth and honor that she immediately persuades the hearer of herself and of her own. Thus the Christian religion teaches nothing absurd, nothing base, nothing unimaginable; but all things conformed to nature and right reason, as Eusebius in his book On the Demonstration, Augustine in the City of God, and others teach against the Gentiles.
On the contrary, the Philosophers and heretics teach very many absurd, base, incredible things. Lycurgus granted impunity to adulteries. The Persians entered into marriages with their sisters and brothers. Plato, who is called by his followers the star of wisdom, willed wives to be held in common, and recommends unnatural lust, in book III of the Republic. In the Timaeus almost alone he has these paradoxes, indeed contrary teachings: First, that the world was created not from nothing, but from atoms. Second, he makes the world an eternal intelligent animal, on the ground that the most beautiful creature, such as the world is, cannot be without intellect. Third, that this animal was created by God after the idea of another animal. For he himself feigns another universal, eternal, separable, and ideal animal, whose example God followed in creating. Again, that God is the soul of the world. Fourth, he holds that fire and earth were first fashioned, then air and water were bound to them as fetters. Fifth, he makes the earth the most ancient of the gods contained in the heavens. Sixth, he says the world is nourished by its own old age and consumption, and yet is eternal. Seventh, he calls the world a blessed God. Eighth, he places the soul of the world in its middle, in the most abject part. Ninth, he holds that the stars are animals, indeed gods. Tenth, that the sun is placed in the second circle from the earth, immediately after the moon, which the Astronomers and reason itself refute. Eleventh, that the stars are fashioned from fire, and therefore are fiery. Twelfth, that the earth is suspended around the pole, the most ancient and first of the gods (that is, of the stars) which are generated within the heaven. Thirteenth, that the fabulous generation of demons from earth and heaven, and the lineage produced through Ocean and Tethys, is to be believed. The same in the Apology: "Demons," he says, "are the spurious sons of the gods," whence he makes the gods adulterers. Fourteenth, he holds that every soul is eternal and unbegotten. Fifteenth, that the wicked are transmuted in their second birth into women, birds, and beasts according to each one's offense. Sixteenth, that offenses are expiated by fire and the other elements. Seventeenth, that the younger gods made the body of man from the four elements according to atoms. Eighteenth, he says that the generation of the world is mixed from the meeting of necessity and mind, as if God had been compelled to generate or make the world. To this pertains what he writes about the daughters of necessity, namely the Parcae, in book X of the Republic, and what he has elsewhere about fortune likewise governing the world: and that God does not resist necessity. Whence Marsilius, the interpreter of Plato, brings forward two opinions of the Platonists. The first, of Proclus, that the world was made; the second, that the world was not made, but has always been and has flowed from God, as if it always becomes and flows. Nineteenth, that before the world the elements were in their seats moved disorderly, and that God brought order and adornment. Twentieth, that the world is God sufficient unto itself. Twenty-first, that he gives man several souls, one made by God, two others mortal, subject to perturbation and lust, made by the sons of God, that is, by the stars and demons, of which they placed one in the liver and the other in the heart. Twenty-second, in the liver, he says, the gods determined that prophecies should be fulfilled, namely in a member void of reason, lest anyone be at the same time wise and a seer. Wherefore no one prophesies while of sound mind, but when the power of prudence is overcome by sleep or sickness, or by some divine rapture is moved from its state; for prophecies, he says, are utterances of a frenzied mind. Twenty-third, that man acquires immortality from the most intent gaze upon truth: whence you may gather that the soul is not by itself immortal. Twenty-fourth, the soul, he says, since it always worships the divine, and has within itself the very familiar demon most adorned, becomes blessed. With this familiar demon the Platonists greatly delight, on account of which they are suspected of magic, as also Socrates. Twenty-fifth, the same elsewhere teaches that the soul existed before the body, and therefore that our cognition is not knowledge, or rather a learning, so to speak, but a remembering, etc. Twenty-sixth, he posits παλιγγενεσία, or the return of all things, namely after twelve thousand years (which space he himself calls the great year: for it contains precisely 12,554 years, says Cicero, book II On the Nature of the Gods) all past things are to be recalled into integrity, that they may again come to be in the manner in which they were made.
Of Aristotle — who by St. Jerome and others is called a miracle of nature and genius — the paradoxes are: First, that the world was from eternity. Second, he attaches the first mover to the East. Third, he asserts that it is moved by fate and natural necessity. Fourth, that of future contingents there is no determinate truth, and that God does not know them determinately. Fifth, concerning the mortality of the soul he speaks now and then in such a way that some assert he thought the soul to be mortal: although others more truly hold the contrary opinion. Sixth, he holds that it is lawful to procure abortion and to prepare death for children. Seventh, he teaches that God's providence does not extend to singulars. Eighth, in his book On the Goods of Fortune, he denies that God takes care of fortuitous matters. Ninth, he denied that God's providence extends below the moon, and that God cares for sublunary things, if we believe Clement, book V of the Stromata, Nazianzen, oration 1 On Theology, Ambrose, I On Duties, chap. xiii. Tenth, he held motion and time to be perpetual, and therefore infinite. Eleventh, that nothing comes from nothing: whence they infer that God did not create the world, but made all things from pre-existing matter. See more in St. Justin, book On the Errors of Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, whose absurd dogmas I reviewed at Acts xvii, 18.
Truly the Psalmist, Psalm cxviii, 85: "The wicked have told me fables, but not as Thy law"; for in true wisdom, both uncreated and created and derived, is "the Spirit of understanding, holy," says the Wise One, chap. vii, verse 22, "one, manifold, subtle, eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving the good, keen, whom nothing forbids, humane, kindly, stable, secure, etc., intelligible, clean, subtle: for wisdom is more mobile than all things that move, and reaches everywhere by reason of her cleanness."
Consenting to the good. — This epithet is not in the Greek and the Syriac, and Prosper expunges it in the book On Free Will; Dionysius, Cajetan, Catharinus, Gagneius, and others: yet the Roman codices read it. It seems therefore to be added to explain and determine "persuadable," namely that wisdom suffers herself to be persuaded of good, not evil things, so that she may consent to good things and good people alike, not to evil ones — namely, by believing them, approving, imitating, loving, and promoting their good counsels and works, envying or resisting none, vituperating no one, and impeding no one from a holy work. On the contrary, heresies and heretics dissent from the good and consent to the evil. Thus Luther in his Table Talks rejected Chrysostom as garrulous, Basil as abject, Cyprian as a weak theologian, Jerome as erring and suspected of heresy, and prefers to all of them the Apology of his Melanchthon: who also elsewhere with satanic pride thunders that he cares nothing, if a thousand Cyprians, a thousand Augustines, a thousand Churches stood against him.
Morally: St. Augustine, sermon 12 On the Words of the Apostle: "Does nothing in you," he says, "resist anything else? See lest perhaps there be no war because the peace is perverse, perhaps wholly consenting to the flesh, and there is no quarrel."
Full of mercy. — The Syriac, "in rachame," that is, with compassions flowing from the inmost bowels. For wisdom knows and has learned that saying of Christ: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," Matt. v, verse 7. Thus St. Cyprian, sermon On the Lapsed: "I grieve, brothers," he says, "with you. With each one I join my breast, with those lying down I believe myself to lie down, with prostrate brothers my affection has prostrated me also." Such too was St. Job, as is plain in chap. xxxi, and St. Paul, II Cor. xi, verse 29: "Who," he says, "is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?" And St. Leo, sermon 10 of Lent: "It is exceedingly beautiful and to be compared with divine benevolence, that each man should remember himself in another." Moreover Pliny, book II, chap. vii, places all divinity in beneficence: for although as an atheist he doubts of God and divinity, yet he holds that the gods were made by men, and were none other than brave and beneficent men. "It is God," he says, "for a mortal to help a mortal: and this is the way to eternal glory. By this way the Roman nobles went: by this way now with celestial step, with his children, walks the greatest ruler of every age, Vespasian Augustus, succoring weary affairs. This is the most ancient custom of returning thanks to the well-deserving, that such men should be ascribed to the divinities. For indeed the names of all the other gods, and the names of stars and men which I have related above, sprang from merits."
Therefore Apollo, Aesculapius, and Jupiter — that is, "the helping father" — are merciful and beneficent to their clients. The same Cicero holds about benefactors enrolled among the gods, in book II of the Laws, and from him Lactantius, book I of the Institutes.
And of good fruits, — namely, good works; for these are the effects, offspring, and fruits of wisdom.
Not judging. — Many codices and interpreters delete the "not," and join "judging" to what follows, reading "judging without simulation," as if to say: judging sincerely, not feignedly and falsely; but the Roman, Louvain, Lyons, Royal, and other codices, equally with the Syriac and Greek, read "not judging"; Pagninus and the Zurich version, "discriminating in nothing," namely rashly, not arrogating to oneself the office of judging, not making oneself a judge of others by carping at, censuring, despising them, according to that saying of Christ: "Judge not, that you be not judged," Matt. vii, 1, as if to say: Do not curiously inquire into, carp at, censure, condemn the deeds and morals of others: so it will come to pass, by God's just disposition, that in turn you will not be judged, censured, and condemned by others.
Secondly, our Turrianus, book IV On the Character of Doctrine, takes the Greek ἀδιάκριτος as a passive and renders it passively: "that which is not judged," because, namely, it is certain and undoubted, so that she ought rather to judge others than to be judged; just as the Apostle says that the spiritual man is judged of no one, 1 Cor. ii, 15. Hence St. Augustine, in the book On Grace and Free Will to Valentinus, last chapter, renders ἀδιάκριτος as "inestimable," as if to say: Wisdom is so sublime and precious that she surpasses every judgment and estimation of men; on which matter see Baruch iii, 16 and following, and Job xxviii, 13 and following. Thirdly, some render ἀδιάκριτος as "hesitating in nothing, not doubting, not wavering, but resolute, certain, and secure concerning the truth."
Without dissimulation, — ἀνυπόκριτος, "without hypocrisy"; Pagninus, "simulating nothing." On the contrary, false wisdom, like heresy and heretics, simulates truth, sincerity, chastity, peace, holiness, while they contrive and teach falsehood, hypocrisy, lust, war, and every crime: they are therefore wolves clothed in sheep's clothing, as Christ says, Matt. vii, 17. Truly Wisdom i, verse 5: "The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, and will withdraw Himself from thoughts that are without understanding"; and chap. vii, 13: "Which I have learned without guile and communicate without envy, and her honesty I do not hide." See St. Gregory graphically depicting the acts and morals of hypocrites, X Morals xvi, otherwise xxvii.
Verse 18: And the Fruit of Justice Is Sown in Peace, to Them That Make Peace
18. And the fruit of justice is sown in peace, to them that make peace. — The Syriac, "to those who are peaceable." "Of justice," that is, of wisdom; for the practical wisdom, of which we are here treating, is justice, that is, the complex of all the virtues. James concludes the whole discourse of the chapter on wisdom and teachers with this as it were epiphonema, by which he assigns and embraces the use, fruit, and reward of wisdom, as if to say: I said that wisdom is full of mercy and good fruits, because wisdom and the wise man know for certain that these fruits of justice — that is, of virtue and good works — are as it were the seed of eternal happiness and glory, which she will reap in heaven as a copious harvest and reward; she knows likewise that she ought to sow this seed in peace, by zealously cultivating peace and mutual concord, and by reconciling those who disagree; this dear harvest and reward is set forth and promised only to the cultivators of peace, not to the proud, not to the contentious, not to those who make schisms, not to those who boast of themselves and their own dogmas and deeds, who despise others that they alone may seem to be wise: for it is these whom St. James has censured throughout the whole chapter. For, as Origen says, hom. 13 on Leviticus, our works, however good in themselves, cannot be pleasing to God unless they are carried out in peace, so much so that even the sacrifice of him who disagrees with his brother does not please Him, according to that saying of Christ, Matt. v, 23: "If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath any thing against thee, go first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift." The counterpart of this saying of James is that of St. Paul, issued about the same time to the same people, Heb. xii, 11, when speaking of discipline he says that "it shall yield to them that are exercised by it the most peaceable fruit of justice"; and: "What things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption; but he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting," Gal. vi, 8; and that saying of the Psalmist concerning the Apostles and teachers: "Going they went and wept, casting their seeds: but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves," Psalm cxxv, 6.
Note: the phrase "to those that make peace," that is, the works of peace — namely those things which conduce to conciliating and augmenting peace, that is, those who are peaceful both to themselves and to others, as the Syriac translates: for in this way in the Scriptures we are commanded to do mercy, justice, judgment, piety, etc., that is, the works of mercy, justice, judgment, piety, etc.
Morally: Note how great are the advantages of peace. First, that it is most pleasing to God, whence He Himself is called the God of peace and of love, II Cor. xiii, 11. Second, that peace is the way to heaven, and indeed the beginning of celestial life. For in heaven one of the highest joys of the Saints is the supreme and eternal peace of all. Third, that peace is itself the likeness of God and of the Most Holy Trinity: for in God, although there are three persons, yet there is one will, one love, one sense and consent of all. Hear Nazianzen, oration 2 On Peace: "We agree among ourselves," he says, "no less than the very divinity itself with itself (unless this seem too magnificently said), and are concordant, and we form one lip and one voice: but in a contrary way to those who once built the tower; with mind and mouth we celebrate the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and this is predicated of us, that God is truly in us, uniting those by whom He is united." Fourth, that Christ descended from heaven for this reason, that He might bring peace to men with God and with each other. Whence St. Chrysostom, hom. 18 on I Corinthians: "Many things," he says, "ought to move us to be united in Christ, because He is the head, we the body; He the foundation, we the building; He the vine, we the branches; He the shepherd, we the sheep," etc. Fifth, that peace makes life most sweet. See St. Bernard, sermon V On the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin: "There is one unity of the Saints," he says, "which justifies, another which glorifies; the one is merit, the other reward; the unity which is had in this life is the grace of sweetness, of which it is written: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. For when the Prophet had described its beauty, he did not pass over its utility: because there the Lord commanded the blessing and life: here the blessing, there life eternal." I have said more about peace at Isaiah ii, 4, and Phil. i, etc., Eph. iv, 3, Col. iii, 15.
Furthermore, that this peace with God, with ourselves, and with our neighbors may be had, war must be waged against ourselves, that is, against our concupiscences. Whence St. Augustine, sermon 6 On the Words of the Apostle: "And if the spirit," he says, "lusts against the flesh, and if there is now a quarrel in that house, the husband contending seeks not destruction, but concord."